You authors never like critics.
I must say you have earned my admiration for persisting through the reading of the entire two part epic. Let me try to smooth out the rough spots that have confused your innocence, Inocente.
You’re right, I’m not following your argument, and it’s due to problems with your plot line:
[1]In scenario 1 you kill off everyone who doesn’t believe Drog has power over them, yet in scenario 2 these turn out to be the very people who had got it right all along.
The point of this is to show that there are limitations to human moral deliberations. That what appears to be, and, in fact, is, morally right, may not be from a perspective above the human condition (the supernatural) which “sees” and takes into account all the circumstances. This is to show that “God’s way” may not be our way precisely because he has a more expansive view of reality. The humans, at the beginning, made the best decision they could have because of their limitations, when they chose to obey Drog.
As in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the true Lord, God, the Father, is to be found in the unstated “details.” Those who did not obey Drog and were vapourized chose not to do what came natural to self-interest but remained faithful to their “hidden” creator who ultimately, they understood, brought them into being, and therefore had power over any usurpers to claims of lordship like Drog. Their “faith” in his ultimate power, even though it was tested by Drog, remained strong and they did not submit, even at the price of death.
[2]Drog ruthlessly kills all who disbelieve in scenario 1 but for reasons unexplained wimps out in scenario 2.
He didn’t “wimp out,” he simply controlled their behaviour by social programs. The humans did his bidding under social control. He tailored the social and political environment to his plans and therefore did not need to be ruthless any longer. The remaining humans were carrying out his plan in return for a modicum of perceived goods under the influence of the entire peer group that had become convinced that these “goods” were sufficient. This happens all the time in “real life.”
[3]The Lord could have just banished the upstart Drog in the first place, but either didn’t have the power or determined that undermining Drog’s free will would be worse than allowing Drog’s genocide and the enslaving of billions.
This is precisely the “problem of evil” that exists today. Atheists will launch the same critique against God v Evil. God “could have” or should stop evil but doesn’t. All your problems with The Lord in my storyline are the problems that could be equally applied to our present situation. That was my intention. To look at our situation in an encapsulated form.
To specifically answer you critique, however, I could say this: The Lord could have banished Drog but didn’t precisely because Drog has, ultimately, no effect on the real good in question. If the ultimate “good” that is “prized” by God (The Lord) is the achievement of a truly **free will, ** one completely unencumbered by evil, then those who died at the beginning because they refused to abdicate their freedom and wear red demonstrated that they were in possession of that freedom. On the other hand, Drog’s merely forcing compliance does nothing to revoke “free will” because that is an ontological capacity, one that could be internally present despite external appearances. It is the internal disposition of the individual that makes them free, not the external circumstances. Someone could “appear” to be doing Drog’s bidding while maintaining a “free” internal disposition.
The danger, in the story, was that individuals were losing their internal freedom, and thus, their identities to Drog, which is why Krestus came into the story, to remind them that they are, ultimately, completely free creatures because The Lord had created them to be such.
In a very real sense, the external situation, whether under Drog, or in Eden itself, matters nothing. It is the spiritual state of the being that makes them free and makes them who they are. Of course, there are certain acts that a free being could not be compelled to do, for example evil. Resistance to evil would draw the ire of Drog. However, a free being could “go along with” something innocuous like wearing red without compromising their freedom. They could tolerate the inconvenience freely, perhaps even as a kind of undercover move to place themselves in a position to subvert evil. Which is what Krestus (Jesus) did by coming into an essentially enslaved world to remind those under its sway that they in fact do have freedom despite what appearances indicate.
So going back to the initial “wear red” command. Compliance with the command was not necessarily going along with evil. It all depends on the “free” motives of the individual. True, those who resisted were very likely demonstrating their valuing of freedom. However, there may have been those brave individuals who “went along” with the command in order to place themselves in positions to engage in counter terrorism at a future time, and were, thereby, demonstrating freedom. Again, it is not the external circumstances that are important, it is the internal disposition.
Why did The Lord not thwart Drog? Precisely because, in a very real sense, Drog is irrelevant. He acted as a kind of “filter,” a litmus test for individuals to see their own response to evil by either resisting or cooperating with it. These were choices that people had to make for themselves. The Lord saving them from Drog would not save them from their own choices for or against evil, which would have been made regardless.
Continued…
