On Christianity

Greetings Toadies.
 
  Today I will be discussing the benefits and dangers of Christianity for your patient. I will outline the strategic role Christianity plays in america today, I will lay out a few rules of thumb, give a few examples and then talk a bit about at least one specific circumstance where the rules of thumb might be broken.
 
  Christianity is not our enemy. Don't be surprised. Christianity is nothing but a set of propositions your patients may or may not assent to. Granted, any of you who's patients become christians will incur rather harsh ...penalties. The reasons for this will become clear over the course of the lecture. Our enemy, you know. We know him all too well; our fight began long before the little bipeds were created.
 
  Here, I want you to make a distinction between christians and christianity. As a rule (though our semantics department has been doing some admirable work breaking this down) a christian in america is a human who claims, at least in theory, to have become a citizen of our enemy's camp (he has taught them to call it a kingdom); christianity is merely the set of beliefs they hold in common and which generally show them how his citizens are to behave.
 
  "Why is this important?". You ask, "surely if these christians are our enemies in the world, it is their shared belief that makes them so." You see that, he sees that, but they don't and in this we have a great opportunity. You will recall that your success with your patients involves turning them away from the enemy's burning light and towards out Outer Darkness. The enemy would like to see your patients accept christianity as true, and follow the path it sets for them since that path leads right towards him; and for quite a while, this strategy of his worked. It is only because of our involvement that many humans have come to think of the path as a goal.
  
  You see that as soon as the humans stop treating their religion as a sign leading them to him and begin thinking of it as an end in itself, the sign will point in on itself and, unless you are exceptionally incompetent, they will never look "beyond" it to him. Here you see how the principle of misapplied priorities can be brought to bear with profound effect.  But then, many of you had professor Beezletoff for Principles of Tempting 101, that demon couldn't teach a whore to fornicate; I suppose I had better give you refresher. The principle of misapplied priorities is derived from the law of first and second things: when any spirit (human half-breeds in particular) put first things first and second things second, they will get both first and second things, if any spirit puts second things first, they will get neither.
 
  Son now you see how this law comes into play even between our Father and the enemy? The enemy claims that he is the first thing, he is so infatuated with the idea that he cheats by becoming three persons so that he might spend eternity putting the other two "persons" of himself ahead of himself. Our Father seeks to make himself first and has devised the miserific vision wherein he brings everything under himself. Through conquest, pollution and destruction we plan to subjugate the enemy's "firsts" to our own "seconds". Nothing will do but a total transvaluation of values. Some of the human animals have even glimpsed the plan. That german buffoon with the walrus mustache integrated some of it in his "will to power". But where was I...
 
  Ah, yes, the law of first and second things. From it, we derive the principle of misplaced priority. If is always a triumph to get your patient to value a second thing over a first thing, this is nearly always valid. No matter how troublesome to our cause something might be, we can always de-fang it and often turn it to our own purposes if we can get the humans to value it over and above something the enemy thinks is more important. Thus romantic love is very dangerous to us, till we get them to value it over family fidelity. Then before you know it, they are off having splendid, heart wrenching affairs, destroying families, wounding and scarring their children  and generally doing much of our job for us. A full commitment to truth terrifies out tempters, seeming to armor the mortals against our hottest darts; then we get them to value it over charity and the next thing you know they are all off on a crusade or inquisition.  Even christianity. The enemy has given them his religion as a good thing, if they take it for the path it is, it will always lead them beyond itself to him. You see how this follows the laws of first and second things? Using the principle of misapplied priority, we get them to do everything including, in the final stages, even their worship and relationship with the enemy.
 
  Those of you whose patients are or become christians will have this task: you must bring the patient to value their christianity for it's own sake and then, gradually, you coax them into making all other things subservient to it. That is our current stratagem. If possible keep your patient from christianity entirely, where this fails, work on making them despise it. if you cannot even accomplish that much then you must encourage them to think of it as, one more nice thing which benefits society (you see the principle at work even here? Christianity for the sake of good society...). If you fail and you patient does become a christian, you may get him to turn away from it, but if not, then get him to make it his god.
 
  Of course these are all general strategies; how you ought to go about the specific tasks with you specific patients is to be left to you. Of course I will take all relevant questions by e-mail, but in order to get you thinking along the right lines, let me offer an example of when the rule of thumb ought to be ignored.

  In america there is a growing group of humans who grew up attending church and generally surrounded by christianity. In future lectures I will discuss the great successes Mammon has had with simony and fear in the american church but for the time being let it suffice to say that many of these "churched" humans have become dissatisfied with their religion. You may think this a good thing, the lowerarchy does not. These worms, by and large, are not leaving christianity because it is to close to the enemy, they are leaving because it is too far away. They are leaving to get closer to him.
 
  There is great danger here for us. Remember the law of first and second things; if they leave their religion (a second thing) to grow closer to him (a first thing), they will nearly always get the religion back all new and shining, blooming with truth, wisdom and beauty. Yes, there is great danger in them, but there is also an opportunity. When they leave their "faith" it is your job to slip in behind and make associations between the actual truths within christianity and all of the accidental practices and opinions their particular sect associated with it. Once you have made these connections hard and fast, you will have formed an excellent foundation for an attack on his relationship with the enemy.
 
  Of course the exact nature of these linkages will have to take different forms as you patients and their sects differ. Is you patient very upset that his group "talks the talk" but doesn't give fig the poor? Tell him that the talk must all be false, else the poor would be fed by now. Does you patient think the worship music in his sect abysmally shallow or archaic? Tell him it is because the teaching is a lie.
 
  The gimmick here is to bring about a state of affairs where your patient, having left his religion for faults real or imagined, also abandons the truth his religion pointed to. If you can manage this then having gotten him off  the path, you will have a patient who is willing to look anywhere for answers except for where the path leads. He will be willing to consider every answer but the truth.