The Kingdom of God Is Within You | Page 8

No. What he does through others, he is in reality doing himself.
Q. Can he fight in conflict with foreign enemies or disturbers of the
peace?
A. Certainly not. He cannot take any part in war or in preparations for
war. He cannot make use of a deadly weapon. He cannot oppose injury
to injury, whether he is alone or with others, either in person or through
other people.
Q. Can he voluntarily vote or furnish soldiers for the government?
A. He can do nothing of that kind if he wishes to be faithful to Christ's

law.
Q. Can he voluntarily give money to aid a government resting on
military force, capital punishment, and violence in general?
A. No, unless the money is destined for some special object, right in
itself, and good both in aim and means.
Q. Can he pay taxes to such a government?
A. No; he ought not voluntarily to pay taxes, but he ought not to resist
the collecting of taxes. A tax is levied by the government, and is
exacted independently of the will of the subject. It is impossible to
resist it without having recourse to violence of some kind. Since the
Christian cannot employ violence, he is obliged to offer his property at
once to the loss by violence inflicted on it by the authorities.
Q. Can a Christian give a vote at elections, or take part in government
or law business?
A. No; participation in election, government, or law business is
participation in government by force.
Q. Wherein lies the chief significance of the doctrine of non-resistance?
A. In the fact that it alone allows of the possibility of eradicating evil
from one's own heart, and also from one's neighbor's. This doctrine
forbids doing that whereby evil has endured for ages and multiplied in
the world. He who attacks another and injures him, kindles in the other
a feeling of hatred, the root of every evil. To injure another because he
has injured us, even with the aim of overcoming evil, is doubling the
harm for him and for oneself; it is begetting, or at least setting free and
inciting, that evil spirit which we should wish to drive out. Satan can
never be driven out by Satan. Error can never be corrected by error, and
evil cannot be vanquished by evil.
True non-resistance is the only real resistance to evil. It is crushing the
serpent's head. It destroys and in the end extirpates the evil feeling.

Q. But if that is the true meaning of the rule of non- resistance, can it
always put into practice?
A. It can be put into practice like every virtue enjoined by the law of
God. A virtue cannot be practiced in all circumstances without
self-sacrifice, privation, suffering, and in extreme cases loss of life
itself. But he who esteems life more than fulfilling the will of God is
already dead to the only true life. Trying to save his life he loses it.
Besides, generally speaking, where non-resistance costs the sacrifice of
a single life or of some material welfare, resistance costs a thousand
such sacrifices.
Non-resistance is Salvation; Resistance is Ruin.
It is incomparably less dangerous to act justly than unjustly, to submit
to injuries than to resist them with violence, less dangerous even in
one's relations to the present life. If all men refused to resist evil by evil
our world would be happy.
Q. But so long as only a few act thus, what will happen to them?
A. If only one man acted thus, and all the rest agreed to crucify him,
would it not be nobler for him to die in the glory of non-resisting love,
praying for his enemies, than to live to wear the crown of Caesar
stained with the blood of the slain? However, one man, or a thousand
men, firmly resolved not to oppose evil by evil are far more free from
danger by violence than those who resort to violence, whether among
civilized or savage neighbors. The robber, the murderer, and the cheat
will leave them in peace, sooner than those who oppose them with arms,
and those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword, but those
who seek after peace, and behave kindly and harmlessly, forgiving and
forgetting injuries, for the most part enjoy peace, or, if they die, they
die blessed. In this way, if all kept the ordinance of non-resistance,
there would obviously be no evil nor crime. If the majority acted thus
they would establish the rule of love and good will even over evil doers,
never opposing evil with evil, and never resorting to force. If there
were a moderately large minority of such men, they would exercise
such a salutary moral influence on society that every