Title Author Published Greatness Aztice Ethertone March 26, 2002
From the scribes record of the Church in the year 97 S.Y. Original record here.
*Aztice stands before a small but dedicated audience. He is not in the sanctuary, but in one of the larger classrooms, reserved for the night. He lays the Book of Staves open upon the podium, a worn book showing the signs of repeated reading and much travel.*
I thank you for being here. It is an unfamiliar time and an unfamiliar place, and you have come to hear someone who is not even a member of the clergy, one who has only his faith to recommend him. Nonetheless, it is important to fully explore our faith, and you have come here with the expectation that your sacrifice of time shall be well-spent in the study of the Book of Staves and searching out the will of the All-Father. I shall try not to disappoint you, at least in that regard. Let us open in prayer.
*Aztice extends his hands in a symbolic gesture of receiving and turns his face upward.* Father, bless your children this night. Give us wisdom as we pursue You with our whole hearts and wills, and reveal to us the plan You hold for our work in your service. May we all benefit from the gifts each of us have received from You, and serve one another tonight with the insight you grant us. *With this, he turns back to the audience and begins to speak.*
In the time the All-Father has so far given me upon Aerynth, I have heard many people speak of Greatness. Here, we often hear primarily of the Greatness of the All-Father, and rightly so, but not solely of His Greatness. We hear also of the Greatness of those who serve Him, and it is a great pleasure when we hear a fellow servant receive recognition for what the Father has accomplished through Him, though we must always give our Father the glory, for what are we without Him?
But more disturbing is the tendency of many to speak of their own Greatness in lofty terms. The champions among the denizens of Aerynth too often seek after Greatness for themselves. Earthly rulers wish to rule Great kingdoms or empires. All too easily, one can forget that no messenger is greater than the one who sent him, and no person is greater than the one whom he serves, whether he serves Chaos or Sin, which leads to death, or our heavenly Father, which leads to righteousness. This failure to see ourselves as servants and tendency to see ourselves as towers of Greatness unto ourselves is known as Pride.
Pride is a dangerous thing for many reasons. Firstly, though all sin is the perversion or excess of some virtuous trait, pride is the perversion of possibly the most remarkable gift the Father has given us: the ability to serve Him, freely and willingly, and to accomplish things in His name. Pride twists this incredible gift into something sinister, a desire not to serve the Father but to be on a level with Him; to make ourselves so Great that we can fulfill this natural striving not through service to our Creator but through service to ourselves.
Secondly, Pride invokes the very essence of Chaos. The idea that you can build without a foundation, that each person can be an island that is Great unto itself and under no one, is not merely utter foolishness, but catastrophic to those deluded by it. The defining quality of Chaos is that it willingly serves no one. Other sins and temptations may come from within us or the world we live in; Pride comes straight from the Void.
Thirdly, Pride encourages us not merely to look at our own Greatness, which would be quite terrible enough, but to compare our perceived Greatness to the Greatness we perceive in those around us. Pride desires not merely to be Great, but to be Greater than others. For this reason, Pride can never be satiated. Normal desires, such as hunger and thirst, can be satisfied because their measure is an absolute scale, but Pride, because it views everything relatively, can never get enough. Rather than merely building ourselves up in defiance of the All-Father, Pride encourages us to tear one another down, to make everyone else lower than ourselves. Pride is the most efficient and fiendish way to make enemies out of friends.
But what I wish to address tonight is not pride at the individual level, which must be combated at the individual level, but rather a concern that pride has taken root at a higher level: that of the race.
It seems there is no race in all Aerynth that does not teach its children that they are superior. The Elves are well-known to propagate such a belief. The Irekei, similarly, tend to denounce other races as less-than-worthy. I could continue naming peoples, but that would be an exercise in the obvious--the list is all-inclusive.
Now, presumably, one of the races is correct in their belief of superior Greatness. Those of us present here could most likely even reach a consensus about which race that is, but let us put that issue to the side. Inaccurate self-estimation, though certainly not desirable, is not a sin. Pride is--even if a high self-estimation is justified. What is at issue here is not the Greatness (or lack thereof) of a race, but all races' desire to be the Greatest.
In particular, it is especially hazardous when someone feels that, by mere virtue of birthright, they are either exempt from service to the All-Father, or are entitled to be serviced by others. As anyone can easily see in all cases except their own, this is perfect nonsense, though they may not be able to easily say why.
An earthly analogy may be of help to illustrate why this is so. Since many of you are familiar with it, let us take as an example the unified kingdom of Cambruin before the Turning. Cambruin ruled over all, much like the All-Father rules over us all. Beneath him were Cambruin's champions, each with his own duties.
Now, no one would suggest that all the champions were equally Great. All here would no doubt agree, for example, that Caeric Blackhammer was a Greater servant to our Father than the Traitor. Yet, Greatness does not entail authority. Caeric, though Great, was not a Lord, and did not rule. In fact, none of the champions held authority over one another--all were answerable directly to Cambruin. Similarly, one race is not put over another because of Greatness. I put this in human terms so that you can better understand, though obviously the analogy is not perfect.
We can then conclude, as I suppose we might have done immediately, that Pride, like other sins, has no grounding in reason or reality at either the individual or racial level. What shall we do about it?
As the Church, we must set an example for others to follow. We must remove the imperfections in our own sight before we challenge those of others. To this end, we should do everything in our power to stamp out Pride within the Church. We must recall constantly that we are all bound in service to one another and to our Father, and focus on the service we ought to perform rather than the service we think we ought to receive. We must glory in our heavenly Father and not in ourselves. We must allow the Father's grace to redeem all who will accept it, rather than culling from those the Father has justified those who we would prefer to condemn. Though not all will wear the mantle of office of the Church, as I do not, we should allow them to pursue the Father and share our spiritual walk, as you are now allowing me to share in yours. Above all, we must not make others low or lift ourselves up, but instead allow the All-Father to raise us up and set us on a hilltop to serve as a beacon to others.
We are the Father's, and each other's, bound by free choice in a service of love. Never forget that.
Aztice