Three Card Monte

Three Card Monte

A View [Not] From The Pew
by Gerry Hunter

From the Desk of the Undersecretary for Ecclesiastical Affairs

My Dear Dogwood,

It had always been a mystery to me why His Disgrace the Secretary chose me for this post, and spent the time to tell me his misadventures with his own nephew. But after reading your last report, I realize he was setting me up to endure the same torture he went through before his descent down the lowrarchy. Well, Dogwood, keep the kind of drivel coming my way that was the hallmark of your last situation report and, just as I now share the torment of the uncle, so you will share the fate of the nephew.

To hear you tell it, everyone involved is simply doing as you have enticed or arranged for them to do. Not only does it lead to a degree of self-aggrandizement on your part that is as laughable as it is unfitting, but also it leads you to an analysis of the present situation that is just plain stupid, and to suggesting a course of action that will squander any chance of gain we might have. The way you go on about controlling things would make one think that it was our task was to change lives, not the Enemy’s. Well, not only isn’t it, but you haven’t, because you can’t. From the beginning, we’ve made our gains by taking advantage of the human vermin when they forget the Enemy, and focus on themselves and their own constructs. We’ve done that by encouraging that focus, thought things like selfist psychology, from the time we got the woman and man in that despicable garden to take the fruit in their own hands and eat it. I expected an outline of how you intended to implement this strategy in your last report, rather than the nonsense you sent in. Your plan is bad, because your analysis is flawed, so it can provide a pretext for your self-serving nonsense. Once again, it’s left to me to set you straight.

(Don’t think I haven’t thought of having you recalled. But every time I suggest it, His Disgrace just gets a gleam in his eye, and, with a diabolical grin, lectures me on my duties as an uncle. I think he really has it in for me.)

If you hadn’t been so eager to make the case that the Bishop of New Westminster, his synod (well, most of them, anyway), and those who think like him had been following your superbly crafted instructions, you might have grasped what’s really going on. You claim to have created two factions, and proceed to set out the steps you will direct them to take to annihilate each other. Well, nephew, all you prove is that your vanity has so blinded you (when you’re supposed to be blinding the human vermin) that just as you couldn’t find a pitchfork in our armoury, you didn’t see that there are effectively three, not two, groups. Now, pay attention.

The first two groups are easy enough to spot. On the one hand, we have the group that sees what they are doing as kind, loving, affirming, and all those other things that the godless humanist psychologists have concocted to distract Christians from what the Enemy would have them being about. On the other hand, we have those meddlesome people who put faithfulness to the Enemy first, trust Him to prevail through that sovereignty He so unfairly refuses to share, and oppose the first group. But in your ambition, you have missed the third group. They are convinced that by simply sticking with the established structures and ways of doing things in the church, everything will work itself out. Near as I can tell, you lump them into the second group. But they really are distinct from it, even though they may espouse the same principles. And they are distinct from the first group, too, which merely co-opts the existing structures and methods to get their way. If you had been paying attention, you would have seen that the third group is convinced that the existing structures and methods are the way to a solution pleasing to the Enemy. But since you are basically incompetent, you missed entirely the opportunity they provide, that should be taken advantage of.

Some hairy bipeds do an admirable job of fleecing their fellow vermin through a street game called Three Card Monte. It’s a rigged game, of course, and even though all their marks are asked to do is keep their eye on the card, and pick it out after the three are moved around, they really haven’t got a chance. If you had recognized that we have three, not two, groups in play in the present Anglican situation, you could have planned to take advantage of the situation in the same manner as the street hucksters do in that esteemed card game. But in your usual manner, you put yourself first, and the job second, and missed it entirely.

So then, since His Disgrace seems to want to make my life miserable, I must now get you to come up with a plan to take advantage of the real situation. Even you should be able to come up with something. The third group blurs everything, just like our huckster’s slight of hand. They want to use the existing structures, just as do the first group, and they claim to be aiming for faithfulness, just like the second group. Your job is to see to it that they smudge the line the Enemy insists be drawn between those who follow His Son, and those who claim to, but work to their own agendas. The Enemy’s closest followers called them “false teachers” in that despicable body of writing we want them all to ignore or downplay. But if you play that third group right, the people caught in the middle of this mess, who don’t know what’s happening or where to turn, could be led by inertia into thinking that the structures and methods that failed to prevent their present situation will none the less get them out of it. That’s what we want – confusion. Blurred lines, inertia, and fondness for the established systems will do us a lot more good than professors of theology spouting academic drivel, which is itself only praiseworthy according to how much it adds to the confusion. And I promise you that if I get back something that suggests you are still trying to attract ardent followers, rather than spread confusion, I will personally come and tie a knot in your tail that even His Disgrace won’t be able to get undone.

There is one final thing. Some of the most troublesome of the Enemy’s partisans in most senior Anglican positions have taken very strong stands against what has happened in your operational area. I want included in your plan a way to optimize the confusion we hope that will give rise to. For instance, in separating themselves from the Diocese and its clergy, they seem to have overlooked the fact that, at the moment, the clergy of the group who are causing us trouble are still operating on licenses from the bishop whose actions we are out to take advantage of. Rather than falling into your usual habit of trying to come up with arguments against their actions, busy yourself with looking for, and exploiting, any confusion their otherwise despicable actions may give rise to. Above all, keep the vermin’s minds off the fact that the confusion presents no particular problem for the Enemy’s despicable sovereignty. Get them wrapped up the difficulties of their own making, and make very sure they forget that they made them for themselves. And if you don’t, be prepared to attend the next Tempter’s Awards Society banquet – as the main dish!

Your affectionate uncle,

Tapeworm