Page 149 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Operation Belshazzar

predominates; that doctrine obviously supports the entrenched
authority. Adherents are encouraged to be sober, disciplined and law-
abiding. The deity is to be approached second-hand, through saints
and church leaders. At some point of corruption or calcification,
charismatic leaders arise from the populace, demanding a return to
direct contact with a personal god: the hierarchy may crumble or
schisms occur, setting the stage for the pendulum to head back in the
other direction. But the human need for authority and order cannot
be denied for long: the revivalist faiths will slowly but surely find it
necessary to impose discipline on their flocks, forming institutions
that functionally resemble those that were rejected earlier.
That was heretical enough, but Lee took another step beyond that.
Taking as the only absolutes of sacredness the deity itself and the text
established as holy writ, he identified the source of man’s antinomian
problem in the original sin banishing him from the Garden of Eden.
Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise still in the immature state
of innocent ignorance leading them to disregard Yahweh’s
commandment and eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Given
that temptation, symbolized by a snake, would always be present for
the childish mind, mankind required not simply a sacrifice for its
benefit but a teacher—someone to guide an infantile amoral
character into the proper channel of virtue and salvation. An
authoritarian religious upbringing could not do it, per Cyrus Lee,
under either a church or a compelling evangelist: neither works nor
faith could save us from sin and folly. The deity had provided the
roadmap, the Bible. We simply had to follow it, and that required
close study under an instructor capable of drawing forth the lessons
and prophecies contained within God’s word. To deny that necessity,
in Lee’s opinion, was tantamount to rejecting both the deity and the
book, relying instead on a false sense of salvation purchased by
mechanically-performed works or mindless embrace of a conversion
experience. Thus the pendulum would continue to swing until Cyrus
Lee’s ideas were seriously adopted worldwide.
No shelter could be found for him from the wrath of every
Christian denomination once his theory was understood. More than
one commentator remarked upon the central place he had reserved
for himself, the arch-exegete, in this scheme; in this he was
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