Tolstoy on the studious deceit of children by the church

Nothing captures my experience with the church better than does this passage from Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894).

The chief and most pernicious work of the Church is that which is directed to the deception of children — these very children of whom Christ said: Woe to him that offendeth one of these little ones. From the very first awakening of the consciousness of the child they begin to deceive him, to instill into him with the utmost solemnity what they do not themselves believe in, and they continue to instill it into him till the deception has by habit grown into the child's nature. They studiously deceive the child on the most important subject in life, and when the deception has so grown into his life that it would be difficult to uproot it, then they reveal to him the whole world of science and reality, which cannot by any means be reconciled with the beliefs that have been instilled into him, leaving it to him to find his way as best he can out of these contradictions.

If one set oneself the task of trying to confuse a man so that he could not think clearly nor free himself from the perplexity of two opposing theories of life which had been instilled into him from childhood, one could not invent any means more effectual than the treatment of every young man educated in our so-called Christian society.

(I provide context here.) It’s not exactly surprising that people who refer to indoctrination as Christian education should regard education as indoctrination when it happens to conflict with their beliefs.