Continuing from a previous post, Leo Tolstoy and his book of the above title:
The Christian religion seems to exclude the possibility of life only when we mistake the pointing to an ideal as the laying down of a rule. It is only then that the principles presented in Christ’s teaching appear to be destructive of life. These principles, on the contrary, are the only ones that make true life possible. Without these principles true life could not be possible.
“One ought not to expect so much,” is what people usually say in discussing the requirements of the Christian religion. “One cannot expect to take absolutely no thought for the morrow, as is said in the Gospel, but only not to take too much thought for it; one cannot give away all to the poor, but one must give away a certain definite part; one need not aim at virginity, but must avoid debauchery; one need not forsake wife and children, but one must not give too great a place for them in one’s heart,” and so on.
But to speak like this is just like telling someone who is struggling on a swift river and is directing his course against the current, that it is impossible to cross the river rowing across the current and to cross it, he must float in the direction of the point he wants to reach. In reality, in order to reach the place to which he wants to go, he must row with all his strength toward a point much higher up.71-73
To let go of the requirements of the ideal not only means to diminish the probability of perfection, but to make an end of the ideal itself. The ideal that has power over us is not an ideal invented by someone, but that ideal that everyone carries within their soul. Only this ideal of complete, infinite perfection has power over us and stimulates us to action. A moderate perfection loses its power to influence our hearts..
(p.74) Christ’s teaching only has power when it demands absolute perfection—that is, the fusion of divine nature which exists in everyone’s soul with the will of God—the union of the Son with the Father. Life according to Christ’s teaching consists of nothing but this setting free of the Son of God, existing in everyone, and in bringing them closer to the Father.
The animal existence of man does not constitute human life alone. Life according to the will of God only, is also not human life. Human life is a combination of the animal life and the divine life. And the more this combination approaches to the divine life the more life there is in it.
Life, according to the Christian religion, is a progress toward divine perfection. No one condition, according to this doctrine, can be higher or lower than another. Every condition, according to this doctrine, is only a particular stage, of no consequence in itself, on the way toward unattainable perfection, and therefore in itself does not imply a greater or lesser degree of life. Increase of life, according to this, consists in nothing but the quickening of the progress toward perfection, and therefore that progress toward perfection of the publican Zaccheus, of the woman that was a sinner and of the robber on the cross, implies a higher degree of life than the stagnant righteousness of the Pharisee. And therefore, for this religion, there cannot be rules which it is obligatory to obey. The man/woman who is at the lower level but is moving onward toward perfection is living a more moral life, a better life, is more fully carrying out Christ’s teaching, than he/she who is on a much higher level of morality who is not moving toward perfection.
It is in this sense that the lost sheep is dearer to the Father than those that were not lost. The prodigal son, the piece of money lost and found again, were more precious than those that were not lost.
The fulfillment of Christ’s teaching consists in moving away from self toward God. It is obvious that there cannot be definite laws and rules for this fulfillment of the teaching. Every degree of perfection and every degree of imperfection are equal in it; no obedience to laws constitutes a fulfillment of this doctrine and therefore there can be no binding rules and laws.
From this fundamental distinction between the religion of Christ and all preceding religions based on the state conception of life, follows a corresponding difference in the special precepts of the state theory and the Christian precepts. The precepts of the state theory of life insist for the most part on certain practical prescribed acts, by which we are (p.75) justified and secured of being right. The Christian precepts (the commandment of love is not a precept in the strict sense of the word, but the very expression of the very essence of the religion) are five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount—all negative in character. They show only what a certain stage of development we may not do.
These commandments are, as it were, signposts on the endless road to perfection, toward which humanity is moving, showing the point of perfection which is possible at a certain period in the development of humanity.
Christ has given expression in the Sermon on the Mount to the eternal ideal to which we are spontaneously struggling, and also the degree of attainment of it to which we may attain in our times.
The ideal is not to desire to do ill to anyone, not to provoke ill will, to love all. The precept, showing the level below which we cannot fall in the attainment of this ideal, is the prohibition of evil speaking. And that is the first command.
The ideal is perfect chastity, even in thought. The precept showing the level below which we cannot fall in attainment of this ideal, is that of purity in married life, avoidance of debauchery. That is the second command.
The ideal is to take no thought for the future, to live in the present moment. The precept showing the level to which we cannot fall, is the prohibition of swearing, of promising anything in the future. And that is the third command.
The ideal is never for any purpose to use force. The precept showing the level to which we cannot fall in the returning good for evil, being patient under wrong, giving the cloak also. That is the fourth command.
The ideal is to love the enemies who hate us. The precept showing the level to which we cannot fall, is not to do evil to our enemies, to speak well of them, and to make no difference between them and our neighbors.
All these precepts are indications of what, on our journey to perfection, we are already on our way to fully to avoid, and what we must labor to attain now, and what we ought, by degrees, to translate into instinctive and unconscious habits. But these precepts, far from constituting the whole of Christ’s teaching and exhausting it, are simply stages on the way to perfection. These precepts must and will be followed by higher and higher precepts on the way to the perfection held up by the religion.
(p.76) And therefore it is essentially part of the Christian religion to make demands higher than those expressed in its precepts; and by no means diminish the demand either the ideal itself, or of the precepts, as people imagine who judge it from the standpoint of the social conception of life. ~~~Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (Barnes & Noble, Inc. 122 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 1001) continued
