Heretics and Heresies

Whoever has an opinion of their own and communicates it in their own words will be guilty of heresy.

Whoever discovers a mistake and covers it up is faithful.

Whoever speaks truth to power, whoever says the emperor has no clothes, is a heretic.

Not all the faithful, but most, believe history will end with an endless holocaust, and they necessarily blame the victims in advance.

The popularity of this belief being the foundation of every faith-based nation, every faith-based nation has tended to persecute religious dissenters whenever blood, sweat, or tears were required.

That is, whenever the religious majority believed the endless holocaust was about to start.

To be faithful and disagree with another faithful person is to doubt the other person’s faithfulness.

To be faithful and persecute someone else is to believe you are the one being persecuted.

To be faithful is to accept accountability only from the object of your faith.

To be a heretic is to hold yourself accountable to the facts as you read them.

At the start of every church the faithful and the heretic were the same.

If Jesus knew what he was doing in the first place then I don’t think his legacy would be so out of control.

I don’t think his legacy would be defined by politics. I don’t think he would have said whoever wasn’t with him was against him, or that he was coming back with a sword in his mouth to throw everyone who disagrees with him in a lake of fire.

I don’t think Paul would have had more influence than all 12 of those disciples put together. I don’t think Constantine would have mattered more than Paul. I don’t think Copernicus would have mattered more than Aquinas. I don’t think Columbus would have mattered more than Augustine.

The benefit to a faith-based nation of hunting heresy is that the public direct their hostility toward scapegoats from the margins of society instead of toward comfortable elites.

That is, the elites get to have artificially low taxes while the public suffers and blames itself.

And there’s property that can be seized.

Most of these people think they’re going to live happily ever after in the end while their political opponents will be kept alive to suffer forever.

No one was ever called a heretic for saying God was crueler than expected.

Heresy has always consisted in saying God was kinder than expected.

But even inquisitors say their God is love.

Whoever thinks they are a slave of almighty power imitates their master.

They can act with total arrogance, considering themself truly humble.

They can lay waste to other people’s homes, telling themselves it was self-sacrificial self-defense.

When Jesus said everything they bound on earth would be bound in Heaven, they believed him.

Had so many of the first European settlers in North America not been totalitarian religious cultists, our history here might have been very different, and might make more sense today as a model for other countries.

In life or in fiction, the worst thing you can say about a character is that he resembles the God of the Old Testament as much as his health will permit.

If, like the God of the Old Testament and the New, we believe forgiveness requires bloodshed, if we believe violence is necessary to make up for shortcomings, then our history will be full of violence to the bitter end.

If the only way we define ourselves is by who we’re not, then we haven’t chosen who we are, and someone else has chosen for us.

As long as churches use the word heresy it will be hate speech aimed at suppressing the truth.

They would take the fruit of the tree of knowledge away from us again as if ignorance was truly bliss.

As long as churches sell unrealistic fantasies and irrational phobias the pastors are going to call one another heretics.

There will never be enough faithful to support them all.

Happy is that man, and beloved of all the gods, who is afraid of no man, and of whom no woman is afraid.

Is it possible there’s a sadistic mind outside the universe that gets off on frightening us?

Sure.

But is sadism divine? Or is it human?

Do tyrants resort to terror out of strength or out of weakness?

Background art:

Fallen Angel, Alexandre Cabanel, 1847.
Saint Dominic Presiding over an Auto-da-fe, Pedro Berruguete, c. 1493-1499.
Luther Before the Diet of Worms, Anton von Werner, 1877.
Saint Augustine of Hippo receiving the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Philippe de Champaigne, c. 1645-1650.
Jan Hus at Constance, Carl Friedrich Lessing, 1842.
Pilgrims Going to Church, George Henry Boughton, 1867.
Portrait of John Calvin, Titian, c. 1563-1600.
Anonymous 16th century portrait of Calvin, Library of Geneva.
Torture of Michel Servet in Geneva, Unknown artist,
John Knox statue, New College Edinburgh.
Quakers being whipped in Puritan Boston in the 1670s, Unknown artist, digital print after 19th century wood engraving.
Sacrifice of Isaac, Caravaggio, 1603.
Daniel in the Lions’ Den, Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1615.
Dante and Virgil in Hell, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1850.
Trial of George Jacobs, Sr. for Witchcraft, Tompkins Matteson, 1855.
Jonah and the Whale, Pieter Lastman, 1621.
The Confusion of Tongues, Gustave Dore, c. 1865-1868.
David and Goliath, William Blake, c. 1805.