another thing that may seem at first counterintuitive there is that, in my searching, I never bothered to, like, read the Bible through.
but why would I? clearly all the all the mutually-excommunicating bishop-sages had spent their lives doing so, and it had at best done only half of them any good! not to speak of all the Protestants who had done so and come back with even worse results, I had to believe. or the poor Arians! if I was to find the truth to which no one else could offer a clear guide, surely it would require a different higher-order method, investigating church history and theological splinter points and miracle claims and so on.
when I spoke about this with my friend he said it seemed so silly to him, God seeming to say, "Do your ecclesiastical history homework or go to detention forever!!!!!1"
and indeed in retrospect it does seem like I was satirising all those self-righteous damn-ready greybeards without meaning to. the cruel absurdity of church history is evident if you take it seriously and it's strange to me how little of anti-abrahamic critique touches on this.
let alone that famous church father quote both papists and byzantinists would cite about how it doth not avail the heretic any even if he sheds his blood in Christ's name.
it was ever more hard to believe that the God who ruled over all this was in any reasonable sense benevolent rather than having, as the poet says, a sick sense of humor.
but then of course I went back among Homer, showing God sending false dreams to cause the Achæans & Trojans to slaughter each other, and even among those who will outright call God the Baleworker and see nothing blasphemous to dramatise of him saying outright- Walland being of course Rome with its once (and only once if ever) unbroken church-
In Walland I was, and wars I raised, Princes I angered, and peace brought never.
as indeed he truly does, and as with temporal princes, so with the saints.
