On Protection and Blessing

5 September 2019

I’ve given up protecting people. After many decades I’ve seen how some people don’t want to solve problems; they might want something else.  They might want a fight, for example. All that adrenalin has to go somewhere, in priority to reason and good sense. One source of unwholesome chemicals in the body is fear, a profitable commodity. Who profits? Currently forces of reaction are exercised on religious freedom, defined as license to vilify. Some proponents may be honest clergy simply selling hell — at a very good price, no doubt — or politicians selling anxiety. Others, in the chess game of ecclesiastical maneuvers, may be protecting their queen. Neither Solomon nor the Queen of Sheba possessed all the assets of the known world, though in a much larger, globalised world, such ambitions can now be suspected. The rage of the rich deprived of the smallest sliver of gold motivates dominance, hostility and control. The real Biblical treasure was given to the queen’s Ethiopian eunuch, a man of no sexual credibility in a culture obsessed with ancestry, genealogy, and inheritance. “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptised?” And Philip gave him the blessing of Baptism.