In the fourth century, under Constantine, the Roman Empire became Christianized, yet just a couple rulers later, the Empire began returning to its pre-Christian roots. Emperor Julian (called by the Church “Julian the Apostate”) instructed his generals to stop using Christian symbols on their flags. Two of them refused–Bonosus and Maximilian. They declared to Julian that they had made a solemn vow to Constantine to remain true to Christianity, and they would not now be forsworn. After several attempts to kill these two (plunging them into boiling pitch–from which they arose unaffected; starving them in prison–only for them to grow plumper and healthier), Julian finally ordered them beheaded. These two are the saints honored on the Calendar for this day.

Shortly after ordering the execution of these two Christian soldiers, Julian himself fell ill. Butler graphically [Reader, be forewarned!] describes his illness thus:

Count Julian was very soon after seized with a terrible disease in his bowels, and the adjacent parts of his body, whereby they putrified, and bred such an incredible quantity of worms, that it was impossible to destroy them. The physicians tried all sorts of remedies; several rare birds were procured at a great expense, which being killed, the blood of them was applied to the parts affected, in order to draw out the worms; but they crawling higher into the bowels, and into the most sensible and tender parts of the body, only rendered his pains the more intolerable, whilst he voided his excrements at his mouth. [Remember: You were warned!]

Julian’s Christian wife begged him to repent, and seek healing through Christianity. Though Julian tried one of those deathbed conversions–and Butler scrupled to pass judgment on whether it saved the Emperor’s soul–these last-minute actions did not deworm Julian or save him from a thoroughly wretched death.

NOT surprisingly, Christians regarded the miserable disease that afflicted Julian as direct resulting from his apostasy and his execution of those righteous Christians, Bonosus and Maximilian. They discerned God’s hand in the wasting sickness and death of the Emperor.

If nothing else, this demonstrates that the tradition of Christians claiming that individual or collective tragedies are the result of sinfulness has a long and deep history, spanning centuries. So when Christians self-righteously proclaimed that AIDS was God’s judgment on homosexuals, and when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson declared that the horrific events of September 11, 2001, represented God’s judgment on an ungodly America, they were part of a very distinguished and disgusting tradition: making God into a sadist of the worst kind while feeding their own sense of moral superiority.

OK, let’s anthropomorphize the Divine for the moment: Assume that God disapproved of Julian’s actions. Why didn’t God then choose to surround Julian with so much Christian love that it melted his heart, rather than to infest him with worms that devoured his innards? Has everyone in the world who ever suffered from tapeworms and parasites similarly been singled out by God because they, too, have been murderously sinful? The idea is absurd. More than that, it is dangerously hateful. Such people who see God’s “justice” in others’ suffering are, in fact, turning their own handmade “God” into little more than a ventriloquist’s dummy, putting into His Holy Mouth the words that make them feel better, feel superior, feel exonerated, feel that their bigotry and hatred are actually righteousness and justice.

Fie!