‘Keep your distance. Don’t touch me. I’m holier than thou.’
"A pharisee is hard on others and easy on himself, but a spiritual man is easy on others and hard on himself."
A.W. Tozer
I grew up among such men, deeply spiritual and sincere in their piety. They would call: "for God and Ulster" or "for God and Ireland" and these opposing cries were sent heavenward by men of nobility and honor who each beseeched the same God to give them victory over their neighbors. They were also forced by their theological sectarianism to align themselves with baser men who used their precious Savior's name as a curse but ascribed theoretically to the same theological nuance. How deplorable to be forced to stand beside the ignoble and intolerant simply because they couldn't find a way to coexist with their conflicted neighbors.
I'm watching a very long movie about the horror of intransigence and impiety, each side claiming the moral high ground to permit the raising of the "Black Flag" of mercilessness. What a line of impiety in this movie of the pious, when General Jackson who has just finished with scripture exhortations for the wisdom of pious living, he then exhorts young Jeb Stuart to raise the black flag to ensure the war would end sooner and life might return to normal. Genghis always raised the Black Flag only after the city he was besieging refused to surrender. Unconditional surrender was the only way to avoid the mercilessness of the powerful then and so it is today.
I hear christians in this adopted nation of mine demand the black flag of mercilessness to be raised against those who live and love in ways they find intolerable. If those minorities who love differently than us, or live differently refuse to unconditionally surrender then we seemingly have every right to legislate our will upon their stubborn shoulders....
The black flag of mercilessness seems to be often raised in the hearts and minds of the pious. For when one is defending God then one surely must be permitted any length of depravity to defeat the depraved.
When I discover myself feeling holier than another human, then I naturally raise the black flag of mercilessness and seek for ways to remove their right to life and liberty so that my rights are enhanced. What does it matter that the concept of the black flag came from the pagan hordes of Genghis as they drove through the christian flocks of Europe? Mercilessness is only bad when it is the impious who wield it.
I've been asked recently how I can be so "liberal" in my social ideology yet so "conservative" in my spiritual theology. I think the answer lies in part in having grown up in a land torn apart by sectarian violence. Where "christians" killed one another over shades of theological nuance and political posturing, and then found themselves aligned with sociopaths who used the conflict to force their darker ignorance and intolerance upon their neighbors behind a whitened sheen of piety.
Why should the man next to me be less deserving of entitlement or protection than myself simply because we see the world differently? Why should I be permitted to dehumanize another's love and life to defend my own personal piety?
When the pious cry out that they are too holy to endure the impiety of their neighbors, then I merely hear another pious person stoop to dehumanize another to deify themselves.
You might wonder what has provoked this lengthy tome tonight? Then again you may not....
Gods and Generals indeed.... Christians are meant to touch the needs of others not trouble them with more needs.
But I am but one voice among many dissenting voices and for fear of finding myself standing tall in my own lofty piety waving a black flag of my own against the pious, I will settle down and accept that there may be no easy answers to the complexities that each generation of generals are forced to face.....
What a long winded diatribe for such a long winters day.....
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