December 02, 2023 – A

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, was actively 
persecuting Gnostics for their beliefs
around 150-180,
but there was no official bible
for the first 300 years, or so,
following Jesus' death.
The Old Testament was settled around 250
and the 27 books of the New Testament
were deemed to be authoritative by 363-397.

Which is to say,
it has been a mess
from the start,
and executions and assinations
were instrumental in securing agreement
as to what should and should not be believed.

Being right was a matter of opinion
all along the way.

If you could get by with burning people
at the stake,
or drowning them,
you could set the boundaries rather clearly,
otherwise they were vague and disputable.
And so it has been all the way to here/now.

We make it up to suit ourselves
as long as there are no heresy hunters
we have to suit.

Which gets us to the "freedom of religion"
the Founders though was important.
It was freedom FROM religion
they were after,
meaning "No heresy hunters allowed!"

And now we have heresy hunters
stalking the halls of Congress
working to have their views of Christianty
declared to be official 
and enforced by the Supreme Court
as the law of the land.

It is crazy beyond imagining,
yet, it comes straight from the imaginations
of those who proclaim themselves to be
the True Believers of the day.

And Democracy is always up for grabs
by those who can garner enough votes
to have their way imposed upon the Republic,
which gets us to the place of money
in buying influence,
and to the art of propaganda and persuasion,
which depends upon ceaseless repetition
and the constant proliferation of lies
to blur the lines and open the way
for anything goes.

When Trump can interpret the Constitution
as giving a sitting president 
the power to destroy the Constitution,
we have reached the point were anything goes
has to go.

Whether it will or not is the thread
upon which dangles the future 
twisting in the wind.

–0–