February Monthly Reading: From "Whom to Serve?"

The oldest, most fundamental, and most enormous error of our life is the error of worship. There is no greater sanctity on earth than the sanctity of the human being, the living bearer of divinity, yet we see that what comes from man—the products, inventions, and works of human hands—are exalted above man, the creation placed above the creator.

But it is time for all to see and understand the undeniable truth that all the efforts of the best, righteous, and wise people, from Moses to our own time, with Jesus Christ at their head, have always been directed toward the struggle against deceptions, against these very human inventions exalted above man—a struggle against these idols—in order to show people this fanaticism, to reveal the truth worthy of faith before them, to bring man to consciousness of the source of life and of all deeds within himself, and to return man to the will of God and thereby set him free.

Moses rejected material idols but retained circumcision and created the Sabbath, and the teachers of Judaism who followed created new idols: rituals and traditions of the elders. Christian teachers rejected both Sabbath and circumcision and Jewish rituals, but created baptism and the breaking of bread, and then gods poured forth as from a horn of plenty: the Holy Spirit, the Savior, the Mother of God, angels, saints, holy men and wonderworkers, icons and crosses and countless material images and objects; and what is most astonishing, even the remains of the dead—these new Egyptian mummies.

And what holds in religion holds also in social life: human work is placed above the human being. Monarchy, oligarchy, constitution, republic—the names and forms change, but always something is set up to which man must sacrifice his spiritual freedom; so-called social good is purchased at the price of personal enslavement. Every religion, every form of social life, as an external expression of the laws of life, should serve the bearer within himself of the essence of life and the incarnation of divinity—man—and not enslave him. Not the humiliation and rejection of the dignity of the rational being in man should reign among people, but its liberation and exaltation. Not external power, not fear of suffering and death coming from without, should bind the passions and evil will of man (they do not bind them) and give people assurance of peace (they do not give it), but the consciousness of the eternal law of life, the consciousness of the spiritual unity of people, power coming from above, the power of God, the power of reason, the power of conscience—that inner spiritual power which lies in the nature of man and which now manifests itself only weakly under the united and systematic oppression of church and state; once liberated, it will become the mighty bridle on all evil and the natural and reliable fortress of personal and social peace and well-being. This very inner power, this universal light of reason, man should place at the head of his own personal and social life. And as the darkness of night melts before the light of the rising dawn, as ignorance and superstition, miracles and sorcery perish of themselves before the light of science, as wood-spirits, water-sprites, and house-spirits have vanished before the light of knowledge and reason, so before the face of that same fire and light all the now so magnificent deceptive and violent social institutions will fall away, and all malice, violence, and slavery among people will disappear of themselves.

—Buka

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Translator’s Notes:

• A. I. Arkhangelsky (1846-1927), pen name “Buka,” was a peasant philosopher whose religious-philosophical works influenced and were influenced by Tolstoy. His book Whom to Serve? (Komu sluzhit’?) was not published until 1920 in Moscow.
• “Buka” means “bogeyman” or “bugbear” in Russian—an ironic pseudonym for someone whose ideas were meant to disturb comfortable assumptions.
• This excerpt is from Chapter IV of Arkhangelsky’s book.