Intergalactic Summit

I will respond to what I perceive as the main thrust of your objections (They are so civilly raised that they deserve a detailed response). I believe that the vast cultural differences between the Amarr and other nations lie at the root of a good deal of talking past each other on these topics.

Free will and its relationship to God is an enormous topic, and I cannot treat anything close to its entirety here. It has been said that Humans have free will and that the essential freedom of this will somehow precludes God’s approval of slavery. The objection would seem to be that denying an individual freedom to do as he or she wants offends against God’s design, since He made the individual with the desire to do as they wish. In my opinion, this argument does not withstand detailed scrutiny. In fact, one does not even instruct a child in this manner. The human will wants destructive things. The restraint of the human will in the pursuit of these destructive things is fundamentally licit. Who will argue that a criminal should not be punished? Who will say that a person who wishes to harm others for pleasure should not be forcefully restrained? Finally, who but only the most inhumane will not seek to reform criminals after such restraint? The Amarr institution of slavery is just this kind of restraint with aim at eventual reform. Each and every human who exists outside of the proper alignment to God is by their very nature violent and dangerous.

Free will is important. This will is the reason humanity can rebel against its Maker and loose itself. It can and often is misused to the detriment of the entire community of human beings. Those lost to God, since they have left behind the purpose for which they have been made, are by their very nature violent. They are violent against themselves, violent against other humans, and (the worst of all crimes) violent against their Maker (as they have chosen to rebel against Him, committing treason). The choice to remain outside the society of the Lord is by its nature criminal. Force is licit to end this estrangement and the threat it posses to the collective human family.

The other issue here raised is that the Empire itself seems ever-changing and as a changeable thing cannot claim the ability to manifest God’s will and God’s community. This is a serious objection and it lies at the heart of the resistance many mount to the Empire. I cannot here, with the present restraints on my time adequately address this objection completely, but I can begin a conversation regarding it. For discussions of humanly (note not humanely but humanly, as in designed and enacted by human beings) implemented slavery we need to distinguish issues of scale between divinity and humanity. The Lord has an eternity and He is unchanging. Humans’ individual lives are finite and so the human is always changing. Any institution made of human beings must, in its attempt to reach the God that is its source, undergo processes of change. The human wishes to fashion itself into the image of the unchanging divine (the hierarchy of the Empire is this attempt), but it cannot perfectly realise this desire. The point is the sincere and continued attempt. The hope of the faithful is that there will be a point, perhaps eons in the future, where humanity will be perfected and fully reclaimed to God. Until then, humans will change. Their voices will change. Their writings will change. We have never hidden that the Scriptures change; indeed, with the birth of each and every Amarr citizen they change! All of these, when they are sincere attempts to replicate the divine image, have within them an overriding core of unity. They are all pictures, if you will, of the same object, drawn by different artists.

Have you ever thought of just not posting? Maybe even once?

That sounds suspiciously like a festival of carnal sinning!
Count me in. Maybe.