Each church has a particular sin, each a a characteristic flaw in a time of transition to a new belief system, a new level of consciousness. In one town, Ephesus (2:1-7), the people no longer cling to a central belief; 'thou has left thy first love.' But to those who overcome their fears and return to their deeper beliefs, 'to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God' (2:7). \r\n\r\nAnother church, Pergamos (2:12-17), is composed of those who may hold to their beliefs inwardly, but are content to sit silently and watch as others do evil. The people of still another city, Thyatira (2:8-29), have listened to a false prophet (Jezebel) and followed her teachings instead of God's. The congregation of another church, Sardis (3:1-6), with no hope for the future, choose to live only for the day and turned to dissolution. Another city, Laodicea (3:14-22), in some ways the most condemned by the alpha and omega, is composed of the wishy-washy, the lukewarm, neither accepting nor rejecting anything anymore, content merely to go whichever way the wind blows. \r\n\r\nAnother church, Smyrna (2:8-11), is composed of those who are suffering greatly in these times, but manage to hold to their faith, even though others persecute them. They are already suffering martyrdom for their beliefs because of the sins of others in their midst: 'the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan' (2:9). The alpha and omega reassures the faithful of Smyrna: Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer...be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life (2:10). \r\n\r\nHowever, only one city, Philadelphia (3:7-13), has fully satisfied God. The people there have never deserted their faith; nor have they yielded to dissolution. They have seen the new way opening before them and have already started to make a transition to the new. Therefore, alone among the cities, their people will not suffer and will not be exposed to temptation.

• consciousness
• transition
• transformation
• fear
• myth
• hope
• suffering
• love
• god
• death
• sin
• life
• time
• will
• faith
• evil
• future
• paradise
• beliefs
• belief

Again, it is a sin to pursue pleasure as a good and to avoid pain as an evil. It is bound to result in complaints that Nature is unfair in her rewarding of vice and virtue; since it is the bad who are so often in enjoyment of pleasures and the means to obtain them, while pains and events that occasion pains descend upon the heads of the good. Besides, if a man is afraid of pain, he is afraid of something happening which will be part of the appointed order of things, and this is itself a sin; if he is bent on the pursuit of pleasure, he will not stop at acts of injustice, which again is manifestly sinful. No; when Nature herself makes no distinction - and if she did, she would not have brought pains and pleasures into existence side by side - it behooves those who would follow in her footsteps to be like-minded and exhibit the same indifference. He therefore who does not view with equal unconcern pain or pleasure, death or life, fame or dishonour - all of them employed by Nature without any partiality - clearly commits a sin.

• good and evil
• nature
• pleasure
• sin
• stoicism
• suffering
• fame
• death
• life
• will
• existence
• evil
• virtue
• indifference

It is better to be led by the nose on occasion than to find oneself quite without a nose at all, as a certain ailing marquis pronounced quite recently during confession to his holy Jesuit father.  I was there, it was simply charming.  'Return to me my nose!' he said.  'My son,' the pater prevaricated, 'all is accomplished according to the unknowable destinies of Providence and an apparent disaster sometimes brings in its wake an exceptional, though invisible advantage.  If stern fortune has deprived you of your nose, then your advantage is that all the rest of your life no one will ever dare to tell you that you have been led by the nose.'  'Holy father, that is no consolation!' the despairing marquis exclaimed, 'on the contrary, I would be only too delighted to be led by the nose every day for the rest of my life, if only it were in its proper place!'  'My son,' the pater sighed, 'it is wrong to demand all blessings at once, and this is already a complaint against Providence, which even now has not forgotten you; for if you cry, as you cried just now, that you would be ready to be led by the nose all the rest of your life, then even now your desire has been fulfilled, though obliquely: for, having lost your nose, you are by that very fact being led by it...

• fate
• suffering
• desire
• life
• will
• fortune