“My Lord, may I have a word?”, an angel addressed Vishnu.
“Greetings, Michael. How can I be of service?”, Krishna smiled.
“It’s about that war conference that took place yesterday. The angels watched it from the heavenly plane and concluded that it’s going to be a terrible time on Earth and they should do something to help. The idea is to assign an angel to every soul on Earth, as a guardian of a sort; not from the earthly evils, of course, because nothing can be done about those, but we can amplify the transcendental feelings and provide spiritual comfort and guidance”, Michael explained. “It’s not going to be much, but it’s going to be better than nothing, because as things get bad, their feeling for the transcendental is going to be silenced by the noise of all the terrible physical things that will be going on and eventually ending their worldly lives, and we think it’s worth the trouble to try to keep their souls pointed at the right direction, so to speak”.
“I think it’s an excellent idea. Do you have enough angels for the number of souls down there?”, Vishnu scratched his neck.
“As the numbers stand now, our volunteers outnumber the souls on Earth significantly. As you are certainly aware, it’s not like we have much to do there, other than talk to each other and maintain interpersonal connections. Everybody volunteered”, Michael smiled.
“I think it’s an excellent idea. Of course, you’ll have to adhere to the rules of engagement, because you can’t get karmically attached by doing too much, because then Satan will claim offence and bind you to that place”, Vishnu nodded. “But other than that, I think it will greatly improve the odds. If Satan can use the physical world to create a worse spiritual pressure on the incarnate souls, we might as well use our advantages to help them”.
“Also, my Lord, I have questions for you about the things I heard on the conference”.
“By all means”.
“Some things I heard make no sense to me. For instance, the humans seem to be struggling for power over each other down there, and are willing to turn themselves into vicious, satanic nightmares in order to attain it. However, I can’t for the life of me understand what power are they even speaking of. Their worldly lives are very short, and whatever control they have over others will disappear once their die, and they can’t take that power with them, but all their sins remain, as their souls are often deformed and scarred beyond recognition, sometimes beyond repair, by their efforts in obtaining something elusive and often imaginary. So they are committing acts that inflict actual, lasting damage to their souls, in attempts to obtain things even they themselves know to be temporary and futile. Are they insane?”, Michael grasped his forehead, as if trying to massage understanding directly into his brain.
“You can’t make sense of it because it makes no sense. They are deluded by the appearance of that world, which presents itself as the actual reality, and things they experience there seem to carry more weight than the “abstract” ideas about afterlife”, Vishnu smiled understandingly.
“But they call themselves Christians. The cornerstone of their faith is that Christ rose from the dead on the third day, and ascended to Heaven, and that he is the son of God. Transcendence is what Christianity is supposed to be all about. And yet they sacrifice transcendental eternity for the sake of temporary power, political gain and opportunism, and the feeling of might they get when they can harm or control others”, the angel protested. “How can they possibly not be aware of the contradiction?”
“They would be, if they cared about the actual message, but to some of them, especially those in power, trivial nonsense such as making a distinction between Mary being a mother of God, or being a mother of Christ, is enough to get them all riled up in anger, hatred and scheming with a purpose of rising above the perceived competition. Essentially, they love bickering about small insignificant things so that they can completely ignore the big picture, which is that worship of the transcendental ideal is the choice for liberation and redemption”, Krishna shrugged. “Also, Satan is strongly encouraging them in everything that has to do with ignoring transcendence and pursuing personal power, which is of course defined in the most stupid of terms, because what power is even possible for them, as you rightly noted? It’s all nonsense, of course. Bishop Cyril pursued power over Hypatia, because she had great influence due to her impeccable character and virtue. He thought himself victorious and at the peak of his might when his mob killed her. And then he died and discovered that she could flick her finger and throw him into hell, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it, other than repent, show remorse, make restitutions and so on. The only actual power he had was to decide the direction where his soul will be heading, and the speed of its advancement along the chosen path, and yet, he deluded himself into believing that he owns God and wields him as an instrument of his personal might over others”.
“Also, I fail to understand why men there seem to act as if they are in some kind of a perpetual war against women, and they need to keep them oppressed to show them who’s winning”, the angel looked completely confused. “What sense does that even make? Why would you want to oppress and disenfranchise someone who is the necessary prerequisite of your happiness? You get to live with a pathetic oppressed person who resents you instead of a happy and empowered person who adores you. What an incredible victory indeed”, he shrugged sarcastically.
“It’s actually a complicated matter. Human bodies are not really a good reflection of spiritual realities. They are close enough, but close enough can be deceptive. Also, making an analogy from how Gods and Goddesses interact with each other, to how human men and women should interact, is not realistic, because the main component of divine interactions is spiritual perfection, which is sorely lacking on Earth. It can be achieved, for instance when Jesus and Magdalena interacted as a man and a woman, it’s essentially identical to how a God and a Goddess interact here. They worshipped, respected and served each other in every way. A sinful man and a sinful woman, however, are a different thing entirely. Each is an untamed beast with base instincts, and also listening to Satan’s call for ‘empowerment’, and they are mostly up to no good. In fact, oppression often does the opposite of what is intended. The one who oppresses falls victim to Satan and ends up being a fallen, ruined soul, and the oppressed one, if virtuous enough to begin with, will pray to God and seek refuge in transcendence, holding on to the thread of salvation that will end up producing a very good, mature soul that was hardened in the fires of hardship. This is why this satanic urge to keep women down and strip them of spiritual dignity and authority harms mostly men. It certainly hurts women, that much is obvious, but hurt and harm are different matters entirely. You are hurt if someone treats you badly. You are harmed if you treat others badly”, the Lord concluded.
“I think I understand it better now, my Lord”, Michael nodded. “It is as the blessed Lady Mary said yesterday: the men of the Church who follow the path of that villain Cyril are the ones who will truly suffer from this, and they are the ones we should worry about, because they listened to that satanic influence the wise Lady Kay explained at length. I wonder whether Satan will think of it, and invent some evil that will try to seduce women by selling them the appearance of power that will cost them their souls”, he scratched the back of his head in thought.
“I am sure he will. He seems to be adapting and improvising; whenever something good appears, he tries to distort it, adopt it for his uses, or invent something that looks similar enough, and yet contains none of the good things and all of the bad ones. Also, he creates vulnerabilities by the very design of the world and the body, and then plays at those weaknesses in every way he can. For instance, he creates a natural disaster or a plague, and then tries to convince people that the transcendental Divine forces are to blame, as if they were in power of that world and not himself. It is what it is, I’m afraid. His character and actions are a given, and we must adapt to help the souls take advantage of that, and not be harmed by it”, Vishnu concluded.
“I understand. The guardian angels will try to do just that”, Michael bowed and flickered out.