Emperor Josephus
"Stop fighting and forgive each other"
In October of Anno Domini 324, Emperor Constantine wrote a letter to an audience of Eastern bishops.
Elementary, My Dear
Since the majority of American adults (54%) read at less than a 6th grade level, I prompted the God of Lies™ to rewrite Constantine’s letter for an audience of American 5th graders.
Then, I edited the output as if it were a roughy draft script for a social media video.
A video recorded in the Oval Office as the president goes about his day.
In May of Anno Domini 2023.
Hi there! This is a message from a man named Joe, a pretty busy and powerful guy right now.
Joe believes in God and wants everyone to have the same beliefs so that the world would be more peaceful.
Joe also wants to help his country, which was suffering because of a bad ruler.
Joe hopes that if everyone believed in God the same way, then everything would get better.
One day, he heard that people in the flyover part of the country were fighting over different ideas about God.
Joe wanted to stop this fighting, so he asked some important people from the church to come and help solve the problem.
Joe thought that the best people to help were back East, where the church started.
They seemed to know a lot about this stuff.
But when Joe asked for their help, he found out that they were also fighting with each other!
This made him very sad.
Then, Joe realized that they were fighting over something that wasn't even important.
They were arguing about a small detail from a book in the Bible, which was causing big problems.
So Joe asked them to stop fighting and to forgive each other.
He explained that it was not important to argue over small details because it could cause more problems.
He asked them to keep their thoughts to themselves and not to argue in public.
Joe hoped that everyone would listen to him and stop fighting.
He believed that if they could all forgive each other and focus on what was important, then they could live in peace.
Mission Not Accomplished
They didn’t stop fighting.
According to Everett Ferguson,
“The great majority of Christians had no clear views about the nature of the Trinity and they did not understand what was at stake in the issues that surrounded it.”
More than 50 years later, the Edict of Thessalonica and Nicene Christianity defined religious state orthodoxy and officially, wait for it…canceled…all other forms of Christology.
Arianism was declared a heresy and effectively wiped out among the ruling class and elite of the Eastern Empire.
Lessons Learned
When the folks in charge come up with some very strict, legalistic rules and refuse to forgive any mistakes, it can make nice, reasonable people who used to agree with you start to disagree.
A wide swath of people who don’t agree will say different things than the ruling class and elite.
These small details cause big problems.
The great majority manages life fine without debating small details - normies don’t debate theology - because the significance isn’t clear.
This hang-up is basically why we struggle to have nice things now.