Author Information
In September
In September, 2023, the forty-seventh anniversary of my matriculation, cleark thinking returned to me regarding a symptom that has afflicted me for nearly four years during the continuing decline of my health.
During this month, I finally understood what may have been obvious to others, that a rebuker who admittedly and militantly does not share my Faith has neither the right, nor the privilege, nor the responsibility (despite an apparently self-appointed vocation to it) to point out to me, or castigate me for, or offer to corrections to my flawed practice of my Christian Faith. Even though the rebuker supposedly "consulted" with other Christians (an assertion I no longer believe), and apparently has only read the seventh chapter of the holy and all-laudable Apostle Matthew's Gospel, he---the rebuker---does not hold, and therefore cannot enter into, the Mystery of Faith (1 Timothy 3:9), to which Christ's Mercy has admitted me through Grace received by Faith (Ephesians 2:8). This Mystery, and one's relationship to it, creates an inside and an outside; and creates a separation between me and my rebuker. Consulting with other Christians does not create a way to cross the separator: only active belief can do so.
Furthermore, the rebuker tipped his hand to show me his almost incredible ignorance and hypocrisy. Recently, I was rebuked for placing a fictive character in Hell, after the precedent established by Dante in the first Canticle of his Poem, The Divine Comedy. But the same person rebuked me, in 2020, for writing of Matthew Shepard (a victim of murder motivated by homophobic hatred and prejudice) being in Heaven. The rebuker said that Matthew Shepard cannot possibly be in Heaven; and since, according to the Faith I hold, Heaven or Hell are the only two destinations possible to the afterlife, to deny him Heaven is to place him (however incorrectly) in Hell. I do not believe, and in this life will never believe, that Matthew is not in Heaven. However, is it not the ultimate hypocrisy to rebuke a poet, however minor, for placing a fictive character in Hell, and yet, not very long ago in the past, rebuke the same poet, however minor, for the joyous belief that an actual person has entered the presence of Jesus in Heaven? Is there something wrong with this reasoning.
In the month of the anniversary of my matriculation, I have been set free from yet another symptom of affliction.
Starward
((S74rw4rd9t4))
