GENE EDWARDS wrote this with the insurgence of internet persecution from believers against believers.
THE NEW SPANISH INQUISITION
BY GENE EDWARDS
MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THE
NEW INQUISITION
My first experience with the modern-day inquisition came the day someone asked if I had seen a review of my newest book. First, I had not written a recent book. There was an article about a new book, said to have been written by me. The attack was both personal and vicious.
The problem? I had written no such book. I had not even read such a book. A mistake, perhaps? No, it was a fictional, but deliberate, attack.
The writer of the article had created a nonexistent book, then used this book as a means of negating my name and my ministry. I thought this a rather creative idea, only to learn it was a common tool often used on the Internet to undermine, even destroy, another Christian.
Welcome to the Christian Internet.
Today the Internet is filled with Christians impaling other Christians. There is an old adage, “If it is in print, then it must be true.” This use of the Internet has curtailed and sometimes destroyed the ministry of many fine men.
Google the name of almost any of today’s Christian leaders, and you will find one to a dozen horrific attacks on that man, his ministry, his theology, his writings, his character. to six billion people. We are in a new world of slander, the impact of which is incalculable.
Most Christians will not do this. The vast majority of Christians living out there in small Persecution of Christians by Christians began circa A. D. 360 and continued on with death as its ultimate conclusion, until 1700 when a more enlightened era began. There were still Christians attacking Christians, but the audience was small until about 1995. Today one man can attack another man, his words being read across the world’s entire population.
Fanaticism has always been with us in both politics and religion. But today, one twisted or unscrupulous man who once could write a letter to one person at a time can now write that same letter to to six billion people. We are in a new world of slander, the impact of which is incalculable.
Most Christians will not do this. The vast majority of Christians living out there in small towns, villages, and cities have never before been exposed to such massive onslaughts, nor would most ever write such condemnations. Still, as a result, what is being printed on the Internet is also believed. The reason is simple: Christians cannot believe that another believer could say such venomous things unless they were true, and the deeds must be so ungodly that some humble servant of God was driven to attack another. Certainly the use of imagination as the only source of evidence is inconceivable.
Who are the people who are turning a rapier’s keyboard on others? Who are charging fellow Christians with being “dangerous,” with heresy, with being dictators, cult leaders, etc.?
When you read such charges, keep one thing in mind: Most Christians read the attack and think, “What an awful person this man must be!” without stopping to consider the one who made the attack. The true reason for the attack by the attacker is never admitted. The reasons given are high sounding, but boil down to two motives: (1) competition and/or (2) jealousy. Logic, reason, theology, protecting the faith are disguises. Most attacks are born of jealousy or because the man being attacked is a competitor. On a few occasions, it is simply a sick mind.
One Christian in twenty thousand would sit down at a computer, open a website and ........ another Christian. Not one in twenty? Most Christians are incapable of doing such a harsh thing. Men who attack other Christians may imply that the attack is needed. The truth is that most Christians are too Christian to ever reach such a “need” threshold. The kind of person who would sit down at a computer and vilify another child of God is rare. His motives are “righteous”; nonetheless, other believers, by the millions, never get that “righteous.”
Be it truth or falsehood, once the inquisitionist writes his attack, no power in heaven or on earth will ever convince him that what he writes is not the absolute truth. Ask him!
CYBER BULLIES
These attacking ones have caught the eye of Christian psychologists. Professionals who read these attacks do not have such a kind view of these keyboard assassins. Christian psychologists have coined a word to describe such men: cyber-bullies. We now face international Christian bullies.
THE SPANISH INQUISITION
We can understand these men by looking at the persecution of Christians by Christians throughout church history original Spanish Inquisition. In fact, look at all those who persecute always do so in the name of God and in the name of protecting others from the evil people they are about to (reluctantly!) rid the world of. The accuser, the one lighting the fire which will incinerate the heretic, has done so in God’s name alone . . . to save God’s people from danger.
During the time when the Roman Catholic Church was a monolith, there were those who did not agree with the Imperial Church; but there was but one mind allowed in Europe, the Catholic mind. All else was heresy and wood for the burning.
In the 1500s, when the dissidents, the nonconformists, grew in number, the Catholic layman was shocked at hearing about ideas other than those which were part of his mindset. Following that shock came the thought: These ideas could hurt God’s work, and could even hurt God!
When feelings get to that point, lying and creating “evidence” become part of the greater good. Something happens inside the human heart. Truth must be protected, even if lying is necessary. Doctrines must be protected. The source of the evidence of guilt? The imagination!
A man’s imagination can see truth and evil more clearly than it can see fact. Imagination, ever faithful to protect God, soon provides documents and witnesses. I am a student of church history. The record of history tells us that fiction became truth in the necessity of protecting God by means of the torture rack. And now the keyboard!
The early Priscillians were put to death by a lie. The Waldensians were accused of unthinkable wickedness. The fictional powers of man were stretched to the limit concerning Wycliffe and lit the fires of Huss’s burning.
This persecution is toward two ends: to protect God and to get rid of the competition.
...CONTINUED
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