October Monthly Reading: From "Whom to Serve?"

The horrors of all religious persecutions revealed to us by history—before Christ and after Christ, from the torches of Nero to the Inquisition, Saint Bartholomew’s Night, the double-edged sword of Islam, and to the persecutions, torments, and murders of our Russian sectarians happening right now—all these horrors so convincingly testify to the madness of violence and resistance for purposes of spiritual unification that it is hard to add anything to these bloody testimonies.

But the main thing, overriding all other reasoning, is this higher understanding: that people live on earth not to do their own will but to fulfill the will of God, which, besides being expressed in the sacred tradition we recognize, is implanted in every person’s reason and heart. All these kingdoms, governments, courts, police, and laws are expressions of the deceptive human will that people should all live as certain people imagine desirable, but it always turns out not according to human planning but as pleases God. To the extent that human institutions do not prevent people from fulfilling the will of God, to that extent they bring good, happiness, and order into the lives of people, and the institution-makers deceive themselves that all this is good supposedly because of them. To the extent that human institutions are contrary to the will of God, to that extent they bring evil, misery, and disorder into the lives of people, and the stupidity and godlessness of the institution-makers is revealed.

Would it not be better and simpler to concern ourselves with one thing: to make the very will of God the object of universal knowledge, clarification, and exaltation, in place of all the numerous, complicated, and often incomprehensible and senseless human institutions and laws? People who wish to make their laws obligatory for others only muddy human life and distract people from fulfilling the will of God. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you,” said Christ. After all, it was Moses who told his stiff-necked people that God Himself, with His own finger, inscribed the commandments on stone tablets, and our priests still fool children with their Holy Spirit, but we have long since stopped believing in this, and we know for certain that our legislators do not climb Mount Sinai and draw their inspiration no further than their offices, departments, and taverns. And if this is so, then what do they use as a guide when composing laws?—in the best case, nothing other than the reason inherent in every person. So would it not be better, instead of great complex inventions—social institutions—to use reason itself directly as the tool for achieving every social good? Reason was given to us by God not to deceive us; it consists only in this and was given to us only for this: to lead us out of delusion and bring us to knowledge of the will of God.

Do us such a favor, lords rulers and legislators, understand that we all walk under God, we are all the same people, and we all have reason, while your coercion is unnecessary, senseless, outrageous, and most importantly, contagious and harmful to us by its ruling example.

—Buka

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Translator’s Notes:

• “Saint Bartholomew’s Night” refers to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of August 24, 1572, when French Catholics killed thousands of Huguenots (French Protestants).
• The reference to “persecutions… of our Russian sectarians happening right now” refers to the ongoing persecution of Doukhobors, Molokans, and other religious dissenters in late Imperial Russia.
• The quotation “Seek first the kingdom of God” is from Matthew 6:33.