FDOAMS: On Fear and Hunger

On Fear and Hunger

Mental illness. The mother of that Child asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He answered, “Mad scientist.”

So, we can say that the birth of our identity was already in the works. The seeds of all evil and good were planted with the ambition of a single kid. He had a love for superheroes, the rich ones, and he had a love for science… those sciences that a kid could understand: alchemy, physics, robotics, and… dissections.

The first of his labors was based around the study of insects, most notably that of a type of garden bug with black wings with orange lines running through them: boxelders. They didn’t bother him, but he was curious about them. So, these little boxelders, a tic tac long, would roam around the walls of his home on occasion, and therefore they would be “studied.” When I asked the Child what his most prominent memory was in regard to these experiments of the boxelders he told me this:

“I found one and tore its leg off. Then I tore another, then another, till it was down to one leg out of six. Then I tore that leg off also and watched its antennas move. Then, I tore the antennas off. I wanted to see how the bug would function as each of its appendages was torn. A boxelder with five legs, a boxelder with four legs, and so on and so on. What struck me was that the bug, despite having wings, never made any effort to fly away. Its wings, that was the one thing which we never removed. I took its legs, I saw it try to crawl away on six, five, four, three, two, and one feet. The way it moved away with one leg, it would have reminded someone of a man crawling through barbed wire trenches. One hand forth, bend the elbow to pull yourself across the dirt. Through all of this, the bug never used its one most effective escape mechanism, its flight. It ran on its legs, till all its legs were gone. It cried with its antennas which moved in all sorts of directions, till the time those two were gone. After I was finished with the amputations, I watched it for a minute. Then I threw it outside to the wood on our sunny deck. Now, I don’t know whether that boxelder starved or got gobbled up by some other beast. We never performed that type of experiment again. We crushed many before, but those were quick deaths … I confess, in the present day, I still wonder if we will face retribution for causing iniquity to that little beast. We describe the pain of being amputated well in our works. That’s because we were allowed some experience by God. Knowing these crimes committed against that boxelder, we thank him for his mercy, and we make plans to repay that boxelder in Bug Heaven.”

He also commented on changing the colors of eggs and ham to green and making green celery blue. He told me about wanting to make robots, and how he set it aside because he found the work of programming too boring.

As for how I view these experiments in the modern day, all I can say is that the Child is fine for as long as he repented. He himself experienced a good lot of pain growing up, so by the evidence we have at hand, he received the punishments he asked for in the depths of his heart. So, my prescription to him in regards to worrying about the boxelder’s retribution would be to focus on matters which a kid ought to rather than matters of sin or death. Living things, crushed under heavy weights will die, machines without a program will not function to their task, and a mix of chemicals could prove to be dangerous.

So, as an aside, this incident should prove relevant to this time’s thought: fear and hunger. The developed world’s people… outside of the lower classes they know no such thing. They experience it in bursts, but never fear, and never hunger in its truest form. Most people in nations that are rich, they never experience the kind of fear which would cause a brother to kill their brother or a child to strike against their mother and father. They never experience hunger which would cause one to eat the flesh off their skin. Rather, it is the opposite of these problems that are claimed by the public. They have no fear, rather they feel nothing. They have no hunger, rather they eat everything they grab their hands on.

Generally, these people are not hungry and these people know no fear. Their fears are based around things like…

“What does X think of me?”

“What if I get rejected?”

“How do I present myself?”

“What if I didn’t get an A on that test?”

These are all fine things to consider. However, it is our belief that one can not appreciate the fears of life, some of which we have mentioned, without appreciating (and overcoming) the true fear of death. Until the day a person gets to know death, they can never truly appreciate the value of their lives. Once knowing that frightening angel, or at least considering him, people who are lazy become productive, people who eat too much start to eat less, the man who used to swallow without chewing begins to appreciate the crumbs. In sum, the man who considers death and overcomes said fear appreciates every day of his life. He takes the earthly life God has gifted him knowing it must end, and thereby lives his whole life as if he were running his own funeral processions, with all dignity, with all respect for there can be nothing more shameful than to die in the midst of a hideous act.

There was an incident in the Child’s life where a sudden ailment struck him. We knew not where it came from, nor what caused it, but it affected his lungs so greatly that he nearly died from lack of breath. In the hospital where he stayed, he slept for many nights and many days. In his dreams, he saw God, though he didn’t know it yet, and by the time of his release, the hospital gave him a bag with a mask. He was ordered to breathe through it. Eventually, by the nurses’ and doctors’ treatments, this child’s breath recovered, and he forgot all about death until the days it began to touch him and his people again.

As we look back on the Child’s days we now know that all healthy men have a healthy fear of dying. For some reason, despite almost dying, and despite his visit from the angels, the kid decided to act like he was going to live a long life. But mortality, no person should live their gifted life as if they were going to live forever. Living forever are for those in the Heavens, and so by the gift of our finite time, it is our commandment to make the most of it. The Child made the mistake of putting off life. He didn’t take risks, and he never made any gains. He did well in school, but all that was really just more training to put off one’s life. It is good to be educated, but he took education to neurotic extremes.

He was a kid with really good grades and high test scores, and who didn’t really enjoy much of his life outside of school or games. If a bomb dropped on his house, would he have been satisfied with his time? From the histories we know that people are always fine with dying for as long as they feel like their mission’s been fulfilled, but what of the Child’s mission? Why did he want to make money? Why did he want to be rich? Why did he want to go to the best university he could go to? By God, what part of the dream which was sold to him? Which part really mattered to him?

I point my finger and gnash at my fingernails. Excuse me, I don’t feel like it’s ever a good idea to prescribe fear and hunger as one’s primary motivators, but I can only state that which I have observed. The Child hungered. His appetite got much larger, and he performed. He only feared not making the most of his gift, and so he went forth and prospered.

By our own work, we have observed the fasts. We knew real hunger, and we knew real fear by the trials which we set before us, and by experiencing our deaths we have experienced our lives.

In the case of the boxelder, he was simply unlucky that on that day and at that time, he was the one out of many boxelders to have been chosen for amputation. Let the thought fester. A lot of people are very very lucky. The Child could have died on his way to the hospital. The Prince could have died climbing up the abandoned mill. So how are people supposed to make the most of their fortunes?

Personally, I have found this hard to know when I am not hungry or not fearful. If courage is a virtue, then how can one have courage if they don’t have any fear to push past? If humility is a virtue, then how can one be humbled without allowing yourself to taste death by your hunger?

Hah, it appears that when one lacks the environment for greatness, one takes measures to create the environment for it. Self-imposed fasts, books in thy room, lifting heavy weights.

Excuse me, perhaps I really have gone mad. There are questions I would like to consider for as long as they are a help to people. Yet, who knows? Do people have a taste for ramblings?

I will counterargue that fear and hunger, when dosed too highly, can be a cause of death. That much is obvious. A man fears a cannonball coming his way and so he stands still in shock rather than moving out of the way. A man starves during a siege.

Perhaps fasts and thrill-seeking are just a luxury for those who are already well off. I have questioned this also where the developed world seeks to be rid of food and full of danger while the developing world seeks to be full of food and rid of danger.

Perhaps I should develop a series on this. On my end, I don’t really think the truth looks like much of anything. We know God in both good times and bad times. A hungry man strikes his tone just as much as a filled man strikes his. In God are the works of the fearful and the brave, the hungry and the full.

For a life gifted by God, maybe it’s good for people to be able to experience it all: fear, hunger, courage, and fullness. So it is that all pain and all wellness is the work of God.

***

“Friend, are you all there?”

“Is that a question you’re supposed to say no to?”

“… No?” The Prince shrugged his shoulders.

“Then yes, I am all there!” I answered. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I am reading through what you wrote in regard to fear and hunger. Did you have any purpose in mind while writing it? It seems haphazard in its ideas. I can’t tell where you were trying to go.”

I took a deep breath and listened to the fire crack in the background. My finger tapped the table in front of my armchair. “Well, does it have to go anywhere?” I said.

“Well, it’s a kind of work. It’d be a shame if your work did not have a purpose.”

“I know that Prince.” I rolled my shoulders back. “I had an idea in mind, however, I did not want to write something which would end up prescribing fearmongering or starvation as methods of motivation.”

“Well, fear and hunger are great motivators. They are used quite often by people to control other people.”

“But that’s the thing, Prince! I already feel like I am running on thin ice with the church. Why it almost feels like it has devolved into the very thing we were supposed to fight against! Fear, hunger, fear, hunger, fear, hunger, fear, hunger. Ah! Control the bread, control the money which gives bread, and sow the seeds of fear, and the people are controlled!”

The Prince took a sip of tea. “Hmm, and controlling people is bad why? You seem to be having a migraine over simple matters of nature.”

“Prince, we… it is not bad to control people for as long as the order is useful to our freedoms. Every being is a slave to God by the nature of what he is, least so much as a children can be considered slaves to their fathers. It is said that when people are free to exhibit all their emotions they become slaves to their emotions. What I am going mad over is how issues of fear and hunger are being used, actually, why am I going mad? I am actually quite content. Except, there is a ringing I hear which is not in my ears. It follows me everywhere, ever since I accepted the count of its existence and the count of our LORD’s voice in our life.”

“So fear and hunger are used to control people? What is the point Scientist?”

I slouched back into my chair. Then I pushed myself back up. “I am thinking about it. It is more of a question rather than a statement. Let’s say that we, us, we are fearful and we are hungry, starving. What are we in the days of fear and hunger? There is a Scientist, Prince, and Child who are what they are when they are full and brave. Likewise, there is a Scientist, Prince, and Child who are what they are when they have fear and hunger. Prayer… fasting… our God says that these things were supposed to build faith. However, when we fast, me personally, I feel like our mind goes to very… old places known by our spirit. In our fasts, we have the security of knowing that the bread is always there. We can break them whenever we want, so we don’t ever have to go over the edge. But, what if we make that choice? We choose to starve for days and nights… and we go over. What will we be then? How will we think? And, what if the choice to end our hunger is no longer there. We have no bread, and we have hunge, so what will we be?”

The Prince folded his hands. “You talk too much. If you’re worried about being a cannibal then let God deliver you. You speak of what-ifs that do not matter to us. When we fast, we fast with purpose. We are not thrown about by the ocean’s waves. We control our times of starving and we control our times of feasting. You are talking like a person who has no control over their life when we are the opposite. We control everything in our life with our LORD’s help.”

“Yes!” I yelled, with my hand pushing my temples. “I know that! But we have to empathize with people who feel like they can’t change anything about themselves if we want to help them. If we, for a time, know fear, if we know death, if we know hunger, then we can help people who have only known fear, hunger, and death.”

“So let’s fast for 40 days and 40 nights then.”

“Prince, people who fast for 40 days and 40 nights either end up as heroes… which is great… or genocidal."

“Well, I’m willing to take the bet that we’ll be more like Moses than Hitler."

I didn’t respond after that. Silence followed for a few brief moments. Then, I threw my hands up and said, “Know what, darn, let’s just eat some raw eggs and end this conversation.”

***

“Scientist, you haven’t been eating.”

“I am fasting.”

“Sure, you are fasting. But are you doing anything else? Are you working? Are you even praying? To me, it looks like you’re just—”

“Waiting to die? Ah gee, I wish. See, we can’t get into Heaven by just jumping off a bridge. That does no one any good. We can get into Heaven by starving ourselves to death though. We’ll call it a form of protest. We write our will, we starve in a spot till our corpse is found with that will, and then the world hears the voice of one of the last biblical men, the last of the savages. The Germans made artificial incubators with genetic editing. Our seed isn’t needed. Everyone can be an Aryan. Who knew? Hitler was right. The world doesn’t need God anymore, and so it doesn’t need us.”

”Scientist, starving yourself to death even in the name of protest is still suicide. We won’t get into Heaven doing that.”

“What if I secretly plan to finish the fasting period alive then?”

“Then it would not be a suicide.”

“Ah,” I sighed, “but then I’d still be alive, and that’s no good. I would have gone through that pain for nothing. I wouldn’t have been any closer to Heaven than anybody else on this planet. Also, this brain is asinine. Even if I wanted to fast, its neurons would try to have me eat some kind of bread. I have to go to a place, a mountain, and walk or speak to God till I drop. But then, it’s not like we can abandon all our responsibilities. Actually, maybe we can. I don’t pay my debt. See if I care. My house gets seized? See if I care. We’ll go to that place, and we’ll sit there until we drop. They don’t care about us, so neither will we care about them.”

The fire grew more dim. The last of its embers were burning out as the room went slowly dark.

“Prince, you might not have been around then, but we used to have two dogs (let all those who know understand). We castrated them both and turned them into yuppies. But the castration isn’t the important bit. The important bit is that before their castration and after the time they went into heat they exhibited a whole host of unusual behaviors. They humped lamp posts, legs, anything they could rub their balls against. They exercised, ran around the house in a frenzy for apparently no reason at all. We’d open the doors and they’d run away. On walks, they’d always point their nose at female dogs, those past the age of maturity like themselves, and whimper as we dragged them away.

“They were dogs in the natural, as God had made them. Yet we, having found their sexual natures tiresome, decided to castrate them. No longer would they have that kind of hunger, that gnawing feeling that they should have a help fit for them. And with that hunger gone from them, we became their whole world. Their only source of love and affection became us, the people who owned them as pets.”

The whole room was completely dark now. The Prince sighed. “What do those dogs have to do with fasting Scientist? So you turned a few bulls into oxen. So what? It’s not like we’re castrated animals right?”

I took a long breath. I couldn’t find it in myself to speak.

“Scientist?” The Prince looked worried. “You don’t think that you are…”

“I’m just going to lay out the facts of the situation that has passed.” I started to speak. “In the modern world, there are declining birth rates. Why? The population of humans in these nations are being controlled by an outer force. Contraceptives? Abortions? Who cares about that? The Church pretends to know nothing by forcing out fake politics to occupy the minds of their growing class of spineless Christians. Protest, protest, protest. They’ll protest till the day bullets rain and they realize that while they were out protesting, the devils will have been building their army in the open sands (let this be a warning to the other worlds).

“Not to mention that on this point, people in marriages and out of it have known how to control births in every society. Contraceptives? You think it’s that revolutionary an idea to have a bag catch your semen? The fruit goes in, and the baby comes out… say what if we had something to collect the fruit? Oh? Now my partner isn’t getting pregnant anymore. The pill? From the old world, from a noble’s library I could probably find a dictionary full of contraceptive herbs. It’s as simple as putting hot water over leaves and having your mistress drink it. Sound like anything else we know? And now, I hear ‘What about the peasants? Could they prevent pregnancies?’ Well on that note, it wouldn’t have been in their interest to prevent given the high mortality of their infants when compared to noble kind. However, if they didn’t want to have any they could have just done what Onan did or leave them out in the forest for the wolves to gather. So, between then and now, nothing about abortions and contraceptives has truly changed. These things, this science is as old as human history. They are just fashioned differently between the modern and old times which exist on Earth today.

“All this brings me to this point. If people already knew how to prevent pregnancies, then what’s so different today about our prosperous societies? People like ourselves are so lost for purpose, that we are literally starving ourselves before God just to find it. Birthrates have been on a steady decline. The Germans, never mind the callback to Hitler, have proposed the solution of artificial wombs as a countermeasure to their negative birthrate. By God, I feel like the answer is very simple. I feel like the answer to this question has everything to do with those two dogs which we used to know in youth.”

I took a long breath and clapped my hands together. The Prince stood up. “Should I put some logs in the fire?”

“No,” I answered. “Keep it dark. I see the light by God.”

“Okay then.” The Prince sat back down.

“Prince, in Scripture, there are these three methods of birth control: castration, genocide, and onanism. Those are present in Scripture because God deems them important. A male may be turned into an ox, he may simply be killed, or he may choose to spill his seed outside a woman’s womb.

“Now consider the castrated dogs and the millions just like them. Consider their behavior as they go in heat and find themselves without a mate. God has let them know the reality of their situation. I am living in a world with these human beings. They give me bread and food, but not that which I hope to seek. I have a member which feels good when rubbed, and these orbs which feel good when licked, but that is not where it’s supposed to be. I have never seen it, but I know that it’s out there. The human has their help, one of their kind, but what of me? I don’t have my help. God, where is my help? So, the dog does all these retarded things. He humps pillows, stuffed animals, and even male dogs should their situation really be that hopeless. Then the door opens, and lo! There is hope! They run out, looking for that help till the time they are either escaped or are caught again. Then, maybe on days where they are stuck at home, they run around the house, they knock plates and pans over in an attempt to exercise. They run around tables, up the stairs and down, and for what! What are they exercising for! What are they preparing for!

“Now, I know Prince that you may consider it ugly to ascribe human thought to animals. However, we need to do this if we are going to be capable of considering their masters. What does a man do when they do not have their help? What did we do? What do we consider doing? And, I know that these aren’t acceptable things to confess to the public. It is why people put it under the guise of fiction and fantasy when they want to make money off their thought. It’s what the priest of the churches hears from people really willing to confess their truest sins. The men, they exercise, they [REDACTED], they fast and in some cases they are phased out. They are castrated through entertainment or the complete repression of all they could hold dear. Yet for the dogs who aren’t castrated, those who still feel, who run, who exercise, who jump up to high places, they find their mates and the effects of their former work are amplified. What are they all preparing for? Why did we have to live through the castrated life before we broke free of our prison? Why do we continue to work after having gained our lovely portion? Prince, we were dogs once, and we are still dogs now. Do we look back at our cages and wonder how many?

“When castrating a human dog, it can not be as obvious in modern society as that of their pets. You can’t just cut their balls off. That’d be inhumane. What you can do though is speak through them by their church and by their entertainment. From childhood, you can convince them that leading a sterile life is virtuous. You should give them romance and films viewed through the 3rd-person perspective to train cuckoldry into their puny minds. You can have their Churches occupy their minds about the evils of lust while also shaming them for having any sexual thought at all, for even thinking about seeking a mate. But I say unto you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:28). Hah! How can a man commit adultery if he isn’t even married! They sell that verse as if it applies to single men. By default, everyone is lusting. Even Paul knew that. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and every woman have their own husband. So, what we have is a generation of human dogs. Men do not have their wives, and women do not have their husbands. And in all of history it takes two, husband and wife specifically to make a family which can produce more people. And why! It’s no wonder the birth rates are declining! They can talk about the evils of fornicating all they like, but they will never talk about the root cause! No, no, no! Fornicate or castration! Fornicate or castration! Who can make a choice like that? The brothels are always open, and each passing day it becomes more and more of a viable option.

“And I see you raising your hand Prince! Put that down! Don’t say what we already know! We all need God! But this society doesn’t need need God! We know this because the only time we see God is when we are literally starving ourselves to death! We get closer to him through our death! But why! How can that be any way to seek God! Even the dogs know when their gifts are missing from them! What about us! We can know only know God through these two things: his gifts or our deaths. Prince! If the gifts are robbed from us, then our only way is death!”

I looked into the darkness. A crooked smile formed on my lips. “You know Prince, do you see it also? People say God is a light, and that is true. But in the Old Testament he has been described as a darkness. A darkness came over Abraham and God spoke to him. Let me grab that book… And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of GREAT DARKNESS fell upon him. And he said unto Abram. Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that IS NOT THEIRS, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; (Genesis 12:13). Darkness! Darkness! What do we see when there is no light at the end of the tunnel! God! And, it is God who speaks!” I laughed horribly. Then I continued, “Ah… preach Scripture… live Scripture… what does it matter? He who preaches Scripture liveths Scripture. He who liveths Scripture liveths Scripture. Oh God, I thank you for giving me exactly what I ask, but I am a magnificent actor. I can feel these memories which were mine, and live them one to one. I am grateful that they are never able to see this kind of me without a censor. She, and those kids of ours… they might cry. After all, it is the type… God’s chosen ones… all those pastors, those priests, those prophets… they all all… all cry alone. Hah, maybe that’s why Moses got the veil. Not to hide his glorious face, but to hide his glorious tears.”

“Scientist… no… P— you should—”

“Eat? Yeah, I know I should. Those people, my elders, I am so grateful they are kind enough to feed me. I am grateful that they try their best to counsel me. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that I have trouble finding Scriptural advice from them that fits the situation that I have at hand from them. They saw God in the light. I saw him in the dark. I tell them that by God I shall be greater than Abraham and they laugh, and I laugh too but I laugh not like them. They laugh because they think I am simply ambitious. I laugh because there is nothing I can do to prevent myself from doing what God wills. The voices of our people are to our hearts and mind. God has gifted me a portion of peace. My seed are set to finish the work. But, ah, you are right in some sense. I should go drink some tea. There may be a class that will start and though I barely speak to my classmates, I feel a sense of comradery between them. The halls of business feel so sterile at times, but the people I know are such splendid characters that they shine ever bright in that darkness. They feel as I do. It only takes one push from the East to send the West asunder. Praise be to God, I hear his voice even now. Prince, I adore logging these conversations. I adore the tales which you come up with. I adore your poems. Why, I never expected one like yourself to have such an… idealistic worldview. The way you describe love, I never read of anything more true. My iniquities, may God forgive. Those two dogs… I shall buy a cousin of their kind… and they shall have a help fit for them. They will have children, and I will raise them, and find worthy marriage partners for them. Nobody in this house shall have to suffer as I did. By God, they’ll suffer in some way, but not in the way I did—living life and winning over the devices of your castration. Our daughters have their husbands. Our sons have their wives. There is no delay to find them. We live how we were always meant to live, by the ways of our God.”

“The tea Scientist. The tea.” The Prince tapped on his wrist.

I checked my watch. “Oh of course.”

***

“Of the dogs… counting, counting, counting backwards. Excuse me, I have to get in that old mind to speak on it. Maybe there’ll be a world where some of that pain could have been avoided.

“We have the castrated, yet not so. The anatomy of man and woman are there, but when one accepts that which is ungodly, they are not. We saw a whole society of eunuchs and castrated people: sterilized. The dogs hop upon one another, but they are all sterilized. Many wives, many husbands, many partners… and nothing from the union. From the observer’s point of view, they lived in a sterile society. And why? What is the root, by God? The Church at the time never talked about it. But those of the barbarous people, they whom we have shared this blood with… they would know. What causes a sterile society?

“In an effort to answer that question Prince, I have interviewed all manner of people from the lowly stations to high stations. Some said that they are afraid for the world to come, so they do not have children. Some cite overpopulation. Others have seen children as financial burdens (this I do not deny in those former modern times). The conclusion that I have come to is that too much of anything makes it undervalued.

“The people of the old world value life with all their heart. They value it so much that they will kill anyone who could seek to harm their life. No, that is not a point. I have observed that in societies where death has run, people value life much more. A baby boom after the war. An increase in marriages upon news of the draft. Life becomes cheap when there is too much of it. The supply of laborers is ever-increasing. Stem the tide. And, I don’t know if the undervaluing of life is any sort of conscious work. When a nation has all the people it could ever need then why would it seek to have more? They have peace… do barbarous societies have many children because they are preparing for something? I saw them at the gates, and I empathized.

“Hah… what causes a sterile society? We know it by our heart, yet is it even something anybody could stop on any societal level? Death comes, birth rates increase, peace is present, and birth rates decrease.

“What issues, real ones plagued these places? Lack of morality? Was the environment they lived in really conducive to moral living? How much did a person have to gain by being a good person? A lot actually, but the definition of ‘good’ got muddled outside of Scripture, so a lot of people ended up as mediocre rather… you want me to get back the original question?”

“Fine, why were some people afraid to have children? Fear of fulfilling one’s God-given purpose? Why? Where did that come from? Were any of those places good places to have children in? Who’d want to have a child? Why would they? What would they gain from having them? In our forefather’s homes, they have reasons to have children. Children work, children earn money, and children take care of you when you are old. In Scripture, one’s children found nations and continue bloodlines, and they make God proud. What did people back then gain by having children in the former modern world?

“Hooray, a child is born. You get him life insurance. You feed him. You raise them. What does the child return? What did honoring your father and mother mean in these countries? Is honoring your parents staying silent as they whip you? Is honoring your parents showing up to their holiday parties? Is honoring your parents talking to them on the phone every once in a while? An exchange of letters? Is honoring your parents just not being in their hair? Goodness! It's no wonder why nobody wants to have those babes! When they are raised to leave you and give you no love back. Where we come from the honor given to a parent is given for all their life. We give them wealth, and we provide good to their name. We are burdens of debt, but no matter what we always seek to turn a profit for ourselves and for them. In their name, we found nations, we build tribes. What was a child to new world people, but a simple byproduct of an enjoyable activity, a slab of meat that could turn on you and produce nothing of spiritual nor physical value to your being? Will they take care of you at your weakest point of life as you did for them, or will they cast you aside to die in some nursing home? Will they allow you to die alone?

“Given the trends found at the time, I’d say that for a great many of them, they had no great incentive. I would mention one other thing, but that bit has been hammered to death already so I’d rather not.

“Gnawing, gnawing. Solutions? You want solutions? Read Scripture… reaaaallly read it, and don’t make any unmanly excuses like ‘Well that’s just how it was at the time.’ No Prince! Actually, excuse me for yelling, you are one of the few people who actually knows. That’s not how it was at the time. It’s how it is NOW! Sorcerers are building golems of flesh, homunculi, and automatons, humans outside of the womb. The meek, humans who live closest by God’s chosen way, are suffering, are populating themselves. They are preparing for a coming point in the cycle. No author has ever touched on it, but how long can the brave new world last before the barbarians from beyond crash through the gates! The jazz will be playing, and the people will pass bread. They will pass their censored Scripture from church to church. Prince, what is the scene? What does it look like when the barbarians get the thought to march into that new world?

“At that time there was a proof, a band of meek who fought against what they believed to be unholy. They waged holy war, and they saw everything in that brave new world as away from God. The brave new world tried to export the luxuries which they owned. They tried to introduce ungodly ways into their society. By the end of all their wars, the meek ones, they demolished all that was ungodly.

“When the day comes for them to march upon the new world, what will they keep? What will they destroy? What will go like the pagans of old? What will stay to build up the kingdom of God? What miracle will God work for them to destroy the society which abandoned his ways? They had chariots, high walls, and an endless supply of arms. They could kill from the sky and kill from the ground. Their ships knew all the sea. By the work of their sorcery, they could kill a man without ever meeting him on the battlefield. What miracle will God work for a people who keep his law? Some don’t even know his name, but they know God in the depths of their hearts. They live the way of God, and thereby know him. The slaves mine their picks, and they work and work and work… till a word comes from the darkness.”

“Oho, so you say that isn’t a solution? Yes, you’re right. It’s more of a prophecy sent to the past. Prophecies can be solutions though. Know Scripture, have a biblical marriage, raise biblical children who can function in war and peace… and then… God will answer. Really live the word. Sharpen swords, fast, pray, and know death for your life.

“Ah, excuse me. No, don’t light the fire. Keep it off. Let’s do good things now.”