Tolstoy - What I Believa aka "My Religion." Thoughts on God. On the Meaning of Life.

Discover the Radical Truth of Christ’s Teachings with Leo Tolstoy’s My Religion (also known as "What I believe.")

Have you ever suspected that the institutional church has completely misunderstood—or intentionally obscured—the actual teachings of Jesus Christ?

In his profound and groundbreaking 1904 work, My Religion (also published as What I Believe), literary genius Leo Tolstoy strips away centuries of church dogma to reveal the pure, unadulterated moral philosophy of Jesus. If you are seeking a Christianity based strictly on the words of Jesus Christ rather than the theological inventions of later interpreters, this book is an absolute must-read.

The Key Issues Addressed: The Great Deception

Tolstoy boldly diagnoses the spiritual crisis of the modern world: the church has replaced Christ’s practical moral laws with a "blasphemous doctrine" of dogmas, sacraments, and "supernatural aid." The church teaches that because of Adam's fall, humans are too weak to live by Christ's rules, and therefore salvation comes only through faith and grace.

By doing this, Tolstoy argues, the church has rendered Christ's actual teachings "impracticable". Worse, this focus on dogma has allowed the church to comfortably align with the State, giving its blessing to the very things Jesus strictly forbade: prisons, capital punishment, hatred of national enemies, and wars.

Groundbreaking Discoveries: What Jesus Actually Meant

Tolstoy did not just read the English translations; he went back to the original Greek and Hebrew to uncover the true, earth-shattering meaning of Jesus’s words. My Religion reveals several paradigm-shifting insights:

• "Love Your Enemy" Means "Love the Foreigner": Have you ever struggled with the command to love your personal enemies? Tolstoy discovered that in the language of the Gospel, the word "neighbour" strictly meant a fellow countryman, while the word "enemy" (echthros) specifically meant a "national enemy" or foreigner. Tolstoy proves that Jesus was not demanding the impossible psychological feat of loving a personal abuser; rather, Jesus was commanding his followers to make no distinction between their own nation and foreign nations. This was a direct prohibition against hate of enemies and war, commanding us to love the "men of a hostile nation as your own."

• "Do Not Resist Evil" is a Literal Command: Tolstoy exposes how the church blinded readers to the direct meaning of Matthew 5:38-39. Jesus was not speaking in exaggerations; he was issuing a strict prohibition against using violence to fight violence. This means a true Christian cannot participate in the police, or military.

• The Prohibition of Oaths: Tolstoy shows how Jesus's command to "swear not at all" was not just about profanity, but a direct ban on taking oaths of allegiance to the State or the military, which forces men to surrender their rational and spiritual conscience to human authorities.

Tolstoy’s Solution: The Five Commandments of Christ. Tolstoy's solution is simple, joyous, and revolutionary. He argues that we do not need to wait for a mystical kingdom of heaven after death; the Kingdom of God is established here on earth when we simply follow the five clear commandments Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21-48):

1. Live in peace with all men and never consider your anger justified.
2. Maintain sexual purity and marital fidelity.
3. Never take an oath or pledge blind obedience to state or military authority.
4. Never resist evil with force, thereby abolishing retaliation.
5. Love all people equally, regardless of their nationality, thereby abolishing war.
6. 
   

Tolstoy argues that true faith is not a blind trust in church creeds, but a rational understanding that living by these five rules is the only path to true human happiness and the salvation of the world.

Get your copy of Leo Tolstoy’s My Religion today and uncover the simple, practical, and world-changing truth of Jesus's words!