Slumrat Rising

Vol. 3 Chap. 40 An Inside Man

“Hang on a second- you say you physically take on the sin. As in, you remove it from the person it is on until they sin again.”

“Yes, we covered that.” The priest nodded.

“And it stays gone until the person sins again.”

“Well, it’s more nuanced than that, but that’s the basic idea.”

“And you, and an unknown but non-zero number of your fellow clergy, can literally see the accumulated sin on a person.”

“Again, sort of. But that is the basic idea. Where are you going with this?”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it’s agonizing. Let me take off my pants; see for yourself what absorbing lust does to a man!” He grabbed his belt.

“No, I mean, does it hurt the people whose sin you absorb? Do they suddenly feel compelled to worship Praeger or something?” Truth quickly clarified.

“Oh. No. Actually, it feels quite nice. A sudden sense of relief, like you just put down a heavy load. And yes, people do feel compelled to give thanks to Praeger, but that’s mostly because they suddenly feel better.”

Truth nodded. “And if you absorb my, what, wrath?”

“Wrath, bloodlust, envy, hate, resentment generally, a few other trace elements like gluttony and lust, and apparently just a TON of blasphemy. Although,” Here Reik turned his head sideways a bit. “The Blasphemy is a bit weird. Like… you have definitely committed blasphemy, but you kind of didn’t mean it?”

“Huh. Surprising.”

“I don’t know how you managed it. You either committed a sin or you didn’t. How do you just-a-bit blaspheme?”

“I don’t know, but I do know at least one internationally known clergyman who refuses to discuss the nature of God with me until I can define what a human is.” This got Reik sputtering again.

“He asked a ghost to define humanity. That’s a sharp operator, right there.”

“True. So… you would explode or something if you tried to absorb my sin, yeah?”

“If I tried it right now? Yes. Well, not literally, but functionally. I would have to do it over several sessions, and it would cost a fortune. Not that I’m going to ask you to pay, we would do a charity fundraiser and ask for donations. No pockets in a shroud and all that.”

“You guys get shrouds?”

“Were you buried without one?”

“You guys get buried?” Truth was feeling a bit mischievous.

“You weren’t buried?!”

“It’s debatable at best.”

Reik opened and closed his mouth helplessly. “I will admit eating the sin of a murder victim will be a first for me.”

Truth laughed. “What’s your going rate?”

“There isn’t one. But for a problem as severe as yours… Ten thousand wen? More?”

“For as long as there are Wen, at any rate.” Reik nodded firmly at that.

“That is the subject of a lot of discussion in the Church. Even at the highest levels, we aren’t entirely clear on how the credit system is going to work in practice, as regards tithing and all that.”

Ten grand was a big chunk of his available cash. Not that he gave a damn, it was found money, but it was annoying not to have cash on hand.

“You say it would take repeated sessions to clear- how about I pay you in installments?”

“Eh?”

Truth laughed silently to himself. “I have the strangest feeling a miracle will occur just as you are leaving the hotel.”

“Decided not to murder me?”

“I’m interested in the sin-eating thing. Anything that makes me less visible, you know?”

“Ah. As opposed to the salvation of your soul from eternal torment.”

“Is it really salvation if the person doing the tormenting is the same as the one doing the “saving?”

“Pardon?”

“Well, God runs everything, right?”

“No, of course not… ah. I see. Because God is the highest and the ultimate authority in the universe, all aspects of the universe must be under his rule. Therefore the torments of Hell occur at his command. Is that it?”

“Yep.”

“Nope.”

“Eh?”

“Free will is a thing, you know?”

“I don’t?”

“Pardon?” There was a moment of mutual incomprehension.

“Free will? Does that… ring any kind of bell for you?” Reik asked.

“Other than, like, consenting for sex or something? Or entering a contract, maybe?”

“Oof. Alright, not how I saw this morning going, but God never gives us greater trials than we can bear.”

“He absolutely does. I speak as someone who has been professionally violent. He one hundred percent gives people more than they can bear, and they die.”

“Another theological discussion for another time. Free will. Very short version- God created the world, set it in motion, and provided rules to live by. Abide by the rules, key of which is faith and devotion to God, and you get to go to heaven. You will be happy forever, perfected by God and existing as the perfect being he always intended you to be. But you don’t have to do that. You can choose to reject God. And God respects your decision. There is a place entirely free of his presence. Hell.”

“Ah. So those who have rejected God are volunteers, going to experience… eternal torment via the absence of God?”

“That and fire, freezing, drowning, cancer, rape, torture, mutilation, and generally misery, horror and every sort of awfulness, forever. It’s the exact inverse of Heaven. All the parts of you that are godly are stripped away and returned to God. That which burns forever is a remnant of the “you” that exists today. All that is left are the things that are not-God.

“Pain. Resentment. Corruption. Despair. Suffering. It is endless. It must be endless because every part of you that could understand relief, love, peace, gratitude, and every other blessed emotion has been stripped away entirely. You are without God. Forever. Conscious and horribly aware, of course, or there would be no point- you would no longer be free to choose. And because you can no longer understand peace or forgiveness or relief, there is no escape. You could conceive of no alternative to your condition. The Gates of Hell keep people out, not in.”

Truth digested that one for a minute. It was impressively horrible to contemplate. Then that niggling little instinct kicked in, the one that made him a misery to Merkovah so many times. “But all this is based on the assumption that we have free will.”

“If by “assumption” you mean attested by the divinely inspired and free from error writings of the prophets and the saints and confirmed by literally millennia of consular decisions by the Church, then yes.” Reik’s voice couldn’t have been dryer.

“Sounds a lot like “The Church decided what they liked was the orthodoxy,” James.”

“Johnny, Prophets speak to God!”

“Sure. And they contradict each other. Happens all the time. I could find demons and angels who wouldn’t back you up. They would have first-hand knowledge, right?”

“Another long theological conversation, but at some point-”

“Faith is required.” Truth said. Reik had the feeling of being checkmated in a game he wasn’t aware he was playing.

“Yes. Is that so terrible? You stand to gain everything and lose nothing by just… believing. By just looking up and saying, “Thank you. Yes. By your will.”

Truth thought about the slums. The ones he lived in, and the Slum of the world. He thought of the Church’s notion of sin determining health and prosperity. And he asked himself again if he really needed to spare this man.

No. He didn’t need to. But he would. He wanted to show him how wrong he was. It was immensely petty. Dangerous. Stupid, even.

“Tell you what, James. You go to the slums. Don’t wear a suit, just dress normally. Go there and look around. Get a real good feel on all that sin. You might just go blind before you get out of the subway. Take a look around at the people, and then look over at the rich part of the city and then look back at them and say, “This is all your fault. You chose this, every bit of it.”

“Well now, that’s-”

“James?”

“Yes?”

“Go now, or I will kill you. And then you can test your theology.”

Reik didn’t see the ghost move, didn’t notice the aura following him. But when he walked out the door of the hotel, two thousand wen landed on his head.

Truth considered it his sign-on bonus. They didn’t know it, but the Church Of Praeger in Jeon just got drafted into the revolutionary army.

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Truth seethed. It wasn’t the description of Hell- he had seen snippets of Hell through portals. Hell was, definitionally, nothing nice. It was the bland assumption that if you were suffering, it was your fault. Which, in fairness, maybe it was! Maybe you weren’t taking the steps you needed to be to not suffer. Truth was proof that by devoting absolutely every fiber of your being to an utterly maniacal degree, you could break out of the slums and better your condition.

But what did that mean by the Church’s logic? That he broke out because he was less sinful? Were the people already living in the C-Tier housing born his spiritual superiors? Those young masters and mistresses pissing on their weaker “friends” as a “joke” must be paragons of morality, then. To say nothing of Starbrite himself. Sure, the world might die, but he had prospered mightily, and was therefore the spiritual apex of the world.

Oh, he was sure the Church would finesse that. It was an oversimplification. The one didn’t necessarily imply the other. But they sure acted like that was what they believed. He let his ideas swirl for a bit, and stumbled onto the core of it almost accidentally.

Free will absolved God of blame. God was perfect and perfectly benevolent. The world was perfect. All your suffering was to your benefit so that you would grow and prosper as you overcame them. And if you didn’t? If you weren’t obedient and fell to sin? That was your choice.

Born poor and turned gangster because they were the only people you saw in the neighborhood with money and respect? Your fault. Turned junkie because it was the only way you knew of to deal with the pain of existence? Your fault. Childhood cancer? Your fault. Possibly your parent’s fault. You were the means to cause them suffering for their sins.

Nothing stuck to God. He created the mess, then washed his hands of it and walked away. Like he always did. His creation got fucked up? Turned out horrible and wrong? Not his problem. He’d just walk away and try again later.

“Free will” absolved God of the sin of his creation. It absolved him of his responsibility for the consequences of his actions. If he really got annoyed, he would simply erase the world. It would come back empty and clean, ready for him to get it right this time. Truth could only laugh with anger. That wasn’t right. That was fucked up. And he was not okay with it.

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It’s fucking circular logic. There must be free will because if there isn’t, then God isn’t perfect, and since God is perfect, our suffering must be entirely our choice and our fault. And we know that logic is perfect because our hand-picked prophets had their definitely divinely inspired and perfectly recorded words written down and neatly collected by us into this book we edited and will explain to you for a sizable donation.

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Truth snorted. By the way, who is Yaldabaoth?

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First I’m hearing of it. Wait, I thought God has hundreds or thousands of names.

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Yeah, but I never heard that name before. Or if I did, I'd forgotten it.

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There was a moment of silence. That stretched into a minute of silence, then two. System?

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Something from the System Astrolgica?

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It’s not you, it’s not me, what is it then?

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