Religious devotion versus religious fanaticism

Religious devotion is internalized, there’s no imposing of one’s will and beliefs on others, while religious fanaticism is aimed at coercively converting, enslaving, even eliminating, those who don’t believe in our divinely-inspired truth. Fanatics have an unchanging modus operandi. When it comes to the matters of faith, it’s somewhat amusing when Polish Catholic priests call Jews starsi bracia w wierze (loosely translates as older brothers in faith).

Religious devotion can have some form of proselytizing as well, of course, just not nearly as aggressive. A more subtle and sophisticated approach is much more effective in converting someone than screams and threats. You can sometimes tell someone’s devoted just by looking at them. Case in point, back in Catholic high school just outside Warsaw (it was more convenience than anything else, as much as I believe in God, I was never a fan of rosary-clutching and all the rest of that showy stuff, and the gaslighting guilt-talk), there was a girl in my class who always wore long skirts, never pants. One of my friends at the time mockingly called her skirts ”bed sheets.”  Never to her face, of course. You could tell she was devoted. There was that aura around her. She spoke good English, too, and she sure got on my nerves at times. At one point during the lesson, I was talking to an American teacher about taking a difficult test. He advised against taking the test. I said I was going to try anyway. Of course, the girl had to chime in with her wisdom.”If he wants to fail the test and fall on his sword, let him.” Yep, that’s more or less what she said, I kid you not. How Christian of her. Or maybe it was classic reverse psychology. She was clever like that and I like smart women, as annoying and holier-than-thou moralizing as she was. I was tempted to ask her why she was always walking around in long skirts like it’s 1850, but I never did.  Brave, in a way. Knowing full well she’s going to be mocked, she persisted.

It’s my belief God wants us to be sharp and not walking automatons quoting the Bible or other divinely-inspired texts without actually grasping a word of what one is saying. There must be a parallel universe where some Church exists and people pray, ”Not conformity, but cognition and curiosity shall set us free.” Take me to that universe. The truth shall set you free? Knowledge? First, you need to find out what the truth is and you acquire knowledge. It doesn’t just magically appear.

Questions such as, ”Why, out of endless cosmic configurations, I am me, and not that guy walking down the street?” continue to intellectually haunt me, on occasion, to this day. This ”role assignment” which happens at a supra-reality level, if you will, is proof of God’s existence to me – or total randomness of the universe/multiverse. God has given us free will, but we aren’t allowed to ask questions about His grand design?

Reductio ad absurdum, anyone? It’s not a matter of rebellion or iconoclasty, it’s how my mind works.

Speaking of religious devotion and fanaticism, let’s look at regimes one more time but from a different angle this time. A gifted economist and not really religious, likely agnostic, Commander Lawrence is also one of the architects of the vicious theocratic regime that emerged after the engineered collapse of the US – the regime known as Gilead. As such, all the religious radicals in power must tolerate him, as he’s one of the founding fathers of Gilead. Lawrence barely knows any prayers, and he couldn’t care less about religious rituals, making the whole thing all the more grotesque. He’s also become a kind of a prisoner of the regime he has helped create. Seeing that things have gone too far with the human rights abuses, guilt-ridden, he is doing what he can to reform the regime without attracting too much attention to his plans.

Here, he skillfully turns a potential enemy into an ally. That’s why he’s the leader pulling the strings of the theocratic regime while some fervent believer who lacks the qualities of mental malleability, acuity and risk-taking, is always going to be the psychological pawn and the enforcer of someone else’s will, be it a bishop, some kind of a gray eminence, or agnostics like Commander Lawrence. A cult member can be a nice person, a good person, but their minds are mostly gone and controlled by whatever their cult has inculcated them with. I’ve seen that pattern so many times. People who are collections of thought-terminating cliches such as, ”You’re going to hell,” and so on. It’s sad to watch capable and potentially brilliant adults so brainwashed and turned into cult-choreographed cartoon characters. It’s best to leave them be. Don’t hate them. They are victims, too, even though they can’t see it.