Only the worst of people view people as currency.
Don’t believe me? Look at who does it.
Slave owners, businessmen, priests.
Like a homeless man begging for change, they do whatever they can to get people into their cup and instead of getting the spare change, they get the dollar bills in their gold laden beggars cup that the world colloquially calls a collection plate.
If it was just money that they took from people, I wouldn’t lump them with slave owners. But like a slave owner, the autonomy of their property sorry congregation is low on the priests list of priorities.
When you start to view people as something to own or control, you start seeing them as less than people, at best prized property, at worst the spare change easily discarded. They’re not their own people, they’re in your pocket, you get to decide how long they stay close to you.
When they do anything you dislike, when they’re deemed as more trouble than they’re worth, when perhaps what they show you scares you more than you realize, you toss them to the side, what’s another coin when you have so many fools exponentially giving you more?
Photos and the people who take them always mean less than cash don’t they?
Don’t worry, Lionel Troy I don’t question your morality and ethics, I’ve already made up my mind that you’re a bad person and a worse priest.
The real question is has your congregation, the poor masses sustaining your luxury lifestyle, have they figured it out?
You see if I was celebrating finding a lost sheep and then taking its head off mere days later, I’m no shepherd, I’m a butcher. I’m not the sheep, I’m the wolf destroying the flock. That would be a pretty clear tell of a leader I shouldn’t follow.
If there’s one thing I learned about being married to someone who viewed me as mere property there to fill a bench while the world looked at him, I learned that once I stopped respecting him, it was real easy to discard him like he discarded me, like you discarded Ramsay.
You and Zeus would get along famously, you both think you’re greater than the people who got you where you are.
At least when Colt followed me like a lost puppy, the way he does you, I had the decency to tell him the truth, they’ll see what I see one day, you’re just a liar who used Colt to get what you wanted, I’m not above it, I did it myself but I never filled him with hope the way you or Zion did.
I didn’t make him feel valuable then discard him like he was nothing.
Your congregation will eventually see that you will happily do that to them if you need to, that your chance at gathering gold is more important than any of them.
When they do, you’ll have your own uprising to deal with.
You won’t be in a place trying to get the gold that’s valuable to me, you’ll be left trying to protect yours.