Cthulhu Gonfalon Chapter 22:
Sui Xiong feels that for the gods, the church is not only a tool for missions, but also a manifestation of his ideas.
Perhaps from a strategic point of view, from the perspective of practical interests, the gods should encourage or at least acquiesce in the various ideas and factions in the church. The gods like Winner, the Lord of War and Mannis, the goddess of wealth, who have powerful churches, did just that. But Sui Xiong didn't want such a church.
What he wants is a church that is relatively pure, full of vigor and fighting spirit. Although everyone has a variety of ideas, they are basically the same in terms of fundamental life philosophy and goals.
He knew that his ideas were a bit too idealistic and unrealistic-it would not be easy to establish such an organization even with the support of the true god. But he felt that if there were not enough conditions, it would be fine. Since he is a powerful deity, he can know what the believers are thinking and can grant power according to the degree to which the priests fit their own ideas, then there is no reason not to do so. .
It is true that this approach will reduce the number of devout believers and the number of priests, but the so-called soldiers are expensive and less expensive. A high-level priest is better than a hundred low-level priests. The priesthood is stronger. A temple presided over by an excellent priest is more valuable than the altars of ten grass-to-head teams.
At least, he thinks so.
So after careful consideration, a few days later, he issued another oracle to allow believers, especially priests, to study their doctrines, compare their lives with doctrines, and reflect on whether they are secular and vulgar. The tendency to change, thereby purifying the mind.
For those priests who "greed for the world", he did not criticize, but established a new department in the church to let them engage in more dealings with society and need more flexibility. And workarounds.
In this regard, he received a lot of support and advice from the **** of law, Law Brands.
Law Brans, the **** of law, is often honored as the "Lord of Justice", although he is not a **** of the gods, so it is said that he cannot use the title "Lord of XX", but what he did His actions, especially the paladins under his command, earned him such prestige.
The paladins of the God of Law are a group of stubborn old-fashioned, they respect and maintain the dignity of the law, and do everything to maintain the normal order of society. In most cases, they protect the weak, restrict the power, and maintain order that is conducive to the middle and lower classes. But if necessary, they will also crack down on those who resist violently and help the rulers maintain social order.
If judged by the system of "nine camps", the paladins of the **** of law probably belong to the two camps of orderly goodness and orderly neutrality. The former is more, and the latter is also a lot.
Unlike churches such as the Lord of War or the Goddess of Wealth, the church system of the God of Law is much purer. From priests to priests to paladins, they strictly follow the doctrine of the God of Law, and even a little bit of specific operation requires temporary prayers and special instructions.
This kind of unflexible old-fashioned approach naturally greatly reduces the efficiency of work, so that the priests of the **** of law are often ridiculed as "wooden heads", "the brains are full of stones" and the like. . But it is undeniable that it is this stubborn and almost rigid style that allows them to gain the trust of the entire society. Everyone knows that the priests of the God of Law are absolutely rules-even if they do not follow the rules. If they do not agree, they will only choose to leave, or persuade the rule-makers, and will never fight against the rules.
With such a reputation, the old-fashioned legal sacred officers will be welcomed even in the most chaotic areas. Even the evil lords have shown a friendly attitude towards these strong men who maintain order and respect the rules.
The key to all this lies in "organizational purity".
Among the gods, it’s not that the gods pay more attention to the purity of the church than the gods of law, but they want to grasp the "moderate" and turn this into a force for the growth of the organization instead of restricting the development of the organization. No one can do better than the God of Law.
So when Sui Xiong wanted to promote the internal rectification of the Void Mask Church and improve the purity of the organization, he naturally thought of asking the God of Law for advice.
The God of Law was very happy that he came to ask himself, introduced him a lot of experience, and sent several priests who have made outstanding achievements in the history of the church to help Sui Xiong. Two of them were even Him. Of the Holy Spirit.
With the help of this group of experts, Sui Xiong quickly compiled a series of documents and plans, and launched a large-scale retraining of priests from all over the Masked Void Church. He set out a very long timetable, and planned to spend two to three years before and after all the priests were called back to the main temple in the void city and retrained.
The first to receive training are the priests who are sent to the Secret Tower Federation to preach. Because of the influence of missionary work, these priests are the most friendly to the lords and nobles, or in other words, they are most affected by the upper class. Sui Xiong gathered them together, analyzed the development of society, reviewed the struggle between the upper class and the bottom people, let them be shocked, realized their mistakes, and repositioned their positions.
Of course, some of them have changed their minds, and no longer feel that development and progress should be from the bottom up, based on the middle and lower people. For these people, Sui Xiong did not severely reprimand, but decided to teach them a lesson.
Although he is not a historian~IndoMTL.com~, he has read a lot of talks on the Internet, and he naturally understands that this kind of idea is actually quite marketable-nothing more than the so-called "reformism".
In the Internet society of the earth, reformism is very popular, because in areas where the Internet is generally available, economic conditions are generally not too bad, and social conflicts are relatively less intense. "Improvement" is naturally more than "struggle". popular.
In this world, those priests who tend to reform are also mostly from wealthy families. They usually communicate with missionaries and come into contact with people with relatively better living conditions, or those who The lords are relatively more enlightened local activities, so the social contradictions they feel are relatively relaxed, so that they feel that as long as they promote the enlightened upper class, they can promote the development and progress of the entire society.
The lesson Sui Xiong taught them was to place them in areas where the lords were not enlightened and the Church of Void Mask was relatively weak, so that they could experience the innocence and ridiculousness of the idea of "reform".
Rely on improvement to make progress? of course can. The premise is that you must first be able to push those in power to the point where they must accept reforms.
Relying on propaganda and persuasion to achieve improvement and progress, there is no such good thing in the world!