To: O'Hara who wrote (1515 ) 12/30/1998 12:35:00 PM From: nihil Respond to
Of what would you have me to repent? In my religion of Jesus, mere naked repentance is meaningless. Please be specific on my wrongs, I've done things so vile that I don't have time or wealth to requite all of them before I die -- only the worst of them. But wouldn't you know it, those are the ones I can't remember or never knew. Give me the benefit of your deep insights into the abscesses on my soul (for I sense that you are a very holy and forgiving man). Because I have recently recompensed some of my serious wrongs to others, I am feeling prideful at the moment. I know what that goeth before, so I am ready to abase myself to those I have actually injured. I hope my attempt to point out the impossible contortions in your grotesque metaphors did not offend you. I was honestly trying to help you identify what I cpnceoved pf as serious deficiences in your writing skills. Hard to believe, but there are many people who think that bad writing does not persuade. My comments were mere pleasantries written on the spur of the moment. If you interpreted them as blasphemy of your gods, you are legally and lexicographically confused. One can blaspheme only his own God. Nothing I say about you gods can injure you. If you think it has, you should read Epictetus who explains that the truth is in each of us, and that no one can injure another. In a free country, one can hardly be offended when a Jesuite ridicules christ, the father, or the holy ghost (feel free to arrange the three in your preferred order and of priority and to capitalize them -- it doesn't matter to me). Surely you understand that the Jewish high priest condemned Jesus to death for blaspheming the priest's own narrow conception of the all highest, not Jesus's. Jesus could never have been convicted and murdered in a free country, so we know that what was left of Judean nationhood and the Roman Empire were evil.
