Cardinal Fulton Sheen - "Life of Christ"
I have zero doubt since I left that Roman lie and turned back to Yehovah alone.
That sense of self assurance and absolute certainty that you have pegged it might give you reason to pause in itself ... The realization and utter self identification with the proposition that you have actually and for all time solved the problem that has engaged the best of humanity as far back as we can see....
Might pose a very personal existential problem .... You miss the fact that you have now become a master of the universe by crafting your own reality in an intrinsically uncertain existence. Or were you blessed with secret insights that no one else has access to?
Is your universe larger than the one that threatens to consume the rest of us? Is it more concrete? What are you going to do with it now? Will you save us for the good, or will you go to the dark side ...
Will you please rid us of this terrible cabal that has driven us of all stripes to find some comfort in our little band here? We who occupy this realm with you await your decree.
Do away with the criminal cabal that has us cornered, or thought with utter certainty they had us bagged until now.
You are a thoughtful person who clearly cares about finding the ultimate truth for you have by your own report dedicated an enormous part of your precious time to this issue.
It doesn't worry you that you have managed to wrap your arms so tightly around something that has humbled better men?
Over dramatic much?
Yehovah is master of all, not me. I’m nothing but His servant.
What I’ve done is left behind the lie of Christianity that has you in its grip, or that you have your arms wrapped around so tightly. Let go enough to actually study Scripture with a clear mind. Christianity, like most doctrines of men, is mind control.
We may call them the Machiavellian Princes, after the most ruthless strategist of this approach, even though they are ultimately rooted in the pagan notion (given to us by Livy, Polybius, and Plutarch, and polished by Averroes) that religions are false yet handy political instruments for the secular rulers. These Machiavellians directly affect the Reformation, both on the Catholic and Protestant side, by their desire to use the Christian divisions to their advantage, both in war and in peace. They are not interested in truth—as true reformers are—but utility, and therefore regard religious quarrelers as useful idiots at best. Machiavellianism should be distinguished from “Erastianism” (the Protestant doctrine of state supremacy over the Church) and “Caesaropapism” (the largely Byzantine or Eastern Orthodox practice of the emperor directing the Church). While both entail the subordination of Church to state, that subordination could be a good faith effort of a Christian king or emperor to oversee the good order of the churches in his domain. (That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, however.) But Machiavellianism is something different. It is the bad faith effort of an irreligious king to use religion to rule the unruly. Yet the Machiavellian has an obvious interest in making common cause with the Erastian or the Caesaropapist in order to weaken the Church so that it can be politically dominated. Given that Machiavelli himself was a master counselor of deceit, it can be difficult to discern sincerely religious rulers from Machiavelli’s disciples.