Civilization Next: Are You In?

I read Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection a few years ago. It was his last novel, published when he was 71. I have discovered that reading someone’s final works gives you the best of their lifetime wisdom, especially from a great thought leader like Tolstoy.

Most of you know Tolstoy for his famous book War and Peace. But did you know he had a spiritual awakening when he was around 50 years old? If you read his books written after that point, they will be more meaty, weighty, and highly spiritual.

Why should we take Tolstoy seriously? Here’s why. He is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times and the Nobel Peace Prize three times. That’s incredible! However, he did not get the award despite being nominated so many times, probably because he was critical of the governments and powerful religious institutions of his time.

Tolstoy was also known as a Christian Anarchist, submitting to no human ruler, including religious authority. Christian Anarchists believe Christ alone is their king and no one else. Are you one of them? Are you supposed to be one? Abraham was one. We will talk more about that later.

Tolstoy’s other book, The Kingdom of God is Within You, based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, was banned in Russia but published in Germany. In that book, Tolstoy presented the idea of “nonviolent resistance,” which fueled the movements of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

By now, I am sure you are convinced that he should not be ignored.

The book Resurrection depicts the corruptive nature of society. If you are rich and powerful, you can be corrupted by your power, procession, and prestige; if you are poor, you might be forced to choose the wrong means to survive. So, whether rich or poor, the human civilization will corrupt you.

That’s why the wise King Solomon asked God not to make him too rich or too poor. He knew that if he were too rich, he could forget God; if he were too poor, he might dishonor God by committing crimes. That doesn’t preclude those in between because rich or poor is relative.

We live in a fallen world—a sea of suffering. What’s worse than suffering is its corruptive nature. It brings out the worst of you.

Tolstoy’s Resurrection takes us on a journey to see the injustice of the legal system, the prejudice of society, the hypocrisy of religious institutions, and, most importantly, the unintentionality of it, making it hard to change. He helps us see that many evils are done unintentionally or even with good intentions.

We often think those who fight for justice are righteous, but they often become a new force of injustice. Communism is an example. It starts out with good intentions but ends up worse than the evil they fight against. We all want to make this world better, but no one knows how to correct the wrongs the right way, except through a personal resurrection. If you want to change the world, change yourself. That change must be thorough; that is resurrection—the old must be gone, and the new must begin.

That community of new lives is called the kingdom of God, and I call it Civilization Next—the civilization of the resurrected people. The Kingdom of God is not just on the other side of death. You can experience the new life right now and right here because you belong to Civilization Next if you have accepted Jesus Christ. As Jesus said, you are in the world but not of the world. You live in the future now.

Based on the scripture lesson on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, we will look at two women in history who brought the Civilization Next to Earth—the 88-year-old Elizabeth and the 14-year-old Mary. Let’s begin!