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andersunmenschlich · 9 months

Text

Unlawful Entry

My apartment building is meant to be reasonably secure. Staff, tenants, and the US postal service have keys to the building: no one else.

Someone circumvented my building's security.

They broke in without breaking anything but the law—probably slipped in after someone with a key.

They were fervent. Fixated. They had a goal; they were on a mission. Laws meant nothing to them in the pursuit of this goal. Criminal trespass was necessary. They had to deliver a message. .

"DO YOU KNOW FROM READING OUR HOLY TEXTS THAT THERE IS A PLACE WAITING FOR YOU IN A BEAUTIFUL LAND THAT YOU CANNOT ENTER UNTIL YOU'RE DEAD?" one piece of bold text screamed.

"Our holy writings are the words of a supernatural being. They teach many incredibly important things, but the most important thing they teach is how a member of Homo sapiens can become immortal* (*live forever with the previously mentioned supernatural being)," the next bit of text said, in a smaller and less excited font.

A snippet from one of their holy books followed, in red.

"I wrote this stuff to you people (the people who already believe this stuff) so that you'll know it's true and… well… believe it. Which you already do. Anyway, you're immortal."

Unembarrassed by this, the smaller and less excited font continued, "According to our holy texts, there are some things that we humans have to do in order to know for sure that we'll be going to a beautiful land that only dead people can enter after we die (at which point we'll live forever)."

Don't be misled by the suggestion of things to be done to achieve knowledge.

Don't, as I did, begin thinking about how one could actually know that people go on living after they're dead (but in an unreachable location).

Remember that this is "according to our holy texts."

The next bit of writing screams loudly and excitedly again, an all caps instruction that the person who left it thought was worth committing a class C felony for: "ADMIT YOU ARE A CRIMINAL WHO HAS OFFENDED AGAINST A SUPERNATURAL ENTITY."

Yes, that's right: step one in getting the knowledge of your ticket to a beautiful place you can only live in after you die is… accepting as valid the idea that you have done something to upset, harm, or offend a being that, to all appearances, does not exist. Seems an odd way of getting knowledge!

After some consideration, I realized the problem.

They say that admitting you're a criminal is step one in knowing that you're going to live forever after you die, but what they mean is that obviously you already know that living forever after you die is a possibility, and so they're skipping that part—what they mean is that admitting you're a criminal is step one in making sure that you get your ticket to Wonderland.

"Everyone has failed to follow this one supernatural entity's rules," another red-text snippet said in calmer font, "and isn't good enough."

"According to our sacred writings," the unhinged rant continued, "we have to admit that we have offended against the supernatural entity whose words those writings are, and so we don't deserve to go to a beautiful place and live forever after we die."

"ACCEPT THAT YOU DESERVE TO BE TORTURED FOREVER," the next all caps bit bellowed.

"If you work, you get money. If you break this one supernatural being's law, you get death. Death is your wage: you deserve it. But the entity will freely give you the undeserved gift of immortality, via Joshua the Chosen One, our master."

"Death and eternal torture were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, with even death dying 'cause it's so bad and deathy."

"Our sacred texts tell us that, because we broke this supernatural entity's law, not only do we not deserve to live in a beautiful place forever after we die, we deserve to die in a horrible place forever after we die! Eternal punishment! Unending, torturous death!"

…

I don't really have a lot to add here. We've gone right past unsubstantiated claims about immortality to insults and threats.

Of course the felon who left this piece of paper inside a locked dwelling thinks they're just stating a hard truth by telling me (and everyone else who reads the paper) that we're so horribly criminal we deserve to be tortured forever… but still.

"CONFESS THAT THE CHOSEN ONE DIED A HORRIBLE DEATH TO PAY FOR YOUR CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR AND THEN CAME BACK TO LIFE THREE DAYS LATER."

It seems to me that if one temporary death is enough to make up for whatever supernatural laws everyone everywhere has supposedly broken, billions of eternal punishments are a bit much. I mean, if I and a group of friends break someone's fancy windows and it turns out $20 is enough to cover everything, why should each of us have to pay $200,000,000,000?

And if it's some worse offense—say we each chopped off one of his fingers or something—how could someone else being punished possibly make up for what we did?

What are we supposed to learn from that? "Do whatever you want and don't worry about it because there won't be any unpleasant consequences for you" seems the only possible conclusion to me. You don't even have to worry about the whipping boy; he's fine!

"This is how the supernatural entity shows us how much he loves us: the Chosen One died in our place even though we were still filthy criminals who didn't deserve it."

This snippet of red text seems to imply that once somebody pays for the broken window, you're not a window-breaker anymore.

Handy, that.

It also suggests that love is shown by killing somebody else, instead of the person you ought to kill. "You broke my rules, so you deserve death. I love you, though, so I'll kill this guy over here instead, and that'll make up for your rule-breaking."

Interesting definition of love.

"Our sacred texts say that Joshua came to earth"—from outer space? from another dimension? from the darkness of nonexistence the way we all do?—"and consented to be tortured to death to pay for our supernatural offenses! Then he stopped being dead and became alive again, to prove that his horrible death really was a satisfactory alternative to our eternal torments."

This is rather like being told that, because I've broken a rich man's window, I owe him two hundred billion dollars—but some other guy handed the rich man $20 and then took the $20 back, so the price is paid.

And, in fact, the guy taking the twenty back is what proves that he had the right to pay my fine in the first place.

"COMMIT YOURSELF TO FOLLOWING THE MASTER JOSHUA AND YOU WILL BE SAVED FROM THE TERRIFYING FATE YOU DESERVE," shrieks the final all caps sentence.

"If you admit out loud that Joshua is your master, and genuinely believe that a supernatural entity brought him back to life after he died, you won't be tortured for ever and ever after you die."

"Our sacred texts say that in order to be saved from the unimaginably horrific fate worse than death we deserve, we have to sit down and deliberately choose to let the Chosen One pay for us," the threatening gibberish continues.

"If you would like to accept the Chosen One's offer now," a bold, but small text paragraph informs the reader, "then do your best to convey this following message (or something like it) to an entity that does not appear to be present anywhere in reality—and make sure you really mean it!"

The message is given in italics, which is pretty much the only way of making an individual piece of text stand out from the rest at this point on the heavily marked paper.

"Cherished Joshua, I admit that I have done something/s that broke your rules. I understand that I deserve to be tortured forever and ever, but I also know that you died a painful death to make up for my crime/s (and then undied). Please make it so that your temporary death is accepted in lieu of my eternal torture, so that I can live forever in a wonderful place after I die. I absolutely believe that you are going to do this for me. Truth!" .

…I know, I've put too much thought into this.

A piece of paper delivered by a literal criminal to the inside of my locked residence without my knowledge or consent, covered in incoherent claims, threats, and promises—in a better world, I'd throw the thing out and call the cops to check the security cameras.

Unfortunately, I don't live in a better world. I live in a world where ranting cultists like this one are considered normal people.

Actually they get more of a pass than normal folks.

Criminal trespass is a crime for everyone else. Entering a locked building without permission would get most people jail time; but when you're the right kind of cultist, you're above the law.

Scary, isn't it?

#ex christian #criminal trespassing #in order to propagate cult nonsense #''there's a wonderful place waiting for you to live in it forever after you die #''and here's how you get there:#''admit that you're a disgusting criminal who deserves to be tortured for ever and ever #''admit that a special person got horribly hurt so you could be saved from the fate you deserve #''beg that special person to save you and believe that they'll do it #''profit! (for the folks at the top.)''#long post #very long post #this is sort of my specialty isn't it #Isaiah loves writing long posts #Christian beliefs described bluntly #stripping bare the ideas and concepts they like to try and hide behind specialized vocabulary

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