JUNE 22, 2022 – (Cont.) “You’re reading my mind!” I said, revealing my fear and anxiety. Why were we even having a conversation if the alien could read my mind? Some kind of sinister trick was going on. My tongue froze, as my mind spun. I’d stepped into a cosmic trap and dragged all of earthbound humanity into it with me.
“I can read your mind just as you yourself can read the mind of another human,” said the alien. “Don’t you try at least to do that on a regular basis?”
The alien had a point.
“Seriously,” the alien persisted. “Aren’t you feeling a bit of conflicted over religion?
“As a matter of fact, I am. On the one hand, I believe religion can and does enlighten and edify the human experience. On the other hand, over many generations, a huge amount of damage has been done in the name of religion. For 100s of years in Europe, pagan lands were attacked and torched in the name of Christianity, which, by the way, teaches and preaches, ‘Thou shall not kill.’ After a thousand years of sharpening the battle-axe, Christianity launched the bloody Crusades to recapture Jesusland from Infidels—i.e. Muslims, who, as I mentioned, are theological cousins of Christians and . . . Jews. Speaking of the Jews, their religion—Judaism—has put them in the hotbox throughout our history. I’ll come back to Judaism later.
“Christianity split theologically and politically between its eastern (Orthodox) version, called Byzantium, based in Constantinople (now, Istanbul), and its western version based in Rome, or more precisely, The Vatican inside Rome. This split, in turn led to all kinds of blood-letting, but nothing like the murderous, scorched-earth, military campaigns provoked by the Reformation of the early 16th century. Triggered at the outset by theological and political opposition to Rome, the Reformation led to all kinds of anomalies and contradictions. The central problem was that both sides—the Catholics and the Protestants—invoked the same entity for mercy, and especially for victory, loot, power, and suzerainty of one kingdom over another.”
The alien emitted a sound that mimicked an old springing doorstop that went “boi-oi-oi-oi-ng when you pulled it to one side and let it go. As the sound diminished, the alien said, “This is getting pretty weird.”
“Oh, you’ve seen nothing yet, though I’ll spare you the gory details.” I forged ahead. “Throughout Christendom, heresies, apostasies, and blasphemy became as condemnable as devil-worship, and after the Reformation, being Catholic—or Protestant, if you were looking at things from the Catholic perspective—was as bad as being an Infidel. If you were a Christian who got sideways with other Christians, you could find yourself screaming in holy terror as you were burned at the stake in the center of town.
“The worst of it was long before the Reformation when one Christian group—the Teutonic Knights, for example—went full tilt after their Polish and Lithuanian neighbors to convert them from paganism to Christianity, when in fact, the Poles and Lithuanians were already full-fledged Christian believers and subscribers. All a big mistake in communication? Not particularly. The God-loving Teutons wanted to control the lucrative amber trade along the Baltic.”
This time the alien let out a deep groan. Its filaments flashed orange, then went dark. (Cont.)
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
