A Thesis on Crucifixion, Judgement and Spiritual Pride

[Ramon 3965]

A THESIS

ON CRUCIFIXION, JUDGEMENT AND SPIRITUAL PRIDE
 

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“So I am the Most High, and in pursuit of My Virtue, I bid my faithful this: You shall not raise a hand in wrath, nor in envy, nor in any kind of sin.” (Virtue 4:9)

Szczęść Boże. We have in recent times heard of it often, crucifixion, a method of capital punishment whereby one is tied to a large wooden beam and left to hang until death in excruciating pain, its perpetrators intend on providing the victim with a death that is particularly slow, painful, gruesome, humiliating, and public all at once. It is a most cruel and disgusting punishment to be levied upon one’s body, the length of time required to reach death ranging from hours to days depending on the method, the victim’s health and environment. It is, however, not only a cruel and disgusting practice but can also wholeheartedly be considered as heretical and in this thesis I aim to answer why and how such can be tied to spiritual pride.

Those perpetrators who judge others and condemn them to death in such cruel fashion believe themselves to be doing the work of God, bringing about His wrath onto the mortal plane. But a man can know nothing about the judgments of God. He alone is the one who takes account of all and is able to judge the hearts of each one of us, as He alone is our Master. Truly it happens that a man may do a certain thing which seems to be wrong out of simplicity, and there may be something about it which makes more amends to God than your whole life; how are you going to sit in judgment and constrict your own soul? And should it happen that he has fallen away, how do you know how much and how well he fought; how much blood he sweated before he did it? Perhaps so little fault can be found in him that God can look on his action as if it were just, for God looks on his labor and all the struggle he had before he did it, and has pity on him. And do you know this, and what God has spared him for? Are you going to condemn him for this and ruin your own soul? And how do you know what tears he has shed about it before God? You may well know about the sin but do you not know about the repentance? To judge sins is the business of one who is sinless, but who is sinless except God? Whoever thinks about the multitude of his own sins in his heart never wants to make the sins of others a topic of conversation. To judge a man who has gone astray is a sign of pride, and God resists the proud.

Every man on earth is sick with the fever of sin and is overcome with its fury. As sins consist mostly of malice and pride, it is necessary to treat everyone who suffers from the malady of sin with kindness and love. Very often we act in the opposite manner: we add malice to malice by our anger, we oppose pride with pride. Thus, evil grows within us and does not decrease; it is not cured – rather it spreads.

We must not judge, and we must certainly not play God by judging others to death in His name. We are told in the Canticle of Humility in the Scroll of Virtue that we cannot judge our own virtue, for all fall short of Him. How then is it possible that we might judge others? Humility is the art of descending into yourself and remaining there. All sins are repulsive before God, but the most repulsive of all is pride of the heart. Do not consider yourself learned and wise; otherwise, all your efforts will be destroyed, and your boat will reach the harbor empty. If you have great authority, do not threaten anyone with death. Know that, according to nature, you too are susceptible to death, and that every soul sheds its body as its final garment.

If you believe what you like about the Word of God, and reject what you don’t like, it is not God you believe, but yourself. He who is his own master is a scholar under a fool.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Signed,

Father Fiodor

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

[SteppeNomad 1552]

A nomadic herdsman reads a missive in his travels. A long time seeing the cruelties of the men of the south. Not only is it unlike man, who is a reflection and refraction of the Skyfather, but it is also unlike beast. As every tiger, wolf, hunter and herdsman knows, the best death is a quick death. To be wounded and slowly die, displayed, brutalized, and horrored before the infinite sky is worse than simply death... Where the skyfather and all your ancestors can see your pain. Truly ungodly, to wound your prey and leave it to die.

[Caelria 2618]

John was not a scholarly sort, but missives of the church did sometimes reach his hands. Ones of cruelty, in particular, were especially offensive. He had led many men through the desert, past the stinking piles of wood and timber bearing the ragged and mishandled corpses of their occupants, to the bloody gates of San Luciano. His nose wrinkled hard at the thought of those men, orcs, and elves hanging there; their faces contorted in agony and bodies consumed by the crows and gulls.

 

A cruel and disgusting practice.

 

It was hard to say whether John had returned to Savoy that night once he'd read the missive, and harder to say what he did if he had, but citizens would find their once horrid San-Luciano bridge soon left to ruins nonetheless. By the sunrise the next morning, each and every cross adorning it was cut apart at its base, to let the pikes fall haphazard onto the oft-trodden soil. The bodies were elsewise stolen, nowhere to be found.

 

John was not a scholarly sort, but he was a man of action.

Spoiler

 

[Nowak 877]

Bruce as it be, shakes his head at the sight of the bridge, an often overseen part of his lackluster life. Seen yet ignored for too long, he sighs ever the more to his men. 

"Let the bridge be cleared, from this day forward... Marshall be damned, these choices are not ones of a sane man"

 

The lumbering man would wave to his men, ordering the end of the act, be it now or the future. He'd watch as the men dragged the shattered bits and pieces towards the city, as a pyre would be planned.

 

"And fire shall cleanse the land, though soul never so..."

 

He mutters to himself, his devout gaze never wavering