ANGER V

ANGER V

(The following is a journal entry left by the 4th century monk, Evagrius Ponticus concerning his discovery of “the eight deadly sins”)

Dear Fictitious Character,

In my dream which I just awoke from, I finally found your cowardly self, huddled in the alley behind my neighbor’s abode. Though I have no idea why it was that you were there, and though I am sure that it is just an idea generated by my own guilt-ridden and warped psyche, which has been molded this way by years of being told lies on your behalf, I did see you. I saw what it is that I have been told you are. I saw all the stories wrapped into one. You were the old man in the sky, you were the strapping young “Jesus” with the oiled chest and the long flowing locks. You were everything that I have been on my knees for years praying to, which has never once spoke back to me from anywhere. You embodied that picture of “God” which all of those that still believe in you see when they go to sleep at night wanting security and a sense that the world all has purpose. Yes, you were all of these things.

One more rule that I was told by your followers somewhere along the way, was to not have anger, to suppress my own natural emotions, and to put it somewhere that I could never get to it, stored way back in the furthest most region of my mind and heart. I was told never to try and draw anything from these feelings, because they were all bunk, they were all sinful, and certainly, counterproductive in the fight to make more believers in you.

My love is not for you, dear fictional character. I have not a drop of tear to spare for you, nor do I care to repeat again how useless all of my prayers have been, in that futile attempt to communicate with you. In understanding all of this myself, and being capable of anything that I alone set my mind to, I picked up the sharpest knife that I could find in my house and I went back out into that alley where you were still cowardly hiding.

I can’t begin to know how many times I stabbed you, “God,” but when I was finished, I felt nothing but pure bliss and eternal freedom. That connect-the-dot sort of pattern that was all over your lifeless body gushing out blood all over the alley street revealed to me the end of all that was your filthy lie that for so long had burrowed itself in my brain like a life-sucking parasite. And when I awoke took a long warm bath, breathing in incense which I had purchased for just such an occasion.

Thanks for the satisfying dream,

Evagrius, AD 375