Christianity misunderstood by believers - Leo Tolstoy

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" The follower of Christ, whose service means an ever-growing

understanding of his teaching, and an ever-closer fulfillment of it,

in progress toward perfection, cannot, just because he is a follower,

of Christ, claim for himself or any other that he understands

Christ's teaching fully and fulfills it. Still less can he claim this

for any body of men.

 

To whatever degree of understanding and perfection the follower of

Christ may have attained, he always feels the insufficiency of his

understanding and fulfillment of it, and is always striving toward a

fuller understanding and fulfillment. And therefore, to assert of

one's self or of any body of men, that one is or they are in

possession of perfect understanding and fulfillment of Christ's word,

is to renounce the very spirit of Christ's teaching.

 

Strange as it may seem, the churches as churches have always been,

and cannot but be, institutions not only alien in spirit to Christ's

teaching, but even directly antagonistic to it. With good reason

Voltaire calls the Church l'infâme; with good reason have all or

almost all so-called sects of Christians recognized the Church as the

scarlet woman foretold in the Apocalypse; with good reason is the

history of the Church the history of the greatest cruelties and

horrors.

 

The churches as churches are not, as many people suppose,

institutions which have Christian principles for their basis, even

though they may have strayed a little away from the straight path.

The churches as churches, as bodies which assert their own

infallibility, are institutions opposed to Christianity. There is not

only nothing in common between the churches as such and Christianity,

except the name, but they represent two principles fundamentally

opposed and antagonistic to one another. One represents pride,

violence, self-assertion, stagnation, and death; the other, meekness,

penitence, humility, progress, and life.

 

We cannot serve these two masters; we have to choose between them.

 

The servants of the churches of all denominations, especially of

later times, try to show themselves champions of progress in

Christianity. They make concessions, wish to correct the abuses that

have slipped into the Church, and maintain that one cannot, on

account of these abuses, deny the principle itself of a Christian

church, which alone can bind all men together in unity and be a

mediator between men and God. But this is all a mistake. Not only

have churches never bound men together in unity; they have always

been one of the principal causes of division between men, of their

hatred of one another, of wars, battles, inquisitions, massacres of

St. Bartholomew, and so on. And the churches have never served as

mediators between men and God. Such mediation is not wanted, and was

directly forbidden by Christ, who has revealed his teaching directly

and immediately to each man. But the churches set up dead forms in

the place of God, and far from revealing God, they obscure him from

men's sight. The churches, which originated from misunderstanding of

Christ's teaching and have maintained this misunderstanding by their

immovability, cannot but persecute and refuse to recognize all true

understanding of Christ's words. They try to conceal this, but in

vain; for every step forward along the path pointed out for us by

Christ is a step toward their destruction.

 

To hear and to read the sermons and articles in which Church writers

of later times of all denominations speak of Christian truths and

virtues; to hear or read these skillful arguments that have been

elaborated during centuries, and exhortations and professions, which

sometimes seem like sincere professions, one is ready to doubt

whether the churches can be antagonistic to Christianity. " It cannot

be, " one says, " that these people who can point to such men as

Chrysostom, Fénelon, Butler, and others professing the Christian

faith, were antagonistic to Christianity. " One is tempted to

say, " The churches may have strayed away from Christianity, they may

be in error, but they cannot be hostile to it. " But we must look to

the fruit to judge the tree, as Christ taught c us. And if we see

that their fruits were evil, that the results of their activity were

antagonistic to Christianity, we cannot but admit that however good

the men were-- the work of the Church in which these men took part

was not Christian. The goodness and worth of these men who served the

churches was the goodness and worth of the men, and not of the

institution they served. All the good men, such as Francis of Assisi,

and Francis of Sales, our Tihon Zadonsky, Thomas à Kempis, and

others, were good men in spite of their serving an institution

hostile to Christianity, and they would have been still better if

they had not been under the influence of the error which they were

serving. ...

 

It is true that there is nowhere in Europe a government so despotic

and so closely allied with the ruling Church. And therefore the share

of the temporal power in the corruption of the people is greatest in

Russia. But it is untrue that the Russian Church in its influence on

the people is in any respect different from any other church.

 

The churches are everywhere the same, and if the Catholic, the

Anglican, or the Lutheran Church has not at hand a government as

compliant as the Russian, it is not due to any indisposition to

profit by such a government.

 

The Church as a church, whatever it may be--Catholic, Anglican,

Lutheran, Presbyterian--every church, in so far as it is a church,

cannot but strive for the same object as the Russian Church. That

object is to conceal the real meaning of Christ's teaching and to

replace it by their own, which lays no obligation on them, excludes

the possibility of understanding the true teaching of Christ, and

what is the chief consideration, justifies the existence of priests

supported at the people's expense.

 

What else has Catholicism done, what else is it doing in its

prohibition of reading the Gospel, and in its demand for unreasoning

submission to Church authorities and to an infallible Pope? Is the

religion of Catholicism any other than that of the Russian Church?

There is the same external ritual, the same relics, miracles, and

wonder-working images of Notre Dame, and the same processions; the

same loftily vague discussions of Christianity in books and sermons,

and when it comes to practice, the same supporting of the present

idolatry. And is not the same thing done in Anglicanism, Lutheranism,

and every denomination of Protestantism which has been formed into a

church? There is the same duty laid on their congregations to believe

in the dogmas expressed in the fourth century, which have lost all

meaning for men of our times, and the same duty of idolatrous

worship, if not of relics and ikons, then of the Sabbath Day and the

letter of the Bible. There is always the same activity directed to

concealing the real duties of Christianity, and to putting in their

place an external respectability and cant, as it is so well described

by the English, who are peculiarly oppressed by it. In Protestantism

this tendency is specially remarkable because it has not the excuse

of antiquity. And does not exactly the same thing show itself even in

contemporary revivalism--the revived Calvinism and Evangelicalism, to

which the Salvation Army owes its origin?

 

Uniform is the attitude of all the churches to the teaching of

Christ, whose name they assume for their own advantage.

 

The inconsistency of all church forms of religion with the teaching

of Christ is, of course, the reason why special efforts are necessary

to conceal this inconsistency from people. Truly, the need only

imagine ourselves in the position of any grown-up man, not

necessarily educated, even the simplest man of the present day, who

has picked up the ideas that are everywhere in the air nowadays of

geology, physics, chemistry, cosmography, or history, when he, for

the first time, consciously compares them with the articles of belief

instilled into him in childhood, and maintained by the churches--that

God created the world in six days, and light before the sun; that

Noah shut up all the animals in his ark, and so on; that Jesus is

also God the Son, who created all before time was; that this God came

down upon earth to atone for Adam's sin; that he rose again, ascended

into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and will

come in the clouds to judge the world, and so on. All these

propositions, elaborated by men of the fourth century, had a certain

meaning for men of that time, but for men of to-day they have no

meaning whatever. Men of the present day can repeat these words with

their lips, but believe them they cannot. For such sentences as that

God lives in heaven, that the heavens opened and a voice from

somewhere said something, that Christ rose again, and ascended

somewhere in heaven, and again will come from somewhere on the

clouds, and so on, have no meaning for us.

 

A man who regarded the heavens as a solid, finite vault could believe

or disbelieve that God created the heavens, that the heavens opened,

that Christ ascended into heaven, but for us all these phrases nave

no sense whatever. Men of the present can only believe, as indeed

they do, that they ought to believe in this; but believe it they

cannot, because it has no meaning for them.

 

Even if all these phrases ought to be interpreted in a figurative

sense and are allegories, we know that in the first place all

Churchmen are not agreed about it, but, on the contrary, the majority

stick to understanding the Holy Scripture in its literal sense; and

secondly, that these allegorical interpretations are very varied and

are not supported by any evidence.

 

But even if a man wants to force himself to believe in the doctrines

of the Church just as they are taught to him, the universal diffusion

of education and of the Gospel and of communication between people of

different forms of religion presents a still more insurmountable

obstacle to his doing so.

 

A man of the present day need only buy a Gospel for three copecks and

read through the plain words, admitting of no misinterpretation, that

Christ said to the Samaritan woman " that the Father seeketh not

worshipers at Jerusalem, nor in this mountain nor in that, but

worshipers in spirit and in truth, " or the saying that " the Christian

must not pray like the heathen, nor for show, but secretly, that is,

in his closet, " or that Christ's follower must call no man master or

father--he need only read these words to be thoroughly convinced that

the Church pastors, who call themselves teachers in opposition to

Christ's precept, and dispute among themselves, constitute no kind of

authority, and that what the Churchmen teach us is not Christianity.

Less even than that is necessary. Even if a man nowadays did continue

to believe in miracles and did not read the Gospel, mere association

with people of different forms of religion and faith, which happens

so easily in these days, compels him to doubt of the truth of his own

faith. It was all very well when a man did not see men of any other

form of religion than his own; he believed that his form of religion

was the one true one. But a thinking man has only to come into

contact--as constantly happens in these days-- with people, equally

good and bad, of different denominations, who condemn each other's

beliefs, to doubt of the truth of the belief he professes himself. In

these days only a man who is absolutely ignorant or absolutely

indifferent to the vital questions with which religion deals, can

remain in the faith of the Church.

 

What deceptions and what strenuous efforts the churches must employ

to continue, in spite of all these tendencies subversive of the

faith, to build churches, to perform masses, to preach, to teach, to

convert, and, most of all, to receive for it all immense emoluments,

as do all these priests, pastors, incumbents, superintendents,

abbots, archdeacons, bishops, and archbishops. They need special

supernatural efforts. And the churches do, with ever-increasing

intensity and zeal, make such efforts. With us in Russia, besides

other means, they employ, simple brute force, as there the temporal

power is willing to obey the Church. Men who refuse an external

assent to the faith, and say so openly, are either directly punished

or deprived of their rights; men who strictly keep the external forms

of religion are rewarded and given privileges.

 

That is how the Orthodox clergy proceed; but indeed all churches

without exception avail themselves of every means for the purpose --

one of the most important of which is what is now called hypnotism.

 

Every art, from architecture to poetry, is brought into requisition

to work its effect on men's souls and to reduce them to a state of

stupefaction, and this effect is constantly produced. This use of

hypnotizing influence on men to bring them to a state of stupefaction

is especially apparent in the proceedings of the Salvation Army, who

employ new practices to which we are unaccustomed: trumpets, drums,

songs, flags, costumes, marching, dancing, tears, and dramatic

performances.

 

But this only displeases us because these are new practices. Were not

the old practices in churches essentially the same, with their

special lighting, gold, splendor, candles, choirs, organ, bells,

vestments, intoning, etc.?

 

But however powerful this hypnotic influence may be, it is not the

chief nor the most pernicious activity of the Church. The chief and

most pernicious work of the Church is that which is directed to the

deception of children--these very children of whom Christ said: " Woe

to him that offendeth one of these little ones. " From the very first

awakening of the consciousness of the child they begin to deceive

him, to instill into him with the utmost solemnity what they do not

themselves believe in, and they continue to instill it into him till

the deception has by habit grown into the child's nature. They

studiously deceive the child on the most important subject in life,

and when the deception has so grown into his life that it would be

difficult to uproot it, then they reveal to him the whole world of

science and reality, which cannot by any means be reconciled with the

beliefs that have been instilled into him, leaving it to him to find

his way as best he can out of these contradictions.

 

If one set oneself the task of trying to confuse a man so that he

could not think clearly nor free himself from the perplexity of two

opposing theories of life which had been instilled into him from

childhood, one could not invent any means more effectual than the

treatment of every young man educated in our so-called Christian

society.

 

It is terrible to think what the churches do to men. But if one

imagines oneself in the position of the men who constitute the

Church, we see they could not act differently. The churches are

placed in a dilemma: the Sermon on the Mount or the Nicene Creed--the

one excludes the other. If a man sincerely believes in the Sermon on

the Mount, the Nicene Creed must inevitably lose all meaning and

significance for him, and the Church and its representatives together

with it. If a man believes in the Nicene Creed, that is, in the

Church, that is, in those who call themselves its representatives,

the Sermon on the Mount becomes superfluous for him. And therefore

the churches cannot but make every possible effort to obscure the

meaning of the Sermon on the Mount, and to attract men to themselves.

It is only due to the intense zeal of the churches in this direction

that the influence of the churches has lasted hitherto.

 

Let the Church stop its work of hypnotizing the masses, and deceiving

children even for the briefest interval of time, and men would begin

to understand Christ's teaching. But this understanding will be the

end of the churches and all their influence. And therefore the

churches will not for an instant relax their zeal in the business of

hypnotizing grown-up people and deceiving children. This, then, is

the work of the churches: to instill a false interpretation of

Christ's teaching into men, and to prevent a true interpretation of

it for the majority of so-called believers. "

 

Christianity misunderstood by believers - Leo Tolstoy

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