Learn From It

Agnus Dei. That's Latin for Lamb of God, did you know?

In 1985, there was a movie whose title was a play on those words. Actually, first it was a play whose title was a play on words. It was called Agnes of God.

Anyway, Agnus Dei is Jesus. Jesus is the Lamb of God. Jesus Is Lamb.

It's difficult to overestimate the effect that ol' Is-Lamb has had on the Western world (even though some would claim the entire world).

The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the whole Microsoftian embrace-and-extinguish approach to non-Catholic cultures. The Reformation, essentially a cell-division of Catholicism into enemy Christian factions leading to all-out wars in Spain and the Netherlands and just about any other place you can think of—any other place in the West, that is.

Is-Lamb is almost everywhere in the West. It's the “almost” that really pisses off the flocks of followers. Almost isn't enough. They want it all because all is an absolute and absolutism is the only thing that matters. The rest is just relativist crap. The rest is the not-Good. The rest is Evil. There's a certain syllogistic elegance to it all, in their illogic “thinking”.

Is-Lamb is to blame for so much good and so much bad. Is-Lamb has brought unity, and the idea that there's something more than a given moment or a given individual to consider. Is-Lamb can be blamed similarly for nonpareil violence throughout history, that which stems from Absolutist Illusion.

Only it's not just Is-Lamb that aligns all the ecstatic energies of its followers into the fire that drives the crucible that removes the so-called impurities, is it? It's any dogmatic reverie that finds traction in the reality-based world of accident and time.

The Ideals must be expressed! Is-Lamb wants us all heterosexual and applying our genitalia to only state-approved tasks. Is-Lamb insists, moreover, that it own the reproductive apparatus of each female. Is-Lamb wants your babies so that it can continue to feed on a never-ending stream of humanity. Is-Lamb wants and needs, takes and feeds.

Is-Lamb does violence, just as Islam extremists do violence. Is-Lamb is more insidious, more clever, more covert in its violence. Is-Lamb has learned to adapt and pervert itself in order to continue to exist in its multi-cultural environment.

Islam hasn't yet had to adapt.

Is-Lamb sips where Islam gluttonously gulps. Is-Lamb obstructs where Islam extinguishes. Is-Lamb institutionally cuts you a thousand times with the paper pages of the Bible while Islam individual extremists resort to scimitars.

Is-Lamb knows there is no reflexive relationship: it does unto others whatever the hell it will with impunity. Islam suffers from a conscious form of absolutism.

Is-Lamb knows that it cannot literally and absolutely interpret its own texts, act upon them thusly, and expect to survive in a multiculture. Islamic extremists have yet to get over their own xenophobia and join the rest of the cultures of the world, much less try and survive in the face of all of that.

Frank Herbert once wrote:

Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”

Is-Lamb sits back and slowly nods the head atop its massive bureaucratic body, knowing that real wisdom lies in context, not fervor.

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