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The Kingdom of God Is Within You

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The Kingdom of God Is Within You is the non-fiction magnum opus of Leo Tolstoy and was first published in Germany in 1894, after being banned in his home country of Russia. It is the culmination of thirty years of Tolstoy's thinking, and lays out a new organization for society based on a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. The fact that he whom many consider the greatest author of all time is almost absent from conversations about non-fiction paradoxically indicates the power of this readable, logical, and profoundly simplistic text. Such an argument supposes that when Christ says to turn the other cheek and resist not evil, he means exactly that, and is not bounded by complicated sophistries. This reasoning leads to the following question:

"How can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment: `Thou shalt not murder'?"

Of course, this confronts a Christian society supportive of war and executions with paramount logic: modern society is completely incompatible with Christ's message.

The title of the book is taken from Luke 17:21. In the book Tolstoy speaks of the principle of nonresistance when confronted by violence, as taught by Jesus. Mahatma Gandhi stated in An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth that this book radically changed his life.

Tolstoy presented excerpts from magazines and newspapers relating various personal experiences, and gave keen insight into the history of peaceful nonviolence as being professed by a majority from the very foundation of Christianity. In particular, he addresses those who argue that such a change to a non-violent society would be disastrous with the following recourse:

"That this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disaster would ensue if this organization were destroyed; all this is said only by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it - and they are ten times as numerous - think and say quite the contrary."

The philosophy was subsequently labeled as 'Christian anarchy', a stigma that may deter people from further pursuit. But Tolstoy's anarchy is peaceful. He recounted challenges by people of all classes that his views on nonresistance were insupportable, and argued that no matter how the challengers tried to attack the doctrine, its essence could not be overcome. He advocated non-violence as a solution to nationalist woes and as a means for purifying the Church's sanctimony. In reading Jesus' words in the Gospels, Tolstoy notes that the modern church is a heretical creation:

"Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church."

When he was living out his still-active days in Yasnaya Polyana, Russia, he began to test these values increasingly. He never reached the levels of his Indian disciple, but in 1910 he abandoned all but his barest possessions, as Christ did, and went away from home accompanied by his daughter and doctor. He began dying at a train station, and his (in)glorious death at the stationmaster's home, experiencing transcendental poverty, is a testament to his conviction. In contrast, one preface to Anna Karenina (Signet Classics) notes that he died 'while he was traveling away from home.'

This book changed my life in the literal sense of the word, on different levels than any book ever has.

you'd really like this book. But I am not, I am not, and I didn't.

First of all, as an English Lit Major in college, I learned years ago that Russian writing does not easily translate into popular, modern English syntax. This ponderous tome is no exception.

Also, the title of the book had me expecting an insightful, splendidly mystical book on the teachings of Jesus Christ. I was disappointed to learn that this book is an explication/defense of an earlier Tolstoi book, _What I Believe_.

I did learn that Quakers have a catechism, or at least they did in the 19th century.

Like I said: for Tolstoi or Russian Lit lovers.