Sorry for the delays this month - Allen's passing has really taken a lot more time and energy than I anticipated.  Thank you for sticking with me.

Ilyin opens the chapter by pointing out that only the truly good and truly faithful get to have a say in this discussion.  The spiritually lukewarm "come as you are" Christians or the "Living My Truth" folks are not morally strong enough to have a say.  They always equivocate or rationalize rather than take a stand.

An interesting point that Ilyin makes in this chapter is that no one ever asks if the villain is justified or morally right in his actions, only the righteous defender or person who intervenes.  They know that the villain isn't but did it anyway.  It's far easier to make the virtuous person feel guilty than the villain.  We saw this in our current world with both the Rittenhouse and Penny cases.  No one disucssed the attackers, just the defenders.  Saint Floyd is yet another example of this.

According to the text, our purpose in intervention should flow from a will to do good and to turn others to good.  We must aim to strengthen & implement good in the soul.

The weak and fearful always equalize good and evil in order to justify their own inaction.  They claim that everyone has a reason for the things they do and that culture/class differences cause evil behavior (sound familiar?).  The truth is that evil and good ARE NOT equal and neither are people who act evil and those who act good.  Never fall into this trap.

Interestingly, Ilyin said that people in his time said that you can't fix humanity's problems with incarceration and capital punishment.  It is so crazy that 100 years later, we are hearing people say the exact same thing.

Ilyin points out that physical action by itself is not enough.  We need faithfully directed social education towards good.  Force itself is temporary, spiritual foundations are permanent.

He explains it in a good way next.  Good and evil are in the mind, but they work through our physical bodies via physical action.  In order to stop physical evil, we must sometimes use our bodies (physical force) to stop the evil actions of another body (physical resistance by force).

While force is sometimes needed and perfectly permissible, it's use should be limited and a last resort.  Mental/spiritual complusion and reason should be used first, whenever possible, as it provides more lasting change than physical restraint does.  For this same reason, we must object to things like excessive force and torture.  While they might get compliance, it isn't spiritual compliance.  These things also breed contempt.

Ilyin notes that you cannot use force to compel love.

According to Ilyin, the use of force should not deprive the other person for the chance to use free will to change their behavior.  As long as reasoning works, it should be used and force avoided.  Phyiscal force, according to Ilyin, is permissible only when psychospiritual action (reasoning/appeals to humanity) is insufficient, invalid, or unfeasible.  Other factors to consider when deciding to use force include the time available (is an attack in progress or imminent), the intelligence or maturity level of the subject, the morality or culture of the subject, crowd behavior, and war considerations (not much reasoning during battle).

Ilyin makes another great point: We must always strive to comprehend the nature of evil and always be finding ways and means to overcome it.

Ilyin closes this chapter with 5 rules for the use of physical force in resistance to evil:

1. We must be vigilant to recognize evil and to distinguish it from things that look similar (stupidity can look a lot like evil).
2. We must learn how to prevent the growth of evil and to cultivate good.
3. The one who resists must begin with spiritual measures whenever possible and understand that force is not independent of spiritual means.  They must be used together.
4. We must understand when to stop using force and compulsion.
5. We must keep tabs on our own motives to prevent evil from growing in us as we fight evil.

I loved this chapter.  Let me know your thoughts below.

Ilyin begins fiery in this chapter, calling the "moralists" vague and inconsistent, and he's right.  We see this exact same behavior today with people who refuse to see the world as it is and attribute good morals and motivations to folks who just don't have any or to excuse behavior as a "quirk" or "being different".  Ilyin also points out that these people are 100% self-absorbed so their delusion rarely impacts their internal world in any meaningful way, and since they don't truly care what happens to others, they don't have an emotional reaction when a bad thing happens (it didn't imapct me, so why should I care?).

Ilyin points out the hypocrisy of Tolstoy and his followers believing both that the natural world has no violence in it and also that everything done against anyone else's wishes is violence.  He points out that the moralists decried seeking wealth and property as evil (socialism) and that they insisted that before any one has a child, all other children must be provided for first (again, socialism).  This is yet another parallel to our modern society where child-bearing is shunned and treated as unnecessary.  Ironically, no other creature in creation does this to their own species.

The list of things that the moralists (Tolstoy's followers and "Red Russians") wanted or were opposed to could be pulled from our struggles today, 100 years later.  He lists: Only physical labor is work and the benefit of someone else's labor is sinful, the need to abolish land ownership, they wanted to abolish hiring employees and paying rent, abolish laws and the military, limit factory production, eliminate the idea of money, and they wanted to abolish hunting and the eating of meat.  Weird, isn't it?

Tolstoy, in his writings, said that even if confronted with a man holding a knife to a victim while he himself had a revolver, he could not intervene.  Tolstoy said "I don't know if the man will strike the victim with the knife, but I know that my bullet will kill him.".  Tolstoy's position is that God's Will is what determines whether or not the victim is killed and we cannot interfere with that.  Of course, that is ludicrous on it's face and Ilyin spends a few paragraphs pointing that out.  In my mind, perhaps God put me there specifically to save one life and potentially more down the road by ending this one evil soul.

The moralists, and today's leftists, hide from the struggle between good and evil by blurring the lines nad saying that no one can judge another's morals and that intervening in their actions (even robbery or assault) is against the will of God.  Saying that, according to Ilyin, is a dodge meant to absolve them of anything in the world that doesn't directly impact them.

Tolstoy's people took it a step further, declaring that stopping someone from harming another (even a child) is immoral and blasphemy, because you are interrupting God's Will.  To believe this, Ilyin rightly points out, we'd have to beleive that God wants the innocent to be killed by the wicked and children abused.  That is just ridiculous on it's face, but we hear the same argument today, 100 years later.

This idea leads to victimhood and victim worship, while offers absolutely no deterrence to the offender.  The offender has literally no reason to stop, as no one will attach any consequence.  Ilyin points out the hypocrisy of pretending to love nad have sympathy while also allowing crime to go on undeterred.

Ilyin closes by reminding us that Tolstoy's moralist have a religious lack of will and a spiritual indifference, neither of which come from God.

Let me know your thoughts below.

First let me apologize.  Allen, the 86 year old man who founded the charity I represent, went into the hospital and that took me away from everything for a few days as I ran the charity and arranged some legal protections for Camp Ponderosa.  I'm back, Allen is on the mend, so let's get to it.

Boy, these chapters are getting DEEP.  More and more, I'm seeing parallels.

Tolstoy, like the modern Church, confuses God's will with his own moral experience.  He chooses to ignore any Scripture that disagrees ("Rescue those being led away to death; Hold back those stmubling towards the slaughter" with his viewpoint.  He calls those parts "the old ways" or "superstitions", just like we do now.  Moralists (as Tolstoys followers were called) disregarded and belittled any science or art that disagreed with thier worldview.  This part really struck me because look at how the modern media and left treated things like Ivermectin or any evidence that refuted Climate Change.

These people, like the modern Church and left, see justice as intimidation (see the Papal stance on immigration enforcement).They viewed the suspects and accused as the victim and the police as "thugs".  The reject law enforcement, money, big business, and inheritances.  Man, does that sound familiar??  

In yet another parallel, they saw patriotism and love of the homeland as silly.  They felt that defense of the motherland was evil.  Even though it was 100 years ago, they wanted no regard for race or nationality and to allow immigrants to freely settle, while providing assistance to them.  History repeats or rhymes.

Their final point is that nothing is worht dying over or killing in the defense of.

Moralism, which we call liberalism today, requires pitying the suffering of all others, except your own suffering.  It requires personal suffering, even to the point of death, rather than resisting and causing someone else to "suffer" as a result of your resistance.

These types posit that if suffering is evil, then inflicting suffering is evil, even it is meant to end someone else's suffering (for example, punching someone who is attacking someone else).  A side effect of this is the feeling that not only should no suffer at the hands of others, but no should ever be offended.  Boy, does that ring a bell?  Therefore, violence as resistance is condemned for inflciting suffering on others.

Tolstoy & his "moralists" see love as the one true good, but their love is only surface-level, and never goes to love of spirit.  The ultimate virtue is being weak-willed with unspiritual love of just outward facing things.

In evaluating violence, they do not separate the villains from the non-villains.  This distorts the idea of good & evil.  Weak and irresponsible men (like men who allow women to be attacked in their presence) and called heroic (stunning & brave).  Heroic men with righteous anger are called shameful and base (in 1925, being "based" wasn't a good thing).  This ends up leaving the adherents unspiritual, self-pitying, and indulgent.

According to Ilyin, one who walks in truth (carries the light, so to speak) finds a reason to live, struggle, and resist.  They find "a jewel worth living & dying for".

The moralist approach leads to a corruption of the ideal of justice, national pride, and church.  Instead of payback & venegeance, they forgive and pity the criminal.  Just like today.  In reality, the cirminal deserves outrage rather than pity.

The moralists preached that love is honoring someone else's animalism or vulgarity, while Ilyin says that true love is love for their spirit and wanted them to improve, rather than justifying their ways.

The chapter ended on something that really stuck with me, as I say this too all of the time.  Ilyin said that the people were more worried about "not causing trouble" to their neighbors than advancing His Kingdom and doing His willl.  Amen brother.

Discuss your thoughts below.  I promise we'll get back to a couple of chapters a week.