Having heard Krista Tippett’s Speaking of Faith radio program a few times, I couldn’t resist buying the book when I saw it in the discount bin at Borders.  The subtitle to the book, Why Religion Matters—And How to Talk About It, is an issue that’s been on my mind recently.  In traveling to many countries around the world, I have the opportunity to talk to a lot of people of different religious backgrounds: Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, and atheists among others.  I enjoy talking about religion, but I have internalized the American adage that it’s something you don’t talk about in polite company.  So this book really caught my attention.

Tippett comes from a unique background as the granddaughter of a Midwestern Baptist preacher she was close to and the daughter of irreligious parents.  She moved away from religion in her teens and college years because it didn’t fit her intellectual paradigm, only to be pulled back to it later in life.  A few years ago she began her Speaking of Faith radio program where she interviews preachers and scientists, believers and doubters, poets and statisticians, all to get a wide variety of perspectives on religion.  These are great interviews because these people are intelligent people talking personally.  Even if you don’t agree with them, the environment is so judgment free that you get real feelings on a range of topics.  She also brings a lot of her personal life into the conversation.

The great meat of the book is, first, its emphasis of the importance of religion in the lives of billions of people, and how that can’t be discounted from a personal (micro) or geo-political (macro) perspective.  The second important emphasis is on the personal-ness of religion, and how we can share religion and talk about it as a personal thing, and that we should not feel imposing or imposed upon as personal and spiritual feelings and stories are shared.

It was a really good read that made me more willing and desirous to talk about religion with others.  It even made me understand my own internal faith better.

There were also some great quotes from the book:

Citing (but not quoting) Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “We’ve pushed God to the boundaries, he wrote, where the rest of our knowledge gives out.  We’ve consigned God to the gaps in our scientific understanding, to the wings of our action.  We’ve reserved prayer for when our best efforts fail.”

“[J]ust as worlds of human dignity flourished beneath the East[ern Bloc]’s surface of want, there were layers of human want beneath the surface of Western plenty that I was engaged in defending.  Communism crushed many souls, but it ennobled others.  Capitalism did the same, but with preferable, subtler devices.”

Quoting Luke Timothy Johnson from an interview: “The notion of scripture as being a cadaver that one performs an autopsy on—as opposed to a living body with which one danced—was stunning to me.”

“The human spirit eventually defies the best-laid plans of politics, and we can guess so little of the history before us.”

Quoting John Polkinghorne from an interview: “…God is not a god in a hurry. That’s clear. God is patient and subtle. God works through process and not through magic; not through snapping the divine fingers. And I think that’s what we learn from seeing the history of creation as science has revealed it, and I think that tells us something about how God acts generally. And, when you think about it, if God really is a God whose nature is best described as being the God of love, then that is how love will work. Not by overwhelming force, but by, if you like, persuasive process. So I think we learn something really quite valuable from that. Again, it’s an example of how religious insights about the nature of God and the scientific insights about the process of the world seem to me actually to be very consonant with each other. You can’t deduce one from the other, but you can see it and they fit together in a way that makes sense. They don’t seem to be at odds with each other, and I find that encouraging.”

Also from Polkinghorne: “[A] chemist can take [a] beautiful painting, could analyze every scrap of paint on the canvas, tell you what its chemical composition was, would incidentally destroy the painting by doing that, but would have missed the point of the painting. . . .”

“Science, like religion, is about questions more than about answers—questions and more questions that meet every new answer as soon as it is hatched.”

“[S]cience is neither innately concerned nor equipped to pose questions of ‘why’ or ‘what next’ in a moral, spiritual, or existential sense.”

“[E]ven the best answers of science and religion can become idols, blocking our view of the complexity of what it means to be human.”

Quoting Rainer Maria Rilke: “Love is perhaps the most difficult task given us, the most extreme, the final proof and test, the work for which all other work is only preparation.”

Quoting Thomas Merton: “One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.”

Citing Roberta Bondi: “God . . . sees us with a great deal more allowance for our humanity than we ever make for each other of for ourselves.”

Quoting Karen Armstrong from an interview: “. . . God is not just a bigger and better version of ourselves writ large, with our likes and dislikes, but a reality that is entirely different.”

Quoting Alexis de Toqueville: “. . . I am certain that [Americans] hold [faith and religion] to be indispensible to the maintenance of republican institutions.  This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.”

“A certain compartmentalization of private reverence from public activity . . . was not sustainable with human nature.”

Quoting Adam Smith: ““The poor man’s son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, admires the condition of the rich. It appears in his fancy like the life of some superior rank of beings, and, in order to arrive at it, he devotes himself forever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. Through the whole of his life, he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose, which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquility that is at all times in his power, and which, if in the extremity of old age, he should at last attain to it, he will find to be in no respect preferable to that humble security and contentment which he had abandoned for it. Power and riches appear, then, to be what they are, enormous machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body. They are immense fabrics, which it requires the labor of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which, while they stand, can protect him from none of the severer inclemencies of the season. They keep off the summer shower, not the winter storm, but leave him always as much and sometimes more exposed than before to anxiety, to fear and to sorrow, to diseases, to danger and to death.”

Quoting Yossi Klein Halevi: “You can’t outhate a fundamentalist.  They will win.”

“Kindness—an everyday by-product of all the great virtues—is at once the simplest and most weighty discipline human beings can practice.”

“[P]eople who bring light into the world wrench it out of darkness and contend openly with darkness all of their lives.”

“Our love for our children is often defined by the fact that we cannot spare them pain and save them; that we give them their freedom as necessary steps to creativity, wisdom, and love; that we raise them for the world they go on to create.”

The crowd stood stunned, some muttering, some building to angry talk in small groups.  The President resumed, “Are we a Christian nation?”  The crowd murmured.  He asked again, “Are we a Christian nation?”  The crowd reluctantly muttered a spattering of yeses.  “Even those of us who aren’t Christians agree that revenge in the abstract is wrongheaded.  Well, we’re not dealing in the abstract anymore.

“What is America?  It’s not really a place.  It has no geographical boundaries.  It’s a concept not only of freedom and opportunity but also of letting the better angels of our nature rule.  Our Founding Fathers knew that only a moral people could remain a free people.  So, what choice is before us?  Do we descend into revenge to satisfy our base and animal instincts?  Or do we truly honor the lives of the fallen here and at the Pentagon and in Shanksville by rising above.  They, I believe, are in a better place where they are gaining a greater understanding.  And I think if we listen to our hearts, they, and the divinity within us, will speak to us the peace and hope of rejecting revenge.

“We will follow the laws of the land in finding and trying those responsible for this, and we’ll do all we can to prevent any such evil in the future.  We will not forget our loved ones nor the pain we feel at their lives being taken, especially this way.  But we will show our love for them, not through reprisal, but through faithfulness to the highest ideals they shared with us. 

“We must not be vengeful.  It is not in the founding character of America.  Let us pray for the families of the victims, for the families of the terrorists, and for strength to reach higher and be better.”

Some of the people gather around the President and joined him in prayer.  Others stood watching, and still others walked away angrily decrying his words.

But his choice that day made a difference in the world.

Leo Tolstoy is perhaps the ultimate example of the late-in-life nihilist-turned-idealist. He is best known for his mid-life fiction, most notably War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He was early on somewhat of a determinist and nihilist but late in life began a study of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and came away a determined Christian, with significant misgivings regarding the Russian orthodox church specifically and organized religion and government generally. He wrote his thoughts in two books that were significantly suppressed by the Russian Church and the Czarist government.

Tolstoy’s main argument is that believing and proclaiming Christians don’t really believe Christ’s words…at least not in deed. Using the Sermon on the Mount, he argues for a doctrine of “non-resistance of evil.” Starting in St. Matthew 5:38…

38 ¶ Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43 ¶ Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

The question is, does Christ really mean that we are to turn the other cheek (not retaliate or defend ourselves with violence), that we are to not sue others (or even argue with them when they sue us), and that we are not to resist evil (submit completely without violence to the evil actions that others would put upon us)? Is this what Christ means? Is He serious about it?

Some may argue that sure, that’s the ideal, but Christ really doesn’t expect us to do it. But then these same people would argue that He completely expects us to be able to not fornicate or kill or steal or covet. Does Christ expect perfection? C.S. Lewis states: “The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.”

As long as we justify that which is difficult by saying it’s idealistic, we will fall short of making any lasting changes in the world.

A few quotes from Tolstoy regarding this issue:

“All of us, when reflecting on the destiny of man, have been struck with terror at the sufferings and evils which our human criminal laws have brought into our lives–evils both for those who judge and for those who are judged…No man of feeling has escaped the impression of horror and doubt concerning “good” produced by the recital, if not the sight, of men executing their fellow-men by rods, the guillotine, or the gallows.”

Many of us have lost this sensibility because we see false death and suffering so much on TV and in movies and video games that perhaps we don’t feel that horror and doubt Tolstoy expresses.

He argues (quite convincingly) that the word “condemn” used in the Greek and “judge” imply a legal damning or using the civil and criminal court system and states that Christ’s injunction against judging and condemning and pulling the mote out really means that we shouldn’t take anyone to court in order to right wrongs.

“In the Gospels, every word of which we esteem sacred, it is said clearly and distinctly, “You have the criminal law–a tooth for a tooth; and I give you a new one–resist not the evil man. Fulfill this commandment all of you, return not evil for evil; always do good to all; forgive all.”

“And farther on we read, “Judge not;” then, in order to render all doubt impossible as to the meaning of His words, Christ adds, “condemn not to punishment by the courts of law.” My heart says clearly, distinctly, “Do not execute.” Science says, “Do not execute; the more you execute, the more evil there will be.” Reason says, “Do not execute; you cannot put a stop to evil by evil.”

“Now I understood what Christ meant when He said, “Ye have hear that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. And I say unto you, Resist not evil.” Christ means, “You have been taught to consider it right and rational to protect yourselves against evil by violence, to pluck out an eye for an eye, to institute courts of law for the punishment of criminals, to have a police, an army, to defend you against the attacks of an enemy; but I say to you, do no violence to any man, take no part in violence, never do evil to any man, not even to those whom you call your enemies.”

“I now understood that, in this doctrine of non-resistance, Christ not only tells us what the natural result of following His doctrine will be, but by placing this same doctrine in opposition to the Mosaic law, the Roman law, and the various codes of the present time, He clearly shows that it ought to be the basis of our social existence, and should deliver us from the evil we have brought upon ourselves. He says, ‘You think to amend evil by your laws, but they only aggravate it. There is one way by which you can put a stop to evil; it is by indiscriminately returning good for evil. You have tried the other law for thousands of years; now try Mine, which is the very reverse.’”

“Each of us gives the doctrine of Christ an interpretation of his own, but it is never the direct and simple one which flows out of His words. We have grounded the conduct of our lives on a principle which He rejects; we do not choose to understand His teaching in its simple and direct sense. Those who call themselves ‘believers’ believe that Christ-God, the second person of the Trinity, made Himself man in order to set us an example how to live, and they strictly fulfill the most complicated duties, such as preparing for the sacraments, building churches, sending out missionaries, naming pastors for parochial administration, etc.; they only forget one trifling circumstance–to do as He tells them…Nobody ever tries to fulfill His teaching. Nor is that all. Instead of making any effort to follow His commandments, both believers and unbelievers decide beforehand that to do so is impossible.”

Lastly:

“He [Christ] says, ‘You think to eradicate evil by your human laws of violence; they only increase it. During thousands and thousands of years you have tried to annihilate evil by evil, and you have not annihilated it; you have but increased it. Follow the teaching I give you by word and deed, and you will prove its practical power.’”

So what do I think about all of this? Is Tolstoy spot on with this non-resistance of evil stuff? It’s really only been implemented politically one time in the modern era and resulted the independence of India and laid the foundation for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. I think that the only way that peace will reign on the earth is when a critical mass of human beings are willing to actually implement the simple teachings of Jesus Christ fully. As long as we ignore the difficult injunctions and instead take the easy road of violence, war and retaliation and vengeance, we will reap what we sow.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassion’d stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.

America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes prov’d
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev’ry gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crowns thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

This song contains in it a recognition that America has, and will always have, flaws. Once we see ourselves as alway right, just because we are America, we will fall victim to that pride that destroys all people. However, if we look to God’s ways to mend our flaws, if we confirm our souls in self control, America will be beautiful again.

Additionally, we must be noble in our successes and divine in our gains. This country was established upon principles of self-government and faith; freedom and hope; equality and merit. Until we return to these eternal principles, all efforts will fail. Let us make America beautiful again, from the inside out.

Our modern world is infatuated with the ends we have in our sight, the goals we want to accomplish, and the changes we want to see. Most people have the same needs and desires: liberty, happiness, security, prosperity, and peace. Why do we consistently find ourselves so far from where we want to be? The problem is two-fold: 1) we mistakenly believe that if we focus on the end we will attain it; and 2) we are using means that are inconsistent with those ends.

History is essentially the account of the means societies have chosen to achieve their ends. France of 1789 wanted “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Because they chose means inconsistent with those ends (“The Reign of Terror”) they reaped a dictatorship. The putative “means” (in the Treaty of Versailles) chosen by Great Britain and France to punish and weaken Germany after World War I accomplished the opposite. The terms of the treaty helped create the environment that allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to power.

The great modern philosopher, Jack Johnson, asks: “Where’d all the good people go?” and then answers his own question: “We’ve got heaps and heaps of what we sow.” There exists a natural law of the harvest: What we sow, that too shall we reap. Others may describe it as the law of cause and effect: we cannot act (the cause) in a certain manner without a specific consequence (the effect) naturally following that action. To believe otherwise is either naïve or insane.

For whatever reason, most of us attempt to defy these laws of the harvest or cause-and-effect. In my family I desire to raise freely obedient children who choose to do good for its inherent goodness; but I often resort to punishments, promises of rewards, or force in order to accomplish that goal. If I persist in these means, I will fail to achieve my end. Most desire to have a home filled with love, kindness, patience, and peace; but how often do we resort to yelling, arguing, blaming, sarcasm, belittling, verbal and sometimes physical abuse in what will be an impossible attempt to achieve our goal?

As a society, we have chosen to be ends-based and goal-oriented, asking ourselves the wrong question (what do we want to accomplish?) instead of asking ourselves the right question: How must I live my life in order to achieve the right ends? If we focus on means instead of ends, our planting will naturally bring us the desired harvest: true means will take us to true ends.

Consider foreign policy for a moment. What do the citizens of nations want? We want food and shelter for our families, peace, freedom, and protection of life. What are the means that will bring these into being? Protectionism, nationalism, war, exploitation, racism, ethnic cleansing, and imperialism? No!

Louis Fischer, in his wonderful short biography of Mohandas K. Gandhi writes: “Gandhi contended that to act while renouncing interest in the fruits of action is the best road to success”.

He who is ever brooding over result often loses nerve in the performance of duty. He becomes impatient and then gives vent to anger and begins to do unworthy things; he jumps from action to action, never remaining faithful to any. He who broods over results is like a man given to the objects of senses; he is ever-distracted, he says good-bye to all scruples, everything is right in his estimation and he therefore resorts to means fair and foul to attain his end.

Living life by the right means, on the other hand, assures us that we will enjoy the fruits of our true labor. This method is diametrically opposed to the pragmatism and expediency that rule the day in modernism; it takes time and a generational view of the world. We must approach it understanding that our means, be they right or wrong, will have consequences many generations into the future. If we choose to use foul means, we will reap foul fruit.

This is the law of the harvest. We cannot expect to reap peace if we sow war. We cannot expect to reap love when we sow hatred. Our means are the sowing and fruits are the ends. One cannot choose to sow corn and expect to grow wheat. Thus our means are the determining factor of the fruit. To act otherwise is illogical, unwise, and doomed to failure.

Consider from literature the means of the Bishop of Digne, the transient, yet omnipresent (because of his impact), initial character in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Jean Valjean, a released convict who had seeds of hatred and humiliation sown in his heart by the criminal “justice” system or penal system, arrives on the doorstep of the bishop, filled with bad intentions. Although not a bad man when initially imprisoned, Valjean responds to the means used to “reform” or punish him for stealing a loaf a bread to feed his sister’s children by becoming filled with contempt, rancor, distrust, and evil designs. These are the natural ends of the means society employs in its effort to achieve justice. The bishop had chosen a different path. He loved Valjean, responding to his query “You knew my name?” thus: “Yes. Your name is ‘my brother’”, with utmost kindness and forgiveness, giving Valjean his silver candlesticks after the convict had just stolen the other silver in the house. This act of kindness, trust, forgiveness, and love sows a seed of the same, which society eventually reaps, as Valjean becomes a wonderful, kind, giving, and patient man. The impact of the means used by the Bishop of Digne is widespread and powerful, changing the lives of many.

If liberty, prosperity, peace, and the pursuit of happiness are the ends we seek, we must daily, hourly, vigilantly check our means to assure that they are completely consistent with these ends. Look around you. See what means we are using in education, families, religion, business, government, communities, foreign policy, and media and decide if what we are planting will give us the desired harvest. Recognize that we are, in all facets of our lives, reaping in abundance what we have sown. We must sow differently.

This book and the ideas of this man have greatly changed my personal point of view.  He was a significant force in the thinking of the 20^th Century.  But, like Christ and many other great teachers, many of his ideas are ignored or ridiculed simply because they are too darn hard for us “modern” people to implement.  We justify this to ourselves by calling them quaint and outdated, but really we’re just too lazy to act on them.

Below are some of my favorite quotes (believe me; I could have made it longer).

Personal Goodness and Betterment

“[M]orality is the basis of things and . . . truth is the substance of all morality”

“[I]t went against the grain with me to do a thing in secret that I would not do in public.”

“My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. . . .  Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word.”

“I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty. . . .”

“To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms.”

“[F]orgiveness is more manly than punishment. . . .”

“[S]trength does not come from physical capacity.  It comes from an indomitable will. . . .”

“The tacit contributor is not exempt from the retribution which must fall . . . , for evil is wrought by want of thought, and all who help in the working must partake of its harvest.”

“True sacrifice lies in deriving the greatest pleasure from the deed, no matter what the risk may be.”

“The slightest deviation from the straight and narrow path mapped out here would bring us down the precipice, not because the cause is at all unjust or weak, but because the opposition set up against us is overwhelming.”

“In trying to realize the false dignity of a false education, we have forgotten the true dignity of manual labor. . . .”

“[K]nowledge which stops at the head and does not penetrate into the heart is of but little use. . . .”

“Even a single lamp dispels the deepest darkness. . . .”

“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within me.  And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.”

“Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid mind.  The valiant of spirit glory in fighting alone. . . .”

 “Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.  That is why Emerson said that foolish consistency was the hobgoblin of little minds. . . . 

“[A] devotee of Truth may not do anything in deference to convention.  He must always hold himself open to correction, and whenever he discovers himself to be wrong, he must confess it at all costs and atone for it.”

“I have never made a fetish of consistency.  I am a votary of Truth and I must say what I feel and think at a given moment on the question without regard to what I may have said before on it. . . .  As my vision gets clearer, my views must grow clearer with daily practice. . . .”

 “True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and fearlessly following it.”

“We perish through our perishable bodies if, instead of using them as temporary instruments, we indentify ourselves with them.”

“The modern or Western insatiableness arises really from want of a living faith in a future [resurrected or reincarnated] state, and therefore also in Divinity.”

“[S]ometimes we have to pay too dearly for [compliments].”

Responsibility to our Fellow Man

“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow-beings.”

“[S]ervice can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.”

“My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.”

“How heavy is the toll of sins and wrongs that wealth, power and prestige exact from man!”

“Happiness, the goal to which we all are striving, is reached by endeavoring to make the lives of others happy, and if by renouncing the luxuries of life we can lighten the burdens of others . . . surely the simplification of our wants is a thing greatly to be desired!”

“Loyalty to human institutions has its well-defined limits.  To be loyal to an organization must not mean subordination one’s settled convictions.  Parties may fall and parties may rise; if we are to attain freedom our deep convictions must remain unaffected by such passing changes.”

“I am loyal to an institution so long as that institution conduces to my growth, to the growth of the nation.  Immediately I find that the institution, instead of conducing to [this] growth, impedes it, I hold it my bounden duty to be disloyal to it. . . .”

“[Whilst] we may attack measures and systems, we may not, must not, attack men.  Imperfect ourselves, we must be tender toward others and be slow to impute motives.”

“[Self-rule] is to be attained by educating the masses to a sense of their capacity to regulate and control authority.”

“Those whom we regard as wicked, as a rule, return the compliment.”

“[D]o we not arrogate to ourselves infallibility when we seek to punish our adversaries?”

“I cannot picture to myself a time when no man shall be richer than another.  But I do picture to myself a time when the rich will spurn to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor, and the poor will cease to envy the rich.”

“The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all, and this can be achieved only by uttermost self-sacrifice.”

War and Force vs. Non-Violence

“Was not so much valor worthy of a better cause?”

“Brute force will avail against brute force only when it is proved that darkness can dispel darkness.”

“[P]hysical force is wrongly considered to be used to protect the weak. As a matter of fact, it still further weakens the weak, it makes them dependent upon their so-called defenders or protectors. . . .”

 “[All] terrorism is bad whether put up in a good cause or bad. [Every] cause is good in the estimation of its champion.”

“[As soon as] the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, the power is gone.”

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent. . . .”

“History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul.”

“A friend says that non-violence cannot be attained by the masses of people.  And yet, we find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day by the mass of people acting as if by instinct.  If they were instinctively violent the world would end in no time.  They remain peaceful. . . .  It is when the mass mind is unnaturally influenced by wicked men that the mass of mankind commit violence.  But they forget it as quickly as they commit it because they return to their peaceful nature immediately the evil influence of the directing mind has been removed.”

“The science of war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple.  The science of non- violence alone can lead one to pure democracy. . . .”

“War with all its glorification of brute force is essentially a degrading thing. It demoralizes those who are trained for it. It brutalizes men of naturally gentle character. It outrages every beautiful canon of morality. Its path of glory is foul with the passions of lust, and red with the blood of murder. This is not the pathway to our goal. The grandest aid to development of strong, pure, beautiful character which is our aim, is the endurance of suffering. Self-restraint, unselfishness, patience, gentleness, these are the flowers which spring beneath the feet of those who accept but refuse to impose suffering. . . .”

“[H]uman nature will find itself only when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal. . . .”

“To Britain and the Allies [of WWII], . . . it is a marvel to me that you do not see that ruthless warfare is nobody’s monopoly.  If not the Allies, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon.  Even if you win, you will leave no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud.  They cannot take pride in a recital of cruel deeds, however skillfully achieved.

“Even if you win, it will not prove that you were in the right; it will prove only that your power of destruction was greater. . . .”

“It is folly to suppose that aggressors can ever be benefactors.”

Means and Ends

“[P]ure motives can never justify impure or violent action. . . .”

“Means and ends are convertible terms in my philosophy of life.”

“They say ‘means are after all [only] means.’  I would say ‘means are after all everything.’  As the means, so the end.”

“If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later. . . .”

“[T]he means to me are just as important as the goal, and in a sense more important in that we have some control over them, whereas we have none over the goal if we lose control over the means.”

“[O]ur concern is the act itself, not the result of the action. . . .”

“[One] man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department.  Life is one indivisible whole.”

Politics and Government

“Facts we would always place before our readers whether they be palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding now existing between the two communities in South Africa [or anywhere else] can be removed.”

“It rests with both [parties] to recognize that differences are not necessarily synonymous with superiority or inferiority and to patiently cultivate that spirit of self-restraint and toleration which . . . will . . . destroy the senseless rind of misunderstanding. . . .”

“It does not require much thinking to know that, under the operation of the brute law of force, the modern world is pressed down with the weight of misery and affliction, in spite of the vast system of organized Government and mechanical contrivances to make men happy. . . .”

“I should expect rulers to rule according to my wish, otherwise I cease to help them to rule me. . . .”

“[O]urs will only then be a truly spiritual nation when we shall show more truth than gold, greater fearlessness than pomp of power and wealth, greater charity than love of self. If we will but clean our houses, our palaces and temples of the attributes of wealth, and show in them the attributes of morality, one can offer battle to any combination of hostile forces without having to carry the burden of a heavy militia. . . .”

“It is as amazing as it is humiliating that less than one hundred-thousand white men should be able to rule three hundred and fifteen million Indians. They do so somewhat undoubtedly by force, but more by securing our cooperation in a thousand ways and making us more and more helpless and dependent on them as time goes forward.”

“[The Viceroy, Lord Reading’s] religious and moral views are admirable and indeed are on a remarkably high altitude, though I must confess that I find it difficult to understand his practice of them in politics. . . .”

“There is no conflict between private and political law.”

“Submission to the state law is the price a citizen pays for his personal liberty. Submission, therefore, to a state wholly or largely unjust is an immoral barter for liberty.”

“[W]e must refuse to purchase freedom at the price of our cherished convictions.”

“[A] government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.”

“[A] government that is ideal governs the least.  It is no self-government that leaves nothing for the people to do. . . .”

“[T]hat nation will be blotted out of the face of the earth which pins its faith to injustice, untruth or violence.”

“[P]olitics bereft of religion are absolute dirt. . . .”

“[N]o special legislation without a change of heart can possibly bring about organic unity.  And when there is a change of heart, no such legislation can possibly be necessary. . . .”

“[Man] cannot be made good by law. . . .”

“Governments cannot afford to lead in matters of reform.  By their very nature governments are but interpreters and executors of the expressed will of the people whom they govern. . . .”

“I look upon an increase of the power of the State with the greatest fear, because although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of all progress.”

“[D]emocracy and violence can go ill together.  The States that are today nominally democratic have either to become frankly totalitarian or, if they are to become truly democratic, they must become courageously non-violent.”

The book cites Allan Bloom’s assertion that America’s national books through its first 150 years were the “Declaration of Independence” and the Bible.  But somehow in the 1950s and 60s familiarity with these national books dropped off dramatically.  The problem this causes is immense—we no longer have these essential works as the foundation of our culture.  This begs the question: What has replaced them?

It seems that we don’t have any national books anymore.  What books do almost all Americans read in common?  I postulate that our new national books are not books at all, but are in fact movies and television.  Yes, it’s scary, but I think it’s true.  We watch them, quote them, discuss them in our social gatherings and at the water cooler.  Do we quote the Bible?  I think we, as a nation, quote the Bible very frequently, but we don’t know we’re doing it.  Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee used a lot of Biblical allusions, but he confused a lot of people with them because of our general biblical ignorance in America.

On the other hand, quotes from recent or classic movies permeate our daily language.  “Make him an offer he can’t refuse,” “Luke, I am your father,” “Tina, ya fat lard!”  We can give a detailed description of Jim and Pam’s courtship, but not Isaac and Rebecca’s faith-building first encounter.  We can name all the contestants on American Idol, but not half of the twelve tribes of Israel.  We quote advice given by Oprah, Dr. Phil, or Rush Limbaugh, but we don’t know the Sermon on the Mount—the best “advice” we could ever have for a happy life.  We can name more of the last 12 Heisman Trophy winners than we can the original twelve apostles.

So what?  What if we don’t all read the same books?  Can’t we all just read good books, or even see good movies that reaffirm our sense of right and wrong?  Yes, we could, if we talked about them that way.  But we don’t.  Instead of getting into the details of the morals taught in movies or TV shows, we call them “a triumph of the human spirit” or “a feel-good movie.”  Can you imagine a co-worker coming up to you and saying, “Y’know, I was reading in Genesis the other day about Abraham, and I was wondering what he was thinking as he took Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him, knowing that his own parents had tried to offer Abraham as a sacrifice when he was young.  He must have had some real certainty of his commandment from God”?  I can’t.

What do we do about it?  Well, first we return to our national books.  When was the last time you read the “Declaration?”  Have you read the entire Bible (I know I haven’t) or your scripture?  Second, we need to move the current situation in the right direction.  We need to talk about those “triumph of the human spirit” movies in terms of right and wrong, good choices and bad.  What are the choices characters must make?  Why do they choose the way they do, and what are the results?  This is most important for children, especially when movies are not as explicitly didactic as Little House on the Prairie was (it’s also a good chance to talk to our kids and to give them a better understanding of our own values, our “family books”).

The concept of a national book is so extremely important.  It is a gathering place for the souls of our people.  Unfortunately, we as a nation have set our books down and not picked them up again.  It’s time to do so—in fact it’s past time.  Let’s do it today.