one of my favorite books is a somewhat strange nonfiction piece by Tolstoy called “The Kingdom of God is Within You”
It’s essentially a treatise on Christian pacifism—Tolstoy addresses the elephant in the room of every supposedly Christian government: that the use of violence to achieve the ends of man or the state is very unambiguously prohibited by Christ’s word in the NT.
Tolstoy predates Arendt’s “banality of evil” discourse in his discussion of the “intoxication of servility” ie the way in which people become capable of immense evil after submitting to a worldly authority
The work was a huge influence on Gandhi, and the two corresponded for years—Gandhi’s final letter was to Tolstoy
To a Christian, the work is an absolute bomb—T lays out an ironclad case for the absolute inability of a godly person to exist normally within a society of tax funded war and coercion
Even for non-Christians, though, it’s a fascinating look at the power of nonviolent resistance and stubbornness in the face of seemingly unstoppable state power
There are multiple translations free online, highly recommended
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