Manichaeism or the Manichean heresy as it is sometimes known is the belief that the world is divided into two realms - a spiritual realm of light or good and a material realm of darkness or evil and all that happens in this world whether done by or to us is a result of the interplay between these two realms. Some people confuse this with Christianity which is not surprising given that modern Christianity has stealthily promoted this heresy to solve a rather ticklish problem: Cruelty - God's that is.
One of the 'problems' with Christianity in the modern world is that while being a very modern, 'hip' religion, Christianity was created in a decidedly pre-modern time. And all of its canon of holy scriptures were written and selected before 500 AD (later if you're Roman Catholic but I'm not so go fish). This means that things that a pre-modern would consider de rigueur for your A list Godhead - sexism, racism, totalitarianism, genocide and the occasional orgy of gratuitous violence - are - how can I put this delicately - 'not done' in our modern, up to date, chock full of progress era. I know, I know, there's tons of killing and genocide and racism and totalitarianism and so on and so forth and your average modern man is a bleeding, screeching hypocrite. But be that as it may, the fact is that we think of such things as being 'beneath us'. And we certainly don't think of ourselves subscribing to any ideology or religion or glee club for that matter that espouses such 'incorrect' behavior. Which is a bitch because after spending 2000 years building up Jesus to be the 'Prince of Peace' and the functional equivalent of 'love' - well, perhaps not the functional equivalent of 'love', that takes batteries and a baster but the conceptual equivalent of 'Love' - it's tough to deal with the rather bloodthirsty way he describes 'payback' for all of the Pharisees and Scribes and other desperadoes that kept obstructing his ministry. Because 'eternal torment' to modern ears sounds a lot like torture which the UN Human Rights Commission has banned right? I mean at least for countries that aren't members of the UN Human Rights Commission. If George W. Bush was a war criminal for doing some admittedly over the top dunking of terrorist masterminds for a few weeks (and he's a Methodist) then how can Jesus skate by with a kajillion year dunking in hot boiling oil of most of the first century Jewish establishment? That is if He's Mr. Peace and Love and all.
That's where a certain nattily dressed 'man about town' comes in. If he were honest - and he's not, he would say that he can't believe his luck - a defrocked angel, on the skids, hoping to eke out a living tattling on us for loose change here and there is elevated into the baddest baddass there is in all of history the Dr. Evil no, the Satan of all time. Which is quite a stretch for someone that God refers to simply as the "The Accuser".
I knew an accuser in the first grade. Her name was Elizabeth and I swear that there could have been a concrete wall between you and that little pest and she'd still rat you out with at least three different forms of admissible evidence. A regular CSI of the elementary set...that, that little....Hillary clone - and I hope that stings. But presumably little Elizabeth grew out of her snitchfulness - either that or she's become a Clinton staffer. At any rate, the worst she could do to me was get me ping pong paddled by Mrs. Kulonowski who admittedly was in a permanent foul mood because her husband was a Marine Sergeant in Vietnam so she swung from being scared he was going to be killed by those...well you know, to being scared that he was sleeping with those....well you know that too. So it was whack, whack, whackity, whack-whack all the live long day at Bluestem elementary's first grade until the day Elizabeth got whacked. Anyway, where was I, ah, yes. Satan. The devil dude, the Krimson King of Karnality.
You see the problem that God's sales team here on earth has is that God is a tri-omni, non Einsteinan entity or 3O-Hold the E if you will. God sees and knows all - O number 1. God is everywhere - O number 2, and God can do whatever the hell he wants - O number 3. In addition he sits outside of the space time continuum which means he's the only entity in the universe that doesn't have to mind when Einstein snaps his fingers and says: "You, ja, you, I'm lookink at you, you schtop vat it iss yer doink and get back on ze schpace time continuum zis minute!". All of which just means that anything and I mean anything that happens in this Universe can ultimately be pinned on Mr. Big. There is nothing that He's not aware of or can't change and because even Einstein isn't the boss of Him He can swing anywhere in time or space anytime he wants. Upset about who won the Second Punic war? He can go back and make sure that the Cannae of worms that Hannibal opened all die before they are able to fortify Rome. If He wanted to, that is. And I'm not saying that it wouldn't be cool if the inventor of armored warfare was able to kick those candyass Roman's....candy asses with a major league armored elephant charge. Cause it would. Anyway, God is implicated in literally everything that happens, either as a perp or at least as a material and I might add, exceptionally credible, witness.
Which as I said earlier, is a problem. Because if God is involved and/or witnessing everything and if he has the power to intervene to change history and in fact has the power to go back in time and change it before it becomes history then that makes him more responsible for everything than anyone has ever been responsible for anything ever. So anything that happens can only happen because He wants it to which is just a fancy way of saying that it's all His fault. And if it's all His fault where does He get off telling us it's all our fault? I certainly am no 3O Hold the E, and I don't think you are either. I guess technically it could be our fault and His fault. After all if I'm the security guard for Disneyland and I see you setting fire to Mickey Mouse and I don't do anything about it, not even spray the rodent down so that the park has to be closed due to the well known 'burnt rat effect' then I am as guilty as you are. But that's not what God represents to us in His book. He says that everything was going swell until we showed up and trashed the joint. That it's one hundred percent our fault and zero percent His. Which is the same cockeyed math that got that stool pigeon Elizabeth her first swat. Because Mrs. K had just gotten a rather 'ambiguous' letter back from the Sergeant and she was in a rather ambiguous mood in which right and wrong had never seemed more alike so when Elizabeth (quite rightly) nailed us for letting the skunk babies out of their (special, vented) cage she was prepared to believe that Elizabeth was (in the vernacular of the day) an 'unindicted co-conspirator' and guilty as Nixon. So Elizabeth got 'impeached' with the rest of us so to speak.
Because if you know that the skunk babies are going to get let out of their cage and you know that everyone is going to go "ooh, look skunk babies they stink run away run away!" even though you know that skunk babies don't stink until they get big and are just like little kitties and therefore you know that little Billy and Ted didn't really do anything wrong other than cause a teensy little riot that exploded out into the corridor knocking a few stupid kindergartners down who started to cry for absolutely no reason whatsoever and you don't snitch until after all of the 'fun' happens. Then....well....bend over baby.
Which is analogous to the situation that God or more specifically, God's earthly sales team has on its hands. Culpability is an inelegant word representing a rather tricky situation and one that had to be solved pronto. Thus the need for a CEO of Gehenna that wasn't the real CEO (Who is Jesus) but could pretend to be running hell and be represented by the sales team as the ultra powerful source of darkness and evil tied in with us mortals so that anything bad that happened up to and including the Great Bluestem Skunk Riot of '68 could be pinned on earth bound perps (me, Ted and the snitch formerly known as Elizabeth Rodham Clinton) and on 'Crimson Jack', letting Jesus and His Dad off scot-free.
So the upshot of all this maneuvering and sales positioning is that we are stuck in a really goofy philosophical cul de sac or should I say no man's land. On one side of no man's land we now have Jesus and His Dad and His Spirit representing Team 'Light' 'n 'Good' glowering across the barbed wire and bomb craters at a snarling Team Dark 'n Evil which we know is really just a unit in Team 'Light' and 'Good' that's been assigned to play the 'Dark 'n Evil' role so that Light 'n Good can keep its skirts nice and...Light 'n Good.
Incidently, is Dark 'n Evil really a team? I always think of Satan leading this howling band of....I'm not sure what - does Satan really have Demons? Or are they just Orcs made to augment Satan's "Sauron Lord of Mordor" schtick? I really don't know and await a theologian's opinion on the matter. If they're not too busy backdating the Lord's daytimer to show he wasn't anywhere near Jericho on the day its "Walls came tumbling down" and in any case it was that Devil guy that made everyone kill everybody. "Yeah, that's the ticket, the Devil did it and God couldn't do anything about it, see? All those Jerichokies were evil, they were playing with the Devil while the Israelites were playing with...Baal, wait, they didn't want to play with Baal but the Devil got them to. And the firstborn of Egypt, including a bunch of kids from the Glee Club at Tripoli's Quaddafi High who happened to be passing through, were killed on Satan's say so, rather than because God suddenly drew a blank on ploys to make Pharoah let His people go short of a nationwide holy killing spree. Yeah, that's the way it went down. Can't be God's fault 'cause He's perfect and good and love and did I tell you about the special Bible Study we're having for all those who are struggling? It's called 'It's all that bastard Satan's fault'. You should come."
And you really should because blame shifting is an art. And Yahweh is the master of the genre. You sinner, you.
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