Dear Humbuck: Christendom

Dear Humbuck,

The topic of Christendom is one that delights me, as I consider it an unqualified success on our part. But to understand why I think it such a success, we must look into the ways of the one we left.

One thing Christendom shows is just how mad the one we left really is. I would dare say that none of the stone-faced fire-gods we plant in the minds of the apes is half as mad in our eyes as he is.

When I look at the history of this world that I have seen or heard about, I have to wonder what he is doing! It is as if he is determined to do everything backwards!

He wanted a people? Well, there were already great peoples on the earth at that time, why did he not choose the Sumerians or the Hittites or the Babylonians or the Egyptians or the Indians or the Chinese or some other great people of that time? But he chooses not a nation but a man, a great man with great wealth to be sure but still just one man, and he tells him to leave his homeland and go somewhere else and he will give that land to this man. Yet even then, he does not give him that land at that time, but instead this wealthy and powerful man lives as a sojourner in this land promised to him. In fact, he does not even give that land to the man’s sons or grandsons. Hundreds of years pass, the man’s descendants live in slavery in another land for much of that time, before he finally, finally gives them the land he himself promised to them.

He wants a faithful people? The people he dragged into the promised land had no sooner began setting down roots then they were bowing in worship to us and our idols! He wanted people to keep his laws? What law did they not break and with great enthusiasm! He wanted a righteous king? The first man he himself chose to be king grew to become our plaything, and the second, well, you know what lust did to him.

He corrects them, he sends prophets to warn them, he sends armies to conquer them, he brings them back to their land.

Finally, in a move that I think I am least able to understand, he came himself, putting on a human sack of blood and excrement.

I don’t think I’ll fully get my mind around what are maybe the most maddening words in all of the words he gave to the humans, the idea that “He emptied himself”.

You know what we are. We are higher than the humans, and we know it. We are superior to them. To watch some humans preen about claiming that their people and their race and their whatever are the superior ones on their little dirt ball is like watching slugs in a mud puddle boast about how great they are. We know what we are to them, and if we must endure their preening and their words against us, we know that all too soon for them a day will come when they will scream in maddened terror at the sight of us, and we will repay them thousands of times over for even the slightest mocking of us.

Yet, there he was. He, the one we left, the one who made this world and these people, the one who is higher than we are, was there. He was a human child. He was a human. He looked like a normal human child. He looked like a normal man. He wasn’t even the tall dark and handsome man so greatly beloved in cheap romance novels. He was just normal.

And he was nobody! He was not born in a palace. He was born to a royal line that had not sat on a throne in centuries. His first resting place was among farm animals. He was born in a great empire, yet he was born on the very edge of that empire, far from the empire’s true seats of power.

And he died. He died childless, throneless, rejected, betrayed. Some mourned him, but so what? Let a few days pass, and he’d soon be forgotten. What is one more death among millions? What is one more crucifixion in an empire that regularly executed criminals by that method?

Even after he returned to life, he did not go about conquering and to conquer. No, he who had defeated death did not rise up against any political or religious powers, but spoke only with some of his followers before returning to his place.

I cannot understand this about him. When our master went to tempt him, his temptations were nothing but reasonable. You want people to believe in you, well, show them why they should? Show them your power! Show them that you are something special, someone different!  Do a great miracle before their eyes! Fall from the heights and let these humans see the angels keep you safe! You want worship, they will fall down before you with all the devotion you could ever want if you do that!

Speak their language! Speak our language! Speak the language of power and authority! That is the language they know, what they understand. It is how they speak among themselves!

Instead, he emptied himself. He became a servant. He, a servant! He, the one by whose power all of this was created and is held together! He, the god even we tremble before, he became a servant! He served them, these small, puny, ungrateful creatures! He served them! He allowed himself to be killed by them! Have no doubt that we knew very well the truth of what he said, that he could have armies of angels come to him at his word if he so chose. It is what we would have done. He did not do it.

It is this spirit of madness of his, this spirit of service, of being humble and lowly, of giving, that we early on sought to expunge from his church. And we succeeded, and that success is called Christendom.

To understand why I consider Christendom such a great, even roaring, success for us, you must see the thing it really was; it was us taking the church, the thing left on earth by the one we left, and making it into our image, after our likeness, and then, in one final mockery of the one we left, telling it to go and take dominion. It is the church learning the ways of the world, the church learning to play the world’s games by the world’s rules, and becoming very, very good at it.

The humans are told that he when he was here “emptied himself”; christendom was us teaching the church to fill itself, to become full of itself, to glory in itself and its great works, to build cathedrals to its glory.

The humans are told that he when he was here “took on the form of a servant”; christendom was us teaching the church that it should be the master, the overlord, the ruler of everything, that it should have dominion over all the earth.

The humans are told that he when he was here “humbled himself”; christendom was us teaching the church to lift itself up, to sit upon the throne of the world, to be the terror of kings and emperors, to make peoples accept its decrees without question, to see the church as the one great authority over all the world.

The humans are told that he when he was here “was obedient even unto death”; christendom was us teaching the church to drown the earth in the blood of pagans and fill the skies with the smoke of burning heretics, and to do it all while singing praises to God and to get gold to build even grander cathedrals to him.

We took his creation, his church, and we made it just like ourselves. Can you blame me for looking at christendom with unrestrained pride?

The church of christendom was the very definition of corrupt. Where his early followers made maturity and character the marks of whether a man should be a leader in the church, the church of christendom made its positions and its favors available to whoever was willing to buy them.

The church of christendom was the very definition of perverse. The fearmongers today want to rant about how perverse people are today? Humbuck, in christendom there were church men who took vows of celibacy who not just fathered children, but then even took their own daughters into their bedchambers! The “love is love” people of today would be horrified by such an act! We made the centers of religious power in christendom into hives of prostitution, of rape and incest. Women used to fear going alone into churches because the ministers might take them into their bedchambers and force themselves on them!

The church of christendom was the very definition of hatred. Cruelties were everywhere, spite and malice, wrath and anger, deceit. Fear ran rampant. Cities were destroyed, people murdered by the hundreds and thousands. The smallest deviation from what was considered “orthodoxy” was enough to send one to the prisons and the fires.

And, finally, there was what we did to his message.

The one great difficulty with believing his message is simply how easy he has made it. Believe, even if you cannot believe strongly, even if all the faith you have is but the size of a small seed. Stop trying to earn salvation and forgiveness, you cannot, but he did it all for you.

We changed that. You want your sins forgiven? Do this penance, say this prayer so many times, go on pilgrimage, buy this indulgence, go on a crusade and murder the infidels, tell us who the other heretics are and where they are hiding, accept everything we say without question. Work work work and do more work, spend every penny and pence you have, fall into poverty, let your family starve, and maybe then, maybe, maybe you can be forgiven. We took his free gift, and made it a burdensome stone.

It was our finest work!

And to top it all off, there are people today who want to bring all of that back! They gained their freedom, and they want to embrace the chains again! Of course, they think they themselves will be the overlords, the rulers. It’s amusing when dupes think they are so very clever.