

## Prancing Grace

### Tristam Joseph

Smashwords Edition

Text copyright 2017

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-9619272-9-5

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Other Writings

### Prancing Grace

Jove: God created me to enjoy this world, its good things of life, acknowledging all His work is good, none suffering from being blemished, so no human decree can admonish me for reveling with satisfaction and happiness, or being pleased with fruits of my toil, and I rejoice in His gift to bless me so, never letting fear drive me to relinquish my pleasure. Trusting to remember He never made me fear, knowing fear may muddle His determination for my destiny, plans already foreordained by Him. Fear is never of His doing but concocted by an evil one, instilling me with lies, deceiving me to believe my fate can be altered.

Stranger: I see your face, radiant with happiness, shining with self-satisfaction, but do you know Jesus, humbling yourself to hear His voice, submitting to His spiritual callings, refusing to follow your reason and common sense, gaining oneness with Him with every moment counting, discovering union with Him matters, becoming like Him more than you could ever imagine, walking with Him to remake yourself in His image? Can you become like Jesus who never failed and was never discouraged, attending to needs of depressed people verging on despair?

Jove: I know Jesus, venerating and worshipping Him in ways I trust. What do you hope for by intruding in thoughts of someone you don't know, thinking to witness Jesus and disrupt me with aims to add to your treasures in heaven?

Stranger: But do you know Jesus, confessing Him as Lord and Savior, needing nothing more than the words of His companion, the thief on a cross?

Jove: I am not committed to anyone preaching what they will do for me or what someone has done for them, training me to be like them, cloning me to follow them, as I am already devoted to proclaiming the Lamb of God, sealed in my soul and protected by my faith, trusting He takes away the sin of the world.

Stranger: But do you witness as I do now, proclaiming His charge to spread God's message throughout the world?

Jove: Trusting joy to make my day complete, praising the Lord that it would not wither away, knowing it will wane without attention, commits me to renew devotion to Him every morning, waking to Him from dreams formed by darkness, visions toying with my self's estimations, rising up, chasing fantasy away, greeting what the Lord has waiting for me, eagerly to pour out His Spirit on me, restoring my joy in great measure, higher than treasures of silver or gold, making each day His, days of the Lord, coming with garments of increasing satisfaction.

Stranger: Trusting in their own convictions, people have developed many discordant factions, multitudes within multitudes, peering at other's beliefs, judging error for all but their own, making criticism their business, examining other's eyes for blemishes, mangling truths with their thoughts and words, forgetting what the Lord says, praying to His Father that all would be united. Having been taught by your religion to trust no one else's beliefs, criticizing all but your own, tolerating no other religious dogma, claiming them all to be heresy, does this leave you much time for anything else, for possibly loving anything you hate, knowing hatred must consume much of your activity?

Jove: He who knows my works, fruits of my labor, patiently discerning and testing all my deeds, the all-knowing God watches all my moves, recognizing my thoughts before my knowing, and He will always find me lacking, never meeting His expectations and hopes for me, calling me on blasphemy when disobeying the Holy Spirit, questioning my wisdom when considering thoughts other than His. Will He overlook human's plans and doctrines never quite confirming to His, accepting their modifications, hoping He will find our compromises as trivial, recognizing our lamenting as real, truly from our heart, needing no outward manifestations, understanding they may feign our true convictions, artificial demonstrations of wailing and weeping, fasting, destroying garments laden with sin, hidden accumulations of violence still in our flesh? Repentance is noticed with skepticism by others, but only the Lord knows if it bears any sincerity. He must expect more than what you propose.

Stranger: Fallen with incontestable sins, born with a choice to be no other, drowning in guilt, your only hope for salvation is to obey the Lord, and that is my conviction.

Jove: Trained to believe everyone is burdened with guilt, taught to trust no one is innocent, saddling all with consequences of original sin, reasoning they must be guilty and deserve some form of punishment, we learn to hate others, detesting their my-selves enough to inflict punishment they deserve, killing all to remove those stained by hatred, removing them from remembrance, leaving none to be forgiven by faint hearts, destroying any who could be judged innocent and virtuous, coming back to haunt a killer's decision, agonizing whether justice would ever return to punish them with remorse.

Stranger: I can't accept evil, seeing its appearance veiled in goodness, confusing my feeble discernment overwhelmed with uncertainty, hastening me to quick decisions, shouting at me to silence patience, urging on its call to action.

Jove: Confidence in one's theology makes one a saint or an idiot, prepared to victimize another with oppressive demands, never knowing the truth of their convictions. Since you invaded my space, thrusting a question on my beliefs, I deserve an answer to yours. What must I be to be acceptable before your God?

Stranger: You must accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, acknowledging Him to be in your heart, be baptized by immersion, and accept the Holy Bible to be infallible, all its words coming from God, sanctifying you to join His church and preach the Bible, His Words documented by apostles two thousand years ago and faithfully guarded since, guaranteeing your righteousness to assure salvation.

Bystander: Intolerance may be lurking, waiting to seize an opportunity, swooping down to claim a victim for destruction, ready to kill anyone committed to tolerance, recruiting religious fanatics creating godly laws, developing decrees to please their followers, legislating rules for all to uphold, determining judgments for convicting the guilty, destroying the disobedient, rejecting heretics claiming righteousness sanctified by their truths, tolerating nothing but their decrees, established by prophets in conflict with Christ's teachings.

Jove: What can be worse, magnifying evil by raising up a free-willed person boasting a super-righteous mentality, arming one to be a wanton warrior, wielding a double-edged sword with unwavering convictions, absolute and beyond anyone's evaluation, never questioned unless with the threat of death? Knowing no tolerance for ones never restraining their will, none for people falling short of complete righteousness, their intolerance is ready to kill, destroying all those committed to understanding.

Skeptic: Oppression allies with righteousness opposing free will, scrutinizing everyone's moments, memorizing all their actions, evaluating freedom's inclinations to ridicule eternal decrees, multiplying consciences to suffer, entangling people in an inescapable joyless web, promising no recourse, only futility, seeking to herd winds and drive impossible changes. Oppression's masters, lords of righteousness seize freedom's rights, assuring oppression will last and be complete, minimizing all people's inclinations to rubble, to be hidden but latent, waiting to be aroused by anything capable of transforming one's deplorable state.

Jove: Oppression is essential to prevent anarchy, stifling humans' natural tendencies, all with ideas for improving life but seldom agreeing to accommodate differing views and sometimes resorting to violence for sealing their agenda. Measure their lamentation's agony for judging what oppression is needed to maintain servility but insufficient for provoking revolt. Always adjust righteousness to sanctify your actions or seize greater freedom for doing what's necessary, knowing righteousness justifies deeds mandated by our decrees, and liberating your will frees you to do whatever is necessary.

Skeptic: You are free, willed to establish yourself, to decide your truths surpass all others, to seal their validity, making you right with yourself so you can remove all restraints on your freedom to act, permitting unhindered exercises, judging all options to convince your activities to establish righteousness. Without oppression, one loses control, leaving them to become victims of someone or something else.

Stranger: My righteousness must exceed that of others, priests and ones most holy, but which ones must I compare with, how much must I exceed their sanctity, weighing me down with many questions, leaving me with only Christ to measure my righteousness, agonizing my soul, knowing my efforts will always fall short.

Jove: God gives us free will, never expecting us to be His dummies, but ones most holy demand an obedience that ignores our freedom to choose, convincing us to follow them or suffer, frightening anyone serving their wants, destroying freedom with their absolute authority, exercising power not even God forces upon us, come with me or else. Despite their absolute decrees, never knowing whether I accept any, I can choose who will rule over my life without other's knowing, hiding the Holy Spirit in my soul, giving Him complete dominion over my beliefs, without submitting to other's demands, without swearing allegiance to anyone's domination. Other's insistence on obedience I acknowledge as deceitful, shrouded with the gentle insistence on acquiescence, bowing before suggestions without acknowledging them to be my master, denying them to guide my thoughts.

Stranger: You reject submission to the Lord's decrees? God showed me the importance of obedience, demanding retribution for disobedience, primarily to protect His people, restricting them from marrying ones outside His chosen ones, and crushing unchosen people that might contaminate His blessed ones. He also taught us never to bring blemished offerings to the altar, so we must be committed to weeding out anyone blemished, learning from Him the ones tarnished and tainted with imperfections should be rejected from society, pagans of disorder, casting them out like lepers. So, you see, God teaches us a lot, training us how to cope in a chaotic world. We learned this all from Hebrew history, and how He eventually rejected them, giving the world reason to despise them, proven by how He has rejected them for several thousand years.

Jove: Your zeal for God is based on little understanding and hardly much of His goodness, developing your righteousness on what you imagine will suffice, never being submitted to Him for approval, relying on selected biblical decrees for justification, ignoring most delivered by Moses, compelling you to live by God's laws, never opening your soul to true righteousness filling your heart to live by. Your righteousness should not be tainted with shame, jeopardizing what God can offer your ways, imprinting your thoughts with prophetic convictions, never needing to call on Him, using trusted advisors, telling what you want to hear.

Stranger: You suffer, following the impossible, trying to satisfy the Lord, never being like my followers who suffer little, assured of their salvation, trusting God's way to follow me, needing nothing more than to follow His decrees.

Jove: You miss hearing any gospel of peace, bringing glad tidings of God's goodness, beauty brought by proclaimers of His Word, by prophets you never call on, messengers you dismiss as not reinforcing your law, the epitome of your truth, making you the agent for judging people disobedient in chasing after gain, failing to secure redemption by trusting in your fantasy of righteousness, never understanding the just must live by faith, repenting for their misgivings, rejecting confidence in human wisdom rather than the Lord's.

Stranger: I suffer nothing in following the Lord, for what others view as suffering can never disturb me, never experiencing its manifestations, having no anxiety of ones afflicted, as I serenely walk with Him, without others' travails, for what you consider suffering I will never know, and your sympathy for all my circumstances is wasted, never needed, never wanted because you will then tempt me to justify self-pity, making me like others seeking comfort for something my Lord doesn't want, trying to explain a basis for suffering from my circumstances, but I am always placed to magnify His glory.

Jove: How can you increase His glory, magnifying One who is perfect, being at His greatest glory? Do you think a measly human can accomplish that, surely being a manifestation of your vanity, or does God's vanity expect this measure from one of His human creatures, increasing glory for a perfect being?

Bystander: Who makes decisions on sin, determining what is evil, making judgments on salvation, seeing this is what's critical in stranger's question, asking Jove about his fate after life here? Where do humans find the basis for what to call evil? Astounded by what they wish never to see, they call it evil, a designation made by their judgment, addressing its decision to God or Satan, springing evil on them for no sound reason, waiting for retribution to reward their righteousness. God, the Creator, making no excuses for evil, none being of His doing, provides humans with a scapegoat, Satan, tempting them to evil, giving them one unseen to blame their misdeeds on and absolve them of guilt.

Jove: Created to be the will of God, I need not ask Him what His will is for me to seek what is implanted from my conception, plans unfolding by His direction, patiently counseling me, trusting no temptation would divert me from His love, no evil requiring a scapegoat for I am eternally bonded to Him, on only Him, needing no imaginations to call on anyone else but Him, asking no one to reveal a different way, no temptation to change the program for following Him.

Jurdan: Acknowledge nothing but science to trust your inherent code for everything, thanking evolution for its development, and rely on it for all your gifts.

Jove: Focusing only on Stranger's convictions, demanding recruits must follow, compelling their thoughts to be satisfying, discarding my ideas, frees anxiety to seize me, confusing me in discerning others' decrees, so I cannot focus on my Lord, praying to Him when Stranger's disturbing dogmas intrude, disrupting my time with Him, forcing me to contemplate human claims.

Stranger: What do you profit from all your labors, considering the rewards they would bring, working to restore order from chaos, discovering something different to claim the prize, but realizing too late there is nothing new under the sun, nothing to change your destiny, toiling until the end, storing up treasures for others to enjoy, finally realizing you are not unique among others, others remembering you only momentarily before they set out for you, laboring to create an existence new under the sun, driven by vanity that is also nothing new, fulfilling how you were created to be, chasing after wisdom never knowing its grief, seeking knowledge unaware of the sorrow it brings. Enjoy pleasures from your labors for it soon ends when you discover too much inflicts one with despair, sending you to numb its pain, something to release one from what is under the sun, to acquaint one with the folly of chasing all that is under the sun. Discovering all this is true, folly is not exempt for one acquiring wisdom for they are last to realize, wisdom of their making adds nothing new under the sun. When you realize this, you will find no justification for your creation, consoling you with only hatred, triggering your despair, asking why was I born.

Jove: Then labor must be lost when seeking gain, showing us to work only for supplying needs, shunning work rewarding us with unneeded spoils, ones never required for a life of enjoyment, leaving us satisfied with what nature provides, peaceful contentment which your way can hardly provide, so I can never look at my way or yours for decisions, being committed to Jesus and belonging to His way.

Stranger: Life's desires and interests consume all people's moments, trusting to reward them with happiness, but eventually discovering they represent life's nothingness. Long after unveiling all that is meaningless, recognizing they can give one only brief moments of happiness, I began listening to God's Words, hearing the Holy Spirit's instruction on becoming holy, developing righteousness, gaining a right relationship with the Lord, abandoning unholiest' drive to seek happiness, restoring holiness He created us to live by, moving us to become more like Him--a progression for which I am given little time, removing hurdles we stumble over, as I circumvented circumstances He placed in my life. Returning me to perfect oneness with Him, I praise and thank Him for making this possible.

Jove: You name much to be wished out of existence, judging them perverse and ugly, monstrous and evil, but you can never explain why they were created, seeming to be misfits or mistakes, never knowing how they are an important part of totality, never understanding what would happen if eliminated, discounting any impact it would have on creation's goodness attested to by God. Have you ever considered if any of them detract from creation's goodness and its inherent beauty, never apprehended as beauty in the bad and ugly, in what you might consider evil, mistakes evident in creation? Describing mistakes as blemishes, we think God abhors, wanting only flawless sacrifices to honor Him, evil compromises creation, the way He made it, thinking He would neglect some part of it, making it His mistake.

Stranger: Beware of your righteousness, trusting its sufficiency, thinking it protects you, but it can prove to be a curse, recalling holy ones proclaiming their sanctity by indulging in prayers open for all to see, satisfying their vanity, painting their garments with righteousness, but leaving their spirits unchanged, justifying everything coming to their flesh, their experiences crying out but unheard by them: Actions must be integrated with faith, never missing any beat of one's heart, testifying to one's sanctification never missing a stroke, incorporating all one's actions with those of Jesus Christ.

Jove: Without sufficient righteousness, seeing you as lacking some, my beliefs are as good as yours, so you can't argue for yours being better, and you must give mine as much space as yours, your truths being no better than mine, existing in our democracy where judgment by peers determines truths all must follow.

Stranger: Fear the Lord to understand the blueprint for your life, fear being necessary to keep your eyes on His plans, knowing He reaches out to use fear whenever we stray from Him, resorting to following our way, not His.

Jove: If I were to fear the Lord, I must listen to your priests, all speaking with twisted tongues, uttering words claimed to be from God, only hearing revelations to sustain my selves, arguing amongst themselves how many angels can occupy the head of a pin, delighting in forked dogmas, creating discordant doctrines never complying with commandments seeking unity.

Stranger: Do you never fear the Lord, trusting it is the beginning of understanding?

Jove: Immobilizing people with fear, freezing them to disable their initiative, paralyzing their incentive is never something I will do, ending me as myself. You invoke what people said when they feared Yahweh, but His words are outdated for people now enlightened, especially on recalling more recent revelations: You are not made for fear to seize your thoughts or actions, and the Lord never forced me to worry, a trusted truth to live by; releasing fear would spell my downfall, ending my hopes, signaling my accomplishment's ending.

Stranger: Heed my words now, never knowing your next moment with evil insisting on immediate action, cursing reluctance spurred on by patience, promoting fear to seize your direction.

Jove: How can I claim oneness in the Lord and support the wishes of this stranger, prying into my beliefs, trusting his words can overwhelm my convictions, proclaiming human dogmas appended to Jesus' Words, drowning out my attention straining to hear God's gentle voice requiring quietness for me to listen, knowing He never needs to shout, speaking to those prepared and waiting to hear, so I must mute the world's distractions, blocking out its pleasing diversions, silencing its music, enabling my attention to be refurbished, reawakening my soul to make room for receiving His messages, never looking back to what once was, never freezing me to be a zombie of my memories, but freeing me to become a praise to God.

Bystander: You both seek ones deep in their own wisdom, ardently cultivated to lead their thoughts, relying on self-sufficient reasoning, dependent on tenuous senses, weakened and fragile, easily broken, readily washed away, waiting to be replaced by some enticing dogma, while you never choose any truth embedded in eternal wisdom, resistant to change, ridiculing human doctrines, failing to maintain God's wisdom and proclaim His glory. Some never cease speaking until their heads are removed, thinking that silencing their tongue will destroy their convictions, but their soul continues to cry out although ones celebrating their demise can never hear them, being deaf without any conscience, rulers thinking their wisdom can embellish the earth, but their spirit has no intentions other than fomenting evil, decorating the earth with chaos, bringing all to destruction, exercising the mind of a crooked servant.

Jurdan: Believing you craft wisdom, molding it to fashion peace, ignoring reason and common sense, trusting they can offer little help, compels you to find help elsewhere, imagining it must hide somewhere.

Stranger: We have a message of assurance, promising peace and the only way to salvation, inviting all to attend, bearing only a fragment of its truths, and count me only for being the messenger, bringing words you may have never heard before.

Jove: You tell me to believe and I will be saved, after dedicating my whole life to Jesus Christ and needing nothing more, convincing me to hear some Albert, listening to someone speak on the necessity of evidence to believe, some truth that is likely to vanish in the night, making me unsure of the belief God places in my heart, thinking some human can interject other convictions to strengthen my faith. On hearing an eye-witness account and trusting its validity, do I need more to believe, making me like a skeptic Pharisee who needs another miracle to believe. My belief is more than for today, never needing another reassurance tomorrow to resurrect it from being questioned by any dreams wandering through the night.

Bystander: People have always needed to apologize for beliefs born with little proof, far-fetched miracles, for no one wants to be shamed by recognizing and trusting the unseen.

Stranger: Do people struggle to be righteous, following every nuance of the law, being obedient to every decree, upholding doctrines, worshipping dogmas as truth, but never asking what motives and aspirations lurk, unspoken, never revealed to tarnish any righteousness established by their doings. Only by having Christ within can one's tainted hidden secrets be washed away, unveiling and freeing the Holy Spirit to ensure Christ lives in them, working to restructure their free will, instructing on how to follow the code God created them to have, making them one after His heart, exemplifying His goodness manifested in the beauty of all He does.

Jove: Many people abandon all consent to being, wishing to leave this world, blinded to creation's beauty and goodness, praying to terminate bonds with a home regarded as depraved and hopeless, trusting they will leave for something better, but if God created this world with His goodness, unrestricted in its harmonious beauty, how can He create something better, having used all His goodness in building our present home? Does He hold back some of His goodness, conserving some to patch up errors made here, saving more to create a better place to assign humankind, transferring them from a site of relative to one of absolute beauty?

Bystander: God creates, pouring out His fullness, spreading forth His beauty, distributing His goodness, using creation to express His joy, pent up, waiting to create time, choosing the moment to be right, and who can say His accomplishments are imperfect, flawed for unknown and unacceptable reasons, provoking human judgments to distrust Him, disbelieving His love, condemning beliefs He creates everything good, filled with beauty and united in harmony.

Stranger: People disbelieve the goodness and beauty of our existence, disputing its virtues, believing the cosmos conceals places where we could live better, and we trust in such a place, calling it heaven where can have our lives restored and live in bliss. How can anyone deny this with both scientists and religious followers certain God created such a paradise for humans deserving something better than they have?

Bystander: God creates all to be united in harmony, in ways people do not fully understand, recognizing nothing stands by itself, accepting nothing exists alone, for He determines every object, from the smallest particle to the entire cosmos, each in relationship with all others, synchronized in harmonic concert, never disrupted unless by human doings unraveling creation's proportional beauty. Why would our Creator plan for our world to be dysfunctional, without the consonance of all else He had done, and tease us by verifying we are righteous if we accept Him as Savior before we can leave for a better place?

Jove: What is the job description for one to be righteous, attesting to what truth?

Stranger: Selecting one honest and suitable for achieving God's goals must be to assure those chosen never to waver from His laws and unflinchingly obey enforcement of all that is sacred.

Jove: How can you be confident that revelations claimed to be His laws are beyond doubt His truths?

Stranger: We are careful to base everything on God's commands, and meticulously evaluate everyone's actions, judging they conform and authorize us to penalize disobedient people.

Jove: Can you be sure of knowing God's wishes and what His judgments are for disobedience?

Stranger: Everyone knows His laws and all the actions He has taken throughout history for sinners.

Jove: But can you be certain of His truths or are they merely projections of human truths, fashioned by philosophers to be suited for their time?

Stranger: What's important is for our followers to believe that messages from God enforce His truths.

Jove: That makes your most righteous leader the enforcer, a messenger stronger than anyone else, including you, making you his lackey.

Stranger: Not at all. We control most righteous ones, making their primary obedience to us while conceding their obedience must appear for all as being to God.

Jove: Are punishments demanded for disobedient ones of a person's choosing?

Stranger: Never. Every punishment has already been authorized by God. Where He determines death for many minor missteps, our enforcers' decisions are kinder and gentler, exacting penalties short of terminating lives, thereby making them more benevolent than God, the feared executioner of ancient times.

Jove: You describe a deity with little capacity to love, creating humans for torment, disgusted with their being.

Stranger: Love has no place for creators protecting their work to ensure its survival, intolerant of people exercising free will to destroy any aspect of God's creation, never enduring all their actions, ignoring unacceptable deeds damaging what has been done. We believe the Lord's actions epitomizes His love, creating all out of love.

Jove: If He creates out of love, loving every result of His work, how can He accept the justice of enforcers disowning any disobeying His laws?

Stranger: Our enforcer serves God's interests as we execute His plans.

Jove: Do you ever question this strategy?

Stranger: God's judgment of the world would be meaningless if He imposed no vengeance, exacted no retribution, reprimanding humans only with words, spoken for them to ignore. No one is righteous, no not one, compelling us to acknowledge our weaknesses evident in living by our will, claiming questionable righteousness to flaunt over others, trusting them to accept our wishes, convincing them to acknowledge our goodness, instilling fear to obey our commands, the decrees established to know their sinfulness, for by laws they will know their iniquity, understanding the maker of statutes and judgments required for justice comes only from righteous ones. The more laws we can justify, the greater righteousness one can claim.

Jove: You disrupted my thoughts of a simple question with little elaboration, layering it with many conditions, doctrines, and dogmas demanding obedience, decrees likely to be unending. Righteousness must claim tolerance for everything, limiting enacted decrees to release people from your doctrine's restraints.

Stranger: We tolerate what conforms to our goals, justifying only laws of faith announced in our deeds, renouncing belief in contrived human decrees.

Jove: Thus, you justify as righteous any beliefs conforming to your laws, securing salvation by obedience to their way.

Stranger: Our followers learn to do what they are told, so must unrighteous ones respond to those righteous, dismissing any reservations, patiently waiting for assurances they hear for truths.

Jove: Faith in God counts for our righteousness, faith being reckoned for believing in Him, distrusting many disgraceful humans claiming to be righteous, compelling us to use gifts He gave us, ordaining us to be leaders, using our free choice to honor Him with deeds, doing nothing that He would not do. If faith can impute us with righteousness, sealing in us His virtues, voiding all human decrees, we could commit no transgressions, knowing none without our laws.

Jurdan: Virtue can be a dangerous commodity, potentially harmful to any cause, because no virtue is ever perfect, free from error in being a human product, and virtue can impede any doing, stalling causes before they begin.

Stranger: Virtue can thereby be a messenger, proclaiming defects in human causes, showing us to look elsewhere for what virtue can bless. We honor virtue by listening to and obeying the Holy Spirit, trusting only in Him, revealing dishonor in individual projects. What virtue can we claim if we disobey Him, blaspheming the Holy Spirit, choosing to silence His words?

Jurdan: Virtue remains only for judging relationships with others and is relative, determined by people's traditions and culture, hardly accepted for relationships with your Lord, acknowledging they are also reflections of religious traditions and culture, so tolerance becomes a standard for virtue, accepting another's beliefs as valued as one's own.

Stranger: We maintain ancient laws, decrees for our followers, traditions established by our faith, protecting them from transgressions, assuring no heresy against our teachings.

Jove: Some will develop the deepest faith in God, trusting any allegiance to you would be secondary, believing you could never be worthy of the adoration He deserves, recognizing the Creator as different, bursting with love on recognition of creation's goodness, seeing its beauty with no bounds. How could you attract anyone so fearless in such in such belief?

Stranger: Trust me. I deny deceit for our way, planning no evil to achieve its goals, never relying on vanity to conceive injustice, but enemies devise intentions for opposition, jeopardizing all we try to do for them. Despite their unbelief in rejecting our way, we show mercy to all who abandon their heresies and adopt our convictions, trusting what is good and required of them, to do justly by our terms, and they will love the mercy we shower on them will walk humbly under our strength's umbrella.

Jove: Your thoughts wander, unable to reply with reason, speaking unprofitable words, following illusions of your making, so few will ever count on you, having been marked with toleration for nothing but your way, rejecting others as never having the right amount of righteousness and practicing it with too much or too little free will.

Stranger: Faith serving people in your manner would not survive under our doctrines, forcing us to ostracize anyone with such convictions, and we urge them to concentrate their hope on nothing but our proclamations to prepare for their life's ending with assurance of redemption and hope of resurrection into a new world, as Christ promised the thief crucified with Him, I will see you in paradise, and if they don't buy deathbed conversions we will have already tried to convince them that anyone dying with Jesus in their heart will immediately enter paradise, promising them more delights than they ever received here.

Bystander: If God created everything by His word, judging it all good, testifying to the beauty of its goodness, what more came with His Word becoming flesh, calling One to be His Son, unique and sinless, the manifestation of His Logos, wondering if Adam, created by His Word was also innocent before temptation began the fall, giving him free will, but never protecting him as done for Jesus, giving him only laws to live by until they failed. Adam had goodness as all creation, with beauty testifying to it, but free will gave him the vision to see things differently from God, insights to do all things his way, never consulting the Father, becoming his person. Despite this, Adam's goodness remained, but he was blinded to its beauty, deciding he could determine beauty of his own, ignoring that of God's, but he failed to harmonize the goodness of his being with the dubious beauty he created. Engaging free will, are you more like Adam, deciding your goodness can fashion beauty to your liking?

Jove: Trusting in only what we can see, faith is ignored, anything unseen is rejected, preventing any possible harmony between the visible and invisible, so God's goodness is dismissed as well as its beauty, giving humans the prerogative to determine beauty. Belief in signs, always looking for ones to establish faith, using them as fleeces to move one's will, was ridiculed by Jesus, seeing Pharisees asking for one more sign to prove one's prophetic power, convincing observers that only seeing to believe can be trusted. Seeing to believe must be in harmony with faith for convictions of God's reality, and strong faith, relying on truths in eyewitness accounts, never needs any seeing to strengthen belief, affirmation of creation's goodness and its inherent beauty.

Stranger: Being born again, never happening through other's words or a fleece to quell quivering trust, reborn to see my Savior, freeing me from sinning, transfigured to acknowledge God's majesty controlling all creation, His supreme sovereignty is never questioned again.

Jove: So you claim to be free from sinning, remembering words saying whoever is born of God does not sin. Never sinning includes too much for any human, impossible for any, so by Scripture's words can anyone claim rebirth, being born again of God, knowing we all sin and never cease to sin?

Commoner: Is there a portion of righteousness able to please the Almighty, satisfying Him with enough that is sufficient, or is this never possible, regarding His pearl of creation as never reaching the goodness of all He created?

Jove: Must we fret over people claiming to be born again, a new life in Jesus Christ, realizing this testimony seldom agrees with their actions, still committed to their old life, maintaining old ideas, deceiving themselves on being changed, anxious on being shamed by onlookers, restraining the Holy Spirit from making change evident, cautious on leaving darkness to beginning walking only in the light as the Lord is walking in the light, fearful and distressed when choosing to walk with Him?

Bystander: Called to be born again, followers can claim to be born again, manipulating their conscience to be convinced of being new creations in Christ, but consider how their life can change, adopting a new role for judgment, donning glasses to identify other's unworthy thoughts and deeds, searching everyone's baggage for imperfections waiting to be judged as sin, giving the born again a role to be played, a purpose they claim the Lord calls them to do.

Jove: If God is not in me, invited to remain, how can I speak with Him and know how to understand Him or trust Him to participate in my reality, more importantly to grasp His truth, leaving Him to be only imagined, described by untrustworthy prophets repeating their mantra, confronting me repetitious dogma I tire of hearing, begging for obedience, promising me less than the world offers? But God is in me, trusting I am disciplined in obedience, enabling me to see God as He is, becoming real by seeing Him face to face, and joyously proclaiming, In all creation, there is none but Thee. Born again, recreated to witness the Lord's reality, we meet His reality and promised goodness.

Bystander: You can never reason appropriate purposes for satisfying God, but must wait on Him as He is with you, listening to the Holy Spirit, putting your determinations to rest, contesting nothing He says, following all His commands--even those conflicting with your decisions--to begin a new life with Him, confirming you are born again, resurrected to sin no more, needing no more sacrifices with having Him, freeing you to dwell with Him forever.

Stranger: We will always need priests, demanding sacrifices, reminding us few are truly born again, questioning all claiming to be born again, one's satisfied by merely declaring faith in the Lord, thinking their proclamation justifies salvation with little effect on their life here and now, continuing to obey laws they have created, ones modified to maintain their innocence.

Jove: What justifies being born again other than reward of eternal life? Are there no perks to benefit life here?

Stranger: The born again can call on God to bless them by enlarging their territory, and He will honor them by increasing their possessions, gilding them to become treasures.

Bystander: Increasing one's belongings, gilding them to be treasures, magnifies fear and cultivates anxiety by thriving riches, growing them to be prized, consuming all one's thoughts, driving their possession to ignore relationships with people, rejecting others who burden one's moments, dismissing their concerns, concentrating attention on all deemed precious, hardly acknowledging one's time will eventually mandate loss, relinquishing their value to a trash heap, soon to disappear, becoming an artifact marking the past.

Jove: Is it better to have much, treasures feared of being lost or stolen, or to be satisfied with little, tempting no one to pilfer other's belongings? Even the most destitute have belongings others wait to steal. If I were naked, some would come to seize my nothingness, seeing my body as a thing to abuse, to amuse their perversions, or to gratify their lusts. Stripped naked I would still have my greatest treasure, dignity no one could destroy, thoughts no one could discover, beliefs no one could destroy, a soul protected from intrusion, perhaps leaving me open to only one fear: invasion of my soul by a virus, sneaking in to attack my beliefs.

Stranger: Most people are taught to fear, without which we could not be effective, failing to shepherd other's ideas, trying to herd their thoughts, but we know that each of us fears something and this favors our proselytizing, even with brave people, trusting we can invent fears to win their following. All humans must fear the Lord, compel us to promote this anxiety, and sustain it for their peace and our success, following the example of all leaders, acknowledging their way must conform, all at the expense of love if necessary.

Jove: Must humans see God in this manner, giving us reason to fear Him, trusting we would not follow without fear?

Stranger: He sets the standard, establishing a feared punishment for every sin, for all disobedience, knowing humans will follow other gods when they fear no reprisals.

Jove: What kind of reverence does God demand, acknowledging goodness determines His every act to preserve all His creation? If reverence insists on fear, must we worship Him in fear? If reverence convinces us to honor Him with love, claimed for all His created deeds, should I tolerate anyone eager to judge Him differently?

Stranger: We are driven to despise some, blemished by arrogant self-righteousness, out-performing our accomplishments, dressing us down with their brilliance, never accepting righteousness must strike a balance, shaming others with their lofty persona, discouraging the masses' free will, the driver of happiness. Beware of those hiding inside walls of their self-righteousness, separated from others behind their temple gates, lurking in secret, isolated in bastions of illusion, mocking one's proclaiming they are born again.

Jove: Fear one's with sinister doings, threatening free markets of willfulness, broadcasting anxiety, persuading some to adopt their obedience, deceiving many, decimating their free will to discard reason and common sense, life's foundation of happiness, inviting darkness to cover pursuits of knowledge, leaving them in a quagmire of uncertainty. Their righteousness compels them to write doctrines of truth, established for all to live by, urging all to accept their dogmas as the only truth, installed on altars to ensure vindication for their verity.

Stranger: Righteousness demands proportionality, insisting on harmony, requiring equivalence based on creation's goodness evident for all to see, displaying creation's beauty waiting to be acknowledged, understanding the Holy Spirit only reveals its glory, witnessed by those sanctified, accepted and trusted as the work of God.

Jove: Do you disregard nature's violence, manifested continuously, necessary for God's work, justified by Him, never meant for retribution but understood as inherent in creation's goodness, although never fathomed as such by reason, making violence an aspect of beauty an oxymoron?

Stranger: Righteousness never lacks harmony, needing violence for equivalence, defined by ones affected, lacking understanding of God's design, calling our unwanted circumstances episodes of violence on our dignity's goodness.

Jove: You must believe violence is not violence but merely a designation for what we abhor, an aberration we are persuaded to be true, a conviction for denying creation's goodness.

Stranger: Free will, human's blessing to determine their ways, also never lacks harmony, allowing consideration of violence to be an option, including it as a design of creation's goodness, giving human beings the opportunity to determine all their actions.

Bystander: God completes the circle of harmony, creating people to be righteous and to have free will, even if both carry what some determine is violence, and consider He may design this for remodeling and growing creation, soon forgotten as adversity and eventually recorded merely as events in His story.

Jove: Calling it violence as we must, accepting it as necessary by God, how much violence is acceptable and who determines what is permissible, adequate for us to grow? Will our words, vehicles for conveying force, be used to make us develop in ways intended by God?

Bystander: Righteous people assemble their violence, authorizing it by their creeds, mobilizing it to hinder people's freedom, praying litanies to justify judgment, washing their hands to maintain soul's purity.

Wanton: Wracked with total depravity, sinful with no hope for redemption, rebellious, transgressing, fulfilling the promise of being afflicted from conception, how can one so wicked be transformed to become righteous? Believing righteousness is an impossible goal, can striving for it be worthy, somehow purifying and making me fit for redemption? Purification can never be complete, wiping out violence that once ruled a sinful life, replacing it with love, trusting love conquers all, enduring tolerance as a companion, believing love can accommodate all without discrimination, sometimes compelling it to be tough where human decrees ignore pleas of the faint-hearted, condemning ones breaking the Lord's commandments, stoning people ignoring laws high priests established, destroying what God created, testifying human laws trump the breath of His Words. Remember God tells us to follow Him; do we when a different spirit commands one to end a life prematurely, before that allotted by God?

Bystander: Peace you crave waits for the unity of mercy and truth, for a reunion of love with faithfulness so righteousness can reap its rewards, encumbered with no traces of violence, purified to embrace enduring peace. Let honesty prevail, asking if any evidence of unnecessary violence persists, delaying righteousness from indwelling your soul?

Jove: Righteousness is essential for God to be God, but it obligates humans to determine and exact judgments that necessitate violence, leaving one to wonder if greater justice demands greater too.

Bystander: Sins coming in strands, unimportant as flimsy filaments, fragments of weakness unable to stir the soul, still count as iniquities, easily dismissed as unmentionables, hiding within until they mount up, accumulating until they can be woven together, forming a whip to inflict oneself with wounds, scarring one's conscience with persisting welts, afflicting one with despair, accumulating threads to form a rope, a noose to destroy the soul, demolishing the Holy Spirit's home. Let no one claim a distinction for sins being little and of no consequence, comparing none to sins preached unpardonable. A sin is a sin, a sin, a sin, accumulating until sinners recognize them as shackles. Every sin bears a tag indicating its association with violence, seeds of destruction concealed from other's, thinking sin is consigned to be removed by a pall-bearer, hiding it never to see the light, saving sinners from being scourged.

Jove: Where do you account wickedness to lie, to know where sin can arise? Does any degree of righteousness know where to preclude its coming? What measure of free will allows its being? Can a blend of the two forestall its violence, trusting some righteousness to counter free will's violence of words, breaking one's conscience into pieces, or can such words be condoned, tolerated for silencing evil, even portions of words of a wicked person? Can cease from my wisdom bring me to know this, hearing another calling to win my way?

Bystander: Many people credit God's nature with both righteousness and violence, responding to beat His creatures into submission when necessary, rewarding those who follow His lead, prompting all to be true to their image of Him.

Jove: We all innately carry that image of Him trusting it is inherent to our nature, and employ violent means when needed. What discussion is ever free from violence, hearing people thrust arguments to protect their convictions, speaking out to mute differing opinions, disregarding any toll their words may afflict on others. We can't express opinions that never distress someone. We are grounded as beings in violence, showing it with subtle words and behavior or outwardly to destroy what disagrees with our convictions.

Bystander: We need not be so condemned to violence, hearing the Gospel offer us another way, a peaceable kingdom, embracing creation's unity in its diversity, erasing violence veiling but never obscuring its goodness and beauty, trying to conceal its foundation of love.

Stranger: Put on the full armor of God, drawing one's sword to safeguard the beauty of God's wisdom, wielding it to sustain the luster of His truth and protect creation's treasures, distrusting anyone lurking to snatch its possessions, knowing we live in fear or defiance, alternating between despair and defeat, testifying to the fragility of any foundation of love.

Bystander: Can one be protected from violence of words and deeds with nothing to lose, having given up everything to the Lord, by accepting the gift of His wisdom, being lifted by His goodness, His beauty corrupting one's understanding, leaving it behind, fading one's brightness of reason, in shambles, no longer needing the sword of violence, no longer needing to violate other's souls, their sanctuaries for the Holy Spirit. Drawn swords alert God's attention, ready to spring forth retribution, calling on nature to prepare its wind and fire, its cold, and time for drought, selecting what can shut down people's violence.

Jove: Are we so made, discerning violence in all creation's goodness, assigning evil to its consequences, thinking goodness is more than to behold, having actions to distribute circumstances, activity to destroy its beauty, never redoing its aesthetics to enhance its charm, or is evil the rebel interfering with its remodeling?

Jurdan: We need to restructure what scribes have written, using the pretense of rendering them understandable, for people have changed so much that archaic convictions are no longer tenable and restatement is demanded, seeing unheeded changes spell death for their beliefs. If people don't temper their opinions and words, ideas will be abandoned, shivering in the cold, experiencing the fire extinguished in temples of worship, seeing their homes for the Holy Spirit empty, without any reason to receive His messages, struggling as they try to find meaning for existence. They can go only so far, attempting to search for its reason by satisfying their wants and desires, embellishing all with nothing but relics of futility, no longer being tempted by jealousy, tormenting them with nothingness, compelled to survive in desolation, voided of promising imagination, and indeed, seeing no further abominations of the world, cruel pronouncements of the Creator's Word, telling humans never to fall in love with the world, a creation all gods know we fill with violence, staining any goodness with evil, marring beauty with people's deeds. In distress, they cry to their Lord, beseeching Him as a last resort, but they don't know if He hears them.

Bystander: Restructuring God's words promises no answer, preaching different versions being little effective, realizing better interpretations profit few when faithless ones hear them, people dependent on reason, unable to embrace faith for all understanding.

Jurdan: Admit the violence people hide, concealed away, waiting to burst forth, to energize words, activate tongues, and vent emotions, satisfying for but a moment, knowing violence never stops growing, accumulating to torch goodness, generated by unclear circumstances. Fear never snares violence, controlling it until too late. We discern what is so objectionable with goodness, committing many to taunt it, threatening it with destruction, and working for its disappearance, reproducing all goodness in aberrations, depicting it as a monstrosity, painting it with blemishes, making it no longer recognizable, transforming goodness into scattered remnants of violence, objects to be highly treasured, prophesying destruction of order, ripping apart goodness into unrecognizable pieces, seeking return of all to chaos.

Stranger: I admit to harboring violence, hating whatever people blemish--transformed images of goodness--committing us to destroy all we judge wrong, fabrications created by deviants, knowing their use is to promote intolerable behavior, giving people excuse to question the goodness inherent in our belief, reasoning anarchy to dismiss noble words and beauty's images.

Bystander: Must violence be called on for restoring creation's beauty? The darkness of violence to thrive sends out destruction into light, clashing with it all the way, choking out truth it encounters, little realizing with its annihilation nothingness remains, having darkened all light, leaving only chaos to remain, trusting human reason would resurrect everything, its truth proudly confident in its power, redeemed by pleasures sought in darkness, showering people with mercies of their choosing.

Stranger: What darkness provides seeing to perceive the unseen, offering silence for ones to hear words of hope, giving understanding to receive the Lord's messages?

Bystander: Darkness is the author of chaos, the painter of nothingness, ruling the kingdom of nihilism, maintaining all in disarray, all being still nothingness until the Creator intervened with His Word, establishing light as the prelude to molding creation, light for giving us love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness, nourishment for maintaining healthy relationships, interactions never possible with chaos. Our Almighty, the creator of all, encourages us to persevere, calling us to be one like Him, fulfilling His plan for us.

Stranger: Entering life to follow my Savior I must be in the world, accommodating its violence, gathered as ancient ashes covering creation's goodness and beauty, but as the Lord taught me, dust falling and clinging to me can be erased, be kicked off my boots, never allowing it to persist and invade my mind, settling as sins to be conserved for heirs, embedding in progeny's innate codes. I will accept no mischief from hearts of ones I love, refusing to hear violence of their tongues, lashing out at peace, disrupting order and tranquility, spewing hatred with lying lips. So, you see why we must be born again by erasing ashes of violence.

Wanton: Learning from the Lord we initiate violence to seize whatever we desire, seeing what's done by Him can be the pattern for us to follow, justice foremost in His perfection, the major representation of His goodness, relegating mercy and grace to minor importance, trusting them less for creation's preservation, allowing Him to exercise violence when judged to be needed, exercising His prerogative of being an angry God.

Skeptic: Violence becomes a necessary evil, used by everyone to promote their wants and to silence blemished misfits. Recalling who taught us violence, trusting it was not assigned to us at birth, never innate to our being, we learned it, being a dubious gift of God's teaching, showing how to manage contrarians, creatures disobeying His mandates, by employing vengeance and exacting retribution, being such a prized possession that He claimed it as His, sharing it with no others, proclaiming, Vengeance is mine.

Wanton: Violence thrives on intolerance, searching out ones obtrusive in diversity, especially ones so blemished they embarrass us and hinder our existence, requiring they be sequestered, hidden in closets, so why should we accommodate their lives in any way? Justice authorizes terrorism, condoning violence when needed and taught by an angry God.

Bystander: Then who changed your God, modifying His attributes, changing His ways so the God of vengeance and retribution, judging no one worthy of salvation, could become the God of love, loving all humankind, His creation's crown designed to take part in His goodness, loving people enough that He would tolerate modifications lessening His expectations for them?

Stranger: It is this Lord of love who stands at our door, knocking, waiting for an answer, a response from one of His creatures, never knowing how one will respond, reminding them to be born again. But our doctrines and dogmas remain unchanged, modified by learned priests to accommodate people's will, transforming God to makings of an angry deity, tolerating little of one's will, never deviating from the God of our fathers. Striving for purity, we must endure little of learned edicts and fulfill spreading His principles of love, tolerating no compromises to please proponents of violence.

Bystander: Ambition, no alien to Stranger, is mightier than violence, building up one's beliefs, protecting them from destruction, realizing violence scatters all in disarray, but unblessed activity for gaining success, doing things one's own way, united as one in voice and deed, reaching out from their citadels to become like God, will be scattered, revealing human ambition follows ways of violence, challenging people to discover where it must be formed, where to seek its ways, how to avoid its errors, protecting against its scatter into nothingness, understanding failure can seed destruction, dismantling human hopes, disconnecting one's imaginations that had been in one accord.

Jurdan: Reaching out to become like God, thinking grace and mercy reflect His attributes, people must remember they have never always been His virtues, reading how scribes understood Him to be in ancient times, ignoring the goodness He proclaimed for creation at its beginning. Realizing He must protect creation's goodness, can there be some other way than unleashing anger and be willing to compromise, preserving the beauty of virtue by some nonviolent means, showing His people that violence is never acceptable retribution, or that retribution is never permissible when goodness offers other responses to unworthy thoughts and deeds, realizing He must become pragmatic. So much for your unchanging God's transformation to please creature's desires.

Stranger: We know what grace and mercy are, God's virtues clearly explained for our understanding, but do we comprehend the justice we attribute to Him, a human version consigned to Him by us, making His little different from ours, never considering He needs no justice in any form, having something else from our conceptions of how He maintains creation's goodness, having innate recovery systems to assure its protection. Human justice treads on the brink of injustice, following a treacherous course, destroying what appears dangerous, thinking it should be no different for God.

Jove: The Lord counts my works, using them to allot His grace, measuring them to determine His mercy, trusting He has criteria for dispersing rewards, honoring the most deserving, choosing me to be a remnant for preserving His truth.

Stranger: Proclaiming God's righteousness, praising His noblest judgments, trusting His commands are morally right and faithful to His integrity, vowing His laws are eternal truths, trouble and anguish still seize me, never letting me go, leaving delight my only reward for obeying His commandments, driving me to work for salvation, never accepting only by His mercy are we saved, justifying us to be with Him forever despite our foolishness, disobedience and persistence to silence admonitions of the Holy Spirit, the One sent to cleanse our temple of despair, restoring what the Creator had fashioned for His home away from home, sheltering the steward of kindness and love, inviting them into showcase creation's goodness. Jesus Christ renewed us, revealing our unprofitable ways, exploding our convictions we can be saved by upholding the law, subverting beliefs we can be justified by merely sinning no more, removing condemnations by actions we have chosen. My work calls others to be born again.

Bystander: Accumulating stones to lay a foundation for your temple, trusting it to last, enduring throughout all your trials, ready to accommodate your words, listening to your worship, you forget the Lord formed the rock for your temple, establishing a throne to seat the Holy Spirit, waiting vacant until He is invited in, seating Him in the one seat your soul can offer, reserved for Him, allowing no counterfeit god to move in and seize it, waiting only for your will to act. Stones gathered for your temple's grandeur, building it by yourself, created for enthroning your gods, deluding you to believe they embellish your soul, establishing a fitness gym to develop righteousness, thinking you learn God's ways to prepare you for doing it your way, acknowledging you can never be pure in heart, so you compromise, following your best way, trusting your way can approach His way, never allowing despair to overtake your self-righteousness or futility to destroy your will, never accepting poverty to begin your redemption.

Preacher: Your soul's foundation would never be developed where God couldn't make its soil holy, even in the worst of times, trusting He determines all our circumstances, calling us to abide in Him, our eternal protector, shielding us in His hiding place. One's foundation must be purified, removing stones cherishing your life, comrades, friends, and kin whose glitter tempt to brighten darkness, polished to maintain your attention, distancing you from sanctification, hiding your unpreparedness for purification, stripping away all you have made yourself to be in preparation to be one with Jesus, closing the door for Him to enter and be one with you, to be more than a copy to follow, but my purification is a reality I join without any hesitation.

Wanton: Being my own person, owning myself, free to exercise my spirit, never allowing another mind to control me, nothing will ever determine my circumstances, no one else or their decrees, leaving me to exist as a unique entity to myself, protected from anyone or group coercing me to abdicate and forfeit my freedom, proclaiming works to make me free, purifying me to follow another.

Preacher: Works are necessary. Recall the last words of Jesus Christ, telling us to go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, working to make others free by His call to arms.

Bystander: Works save no one when their nature is determined by persons driven by vanity to seek glory, reasoning to become sanctified by ways of their own choosing, sacrificing themselves to protect their honor, believing they will be first in line for God's rewards. Let those trusting works be justified by their actions, for they could be persuaded by their imagination to propose things worse, knowing its inclination to promote evil, persuading others to delight in destroying goodness.

Jurdan: Admit some good works, appearing to embrace noble intentions, conceal deceit, soon to be seen with crumbling of their foundations, being regretted as time unveils their real intent, leaving only vanity to declare their value, praising them to have been most noteworthy.

Jove: Good works cleanse my soul, filling it with satisfaction, knowing I have done some good.

Bystander: Examine your beliefs, asking are you feeding some god in your belly, craving morsels for your idols, satisfying its unending demands, never shamed by Scripture's words, denying them, ignoring them with your abundance, giving your will freedom to indulge yourself with excesses crossing your lips, trusting in admonishment by no one while embracing Christ for righteousness, greatly rejoicing in His grace and mercy, justifying your worth by doing some good?

Wanton's Friend: My heritage has betrayed me, giving away my soul, treating it as an unwanted foundling, abandoning its temple, ravaging its foundation, seeding its site with salt, poisoning the ground of its existence, leaving it as a desolate wilderness, spoiling it as no place for joyous hope to return, for nothing righteous to dare enter, but I plead my almighty God would have mercy and rebuild my home for the Holy Spirit. Have compassion on me O Righteous One, restoring me to your chosen heritage, blessing me with grace, changing me to be reunited with You, making me as you planned before Your Word created me, releasing me from Your strength with music of Your wisdom, to be more than faintly heard in a world transfigured by human desire, no longer listening to the people's Maker. Praying to You my Lord, hear me begging to restore my soul, transforming me to return to You, prepared to praise and worship You, attending to obedience demanded by You, knowing now no one is faithful like You, understanding it manifests your goodness, the mighty gem of Your eternal truth.

Bystander: Contented are ones planning to have their names written on earth, trusting it to be God's heritage for them, chiseling epithets in granite, trusting they might last forever, but will be eventually buried in rubble, relics under the future's waste, beneath new constructions covering the old. Why record people's names in what never lasts, names forgotten sooner than their flesh and bones turn to dust? If one's name is hoped to survive beyond time, let it be written in the book of life, blessing those who came in the name of the Lord, praising His goodness, knowing His mercy endures forever. Your heritage of being created by His Word may be ignored but never betrayed.

Jurdan: Who cares about mercy, writing dead one's names in a book of life, impossible as this oxymoron suggests, as does any trust in mercy by someone's God?

Bystander: Creation's goodness demands grace and mercy for all, never blinded by a being's greed, established to bless moderation, saddened by gluttonous living to acquire more than one's necessities while ignoring unmet needs of others, never overwhelming others with dogmas to protect their ways, enabling them to sustain oppression of the poor and needy. Be assured that anyone true to Creation's goodness and preaching its message is demonized and made a target for destruction, becoming a prophet crying in the wilderness, alone among all those claiming to be prophets and telling people what they want to hear.

Jove: Then must I be created blind and deaf, closing all means for vanity to exist, leaving all thoughts to be filled by the Lord's choosing, directing His mercy to endow me with innate instincts directing only His truths, needing nothing else for redemption, assuring my return to Him?

Bystander: The Lord promises to provide all our needs, and ones blind and deaf need no special grace or mercy to receive them, trusting all His creatures are inherently endowed with codes to ensure survival and given revelations to thrive by the Holy Spirit, promised by the Word creating them, never needy prevention from coveting by blindness and deafness, learning all that is needed from the Spirit, trusting God allows no one to survive without capacity for the Holy Spirit.

Jurdan: Mercy springs forth from pity, undeserved and blessing us for reasons unknown, and threatens to come with judgment, mystifying us with its punishment, perverting mercy with justice, showing mercy doesn't forget iniquities, but is intent on delaying retributions for some Day of the Lord, reserving vengeance while placating us with mercy until His time is right, settling us with mercy so we can continue living. You may ask if mercy is a blessing or a curse, a blessing so we can hide memory of our sins or a curse telling us to confess our sins and expect justice to confront us now. Will delaying judgment cause it to disappear, to vanish from one's memory and never return later, trusting a death-bed conversion will cleanse people of all iniquities, confessing them all at a best-chosen time?

Stranger: You show little knowledge of the Lord, never acknowledging or appreciating the One promised to be merciful, calling on the unrighteous, pledging to remember their sins and iniquities no more, showing us the way to redemption through His Son, establishing a new covenant, replacing the old ready to be replaced, proclaiming the coming of a new creation, destroying the old, arriving with the Day of the Lord, but His mercy gives us time to repent, erasing contempt of the proud scorning all at ease with belief, transforming sinners to follow and trust in the Lord.

Skeptic: Was a new covenant needed, seeing restatements to renew old promises continue to this day, finding ways for people to live without love?

Stranger: Threatened by censure for not loving others, condemned by the law of grace and my unmerciful judgment of others, must I tolerate other's convictions, accepting them as equal to mine, exercising charity for diverse dogmas, alleviating fears my judgments lack mercy?

Bystander: Speaking forth without ceasing, spilling out all one's mind, fools reveal their nature, so corral your words, measuring out no more than necessary, making you appear wise. See how the Lord determines His words, exercising their use with care, making no mistakes in creation's development, guiding its evolutionary advancement, assuring His mercy endures forever, growing its goodness to greater beauty.

Jove: Faith, now possible through knowledge, discovering one's Lord and Savior, wishing all grace and mercy, blesses us to promote virtue, directing us to practice temperance, waiting on all to honor patience, changing people's priorities to live godly and manifest brotherly concern, distributing charity where needed, choosing words with divine approval.

Stranger: Some are never fit to assemble knowledge, lacking discernment for words, trusting understanding comes only from reading page's spoken words, but remain content to be illiterate, never trusting the world's messages, so how can they be trusted to accept any teachings, coming as semi-believers, treated as numbers to be counted for adding to one's deeds, obeying the Great Commission, dismissing their deficiencies as part of goodness's diversity, identifying them as the ones we will always have, satisfying our inclusion of them as spiritual and pious, praying for others, maintaining devotions to purify our conscience.

Commoner: Having been saved, my faith attesting to belief in the Lord, rewarding me by investment with righteousness, what more do I need, seeing righteousness has completed my sanctity and needing mercy and grace no longer, let it be reserved for ones still reaching out to become righteous.

Bystander: Is the righteousness given you so completely that you can now claim deity, a personification of the Lord?

Commoner: Indeed. Finished with transgressions, ending all sins, having made reconciliation for my iniquities, I can now claim righteousness, sealed in me to be everlasting, needing no more sacrifices, requiring grace and mercy no longer.

Bystander: Can righteousness choose unrighteousness as an accomplice, asking if light's relationship can be with darkness, goodness fellowshipping with evil, realizing truth can never be found where corruption thrives, trusting the Lord is never found in darkness, being creation's Author of light, leaving darkness remaining in chaos' void, sustaining light as truth's only vessel, with the Lord's Son established as the only true Light sent to dispel darkness concealing evil's hatred of life, committed to destroying evil, melting its force, neutralizing its power, annihilating its spectacles of horror and brutality, mesmerizing people no longer with its displays of carnage.

Stranger: Perfection is evident by my living for God, obeying His commandments, racking up achievements too numerous to count, exemplifying success for everyone to see, preaching my life's goal in all that I do, making decisions to follow His will, revealing God's presence in all I do, trusting this is what He wants of me to please Him, believing it makes me one with Him, enriching me to magnify my virtue, sanctifying me to become one with Him.

Jove: My Christian worthiness develops from perfection as a human, a crown of the Lord's creation, learning what He teaches, discerning how to engage His messages in practice, trusting my achievements will reward me with greater grace and mercy, attaining what mere mortals can accomplish.

Stranger: But have you surrendered to the Lord, trusting your will to perceive His, discerning all He reveals, more than what comes to your reasoned thoughts, never ignoring circumstances inviting you to become one with Him, mundane opportunities never worth consideration before, pointless tasks He offers, promising transformation for deification, most important to Him, rejecting things done your way, obeying only Him to acquire His love for all creation, to pray for all to know Him as the only God, rejecting all the gods the world lives by?

Bystander: Denying the Lord retribution for no good reason, trusting He created everything good, we must reconsider His virtues, dismissing traits assign from humans, believing we are indeed images of Him, transforming our ideas of Him, changing Him to be kinder and gentler, but where do we discover such images, never from our broken virtues, but only from our imagination of what our conscience reveals, our human-derived wisdom, acknowledging wisdom can be changed at our will's discretion, but never confessing we have not become kinder and gentler while asking God to make this change, freely offering mercy which humans do only reluctantly, abundantly dispensing grace, unlikely by our nature, our inherent propensity never to pour out steadfast, trustworthy love for anyone, including your Maker who you find easy to fault.

Jove: Testifying to the Lord's proclamation, acknowledging everything He created is good, making me good as well, should I not live up to His testimony, celebrating His accomplishment in my being, so it is fitting I should take pride in myself, wearing His glory in my being, and I can't agree with wisdom profaning us, claiming everyone with a prideful heart is an abomination to Him. As a father is proud of an offspring, so the Lord takes pride in me, covering me with pleasure, knowing without it I would resort to despair, having dignity snatched away, leaving only depression to struggle through my existence. Can a human dwell anywhere between pride and despair, finding moderation to escape both, alternating from one to the other to find something acceptable to the Lord?

Bystander: You profess to be righteous, making no decisions appealed for by emotions, gratifying your senses for pleasure, as your fervor to be righteous is led by your conscience to follow its direction, but consider what programs your conscience's terms of right and wrong, adding footnotes to your inherent intuitions of doing to others as they would do for you, terms as legends for authorizing your wants and desires, righteousness being faithful to one's myself, for what is more important than being true to oneself, forever regarding it as righteousness.

Jove: Worshipping the Lord, regarding Him as the only One righteous, appearing as different deities, Yahweh spewing forth destruction as a volcano judging humans for all their deeds, inflicting punishment in retribution, withholding mercy from the sinful creation, wantonly ordering destruction for what He created, or the Lord manifested as the God of love, building goodness into all creation, gives a choice to follow, one to consider righteous, providing a standard for righteousness.

Preacher: To be transformed from the image designed and borrowed from the Lord, we must appreciate He has mercy on us, innate and hidden, unseen inherent blessings, created for our protection, guarding us against unseen invaders, sealing wounds all without asking, guaranteeing life a given span of time, but we beseech Him for mercy to heal what we consider to be unacceptable actions, threatening our innate protections assuring a full life, praying for His favor and merciful understanding.

Stranger: The Lord had mercy on me, healing what was incurable, saying tell no one, so I called it a miracle, a recovery no one could understand, an explanation no one would question, for if I attributed it to God, other's shame would surround me, their trust avoiding me, watching as lesser physicians respond with disgust, never heeding their help as the first response to my affliction, asking only for a word from the great Healer to be restored, believing my restoration from death's grip is resurrection to continue life, a daily revival in silence to my awareness.

Jove: What measure of mercy can I expect, believing the Lord renders all according to one's work, tempering mercy in allotments for what one deserves, never to be squandered, realizing compassion to quell pity removes no ill thoughts or deeds, leaving them to remain, waiting for the next opportunity to slay one's virtue?

Stranger: Mercy diminishes protection of goodness, ignoring what excellence entails, dismissing its beauty, unrelating it to happiness, reserved for one's faint in themselves, seeking mercy for all their erring. Pride and vanity seldom call on mercy, trusting its keepers to reason no need for it, relying on dignified sense, questioning any need to bow down, bending knees in supplication, hoping something good will happen.

Bystander: Creation's goodness conflicting with betrayal being a human vice, an inborn sin, free will's favorite virtue, requires a need to offer us mercy, grace, and forgiveness to change our inherent inclination, asking us only to acknowledge our iniquities and confess our disobedience in ignoring goodness and defacing its beauty.

Jurdan: People are made to betray others, responding as part of their nature, encoded in their genes, so why should this deceit surprise anyone? Perhaps creation's goodness is a paradox, authorizing vices such as betrayal, wondering how it could create anything ungodly by human standards.

Wanton: Who cares about all your thoughts, choosing eloquence to convey your ideas. As for me, deny me nothing, fulfill all my desire, show me new distractions, and never end my merriment, realizing time will jade all my interests, mocking toil's efforts laboring so long for greater happiness, never anticipating this would add nothing new to the eons under the sun, realizing my wisdom never anticipated the frivolity of distractions I sought, being no more than herding the wind, impossibly shepherding it, never knowing its coming and going, hoping to master what others have never accomplished, trusting to improve on their futile hopes for happiness, assured no wisdom would permit illusions to tamper with my dreams, leaving my happiness impoverished, never neglecting wants comporting with common sense, ignoring the right to follow one's will, going out laughing, leaving grace and mercy for losers.

Bystander: Does mercy temper what we deserve, obligations for punishment, damnation for being born in sin, condemnation for no fault of our own, eternal retribution for sinfulness, or does the Lord recognize our imperfections, acknowledging He had a role in deciding we should have free will, giving us freedom to choose when we lack much in making choices to please Him. Mercy, expressing His deepest love, became an essential commitment when He designed us as we are. He did not form us and walk away, leaving us alone, abandoning His children created out of love. He remains nearby, administering mercy to show His love.

Preacher: Acknowledging we receive His mercy, the Lord counsels us to be as merciful as Him, trusting we are blessed in being like Him, warning us, however, one exacting judgment without mercy must expect no mercy from Him who is most qualified to judge.

Stranger: Remember the prophet's telling, He showed us what is good, what the Lord requires of us, to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our Creator, being merciful as He is merciful, acknowledging His mercy is love.

Skeptic: Being practical and honest, as you all attest to, rather than seeking mercy, asking God for what you don't deserve, confess and seek forgiveness, admitting your iniquities rather than asking the Lord to continue your good fortune. Confession cleanses where receiving mercy allows one to continue sinful ways,

Bystander: Mercy as the exalting expression of God's love, provides no other way to understand better His bond with us, sent not as retribution but for transformation, giving us a chance to do better, releasing us from imprisoning guilt, freeing us to recognize the importance of His compassion. Never considering justice to reform us, His mercy suffices. If we are unwilling to change with any justice He offers, mercy is unlikely to be successful, leaving us angry at God for what we have chosen to do, what we will to be.

Stranger: Only by faith we have access to His grace and mercy, faith justifying us, faith bringing us peace, faith immersing us in joy and hope in tribulations, as we wait patiently to join God in His glory, changing to partake in His likeness, entering His love to share in Its beauty, greater than all we gave recognized in this world. For like a righteous person I would not die, but be reborn, never dying again, being already dead to sin. The Lord offers no other goodness for committing my life to, knowing nothing else could erase my sins to cleanse me of iniquities, for that has already been done and nothing can do more with His battle being won, and God needs no destruction of more lives for convincing me to invest in righteousness, needing nothing more to reconcile me with Him, knowing Christ has already done that and I can do no more, never thinking obedience to my will can make me righteous and assure grace to last into another existence.

Jurdan: Born once is enough let alone being born again, fearing it would be more of the same.

Stranger: What plagues you to belittle all worthy thoughts, scorning everything people consider, perhaps searching for wisdom but finding none, seeking it where it is never found, humiliating others having found what you disparage, contemptuous of anyone prideful of the Lord's wisdom? Where does scorn profit anyone, being a habitual tool of demons, destroying goodness by ridicule, drowning good ideas in a cascade of contemptuous comments?

Bystander: Scorn forms a barrier to understanding, blinding wills, closing minds to comprehension, disparaging willingness to listen, leaving one thoughtless, unprepared to consider anything, as empty nothingness rules the mind. Scorn is never of the Holy Spirit protecting one's soul from destruction, so examine yourself, asking, Does He reside in me, working to guard against my temptations, using scorn to reject others I have been tempted to tolerate, realizing scorn is never uplifting, forever reflecting intolerance, dismissing unacceptable diversity, developed only to honor others like me. Why must people covet criticism, blaspheming the human spirit with scorn, readying it on the tips of their tongues, prepared for engagement without a moment's notice, drawn from treasured human wisdom, frankly expressing its loveless convictions?

Stranger: Scornful convictions, dismissing creation's glory, disinherits one from the promise of goodness and mercy following one all the days of their life, of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever.

Bystander: Scorn, bitter fruit of a whining spirit, never of the Lord, an emotional response never of the Holy Spirit, makes a frequent appearance, commonly seen compared to brief moments of happiness and never with joy challenging people to salute the goodness of all He created, giving Him glory by our praises.

Wanton: Trusting the Lord, joined to Him in the Covenant, can you be certain of His decisions, believing He is unchanging when His virtues lapse, reneging on His promises, exploiting differently with humans, ignoring their pleas for mercy, rewarding them with retribution when their genetic makeup reveals they could never be favored, never certain that He will forgive and forget one's iniquity. Does your God show mercy, restoring hope, renewing trust when you sin by disobeying Him? Or does your God still hate sins of disobedience, never allowing any option for mercy to restore His Grace?

Bystander: Disobedience, flagrantly disregarding the Lord's commands, justifies punishment demanding retribution.

Jove: My God, never being the one condemning Saul for disobedience, dismissing his confession of not following divine orders, disregarded his repentance, severing his anointment to rule after selection to be king, cannot have claimed to possess foreknowledge, employing trial and error to find someone worthy to govern His people. Words of Saints implore us to confess our sins, mandatory for repentance, essential for cleansing to satisfy the Holy Spirit's urgings, but did God renege on gifting Saul with the Spirit, revoking His messenger's action, dismissing One who might act as his counselor, and never accept his confession or acknowledge his repentance. God may have changed His mind, recognizing His mistake, as He stumbled on someone more suitable to be king, one with acceptable imperfections but one He could trust more in being obedient, acknowledging obedience to His commands can overlook a few human imperfections.

Bystander: Confession seeking forgiveness entitles one to grace, seeking mercy at life's end, trusting the Lord erases all traces of iniquities, accounts as now forgiven.

Stranger: But grace can be costly, thinking we must pay for it, rationed out as rewards, carefully allotted, blessing us for obedience, counting our thoughts and deeds to measure out grace for ones most deserving, acknowledging grace can never be cheap and rewarded only for the asking.

Bystander: Deeds unworthy, ones believed to be forgotten, the Lord can recall, exposing them from hiding, unveiling them for sorrow, ones never confessed.

Jove: Delight in having a God so good, I am thankful our scribes and prophets report Him bursting with mercy and grace, detailing what He has revealed to them, giving us hope in an existence seeming to have little.

Stranger: Will confession seeking forgiveness entitle one to receive grace, promising mercy at life's end, or does the Lord's tracking count for something, using it to judge us, considering what we have forgotten?

Bystander: Most people defer confessions, relying on prayer for everything, asking God for every need, although they never know if He will respond as they hope for, or if their petitions will be resolved without His intervention, hiding any need for repentance.

Wanton: Is repentance cleansing, authorizing redemption, pardoning sins, wiping out remorse for any iniquities silently hidden in one's heart, proclaimed by one's conscience to be sins, acknowledging confession of sins must include all, not only of one's choosing, leaving out any rewritten to no longer be deemed sins, ones now tolerated by culture and no longer requiring confession, unworthy of mention before God or anyone, authorizing us to no longer be obligated to repent and confess, revealing only what we silently choose, releasing us to thrive with a clean conscience?

Bystander: You are the person, establishing yourself, deciding your truths surpass everyone's, sealing their validity, making you right with yourself, allowing you to remove all restraints on your freedom, permitting you to exercise whatever is desired, choosing from imagination's options, convinced of the rightness granted by you. With no unmanageable consequences, you maintain control, sneering at others having become victims of the world.

Wanton: Who can maintain control better than me, never relinquishing trust in myself, never calling on an imaginary deity for help, praying needlessly to some invisible being?

Jove: I pray for nothing, asking God for nothing since he knows my needs, but He chooses me to be a living trophy of His grace, truly a recipient of His loving mercy. Which is more important, asking Him for something by pleading like a child, or being certain I belong to Him and trusting Him to provide all my needs without begging, for the beggar never knows who will provide his wants, nor whether he will receive them, as I confess I am no beggar. My prayers are to worship Him, showing my oneness with Him is complete. If I pray for any change and it fails to happen, I could only blame God, something I am not so ignorant to do.

Wanton: You are in league with ignorance, living where wisdom never enters, off bounds to common sense, reasoning only as a dim wit, waiting to join maggots of destruction.

Jove: I rejoice, trusting the Lord makes me glad through my work, allowing me to triumph with the work of my reason, rejecting your words as ignorance.

Stranger: Self-righteousness bonded with free will actions mires you in illusions, perfecting your thinking, confirming your trust in being right with God, believing nothing can separate you from His love and with confidence you are more than a conqueror through His love, but wait until a time when disillusionment seizes your serenity, ripping apart its peace, leaving you in a pit of despair.

Jove: On consignment to death, counted as one on the way to slaughter, I trust nothing can separate me from the love of God, and no anxiety can conquer my confidence on where I am going. Righteousness never freely abounds, gifting me with enough to claim self-righteousness, realizing I have too much to change, so I trust in the Lord's grace and mercy to grant me redemption, acknowledging I can never be completely justified until He helps to make me over.

Bystander: Anyone completely made over, changed to adopt God's image, would never be accepted for guiding humans, but be rejected as His Son, so He never again sent His Holy One, but depended only on prophets, trusting them to tell us what the Lord is like.

Wanton: Forever despairing of sages proclaiming freedoms, truths to make all free by wisdom their reason adopts, people beg to know verities more reliable, seeking prophets more like them, promising directions to satisfy their yearnings, connections to meet their desires with wisdom they can trust, never from unseen entities, spiritual beings having no requirements of reality, pledging empty promises, leaving people to fear failure. Should we heed such charlatans spewing messages from their imagination?

Preacher: God continues His promise, blending a touch of righteousness with free will to establish rulers' rights, ordaining leaders to be in charge, consecrating them to govern, confirming we are so blessed, telling us to live up to His promise. God's promise is to provide all our needs. Never defer to charlatans who appear with promises to satisfy our wants.

Wanton: Free will is my beloved charlatan, waiting at my beckoned call, imputed in by the Lord to make life tolerable.

Stranger: You claim to know the Father's business, thinking it makes your convictions infallible, but I know how to be about His business, taught by His Holy Spirit, leading me to be one with Him, but your knowledge on His business, leaves me wondering, questioning your understanding, so I must reach out to Him in prayer to hear His words, wondering why I should trust you, seeing your discernment lacks His wisdom.

Jove: The Lord fashioned me, creating me with a will to do everything my way for determining my goals, never designing His plans for me, never revealing anything acknowledged for me, never convincing me my ways should be His, ignoring any purpose seers claim for me. I listen to only my desires, discounting all circumstances purported to be His doing, never taking me aside to reveal a different compelling purpose for my life, for changing directions I have chosen, and I trust decisions convicting me to do my will, always trusting His will be satisfied, praying it will confirm with my wants.

Stranger: Being unlike you, I admit weakness but rejoice in being weak in Christ crucified, living by the power of God, with humility showing I can live by His power, enabling me to do all things He decrees, praying I will always be strong in Him, never giving reason power to confirm my faith, never needing to prove I belong to Him, doing nothing against His truth and nothing for the world's truth, being glad in worldly insignificance to prove my strength in obedience to transform all sorrow into joy.

Wanton: You testify to weakness, the scourge of humans, believing imaginations, trusting unseen apparitions, developing fables to be imbedded in their minds.

Bystander: Don't blame Stranger for not convincing you to believe in the Lord. You have enough gods prying into your space for attention to satisfy your needs. If you have prayers never distracted by our God's requirements, they will be by some other lord in your life. Even in a secret quiet hiding place, complete from any invasion by the outside world, people can't escape from what they make critical, rejecting business with the Lord as a low priority.

Wanton: Does one ever doubt, questioning why God doesn't answer prayers, sending doubters to apologists for reinvigorating trust in Him, believing they know enough to bandage skepticism, hoping to heal tenuous convictions, recovering people to rejoice again to reencounter belief in the Lord and discard requirements needed to see for believing, for renewing eternal discipleship with Him?

Stranger: I pray His will be done, trusting the needs of affirmation by prayer, telling the Lord I'm never certain of His intentions, or maybe telling Him I don't need my will be done, or perhaps confirming His will is acceptable for me. Must I also ask His will for me, or do circumstances put in my way hint at His will for me, hoping they will not be ignored? At times self-awareness overwhelms me, shutting out voices from my Holy Spirit, setting me up for self-pity, distracting me from God's purpose, distancing me from recognizing His will for me during moments of absorption in myself, distracting me from learning His plans, preventing me from running the good race and completing it to win promised laurels, becoming not my will's accomplishments but God's.

Jove: I admit vanity controls my dreams, imagining more to accomplish, overwhelming me with more desires, seeking ways to enlarge my territory, means satisfied with answered prayers to bless my life, trusting on awakening I can name it and claim it.

Preacher: God blesses me by my works, never done to assert self-righteousness, never expecting obligations by Him to enlarge my territory, only wishing to show I belong to Him, forever faithful in all I do.

Bystander: The Lord can indeed grow one's territory, giving more than needed, fattening the tenth for return to Him, blessing one with more than needed, but take care how a person's stewardship behaves, guarding the beauty of His goodness, preserving the glory of His creation, for raping the land guarantees no renewal, destroying what He subjects to renewal by flood and drought, pests and fire, turning over enough for new growth to thrive, and learn by His ways, resting land every seven years, but we are greedy, corrupting treasured soil, stealing its fertility for profit, exposing it to torrents of wind and rain to be blown or washed away, digging deeper to break its beauty, mining hidden treasures to satisfy our wanton desires, fragmenting earth's crust, removing its cushion, propagating its inner rumblings.

Preacher: Enlarge your territory to ensure greater wealth, sent as a blessing to fulfill greater needs. If you must, look to tradition for its belief, hearing what prophets have said.

Wanton: Are we wounded with indifference, inflicted by self-satisfaction, walking in love for only ourselves, sacrificing nothing of our abundance, discerning nothing to change our ways, ignoring ones suffering, deprived of needs promised by the Lord, as our thoughts are only on what we desire, engaging what we claim is promised to enlarge our territory, fulfilling a covenant for responding to our desires, never reaching out to give thanks, trusting it for no one else but ourselves, having achieved all by our own efforts? Is there room for us in heaven, a place to be seated in Christ's kingdom, designated for the vain and proud, pouring out self-claimed righteousness, thinking themselves royal, dressed in vanity, articulating deceit, dismissing the lowly, neglecting the needy except when letting their right hand know what their right hand does, parading generosity for show to collect interest in heaven, accumulating acts of magnanimity, displayed for others to see, convinced of their kindness in benefitting all, but deceiving themselves in showcasing fruits of the Spirit, expecting rewards for goodness, righteousness and truth?

Bystander: Loving abundance, increasing one's territory, is indeed the hope of vanity, and see what it does for accumulating treasures and satisfying wants, for fulfillment of riches steals peace and rest, disrupting sleep, startling slumber with anxiety, invading one's thoughts of never having enough and with making plans to profit more, never realizing it feathers nests with increasing despair trying to be relieved with silver and gold to be guarded as the price of vanity, working without ceasing for wealth to grow. How can riches embellish one's life, eating delicacies which turn to waste, no different from a poor one's food, adorning one's body with garments and jewels soon out of fashion, outmoded by culture and time, discarded by trends seeking something new under the sun, never understanding nothing new can be found there. Recognize only the wealth of God's riches, the goodness and beauty of creation, making you part of it, and enjoy all He entrusts to you, eating manna He prepares, consuming it in moderation to nourish your body, His temple, glorified as home for the Holy Spirit, and rejoice in labor designated and gifted to you by the Lord, promising you the only means to be filled with joy, coming only by belonging to Him, so you will realize only vanity can claim you to do other. Remember advice telling us: If riches increase, set not your heart on them, being words from the Lord, for laboring for riches is to work for what never satisfies.

Wanton: We must have vanity, believing nothing else contributes so much to our success, so crucial for avoiding failure, and being so essential it is entrusted to our inherent nature, believing it is created as a gift, helping us to survive, so don't tell me to discard my vanity, having its duration so short, knowing it will soon become forgotten in the dust I become.

Stranger: Vanity stumbles on coming to belief, giving up pride, but soon on resurrecting one's old self-belief had come in vain, returning the old man as one's mentor, giving him free rein, distracting one no longer by belief in something unseen, dismissing faith as nothing to be trusted.

Bystander: We are created to worship, perhaps calling us to worship an imaginary God one can never see, trusting a deity created our cosmos, but believing in none, we must seize something to worship, anything to bow down to, following our innate needs to covet something, knowing if we have nothing to adore all would amount to nothingness, yielding to the wisdom of philosophers, so we create gods, forming something tangible for our comfort, reasoned for us to rejoice, for we can only imagine what comes after, more of the same for everyone, birth, life, and death, shuffling human ideas, recycling them by the Fates, to be unknown for our tomorrow, hoping they are planning no afflictions for days to come, leaving us free to be satisfied in our works, happy in the comfort they bring, and to believe this is not all vanity, for if we chasten our actions, attributing them to vanity, what would move us to do anything, fearing shame from doing anything out of vanity, reflecting vanity from our gaze in life's mirror. We eat and drink enjoyment from all our labors, fulfilling the inherent nature of our being stamped into the code of our flesh, worshipping the gods we create.

Wanton: Never one to humble myself before anyone, especially the Lord, I treasure pride, calling it vanity if need be, protecting something living is empty without, but I must disguise its appearance to veil my true ways, to cover me with some religion but hardly knowing which to choose, seeing all are recourse to recrimination, beliefs fought over, some inciting other's demise to destroy their convictions, all done in the name of God. So, you see we must all harbor hypocrisy, judging others for their unworthiness, while concealing our iniquities, and proclaiming nothing in the name of religion to enable others to call us hypocrites. We can never be called hypocrites if we never profess belief in any spiritual being, trusting in only being true to ourselves, resolving fidelity to all established by our truth and being true to ourselves.

Bystander: All forms of wickedness lurks, identified as such by different people sorting out human actions to call some evil, but many are acknowledged as unimportant, classifying them as minor sins or forgivable iniquities, never classifying all as significant sins, never believing a sin is always a sin, making many acceptable, promoting importance of tolerance, accepting beliefs of one as good as another, telling skeptics, That is only your belief, asking others to accept theirs as well as yours, acknowledging we all blend righteousness and free will differently, and we must tolerate the mixture I create for myself, while never judging other's actions, calling them a hypocrite, so don't stoop to this judgment for my actions.

Jove: Your anxiety is evident, worrying your tolerance, wondering if my actions are sinful, compelled to be admonished, never considering if my thoughts are ever yours, if my righteousness is ever sufficient to challenge other's ways, enough for their hearts to be untroubled.

Bystander: Pure righteousness demands flesh is never contaminated, never associated with sexual immorality, never coveting more than one's needs by worshipping idols--created gods--emulating drunken companions, liars, and extortionists for making their way through life, all ones criticizing the righteous for being hypocrites, debasing them all to dishonor and judge them with contempt, tolerating nothing they do, shaming their virtues, judging all with human wisdom's authority.

Wanton: I will never be accused of being a hypocrite, cursed for being a believer, bringing me shame as one living some faith, for I believe in nothing unseen, following nothing spiritual, trusting in myself, enabling me to be true to myself. If an almighty One created me, the free will He gives me is for relying on myself, using the powers He equipped me with. I need not humble myself if He lifted me up at creation, gifting me with His intent, hiding all treasures of wisdom and knowledge, dormant and waiting for me to reveal. I obey my inherent convictions to be true to myself, fearing only ones beguiling me with enticing words, voicing dogmas of religion and philosophy, doctrines of vain deceit, resolved in judging me for how I live, watching how I eat and drink, how I celebrate or not, if I give gods their glory. Never proclaiming sincere humility, trusting humility is always insincere, strutting about like Pharisees, comical puppets steeped in vanity, rehearsing a role doomed forever to unrighteousness, I trust only in myself, and if we have an all-knowing God, He sees through insincere humility, hypocrisy and the cosmetics of self-ordained piety.

Simple Simon: Humility protects me, guarding my dignity against undeserved scorn, assuring I will be ignored, my existence hardly noticed, dismissing any concern for me, regarding me as merely a stray animal wandering about and stirring up little disturbance, never strutting with pride, seeking no recognition, hiding any depth of life, having no treasures measuring worldly wealth, trusting the Lord counts treasures I accumulate in heaven. Remembering pride is people's greatest sin, I will never give another reason to accuse me of pride, and I trust God to honor me by justifying humility for my protection.

Wanton: Humility is for wimps, fearful of exercising their innate potential to be all they are created to be, to be themselves.

Bystander: All must be aware of human wisdom and prudence, created by being true to oneself, never choosing to do the Lord's will, as He watches, always aware of ones obediently following His way. Suffering must school learning obedience, and seeing you never suffer you entrust yourself for everything, looking inward to justify obeying whatever you will, polishing your instincts to create truth, transforming them into wisdom, remaining happy to live by your heart's direction, rejecting anyone's attempt to ordain you as a high priest, a position from which you could become a blighted hypocrite.

Simple Simon: Peace holds hands with suffering wimps ignored by the world, humbled never to be hypocrites.

Jove: Judging all to be hypocrites, how can anyone identify which hypocrisy is most unworthy, unacceptable as a Pharisee's, so we won't have the blind leading the blind, leaving us with no one to honestly live and convey the Lord's way?

Wanton: Hypocrisy thrives on your ways, fed by portions of righteousness sprinkled with free will, waiting for you to harvest adversity, a day of doom upending all your achievements, finding they amount to nothing, ending dreams for honor. By claiming hypocrisy for your ways, I can justify mine as shining with integrity.

Bystander: Growing to an age for reason's rule, dismissing parent's teaching, honoring rules no longer, ignoring traditions for following the Lord, avoiding His Words, many voices still proclaim His messages, their tongues uttering His commandments, but their hearts are distant, worshipping Him being a charade, living out human precepts, doctrines foreign to Him, creating themselves to be hypocrites with some more than others.

Stranger: Protected by trust in self-righteousness, willing themselves sanctity, seized by reason, blessed to be like no others chastened with unconscious hypocrisy, following ways unapproved by doctrines and dogmas, many are grateful for scholars who relativize all, making anything acceptable.

Wanton: Do you listen to prophets, trusting their voices, believing their messages?

Stranger: Prophets are known by their predictions, creating them to become truths, repeating them again and again until accepted as truths.

Jove: Must our judgments, concealing deceit, waiting to convict us of hypocrisy, be unworthy, never surviving the test of time as we make and trust them to be lasting, but the Lord's mercy ends our lives before their goodness fails to come out.

Bystander: Proclaiming other's shortcomings, broadcasting them for all to see, assures paying your judgments forward which inevitably return to haunt you, resurrecting what had been in your heart, indelible for only the Lord to see.

Stranger: Abiding in His light, I have no reason to stumble, obeying all His commands, so how can I falter but by deciding for myself what the Lord wants of me, revealing what is in my heart?

Bystander: Bringing your reason to bear, current with the latest knowledge, providing judgment with needs to know, can you trust your reason is not tainted by hope, never struggling with fear, hopefully trusting you know the Lord's mind, predicting the time for His return with plans for you? How does He return if He is always in your heart?

Stranger: I wait for the Lord's return, His second coming, trusting it to be the Day of the Lord, a forecast threatening every one's composure, calling them to return to Him, uncertain if it will be dreaded as a moment of darkness, filled with horror as Scripture assures, or a day of celebrating the Lord's light, being none other than His truth, so one must be born again to be included.

Bystander: Believers in ancient times dreaded the Day of the Lord, convinced of its bringing darkness, coming in retribution for their sins, iniquities deserved for ignoring God's laws, burdening them with commandments they could never obey, being too many and demanding more than they could bear, so what has changed with God's human creation, trusting in their faith and righteousness, now longing for Jesus Christ's return, His Day of the Lord? Is this day of judgment overlooked by many believing they have lived a self-determined good life, assuring them of salvation by imputation of righteousness their faith promises, and sustained by modifying God's laws to be consistent with changed times, adjusted to conform with reason and common sense, while still exercising judgment, considering penalties for sins of long-dead flesh, and eventually rewarding born-again believers with the Lord's companionship? The Day of the Lord can't be dreaded, never coming as a moment of darkness, but trusting His Word as the author of light, essential for goodness and beauty of creation being impossible without light, realizing only wickedness remains trapped in darkness.

Jurdan: What kind of thought creates spectacles of violence, the clashing dissonance of mayhem, words instigating destruction, barbarism torturing flesh, trashing life's goodness, setting an example for human actions? Do humans learn this from their imaginations of your God, never encountering anyone with His nature? Before their Savior came to teach them what their God is like, describing His goodness and beauty in all things, people imagined Him as one their image is copied from, ready to meet any adversity with blame, judgment and justice, condoning vengeance and retribution as their rightful response, impugning people with anxiety, terrorizing fearful ones, worrying them with everything, distressing them with despair. Expect nothing less on surrendering to the hands of your angry God, trusting He has never changed.

Preacher: You base all your reasoning on Yahweh's working throughout the centuries, justifying your actions, your philosophy on His. Does all people's blame rest with Him, with believers adopting His ways?

Jurdan: Can you trust all things work together for good for those loving your God, who are called according to His purpose? Are you one special, foreknown, predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, making you first-born among people?

Preacher: Never first-born as a son of man, but predestined to belong to God, to be called by Him, justified and glorified to be in His image, assured He is always for us, protected from anything being against us.

Wanton's companion: We think we know what God is like, imagining His ways, examining His actions to determine what He must be like, and reminding us we are made in His image, thinking our ways must resemble His, wondering if His experiment with me sometimes surprises Him with the imaginations my mind encounters, revealing something He hadn't considered. Look at all His failed experiments with life, creating different designs one after another, discarding each by extinction, learning something from each invention, saving what seems to work for incorporation into His next design.

Jove: Does anything become extinct, knowing its information persists, tempting scientists to extract its code for resurrecting life God at one time decided to eliminate?

Bystander: Information is never destroyed, being hidden somewhere, waiting God's time, His decision whether humans deserve its revelation.

Jurdan: Learned people create information. Waiting on any god for it is like expecting your Lord to reveal Himself, showing us who He is.

Bystander: God gave human's instruction on fire, gifting them to harness its use after observing flames consume what He created, training people to devour all that a fire can kindle, and feasting their desires on energy from the sun and stars, they now pursue information on God's secrets of fusion, thinking scientific reason will discover its power, never contemplating only God controls the time for its revelation, with Him waiting for a deserving time.

Jurdan: What should He be in any hurry? See what we have done with fire, wreaking more havoc than good, fine-tuning its uses for destruction rather than construction, decimating much of creation's goodness, manifesting our juvenile fascination, spell-bound in awe, watching flames destroy, undoing creation's wonders. Why should we yearn for a new fuel to drive our desires, an understanding of fusion to be trusted with, never realizing it could run wild, making us a new star to blaze across the sky like a firework, fulfilling your prophecy foretold, creating a Gotterdammerung.

Preacher: Maybe someday when our battles feeding fire's seeds, sprouting flames of desire, enriching coffers to equip violence, letting blood to satisfy decrees demanding righteousness, cease, bringing people to some sense of creation's goodness, God will resume His revelations and give us insights on meeting our wants.

Wanton: Your concerns can never be mine, struggling about information's coming and going. Pain occupies my days, festering worries, busying all my time, preventing break-ins of happiness, stealing hope of its interlude to create space for peace, preventing experiences I was made to enjoy, mocking wisdom I call on, intellectual comprehension from common sense. Why should I not live for simple pleasures of my feelings, seeing life is made for this, asking for evidence if there is more, proving its assurance and promise for some other way. Can I count on any other, rewarding me to deny my senses, awarding me prizes of righteousness, seeing some certainty looming, the ultimate reality for all, blessing us all, never troubled again about the winds of fate herding and corralling life's chance, securing them for our direction?

Jurdan: Created in vain, a whim in evolutionary progression, humans are given so little time, destruction beginning at birth, blessing them with only short moments to love, little more than measly intervals for happiness.

Wanton: Purposely created, given times for birth and death, encoded for a life of fleeting moments, I was never absolute righteousness equipped for any eternity, but prepared for sorrow, uprooted by fate to be thrown into this world, subject to perpetual distress crying for healing, experiencing grief dismissing interludes of fleeting happiness, suffering strife from pride and hatred, compelled to destroy creation's goodness, plagued by urgings to repent and be cleansed, but for what, preparing me to revisit all I was created to do, recycling through life's meaninglessness, revisiting all embodiment of the nothing new under the sun, realizing everything I plant will be nothing new, but soon to be uprooted by someone believing their activity is something new under the sun.

Jurdan: Created with a time for everything and unprepared for eternity with only imaginations of its essence, fleeing circumstances dancing to the tune of fate and blowing uncertainty on us, encouraging us to herd the wind, don't neglect time to love and hate, undone in eternity where one is deprived of a time for war and a time for peace.

Wanton: Only in dreams can one chase and harness winds, herding lofty ambitions, corralling their whimsy, discovering their mystery, capturing their energy.

Stranger: Dreams are as fleeting breath, coming and leaving as phantom wisps, unannounced and uninvited, appearing for mysterious reasons, seizing one's thoughts, silencing wills to protest, shattering peaceful sleep, one's only moments to escape reality. Could dreams be caged, allowing them only token moments for disturbance, rationing their time to invade one's slumber, restricting their invasion, one could schedule their appearance to conform with priorities of our allotted time, acknowledging all existence is finite, having no moments to be wasted on what can never be understood?

Bystander: Surrendering all possessions enriching your wants could pacify your sleep, more than for ones living exclusively by their will, reaping all they desire as for righteous ones living by laws, created by them to fulfill all their wants. Treasures of this world precipitate concerns lasting into the night, sending them into darkness, hiding them from light where lasting truth remains, likely urging people to fear God, sending them to fear Him before they will respect Him with reverence, awe and love. What resolution can darkness resolve? Nothing for one treasuring things of this world.

Jove: I was never created to be deprived, assigning me poverty and forcing me to beg, being a blemished misfit from birth. Righteousness is already a birthright, created as in Adam, verifying all are wonderfully made, establishing goodness, beauty and truth, uniting our matter harmoniously, interdependent in its functional arrangements, spiritual forces knitting each item into wholeness, creating a composite totally right, a righteous framework to develop righteousness, waiting for love to paint it with beauty's hues.

Jurdan: All people never become righteous, never completing the task for being wonderfully made. How does your God manage those never completing His plan, ones He chose to create?

Bystander: Life is only one phase for each being, never being formed to suffer utter destruction, giving God options for growing and perfecting beings in subsequent stages, never assigning any to failure, still considering all wonderfully made, containing His blueprint sketching out truths of goodness and beauty, created by the Artist who has no thoughts of destroying His canvasses, knowing they possess a right foundation, prepared for building righteousness. Life is limited, giving people time to define themselves, to establish a relationship with their Creator, never wasting time by refusing to acknowledge His hand, but reach out to accept His truth.

Hope: Humans covet perceptions of happy endings, imagining their optimism for circumstances' conclusions, rejoicing for outcomes to fantasize as meeting expectations, satisfying their greatest illusions, ignoring the wealth of creation's goodness, dreaming only of love and beauty, never acknowledging their definitions of life's tragedies as congruent with creation's beauty and truth.

Bystander: Thinking nature consists only of forms, illusions must conform to images, thinking nothing of anything but its matter, never considering its invisible content, unseen forces sometimes described as spirit, its soul conveying goodness and truth, promising its ultimate beauty, ensuring matter's relationship with all its pieces, trusted to be components, but hidden in mystery, seen indirectly only by what they do, never by how they appear.

Jurdan: I beheld chaos where others see goodness and beauty and had to decide if my visions are real, wondering if life has any meaning or if its truth is merely an illusion. Stealing into seclusion, hiding in a monastery to sort out my uncertainties, delving into doctrines, studying dogmas purporting to instruct me on the Word of your God, trusting it to save me from my angst, I discovered His message did nothing to restore order to the chaos reported in the beginning, convincing me nothing has changed, leaving persisting disorder, giving me a mission for battle, rectifying unfinished business, for reverting all wrongs, unifying my energies to take over where your God failed to civilize our world.

Bystander: You discern God's goodness by recognizing forms of outer beauty, differentiating them as pleasing or repulsive, possibly abhorrent, never delving into their inner mystery to understand the makings of their beauty, but on unraveling their structure you can appreciate creation's greater beauty, marveling at its goodness, despite never being able to describe truths hidden in matter's invisible depths, secrets determining its form, persisting in mystery, and discovering universal principles creating matter's goodness, you must concede that all creation possesses beauty despite what you see in any mode, judged to be in some cases beautiful and in others ugly, so look deeply into all nature to discover its beauty, possessed by all including what the Creator destines for decay, destroying what His Spirit has spoken into matter.

Jurdan: You base all your reasoning on Yahweh's working throughout the centuries, justifying your actions, your philosophy on His, blaming Him for continuing chaos with believers adopting His ways.

Bystander: God would never choose you to become one of His own, having purposes of your own to serve, but He waits patiently for your self-sufficiency to end, recognizing your efforts amount to nothing, trusting you will eventually become His servant, dismissing self-assured grandeurs of virtue and integrity, knowledge and wisdom, worldly honors and achievements, abandoning illusions of indispensability and distractions to mundane otherness, none of which claims creation's goodness and beauty, as you come to the Lord by denying one's usefulness, removing all obstacles to relationship with Him, impoverishing oneself of clinging to nothing of their being.

Jurdan: We all have gods and can choose which one to worship, realizing your God demands much nonsense. Trusting gods of science to reveal matter's mysteries, giving us truths to live by, I don't need your God.

Stranger: Humans discover no human wisdom or truths composing matter, nothing they can describe except what some component does, reporting only traces of its footprints, permitting speculation only on its movements, never understanding the mystery representing God's involvement in all creation, invisible as it is intended to be, veiled by Him, waiting to be perceived by us, His truth unifying goodness and beauty for all creation.

Jurdan: Not necessarily. With people creating your God, giving Him human attributes, I adopt what they believe, conforming to what He must be, set up to have human characteristics, modeling Him as someone to emulate, doing nothing more than anyone would and trust in His approval, and if we did develop Him from our imagination, my actions conform with what people expect, good or bad, no more, no less, permitting us to determine our destiny as we think He would do.

Bystander: You must believe that you are God, equal to Him, denying His glory, changing our incorruptible God to reflect your image of Him to be a corruptible person proclaiming attributes we despise, changing our God's truths, declaring them to be lies, enabling people to worship themselves, to cherish the work of their minds and hands.

Jurdan: Human imagination reveals your God, allowing you no other way to know Him, creating God to be the author of goodness and beauty. Tell me where I might find beauty? Does it hide with goodness?

Bystander: Sadly, you must ask, seeking the place of goodness and beauty, never knowing where to look, blind to everything around you, because they came into being with creation, encompassing all created by God's Word, and you ask now where to find them. God created you with a vision to behold creation's goodness and beauty, but it is never activated until you invite the Holy Spirit in, asking Him to fit you with lenses to appreciate His gifts. Discard glasses for viewing everything darkly, and don those for revealing all you can see with light, the light of eternal truth proclaiming the Lord's glory, testifying to His beauty, breathed altogether by the goodness of His Word.

Jurdan: How can creation claim goodness, the light of eternal truth, when the rich gain more riches and the poor remain poor?

Bystander: Gain for the rich is meaningless, filling stores with greater treasures, but for what, trinkets adding nothing worthwhile to their meager deposits in heaven, tokens hardly encouraging their worthiness, leaving them in poverty on demise. The poor do not remain poor if they accumulate all their treasures for heaven's keeping, relying here only on needs the Lord provides, promised and fulfilled by Him.

Preacher: Consenting to creation's goodness and beauty, one cannot disparage death, realizing all life must embrace its certainty, accepting it for everything changes with time, demanding us to endure with courage until our life has been fulfilled, never allowing fear, despondency, or despair to threaten our resolve, never needing hope for dispelling any uncertainty.

Bystander: Living bottomed out in despair, forever agonizing over life's tragedies, one can never see creation's goodness and beauty, veiled and blinded by tears, lacking the courage to accept life's certainties, unable to reconcile apparent failures with any goodness.

Jurdan: My certainties promise no goodness or beauty for creation. No such thing exists.

Bystander: God revealed creation's goodness by sending His infinite beauty in Christ and continues to progressively unveil His mysteries since, bit by bit showing us how to investigate His beauty further, giving us pieces of the puzzling universe for bettering our lives, doing all by His grace.

Stranger: Living vicariously, understanding my limits in recognizing beauty, I look to Jesus, a fountain of grace pouring forth His every dimension, leaving behind all my struggles to apprehend goodness, no longer expecting beauty to be experienced by reason, finding it at last in Christ.

Jurdan: Living must be with a mask, comedy or tragedy signifying its perception, showing us there is nothing more.

Bystander: Comedy provides an escape from reality, running from creation's goodness and beauty. Tragedy is also a perception, sometimes becoming an illusion, portrayed to be a failure of integrity, convincing all to lament, seizing moments to question creation's beauty, marring God's design, but consider what time does, erasing suffering, rethinking tragedy as a historical event, never believing it requires lasting lamentation, but manifests evolution's progress, reconstructing creation while being continuously marred by beings with free will, magnifying their suffering by how they choose to live.

Stranger: Tragedy's appearance being ephemeral, never lasting, randomly and unpredictable, absurd, unreasonable and unexplainable, chaotic, arriving for no logical reason, deceives us with claims of negating creation's goodness and beauty, damaging what the Creator designed for all to share, ignoring His mandate to assure providence for all.

Jove: Using gifts given me by God, the goodness of His beauty in all creation, designed to develop my righteousness, creating me with free will to make my own decisions, I blend the two, reasoning their need for success, but moderating them so neither dictates all my actions, balancing them to prevent destruction by either, assuring these convictions to drive success, guarding against carelessness, realizing no one else must invade my way to steal my opinions and replace them with others' truths.

Jurdan: Can you know real beauty, revealed only by your God's goodness, subject to belief in Him, conveyed by the Holy Spirit, never by any other means, beyond any reasoning powers to understand, calling no manifestations of human truths beautiful, as we see no beauty in our drudgery and adversities, suffering and pain, disappointments and despair, convincing the terms we must accept, and the conditions of our existence can never be described as a reflection of goodness, without which there can be no beauty, except what we choose to be, relying on our common sense rather than the Holy Spirit's sense?

Bystander: Humans cannot identify the goodness of beauty without relying on the Holy Spirit; no beauty can be discovered in evil accomplishments, acknowledging nothing good can come from something bad and meant for evil.

Jurdan: How can you consent to creation's goodness, giving it unqualified beauty, never subjecting it to reason, relying on some ancient superstition trying to transform virtue out of chaos magically?

Bystander: God creates everything good, making nothing worthless, verified by making all part of the whole, all in unity, nothing existing isolated without contact with another, seeing no disruption by isolating any person from all others, fracturing relationships and punishing harmony, destroying relationships, for as we know He created everything for interacting, creating all for unity, interconnecting all in the cosmos, entities to entities, entities to beings, and beings to beings, leaving nothing from atomic assembly parts to heavenly bodies without interactions, unified to comprise creation's goodness, testifying to its overall beauty, forming love by its essential bonding, realizing love is key to unity. Statements of love fail on dissolving bonds uniting all in the making for the goodness of all in creation. Our God creates with words of love because His goodness creates beauty in unity, leading Him to create all out of love, acknowledging Him to be the God of love, showing us how to revere Him, to worship Him reverently without fear, acknowledging He created us with overflowing goodness and beauty. Believing all this is true, He surely unites with all things and beings, never wishing to have any union broken, and we remain united with Him through all things pleasing to Him, protecting the bonds we have with all His creation.

Stranger: Dissonance fragments beauty, disrupting proportional relationships within the whole, disrupting its assembly by humans thinking they can reassemble its pieces for disharmony to their liking, distorting goodness, changing the world's reality from beauty to ugly blemishes, authorized by whatever violence is needed.

Jove: I can do more than others, blending right portions of righteousness without denying my will, God's precious gift. Our laws comply with His, as we take care in creating none to tread on His, reasoning our decrees are just in complying with His, always resorting to common sense when necessary to rein in our temptations, never extending our actions to deny His will. We carefully research His archives, identifying His commandments, many being vague and inconsistent, seeking new ways for their interpretation, discarding one's no longer for our times, rewriting many to conform to our ideas, reasoning new explanations to comply with common sense. We are here to remake this world, restoring its goodness from whence its beauty flows.

Stranger: Acknowledging my home is not of this world, believing my vision is stricken from seeing its beauty, I look forward to a heavenly home. This is my failing, being human, no different from the Hebrews returning from slavery and exile, coming back to resume their old ways, blinded to creation's goodness and beauty, fearfully relying on comfort in complaining about God's injustice, having little trust in His promises, covenants He renewed from moment to moment, returning to deplore their circumstances He never ceased in coming. Better to be reborn but never for this world.

Jurdan: Stranger is right. Human vision perceives no goodness, witnessing persistent views of chaos, creation disordered and out of control, prevailing in disharmony with nothing to sustain unity, understanding achievements of order accomplishes nothing, with all fading away to die, realizing our eyes are merely for managing life, meeting survival's needs and nothing more, never to see goodness for creation. Compelling us to download the Holy Spirit, equipping our soul with mandates from your Lord to recognize goodness and appreciate its beauty will never be my great need. Reflect on modern art, acknowledging its praise on chaos, formlessness, deviation from goodness, splattered nothingness on canvasses, dissonance in repetitive sounds called music, celebrating free will's expression in nihilism, translated to pleasures and its enjoyment, fulfilling people's wants and desires, never attributing beauty to God's goodness.

Stranger: Your belief describing constant chaos needs to be dismissed to restore trust in universal goodness, requiring someone to sweep out the trash before creation can reclaim goodness and beauty, restoring harmony's beauty in the relationship of the Father with His Spirit.

Preacher: Heed Jove's words. Blending righteousness with free will desires accommodates diversity, reflecting creation with its limitless range of design--an essential feature requiring harmony--recognizing God's establishment of goodness to include everything, displaying beauty in all, maybe unrecognized by some, matching little of what they consider excellent, the vastness of what is seen as bad and ugly, even depicting the worst as evil, never trusting diversity, choosing only people who are most like us, or perhaps ones deformed but cute and cuddly. People begin to recognize diversity succeeds in harmonizing by unifying different thoughts, acknowledging different ideas bear merit in building peaceful domains, enlisting novelty to foster growth, knowing Creator God continually remodels His work, employing evolution to create new appearances, multiplying diversity for all things. If we seek righteousness for all, condemning difference to prevent diversity, demanding justice and retribution for wayward excursions, we would be forced to invoke unacceptable punishments, reprisals expected from freely willed designs.

Jurdan: If creation is intended to fashion contrasts, developing diversity being the Creator's goal, revealed by science where particles must have antiparticles, all matter must have antimatter, and evil must oppose goodness, how could He proclaim on His completion of all, creation is good? If His goodness reflects all creation as beauty, how can one account for evil and antitheses? Are they human machinations, contributed by people, having a will to free them from constraints of His goodness?

Stranger: Jesus Christ, the One I follow, says, my Father and I are one, united, knowing Him is knowing the Father, having abandoned My individuality I am united with Him, united in spirit with One claiming unique identity, denying any diversity, proclaiming the Lord to be One, the only God, realizing people will decree many gods to be.

Jurdan: How can you be united with your Lord as one, creating or forever searching for a religion to serve your wants, one to be modified, to be changed for accommodating your desires, laden with sufficient degrees of righteousness to sanctify all your actions, destroying tarnished remnants from deviant deeds, eliminating beliefs sprouting from Cain and Abraham, seeding laws ordained to be your God's word, emphasizing mandatory decrees, ordering death for disobedience, preserving loyal remnants to build His empire here. Without laws people can never judge and condemn deviants, ridding religion's purity of all blemishes, tolerating nothing to endanger it, so its followers can bow before their altars in complete obedience to their laws, ignoring any temptations to reconcile differences with others, excluding those threatening their decrees, dismissing all notions of unity, trusting agreement would destroy their beliefs. Consider reconciliation with creation's brothers as impossible, an imaginary mantra of those preaching love for everyone, proclaiming it is willed by God's goodness, trying to fashion an impossibility for something claimed to be decorated in beauty. Human's reconciliation for most brothers requires their destruction, eliminating diversity, sacrificing deviants who promise to doom our existence.

Preacher: We can't claim unity, making us one in the Spirit, with our will wandering, leading us in ways of least resistance, following different strokes, unique for each of us, striking out in paths of each one's choosing, each claiming beliefs to be just as good as any others, justifying and distributing tolerance for all but maintaining intolerance for unity compromising free will's choices, insisting on an ultimate authority to seal accord and deny individualism supporting free thinking.

Jurdan: Standing divided and protecting all their desires, people ensure no unity through your Spirit, trusting it fragments ways they live, commanding all to be united, responding to all instructions from some Holy Spirit, telling believers they must unify their lives with His proclamations. No one can be united in Spirit, squelching diversity, compelling all to think as one and never permit people to think openly how they should live.

Preacher: Unity in fellowship can transform us to be one in following the Spirit.

Jurdan: Your Holy Spirit, trusted to bring words of wisdom, counseling people to be one, fails to unify them, resulting in little agreement on the fellowship to assemble their lives into accord with each other.

Preacher: We have a Messiah, One you seem to have no room for in your heart.

Jurdan: Who is your Messiah, trusted to come for people's salvation, believing your God sent him but people rejected Him, an alien to cultural standards, keeping many waiting until they satisfied His requirements for acceptance, criteria for acknowledging Him, standards still debated by priestly wisdom, admittedly forever espoused, but without consensus by religion's diversity, drawing on human experiences to create a Messiah for gracing people with love, showering them with mercy, being one to worship and adore, never exacting judgment, never creating victims for vengeance, and never seeking repentance? How long must you wait for this promised Messiah, perfected by your hope?

Stranger: My Messiah has already come, and He promises to return soon.

Jurdan: If He has come once, sent by your God to free His chosen ones why must He come again, seeing He lacked much notice and failed on His first try?

Preacher: Jesus first coming wanted much notice, following a procession of wannabe Messiahs, His message hardly heard, attracting but few followers, needing His death for anyone to understand, leaving many to confuse His sayings, tempting many to trust their wisdom for understanding, opening a way for diversity to pit His followers against each other, choosing prophet's predictions to build their dogmas, trying to establish a time and reason for Christ to return, each having inside information, personal revelations on His plans, God's intentions with His second coming, even on how He will return.

Jurdan: If His first time here had little effect, why should it be different with a second coming? Will doctrines and dogmas developed on His existence, notably confusing since, be more unacceptable now with expanding diversity of belief, compounded by introductions of heretic material working to confirm His sayings with people's changing ideas, trusting human reason for growing people's wisdom to replace their Lord's truth and reach the summit of all understanding, a pinnacle where they need Him no longer?

Bystander: The Lord designed existence to be diverse, creating all to be different, and fighting against His plans for diversity will always fail, allowing codes directing our beings to be flexible, changing with circumstances He creates, molding each one to develop differently, and you call for elimination of diversity, forcing all to be alike with none having unique superiority, reducing us to be sheep, each one following the ways of free will, breaking any relationship with an unwanted other, living on an island to oneself.

Jurdan: What is for me to fear but invasion by imaginary spirits, entering in quickly where one's composure is unguarded, vacant and freely inviting others' truths, tolerating anyone's entrance, never discriminating between good and unacceptable, trusting in diversity to be harmless.

Preacher: We are created by the Lord for relationships, needing them for our thoughts and activities, never abandoning us to Isles of loneliness void of interactions with others, but on developing dilemmas for us, predictable difficulties with others, He is our counselor, directing us to choose peace in bonding with seeming incompatibility, celebrating diversity He has chosen for us.

Jurdan: Acknowledge your Lord's manipulation of our virtues, testing them by surrounding us with unlovable people, proclaiming we must love them as ourselves, watching us scramble to please Him, working out our acceptance for His pleasure, performing deeds to convince Him we do indeed love all as ourselves.

Bystander: Does the Lord create people to be unlovable or is it by our intent to make them so, realizing we train ourselves to determine flaws in others, establishing blemishes to reject any manifestations of diversity, transforming creation's beauty to focus on transfigurations for establishing anxiety, making our existence eager for the Day of the Lord?

Jurdan: What is perfection, signaling completeness, but another's evaluation, dependent on assigning flaws, categorizing diversity into acceptable and unacceptable, confusing perfection's selection with rhetoric's power making the final decision.

Bystander: Diversity restrains us from judging perfection, bargaining with indecision for commitment to a single choice, as we know all come from a different mold and painted with unlike hues, thinking we can evaluate a tree's perfect apple.

Jurdan: If your God determines destiny, foreordaining everything, we deserve neither rewards nor punishments, being actions of His design, obediently carried out by fate, making us no more than innocent robots, never needing to assemble any virtues because they could never change His plans, intentions of your unchanging God, maintaining what we perceive good and bad must be His nature, confusing us to think differently, acknowledging He needs diversity of what we consider goodness and evil to continue His design.

Jove: If God needs both good and evil for creation's ongoing, how can we judge Him or be judged by Him unless He uses different criteria than what we use to judge humans. Being true to my own principles, pleading ignorance for others' standards, trusting in my innocence, I never defile my thoughts and deny accusations degrading my purity, assuring protection for my righteousness, never constructing evil thoughts, never tempted by evil seen in others, remaining true to myself, defining my own truths to live by.

Bystander: Where does your purity come from, anointing you with its essence, never commissioned at your birth as you were tarnished by the world? One's purity comes only from one unblemished, from welcoming the Holy Spirit entering your soul to becoming guardian of all your thoughts and deeds. Pleading ignorance testifies to not knowing the Holy Spirit, making your purity an illusion, thinking it develops from following laws and philosophical decrees assuring some degree of innocence, trusting and never challenging their doctrines constituting your eternal truths, as you choose to be a coward, hamstrung by ways of the world, crippling ones from becoming what Lord designed them to be, pleading ignorance to live in a fool's paradise, instructed by one's intellect to remain in darkness.

Jove: I trust my righteousness, knowing it gives me power, justifying my actions and deciding what must be judged unworthy. The world has not tarnished my ways, making me sinful from birth, but acknowledges I lead a life of goodness.

Jurdan: What criteria determine your righteousness and boost your confidence in its validity? Have you some gold standard for its measurement or is that left for your vanity, promising your wisdom never to fail?

Jove: When I become discouraged, seeing others punching holes in my righteousness, I run to my sanctuary to seek peace and affirmation, my mutual admiration society all speaking and hearing what members want to hear, where the evil of difference breeding discord is forbidden, leaving all in accord. My righteousness cannot tolerate all of God's work under the sun because searching for its goodness sometimes fails, my wisdom perhaps being insufficient for its knowing. Finding little consolation in following Him I choose to remain with my mutual admiration society. I must distance myself from all others, trying to disregard that we all end mixed in a bowl of dust, and until then I will separate myself from those evil, unclean, and blemished by their actions, swearing by the world's ways.

Jurdan: Needing no righteousness, nothing prevents me from living my way, ridiculing temptation, eating unrestricted, drinking wine to merry my heart, never pausing to draw a line, ignoring your Lord's decrees for restricting my happiness, desires to be myself, and you can waste your time, unashamedly loving His creation and vainly hoping for truth to spring forth from your imaginations.

Stranger: Choosing to join fools, sojourning in their house of mirth, regaling in songs of nothingness, rebuking tongues of the wise, finding laughter better than sorrow, avoiding any house of mourning, seeking distractions to forget painful woes, you sink into mire where all is meaningless. We offer wisdom for all to profit under the sun, protecting them from free will's ways, promising bounty to increase territory they command, prospering them as no other can. Without wisdom, following fools, you discover ways for wickedness to prolong life, so it would seem, drenching your thoughts in wine to make living a merry-go-round, finding amusements available only in drunken bliss.

Preacher: So must all people choose, realizing no one is just among them, no one seeking ways to be good, knowing they are all condemned, sinners as they are?

Jurdan: Wine remains my gateway to understanding, dulling inhibitions, opening senses to polish imaginations, uncovering intuitions lying dormant, sequestered by commandments admonishing my thoughts to remain in seclusion, but this is only a recreation, restructuring my vanity's needs.

Bystander: Better to trust the Lord, telling us to come to Him, all who labor, heavy laden with their burden, afflicting them with depression relieved temporarily only by revelry in wine, promising all with rest for their souls, assuring His yoke is easy and His burden is light, but many take His burden to be unacceptable, interfering with the needs of their desires, as they work out ways to satisfy their wants and make them acceptable in the world's eyes.

Stranger: Conducting business with others as one's own life, concealing truths, fabricating lies, stealing innocence of others, emulating unacceptable behavior, consuming chemicals to forget commitments, grooming pride to reveal one's true nature, releasing anger for all to taste, hiding dishonesty, knowing much must remain concealed to disguise what one is, nature hidden, undressed only behind closed doors, revealing nakedness in the dark, where rule can be dictated by one's will, trusted to be hidden from Satan's approval, lurking outside, waiting to claim one to be his own kind, how can one expect mercy from the Lord according to His Word?

Bystander: Deciding on a right time, bringing all to bear, lamenting over people's celebrations, freely exercising their will, consuming beyond their share, satisfying their flesh with gluttony and wine, fornicating without discernment, ignoring innate instructions, hastening their day, people free themselves from the Lord's supervision, doing all by will, trying to succeed at their own will being done, being servants to only themselves. Who needs the Day of the Lord when people can will to accomplish all He threatens, doing it all before He is given the chance?

Preacher: Believing to have the kingdom of heaven within, one can't satisfy its requirements and belong in the world, unless one becomes a hermit, living alone, abandoning all relationships, ignoring fellowship with semi-believers, praying for the Day of the Lord to come soon.

Jurdan: Your Lord could transform our errors, redoing what He proposed us to be, returning to an earlier time, resetting a previous design, restoring humans by breathing new words into a chosen primate, experimenting with a different humanoid potential for creating humankind. He could do this without destroying the harmony of creation's goodness and protect its beauty, by convening the Day of the Lord, rescinding His decree subjecting all people to be born in sin and live in iniquity, dismissed from this world, to no longer be stumbling blocks, existing in their treasured abominations. If we are created in His image, He could change like us and redo His plan.

Jove: Who would cut people off, ending their tenure with the Day of the Lord, proclaiming their demise with an event to know who He is, broadcasting I am the Lord? What will that restore? Destroyed people can never hear any of the Lord's words, speaking to a kingdom of the dead, cut off from all the living.

Jurdan: Fear can't drive me to believe your Lord is a judge, a creator of all lasting decrees, a king to save us, instilling fear for me to comply, furious if I disobey, claiming my destruction if I don't obey, exacting retribution on His Day of the Lord, exercising His claim, Vengeance is mine.

Preacher: Our loving God responds only with love, mending creation's flaws, healing disruptions, but you cannot assume His responses flow from wrath, believing He is punishing human beings, identifying individuals to be punished for disobedience, for they are caught in His restoration processes and you cannot blame God for that, renewing goodness for creation, having been disrupted by human's ungodliness and unrighteousness, continuing to be a calamity needing restoration of creation's goodness, fulminating in the Day of the Lord.

Jurdan: If your God chooses to correct creation's errors, their amendment is done by evolution, never requiring complete demolition to redesign forms, to begin rebuilding from nothing. Give evolution a chance to improve on creation's goodness. We barely comprehend the beauty of creation's goodness to judge needs for remodeling. Evolution never destroys all to start over, knowing no such answer, such being the way of humans, perhaps being the way of your Lord if He is the mold for your image, having ideas and thoughts resembling yours.

Jove: I am not one wishing for its appearance, at least not in a form some prophets describe, destruction of both heaven and earth, sending them to a fiery end, to an inferno for their remaking, incinerating all that God created and being satisfied He is good, leaving us with the conclusion He made some mistakes and they demand correction.

Jurdan: You maintain hopes, trusting convictions of your Lord's returning, remembering His promises to come back soon, before His apostles would suffer death, but you must admit some doubt, seeing He should have returned long before now.

Preacher: We cannot know all His words, confident in scribe's only somewhat reliability trying to faithfully remember what He said, hoping none are ever embellished with their own biases, trusting their words are translated maintaining Jesus' intent, preserving His sayings after passing through pens of many interpreters, so we cannot establish a time for the Day of the Lord, hoping it to come at some time soon, seeing soon the coming millennium's promise.

Jurdan: What will your new heaven be like, your hoped-for paradise, coming after the Day of the Lord, trusting it must resemble somewhat all you know in this creation? Assemble all your sources of happiness, experiences bringing contentment, and honestly evaluate each one, judging each if they were other than for satisfying lusts of the flesh, acquiring treasures to sate lusty appetites for instincts, inherent drives immoderately followed, thinking your pleasures here will continue in heaven, exercising a heavenly body little different from yours here. Will you be content with things bringing you no joy now?

Jove: Is peace with God possible by never messing with the goodness of His creation, realizing the Day of the Lord does just that, sacrificing creation's goodness to appease Him?

Bystander: Humans observe beasts killing their prey, taking lives out of necessity, never leaving any as sacrifice, only remains after satisfying their needs, left-overs for vultures as is meant to be, never wasted as sacrifices to an unknown god, but fulfilling needs for all God's creation, ensuring survival for all. Who can be satisfied by sacrifices to fire, thinking there is a sun god pleased by this offering. Killing humans is akin to sacrifices made to Molech, wanton destruction by fire, never knowing how much is enough, unable to discern if this god can ever be satisfied, having the taste of blood forever in its mouth. Not so for God, the only One, who tells us over and over I am not pleased with your sacrifices, continuing traditions you are reluctant to dismiss, so cease such actions I abhor, destroying what I have created, my gifts to all creation earmarked for you. The Lord continues, telling us, You treat yourselves with assemblies, enacting them to honor me, but never pleasing me, seeing none absolves you of your iniquities, and you weary me to bear them, forcing me to watch haughty, proud and lofty one's, gesturing with ancient traditions to please their Lord, invoking idols of tradition, never thinking they will be abolished in the coming Day of The Lord, idols of confusion persisting from ancient gods, but God is never one of confusion, authorizing sacrifices to be symbolic of peace, seeing peace can never accompany destruction.

Stranger: God sends a worm to destroy the shade comforting ones in darkness, sending them into light, out from shadows hiding truth, destroying prevailing darkness, restoring light in abundance of the first creation, and He will proclaim that the Day of the Lord.

Jove: Is that the peace of circumstances he sends our way?

Bystander: Circumstances most often hinder our will, calling for humility, confession and repentance, but humility is seldom a Christian leader's virtue, hardly ever in vogue, committed to few hearts, sustaining few committed stalwarts, knowing humble individuals are acknowledged as shrinking violets, out of touch, installing pride as its replacement, trusted to be a proud leader's success, growing vanity with accomplishments. Who would not be entertained by scorning downtrodden prophets, mocking evangelists garmented in shambles, preaching Jesus' Words on a street corner and confronted by some dog barking at their proclamations, articulating the coming Day of the Lord?

Stranger: Never forget we are commanded by Christ to be responsible to all people, committed to Him for all our thoughts and deeds, for all human sins, but transformation of His commands, changing His Words to tolerable messages transfigures Him, veiling His humility, minimizing His virtues, making Him an acceptable friend, possessing the needs and wants we endear, changing Jesus to be our buddy,

Bystander: Church leaders preach humans are worthy and easily freed of sin by being imputed with Christ's righteousness, and He waits for all to follow. But how they are to follow Him has been changed, making it easy for anyone to join Him and maintain pride, now no longer the greatest of sins, no longer mentioned to disturb anyone wishing to remain enchanted with themselves.

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Vagrant: Convicted of my nothingness, wearing tatters symbolizing my insignificance, testifying to my worthlessness, subject to judgments of the world today, it is difficult to be different, belonging to the Lord and following Him, faithful to all His ways. My humility is a stench to prideful leaders claiming to outdo all that Christ has done.

Bystander: Vagrancy has a purpose, calling attention to neglected ones deprived of the Creator's promises.

Vagrant: Called to be a sacrifice, having no purpose, dying for no cause with nothing to sacrifice, knowing hope for purpose remains with others, acknowledging all purpose disappears with one's last breath, sacrifice exists for the living, with extreme sacrifice being truly a living sacrifice, giving up all to follow the Lord, trusting one's whole soul, spirit and body be preserved blameless, in pure uprightness, waiting for the Lord's return.

Jurdan: Created with imagination and free will, even vagrants dream up a creator, thinking one like them must be responsible for their being, and calling them to sacrifice to sustain their existence is script written by a jokester, a prankster retaliating to cover the creator's mistakes.

Jove: What deserves retaliation from our Creator, trusting we are a portion of creation's goodness and beauty? Is it perhaps to correct some error, developing because He failed to include some essential part, recognizing His mistake when it was too late? Perhaps He uses evolution to make subtle changes, working still on His masterpiece, realizing our destruction appearing with the Day of the Lord admits failure, dooming all the goodness built into creation to annihilation, returning all to chaos, the starting point for redoing and rebuilding, likening Him to creatures that cycle through building and destroying.

Jurdan: How can creation be praised for goodness, realizing it houses a den of thieves, subverting its purpose, desecrating it with people of free will, developing gods to serve their desires, never serving as a home for your God, a house of straw to prayer for Him, for Him to hear little except from the mouths of babes?

Jove: Why must history end, trusting in destruction for its completion, judging failure for God's design, terminating creation with the Day of the Lord, simulating what human reason would decide, destroying everything to celebrate a person's failure?

Jurdan: Are we reason's misfits, a motley crew designed from a brew of truth formulating mistakes, trusting in creation's goodness entering the caldron of destruction on the Day of your Lord.

Jove: Created as misfits, placed here for reasons unknown, Christ came for us, giving us no explanations why we are here, telling us "My Kingdom is not of this world," while adopting our passions to prove He like us could be human, but He never explained why we are here, telling us all along we can change our human nature and prepare ourselves to be accepted into His kingdom. His Words speak of a coming time, the Day of the Lord, when destruction annihilates our earthly home. These are words of prophecy. Did He come as more than a prophet? Are these words of doom truly the will of God, the creator having labored millions of years bringing us to where we are only to destroy our home in the blink of an eye?

Jurdan: Jesus as a prophet, coming as the prototype for transforming and perfecting humans, born a man while still attached by umbilical cord to your God, waiting time to be recalled, was here long enough to be rejected, unacceptable as another son of your God, wasted, treated as another masquerading as the Messiah. Prophets never come to be archetypes of human perfection and if they remain to be venerated, it is only by human manipulations to embellish their words and deeds, adding whatever gives them lasting powers that can't be forgotten, making them god-like to be worshipped forever.

Bystander: Rejecting the Lord and relishing conflict, many rush to enlist in battle, dismissing prevailing harmony, following byways to discord, and tiring of peace they seek doomsdays of their choosing.

Stranger: People waiting for the Day of the Lord, believing in its coming, predicting its time and place, grow impatient, developing attitudes for self-destruction, measuring out greater hatred, teaching intense hostility for all others, arming themselves with weapons for annihilation, so don't be surprised if they don't wait for His Day, His Armageddon, believing it comes too late, destroying all to leave nothing standing.

Jurdan: Your Lord's commands, the power of His Words, drive all to fear Him, arming many to face enemies, creating weapons from the arsenal of His design, authorizing them to be brandish, and you can find all His Words reported by scribes, written to last, protected by followers, enforced by the most trusted. Commanding ardent ones to enforce obedience, to destroy breakers of His covenant, killing them swiftly by dispatching people's heads, consider if this is more barbarous than destruction with projectiles to destroy life, gunning down enemies never justified as such by the Lord's commandments. Is Yahweh your Lord, punishing humans with decrees they can never obey, giving them free will to choose and then demand obedience to His commands? Can you separate your Lord, Jesus Christ, from Yahweh, choosing only Him to follow, trusting Him as One in the trinity as part of your God-hood, never having Yahweh as your Creator, the jealous One who could never be the architect for creation's goodness and beauty? Could an avenger ever be trusted as a creator, a masterful builder, allowing His work to become public, only to destroy its flaws, attempting to restore His mistakes, telling us this will all be completed on some Day of the Lord, destruction of earthly things to prepare for a new beginning to recreate heaven and earth. Humans needn't wait for this day, for people hasten destruction of creation's goodness and beauty with impatient activities here and now.

Jove: In the Valhalla of your gods, celebrating heroic proclamations of your righteousness, feasting with its gods lasting only until the Day of the Lord, waiting to be demolished in flames, everything not of His plan is consumed.

Jurdan: Self-sufficiency promises control of destiny, trusting oneself to direct fate, determining all one would be. Destiny waits for its day of reckoning, hiding it from one's anticipation, veiled from contemplation, allowing one to remain content, living in pleasures, enjoying moments of happiness, ignoring fortune's coming travails, forgetting that destiny was once considered the coming of the Day of the Lord, but that was in an era of superstition's reign, a period erased by increasing human knowledge.

Preacher: Some have become many, ignoring prophecies of disaster, disbelieving any coming for the Day of the Lord, a day of retribution for people stained with sin, denouncing archaic admonitions, trusting only in faith in the Lord and self-satisfied they have been a "good" person, convinced God blesses ones so convicted, relenting on His justice to save the creation He loves.

Jurdan: Your God's religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have been invaded by human reason, colonizing them, transforming His intent, demonstrating people continue to seek something He fails to provide, trusting He will re-enter lives, somehow by resending some Messiah, ending human suffering with a Day of the Lord, or convincing them to end all existence so they can return to Him sooner than He plans.

Stranger: Are you ordained to be an oracle, being greater than prophets bearing messages of reason? There are many like you today, bearing messages, calling on intelligence to be prophets.

Bystander: Beware of those self-assigned to be prophets, delivering messages developed by reason, claiming God sends them, some preaching His blessings for all, tickling their fancy so they can name it and claim it, delighting them with visions of happiness, and some filling hearts with fear, predicting times for doom, proclaiming a time for the Day of the Lord.

Jurdan: We must depend on reason, trusting it as the only reliable means to develop truths, denying imagination to create gods.

Bystander: The Lord speaks with enigmas, revealing truths in pieces, unveiling fragments of His hidden meanings, scribbling messages in dreams waiting for interpretation, understood only by an appointed prophet for revelation. His time and place for uncovering mysteries is unknown until He chooses, revealing them to reward people's maturity, growing their understanding of who we are, compensating their obedience to be fruitful and multiply, adding to His promise, restoring their needs after they have depleted creation's abundant provisions and jeopardized human survival, exhausting resources for preventing massive extinctions.

Jurdan: Human reason courts prophets, self-assured seers forecasting success, relying on their contributions to assure promises, but never knowing which way fate will decide, prophets must hedge their bets, flooding the most likely with treasures, so whoever succeeds the donor has an ear to bend, to gild their words with reward of wisdom, understanding riches it will bring.

Stranger: Separating myself unto the Lord, silencing my ears to such prophets, dismissing worldly unworthiness, sandals of desire, to tread only on His holy ground, I vow allegiance to Him, obeying His plans for me, trusting He will make His face shine upon me and give me peace, drowning my pride, sinking my shame, restoring my potential to understand His wisdom.

Jurdan: Prophets know, having garnered wisdom from wily understandings, hatred and love evoke only transient situations, never lasting, forgotten with time wiping them away, so why be concerned, life is short, ending soon with all memories gone, its triumphs disappearing, leaving only remnants remaining as illusions, trusted to once be real and never imagined, but now life retaliates, exposing all in dreams, never assuring their reality.

Bystander: In their glee, proposing to foresee the future hidden, prophets know mishap will afflict all lives, and they must win people's favor, distracting them from unknown certainties waiting for all and adopt buffoonery to entertain ones needing to forget agonies.

Stranger: I know Jesus, understanding Him as well as Peter--mistaken as he was--verifying He is the Christ, God's general to restore freedom for His people, armed with weapons to destroy their ruler, provoking Jesus to admonish his ideas, telling Peter his thoughts were like Satan's, directing him to the rear where Satan follows.

Commoner: My understanding of Jesus was like others, wondering if He was a returning Elijah or prophet like John the Baptist, remaining so until my trust and belief were initiated by the Holy Spirit, like Peter who comprehended little until the Spirit entered his soul.

Stranger: As a latter-day prophet I was commissioned at Pentecost, perhaps unfamiliar to you but one God ordained, and sometimes speaking in tongues causing many to sneer, thinking my wits are scattered, mocking me but with uncertainty restraining their passion, wondering if anyone listens to my messages, wondering if they voicing new revelations, knowledge unheard before, certifying me a prophet crying to be heard, proclaiming the Lord's truths in a wilderness of know-it-alls never having the Holy Spirit, never hearing the Word of God, but I seek unbelievers to understand His Good News, telling them the Spirit's messages, conveying their truth as I search in the wilderness, finding ones willing to listen, open to hearing His words, telling everyone of God's calling, My people come back to me, telling, If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then they will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land. Many treat this message as unimportant, wanting it to be unheard, calling it imagined by some scribe, trusting only words of their choosing.

Jurdan: Honoring Jesus as a prophet bringing your God's messages to earth, He is treated as someone climbing over the fence of human limits, clashing with many over implementation of laws, dishonoring holy priests, despising their traditions, disturbing peace for your Lord's anointed ones, but He went the way of savants entering the earthly kingdom, claiming to be called by the Lord, but doomed for destruction. Remember the one killed before the altar, expected I presume to become a martyr sacrificed to God. Prophets still come and leave by ways of their choosing, thinking they will be martyred and resurrected as the first ones in heaven.

Bystander: Ignoring the Lord's messages, you must listen to prophets who consult the dead, seeking wisdom before its decay, relying on philosophies before they pass away.

Stranger: As a prophet crying in the wilderness, committing God's commandments to my trust, dismissed by many calling me a fool, I wear a badge of foolishness, shaming me in my conviction's belief in His eternal truth, keeping His law continually, for ever and ever.

Bystander: Burning parchments recording the Lord's Words, thinking destruction erases their memory, destroys what eyes can see, trusting to make Him speechless, but He persists, sending revelations in different forms and circumstances, tattooing some on prophet's tongues, making indelible decrees to last, enduring beyond the impermanence of human life, and His Words cannot be erased, His Will never ceasing to send them forth. Emblems of foolishness implode in flames, destroying errancies creeping into creation, but humans can revive foolishness, trusting destroyed errant judgments can be restored, ignoring the Lord's plans carrying other designs for nature's renewal, promising to overcome what humans demolish. Examine rulers killing truth, concealing verities, thinking no one recognizes tyrant's guiles, ignoring possibility of a time for reckoning, requiring only moments to satisfy followers, eagerly lavishing praise and showering epithets of glory, but nothing can be hidden from the Lord, waiting for a time to embarrass rulers' deceit, toppling their monuments, dis-interning their bones for destruction by fire, never waiting for their slow decomposition to dust, never understanding His Word is more precious than silver and gold, treasures imperishable, negating lies forged against Him.

Jurdan: We must trust in ourselves, never being convinced by any religion, ignoring its teachings on judgments demanding justice, vengeance demanding retribution, destruction of life rather than rehabilitation, showing your Lord's goodness--if any--is damaged beyond hope for restoration. Our trust also cannot extend to peaceful solutions based on love, knowing love solves no problems, coming only to delay human adversities until new afflictions develop, inherent derangements of people's souls for seeking enemies to blame for their despair, and love is never lasting, enduring only for moments, finding times when one can declare it is well with my soul, only to wonder later why a time of weakness could appear. So, what can your Lord teach us, to hate when appropriate and love on other occasions? We already have that, natural inclinations, perversity tarnishing goodness, springing in love at intermissions, directing dramas we are created to have, hoping some beauty can reward our existence. Foremost must be our accomplishments, ignoring distractions causing us to stray, namely, ones demanding revenge, avenging ghostly imaginations, but also dalliances tempting love, realizing love's veiled destructive diversions, dismissing accomplishment's importance.

Stranger: The Lord distrusts many with their own doing, ordering them to ignore human accomplishments and raise their swords to protect His first covenant, killing adversaries if necessary.

Preacher: Living by the old covenant, dejected with its failure, rejected for one better, we still struggle, trying to discern any will voiced by our Creator and by the free will instilled in us, gifted by Him and trusted to lead us, reasoning a covenant by our own making, equipping us to create one better, needing no high priest to hear our desires and give us what we want. The Lord, seeing failures of prophets, now shows us how to unravel His hidden designs, showing how His word is instilled in everything, directing the formation of all, revealing His knowledge so we can create our covenant, trusting us in our own doing.

Jurdan: Do you bear good tidings, proclaiming kindly words, assuring eager acceptance, realizing you must test the blowing currents, determining people's will for the moment, modifying your offerings to suit the days, knowing they must be acceptable so your voice doesn't reverberate off zombies, deflected off pedestrian minds waiting decrees to announce greater hope, realizing successful prophets bring only good news, new edicts never disturbing their conscience, changing laws to protect coveted positions, as they run from prophets of doom, preaching to maintain commandments of long-gone priesthoods, heirs to ones after the order of Melchizedek?

Preacher: We must always beware of false teachers, disguised as prophets, proclaiming heresies, vilifying the Lord's decrees. Compare their messages with ours. Are they written to include His wishes, intended to protect His creation's goodness, erasing blemishes developed by evil ones, wicked leaders of all sorts fighting for control of earthly treasures, destroying innocent lives to seize minds of the vanquished, bringing them to be plagued by fear, fear that is never of the Lord?

Stranger: Indeed. How can we trust words credentialed by the world, bypassing ones spoken to prophets, ancient ones having been stripped of their authority, reading messages from God and understood by revelations from the Holy Spirit? Should we dismiss words of church fathers as fabrications developed from their imagination and replace them with worldly wisdom?

Preacher: Living in the modern world revealing more knowledge, bringing us far removed from the Dark Ages, building on our potentials since the Renaissance, we depend on many scholars for wisdom today, trusting their insights in reworking prophetic visions, reinterpreted by employing reason to change them from superstitious beliefs to lucid understandings, embarrassing no one any longer, changing unreasonable dogmas to acceptable doctrines.

Jove: Prophets' words come and go, perhaps changing little, repeated to instill in one's memory, but words fail to notice there, forgotten as unremembered dreams, testifying that no prophet is accepted, being unheeded in a seer's country or all the Lord's dominion, by hearers ignoring admonitions and warnings, Be not conformed to this world.

Stranger: Why do people write laws but to clarify the Lord's commands, assuring we all comply. Representing Him here on earth, we live faithfully by His Word, protecting its integrity, allowing nothing to alter its wisdom, interpreting it to His favor. If necessary, we are given rights to clarify Scriptures with announcements to manage His people, establishing such rights by the blessings of His power, and we search all territories to destroy heresy, eliminating all who don't accept our beliefs.

Jurdan: How long do addenda to any words claimed to be your God's survive, additions by humans to serve their purpose, never authenticated to be from your Lord, showing history has a purpose, revealing people mangle prophetic pronouncements, transforming their truths, changing them, so they will never last, dismissing them as forgotten fables, written as provocations of someone's imagination?

Stranger: We still need flexibility for creating new edicts, trusting people will believe they come from the Lord, so we establish religious leaders with the power to set up and enforce lives, entrusting them with authority over life and death.

Commoner: Take care in trusting religious rulers, thinking of them as prophets to control our lives. Scientists have become our prophets, delving into the unknown, revealing facts, developing theories that eventually become truths, crowning their achievements as prophetic revelations.

Stranger: Do their accomplishments benefit us, reducing our anguish, depression, and despair, resolving tragedies and diminish suffering?

Jove: Scientific breakthroughs reward us with chemicals to solve these problems, continuously synthesizing better ones.

Stranger: Humans have always had means to make them feel better, to escape their problems, with ancient people discovering mood-altering chemicals hidden in creation's plant life. So, scientists have given us nothing new, perhaps merely modifying older ones to be more potent, making them more dangerous, especially by producing auras to make people think they are divine.

Bystander: Seeking euphoria, hoping to escape this world, building relationship with drugs instead of people, is recognized as a human problem, and is exploited by leaders to enslave their subjects, to ensure control over their lives.

Stranger: If scientists are prophets they have not proven their claims, seeing us wait for some benefit.

Vagrant: People get what they pursue, and we must distrust their desired convictions as they seldom see beyond their wishes, but self-assigned authorization to be prophets, reading glory in the future, ends their hopes by reading entrails left rotting from their decisions.

Stranger: To decipher the unknown and unravel creation's secrets, we smash matter to pieces, capture its bits, and investigate its entrails, thinking we will uncover all that is hidden, creating mathematical formulas for material's description, marching us to independence, working our way to abandoning prophetic imaginations formed by our imagination.

Skeptic: Prophets, like doctors, delve into people's hidden parts, seeking blemishes concealed within, and finding none they create some, satisfying their efforts with discovery, so they can fabricate judgment to reward justice, formulating barriers to limit diversity.

Stranger: Containment encircling diversity institutionalizes freedom, limiting people's direction, programming a person's way, placing both insiders and outsiders in a box, destroying interactions between them, and who can say if one's limited freedom is greater than the other. Let us all be aware that age directs our activities to ever increasing containment, retribution as punishment for the living, without pity for our adversities, suggesting some form of a drug is taken to end our being, honoring ignoble ones giving sage counsel.

Bystander: The Lord chose diversity to make all things possible.

Jurdan: That's the problem. We can undo Him, reducing Him to superstitious imagination, replacing Him with ourselves, eliminating diversity where needed, creating new humans from the melting pot, using science to sort out differences and make us one for all and all for one, requiring no deity, holy commandments, nor righteousness to be like your God, for people to tolerate each other.

Stranger: You, tolerating no one loving the Lord and realizing God preserves remnants, ensuring people will never forget Him, will always fail, tasting defeat with every breath, trembling your heart, beating in rhythm with anxiety, with you wondering where your desires stumbled, blind to the barricade before your will, detouring you to my self's way.

Jurdan: Creation's diversities condemn many, producing victims, but not so importantly as for the poor believed to be always with us. Diversity in religious belief generates the greatest danger, causing disunity, becoming destructive discord, and is responsible for the greatest genocides history tries to hide. States bound to religious convictions will battle any others with different beliefs, others confessing allegiance to some deity differing from theirs, maintaining fear for diversity. Justice can never support our beliefs if we can't accept the obligation to serve the needs of everyone.

Preacher: Reason gives people hope, but whose reason, what reason, seeing each person is guided by different reasons, committing us to diversity, knowing each is wedded to ideas of their own. How can a cause develop to know each one's persuasion, incorporating one's needs into fruition?

Bystander: Deceit learns how to unscramble diversity, teaching people to trust reason for unifying all into similar thinking, involving propaganda to align perceptions, giving everyone similar facts to interpret, but each explaining them with muddled theories, suggestions that the gullible can accept, presenting them with mathematical sleights of hand beyond the understanding of most.

Jurdan: We use mathematics to describe the universe, our only one, proving to be of great help, and we realize it may not apply elsewhere, somewhere in some other place.

Jove: Calculations trusted to explain everything fails, unable to derive a principle describing unity for all.

Stranger: Do you suggest we exist where agreement is impossible, believing what Jesus prayed for can never happen?

Jove: It hasn't happened yet, but by His asking it must never be impossible, knowing for the Lord nothing is impossible.

Skeptic: Unity breeds disunity, trusting in the Lord's forever changing truths, exercising His power for nothing being impossible.

Saint Verity: We are driven to despise some, blemished by their arrogant self-righteousness, out-performing our accomplishments, dressing us down with their brilliance, ones never accepting the semi-righteous to strike a balance, acting to shame others, downplaying their deeds to discourage the masses, restricting their free will, the driver of happiness. Beware of those hiding within the walls of self-righteousness, separating themselves behind their temple gates, lurking in secret, isolated in the bastion of illusion. We must fear them, never knowing if their sinister doings will spill into our free market of decisions, seeing few adopt the obedience they proclaim, led by deception to decimate their free will, discarding reason and common sense, the foundation of happiness, inviting darkness to cover their pursuit of knowledge, leaving them in a quagmire of uncertainty. We have developed a righteousness to write doctrines of truth, establishing ones for all to live by, and reconcile all comrades to adopt our dogma as the only truth, to leave their lives on the altar of our dogma, to vindicate its truth.

Stranger: My dogma knows Jesus, calling Him by name as He calls me, never knowing Him by anyone's arguments, never reasoning to establish His reality by creating doctrines for convincing us who He is, for investing in dogma to prove He is the Son of God, but basing my convictions on John's testimony, spoken by his eyewitness, perhaps the only disciple to testify he was there, all others being second-hand eye-witnesses. Ones arguing for Jesus by trusting second-hand accounts must apologize for not relying on John's words, believing instead on their reason.

Saint Verity: Theology, pursuing our study of God, using modern methods to search for answers, finding truths as in all humanities, searching records of earlier investigations, considering written works and archeological findings, compiling all by common sense, logic, and reason, we rework dogmas and doctrines, employing all to formulate truths acceptable for scholarly majorities, employing tried and true methods of scientific research, giving us reasonable freedom to discern religion's evolutionary progress. We consider this to be certain, protecting our righteousness and reworking our belief to justify its continuing relationship with our free will.

Stranger: You are truly conscientious with these methods, seeking to develop new ways to believe, novel means for attracting people to follow Christ by changing dogmas, increasing their enthusiasm with reworked doctrines, recharging zeal for their religion, justified by revising what's seen when noteworthy ideas are introduced, authorizing greater insights to know God, but can you know Him by perceptive mantras trusting belief in seeing. You leave no room for spirituality, discarding reliance on what's seen, believing in God's revelation, telling what He wants us to know about Him, what the Holy Spirit puts in our hearts.

Jurdan: You expect me to waste time on dumbed-down explanations of Christianity, doctrines mellowed for acceptance, transformed to protect people from shame, pleasing never to arouse suspicions from nonbelievers, dogmas searching endlessly for adversity, indicting anyone considered deviant, open to intolerance of other's doctrines, willing to rebuke convictions of any others to strengthen their cause. We trust someone with credentials to blur the Christian message, undermining its out-of-date dogmas and doctrines, and if necessary to eliminate words claimed to be spoken by your God.

Stranger: What did Christ ask of us, with His last request to be unified, together as one but in what, praying to His Father for believers to be one just as He is one with the Father, for the world to believe He was sent by the Father, that the glory God sent in Christ would be given all people so they could be one just as the Father and the Son are one, enabling them to be perfect in one, made possible through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, all believers must become one in the Spirit, untainted by a person's doing, never transfigured by anything else, committing them to all be one, the church built by the Spirit. Do we accomplish that, becoming a body unified by the Spirit or is our unity dependent on something else, doings of our making, fragile as all actions of human beings? Unity of the body of believers ignores the Holy Spirit, dwelling instead on doctrines and dogmas, developed by human wisdom, silencing Christ's plea for unity, to become one as reported by the Spirit telling us to be unified as one, exercising our free will to obey Him, ignoring temptations to reform His commands, reasoning on how they may be better said. The church's disunity, broken by our ideas, engaging them to better those expressed by the Lord, creates impossibilities for living, reflecting no importance for living by the Spirit, regarding it as impossible, and leaves people floundering from one doctrine to another, worshipping one dogma until another gains popularity, leaving disunity intact, maintained by numerous choices, opportunities to transfer devotion as people modify what is important to serve their interests.

Jurdan: Your words testify to creation and sanctification of false Gospels, each proclaiming a Jesus to satisfy people's greedy desires, teaching them to name it and claim it, exercising their innate power of the mind over matter, giving Him no more than a sighting in history or credit for showing how works can save them, telling of ways of belief to receive warm feelings and promises of happiness, until a good news's sincerity fades and gives way to indifference, losing one's motivation and stifling faith until it eventually disappears.

Skeptic: Still trying to define themselves, theologians struggle, reworking their doctrines, voting unceasingly to revise their dogmas, never seeing an end in sight, trapped by not knowing who they are, working their reason to discover an explanation for their being, reworking their reason to justify desires inherent in their being, invoking their majority conclusions to settle decisions, but never knowing what next moments might bring.

Jove: I live by righteousness dictated by laws, established by reason and common sense, trusting them for benefit more than spiritual nonsense, trusting nothing imaginary, knowing rules can be modified, changing them to correspond to our culture's growth in maturity, directed by our merchants of virtue, creating doctrines conforming to our times to meet ever-changing needs, assuring us of enduring blamelessness.

Stranger: Documented decrees, establishing righteousness under the sun, printed for all to see, read to dictate judgment and can never be justified for salvation, needing revelations from above, never heard except from the Holy Spirit, carrying messages from the Lord, canceling righteousness of my own doing, establishing righteousness which is of God by faith.

Bystander: The Lord's laws created by people, different from His, recall few of His words to put commands into one's heart, writing little into people's minds, hardly indelibly for never being erased, assuring their sins and iniquities will He remember no more. Trusting their ways are not His ways, His laws never coming close to theirs, can they be certain any accountability for transgressions will be forgiven and forgotten, trusting He will change His standards, sympathetic to human's changing ways conforming with a moment's demands?

Jove: Why not? See how we have come to worship, seeking new ways for religion to evolve, synchronizing the most favorable to give us peace, selecting choice fragments from philosophy, ancient words to describe God, useful practices to build faith, and this doesn't change now, having given us a platform to modify our religions, giving equal opportunity for any to fine-tune their doctrines, to offer different dogmas.

Bystander: With reason becoming supreme, displacing imagination's fantasies relating faith to superstition, people re-engage with intellectual's darlings, Greek thoughts, trusting their intellect, fancying their ideas above all others, embarking anew on a renaissance, seeing how this was done before, establishing Christianity on Jesus' words translated into Greek, written in Greek and introducing the essence of its philosophy and religion when thought to be appropriate, modifying interpretations for His unwritten sayings.

Stranger: Reason never guiding me, confident of my life's events appearing as circumstances, presenting me with God's directions, closing the options of reason, I remain sanctified, never asking the Lord for guidance, knowing He will say, Look around to discern My direction for you, never to reason's conclusions, for you will hear the Holy Spirit's words, My will is to be done, ignored by ones still struggling to be born again, striving to join a divine life, eager to partner with the Divine Mind.

Jurdan: I don't have to choose between your doctrine and your Holy Spirit's because He has none to follow, nothing original, understanding all doctrine is human-made, with none made by your Lord who never made the uncomplicated complex by confusing the simple into doctrines. I never pray for your Lord to change things, jeopardizing anything you have, seeing you pray only for Him to change yourself, introducing obedience to follow Him.

Stranger: You hide in a refuge for lies, for falsehoods protecting your righteousness, establishing your sanctity, destroying any upright ideas attempting to challenge your beliefs and bring down your crown of pride, seating it on some deserving nitwit. Having imaginations enter your thoughts, using them to create your truths and verify them as important, certified by passing through reason's scrutiny and agree with common sense, you reject any eternal truths, ignoring them as figments of another's imagination, proclaiming your thoughts are as good as anyone else's, comparing and complimenting one's myself opinions, tested as truths by contrasting my self's verities with my self's dogmas, boasting pridefully of my self's truths in myself. You praise yourself. Someday you may discover what the Lord consigns is lasting.

Jove: Scribes, laboring to refashion words, establishing versions to create new doctrines, dogmas for pleasing faithful readers, being admirers hearing their pleasures sanctified, are honored for their candor in revising decrepit decrees, discarding many to accommodate different times, so reward them for their good works, glorifying them with praise.

Vagrant: Imprisoned in the House of scribes, shackled by decrees, secluded from unblemished others, protected from contamination, prophets live under discretion of rulers, silenced, never speaking freely, muffling words before they can be uttered, restricting blasphemous tongues foretelling doom for leaders' directing, distrusting trusted scribes' diligence, knowing no one better than such scribblers of thoughts for creating laws. Confined to survival's monotony and condemned to live tortured, existing on crumbs of nourishment, daily bread as my token for struggling on, I am isolated with lesser vermin, venturing to steal all that remains within me, removing my dignity piece by piece, leaving no one to consider my word.

Stranger: If we are to keep the Lord's ways, what should we obey, following self-ordained scribes recording their imaginations, revelations ascribed to God while disregarding commandments He chiseled in stone, or deeds rewarding us with righteousness, claiming to cleanse our hearts and purify our souls, attesting to His ordinances and never turning aside from His statutes?

Jove: Sent out for ministering to people's needs, committing all to alleviate afflictions, devoted entirely to supplying necessities--the Lord seems to have forgotten, or maybe had little time for--I dedicate my life to helping the destitute, trusting this is my mission, doing God's will.

Stranger: God's will is to obey Him, listening to His words so one can know His commands, and they are not for blessing one's plans, but to recall what is written, directing everyone to: Go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, teaching people to obey everything the Lord commands, and for those with a short memory trying to ignore these words, the Holy Spirit is always with those professing faith in their counselor, trusting in His will rather than in their foolishness.

Jurdan: No doctrine pleases everyone, trusting we are self-assured by reason to think logically and be committed to our dogmas, and we will likely distrust others' ideas and protest whatever they proclaim. Therefore, from the onset you will encounter some ready to criticize your thoughts and even fight them if they are ever implemented, assuring your best plans will attract adversaries prepared to destroy you and your convictions.

Stranger: Looking to your horses dependent on reason, trusting them to sprint without ceasing and winning races in scrambles for truth, they deliver little wisdom, convincing humans to seek the Lord for revealing eternal truths, recognizing the Lord sends leaders, ordained and equipped by Him to teach, knowing we are unruly with imaginations powered by reason and common sense, thinking we can do all things, but until we fail we never understand it is only through Christ we can do all things. Despite His sending us leaders, knowing we will fail, providing ones He orders us to obey, we neglect complying until it is too late, realizing some were not appointed by Him but rose up empowered by their guile and deceit until they self-destruct, leaving us little understanding other than to trust Christ and believe all authority is given Him, declaring God wants salvation for all people, all coming to the knowledge of truth, acknowledging nothing can be accomplished until everyone has been so instructed, His teaching never ignored or compromised by human reason to make the world more just, to reduce inequality, or to trust in human truths for achieving peace.

Jove: God created us with free will, throwing in common sense for anyone misusing reason to plot their course, and we use it the best we can, charting means to generate new knowledge, mining thoughts of ancient philosophers to justify our deeds. Our plans have never been used before, establishing goals for lasting peace and prosperity, far-reaching to endure, and we realize they come with costs, primarily to abolish provincialism, islands to themselves, living without changing ancient customs and beliefs, destroying whatever is necessary to create a world ruled by one doctrine, eliminating the numerous different dogmas, sources for discord, disunity and rebellion, creating an empire to last a thousand years.

Jurdan: Reason needs scholarly scribes for recording all needed facts, reviewing history for failed aspirations. Trusted authors delve into our desires, striving to understand our wants and learn our thoughts, developing ideas to sweeten our endeavors best, assuring them of being most favored, promising them a place in our right mind, honoring them for uncovering facts to establish truths for our guidance. Others always find reasons for their failure, assigning blame where due, and they show us how to avoid pitfalls of their mistakes, revealing errors in someone's judgment, by discovering new facts, unknown before, to achieve success.

Stranger: Can one know any trustworthy scribe, never tempted to be devious, never straying from words of truth but lying when confronted by reliable truths of others, scheming to gain recognition, scribbling to be honored, hoping their works would survive in annals for centuries?

Preacher: Writers pen their dogmas, assembled from facts they trust, recalled from persisting memories, completing works with promise to satisfy their convictions, but how often do they ignore the Lord's revelations, listening only to their own music, never to hymns of joy sung by the Holy Spirit, acknowledging His words people choose to remain unheard.

Jurdan: Can scribes be more honest than court jesters, writing fables to relieve anxiety, while jesters expound on wisdom, concealing their thoughts in veiled words, difficult to be deciphered, never disturbing boneheads, inciting only laughter from majestic minds?

Stranger: Jesters dressing us with comedy, dismiss our angst, authorize disobedience by removing its despair and open the gateway to further suffering, agonizing dread descending without notice, stealing our contentment, inflicting anxiety, disordering our convictions, and threaten our virtues, but they can expose our vanity and transform us to relinquish our pride. Transposition of obedience, changing us to suffer from commanded changes, steals joyful acknowledgment of creation's goodness, dismissing gratitude for its hidden beauty.

Preacher: Success depends on obedience, maintaining convictions to trust laws, making disobedience unheard of, knowing it comes down to nothing else. We fail when discipline to follow our doctrines falls short, and we must blame only ourselves.

Jurdan: Life with your God, devotion to Him being admirable but unnecessary for many obstacles to an acceptable life, carries minimal importance when people discover reasonable human desires can guide them to peace and prosperity, ignoring any ardent pursuit of holiness as fanatical and absurd, relying on science's exploration of our minds for reasons of unsound activity, drugging areas responsible for despair if necessary, creating zombies for some with nothing to justify their existence, ones with only flimsy commitments to endure, biased by feelings and subject to change, concluding nothing awaits but nihilism.

Stranger: Acknowledging creation's goodness, transforming it to values, trusting goodness one reveals, promising experiences to assure its beauty, we are drawn to God, seeking communion with Him, believing goodness represents His supreme truth, confident in its perfection, impossible of being no other, exposing people to divine love through His only Son, sent to understand what God was like, incarnated mysteriously, transcending to bring us a knowledge of God that philosophers try and fail to reveal, bringing the love and peace of God that passes all understanding.

Jove: We ignore doctrines critical of humanity, dogmas dismissed for being offensive, decrees binding us to outmoded teachings on morality and the wrathful God we must face, trusting the Lord's teaching is transforming us to believe in Him rather than dogma, espousing love instead of doctrine, believing love conquers all, while creeds attract attention merely for moments, soon discarded as refuse in bins of obsolescence.

Stranger: What have we come to, reducing morality to convenience, adjusting its principles to our desires for the moment, discarding tradition's dogmas and doctrines, unreasonably directing vagrant ideas in modern times, while adopting faith revised, living in fullness of God's love, having been transformed by His love, responding to Jesus' call to love all others without any reservations?

Jurdan: Are you expressing the call for tolerance, showering all others with love, discriminating against no one, judging no one, tolerating anything one might do, accepting no excuses to condemn anyone, acknowledging we all children of your loving God who commands us to adopt His attitude of love, giving Preacher meat for his messages?

Preacher: We create sanctuaries for ones seeking peace found only in belonging to the Lord.

Jurdan: Erecting palaces, providing places to escape the world, sanctuaries for isolation in dreams, you seek refuge from creation's goodness, fearing the beauty of its unknown, rearing hopes in yourself, trusting your Lord will walk through your temple's doors, but your sanctuary will entertain diversity, rousing controversy, battling over doctrines, being a home to argue dogmas, a hall for expounding different interpretations of your God's Word, using reason handed down by Greeks to align your prayers to theirs, never acknowledging heathen gods persuaded your reasoning, unholy deities crafted from imaginations thinking any god must approximate a human image. Is your temple of wood and stone one your God would choose for His dwelling, thinking it improves on the home of His creation?

Preacher: We all need space to preach what we believe, our doctrines and dogmas being unique and free of heresy.

Jurdan: Call your space a hiding place for misfits, different ones seeking escape from the world, unhappy with life's circumstances, ones planted here without consent, but they can hardly find solace where rancor and bickering thrive, seeking love where little abounds, discouraging them more, replacing their trust by moving it from worldly ways to your God, One they look to for answered prayers. If misfits never understand creation is ultimate goodness, how can they imagine a temple made by human hands could be better?

Skeptic: Temples are havens protecting people's wants and desires, accepting them unconditionally, assuring all that sanctuaries can modify iniquities, reinterpreting sins to make them sinless, rewording edicts, cleansing doctrines, destroying dogmas to remove their consequences, inflicting remorse on ones trusting in their own goodness.

Stranger: Perhaps we need to remember that what can be known about God is plain to see, evident to all, believing He has shown us His eternal power and divine nature through all He has made, giving no beings excuse, ones created to see and reason for recognizing the goodness of His works and the beauty woven into their pattern. If so, what drives humans to create a home for the Lord, one unneeded for God having all creation as the keeper for His heart?

Preacher: Never satisfied with being chosen for life here, despairing over unfulfilled dreams, we yearn for something better, a place where our wants and desires will not be forgotten, imagining every wish will be realized, a utopia we could never imagine.

Jurdan: Utopia promises a monotony of eternal existence with boredom festering, awakening one each day to unceasing pleasures, fulfillments lacking nothing, responding with emptiness to desires long dead.

Bystander: Inserting bits in desire's mouth, bridling it to turn at one's command, urging it to consider wants, reasoning ways to acquire treasures, recognizing the power of chasing desires guides people to honor their will, freely given and willed to be used. But desire can't be tamed, being an unruly evil full of deadly poison, untrustworthy in cursing virtuous ways for gain, ignoring heaven's vaults to store treasures, filling them to cleanse one of bitter envy and strife.

Preacher: No difficulty attends our place of worship, trusting the Holy Spirit is in attendance, guiding all in His arena of goodness, decorated with its natural beauty, confident He wishes unity with us, dwelling in our soul and bringing unending joy. Difficulty smolders only where God's spirit is unwelcome, driven out by disunity lurking within walls of discontent, discord from wrangling over dogmas in structures unable to withstand challenging doctrines, edifices crumbling with decay, deteriorating and disappearing into oblivion, scattering God's Word into trash cans of disobedience, but our temple for worship persists outside the enclosures erected to protect His truths, surviving in creation's goodness despite battering by pride in human wisdom.

Stranger: Sanctuaries of human design, trusted to outlive time, becoming havens for works to determine judgment for deeds, lasting until works need no house to celebrate accomplishments, realizing human nature leads some to obey their heart and provide needy ones with fruits of the promised land, sharing the abundance of creation's goodness, appropriately fertilized by human's decaying remains, destroying all visible signs of works, retaining only records to judge worthiness, an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, never fading away, reserved in heaven.

Jove: Sanctuaries of wood and stone, failing to invest me with holiness, unable to assure justification, must defer to my faith for justification, as I heed the Holy Spirit for developing holiness, restoring me to the beauty of God's goodness.

Wanton's companion: Listening to the Holy Spirit, called to rely only on Him for truth, never considering other's words, can I evaluate any social doctrine, trusting its dogma as a version of truth, or should I rely on the Spirit's messages, believing only them to convey God's truth?

Stranger: The Holy Spirit reaches out to those with unblemished faith, untainted by slivers of doubt, never contested by human words, reason, or common sense, never relying on human experiences delivered during mountaintop adventures, ones sure to fade away unless reinforced by revival of emotional highs, having merely a tenuous relationship with the Lord, never assuring one of sanctification.

Rudolfa: Never trust any spirit to learn about God. My time in seminary taught me all about His virtues, wielding a power to destroy enemies, learning never to fear Him, encouraging me to adopt His strategies, using all this to manipulate people's minds, giving me control over them as they believe God controls them.

Jurdan: Studies in a seminary, learning what your God wrought, discerning His transcendence on the world, never imagining how it could have been better, you decided on not finishing the course and minister to your will, ignoring obedience to His way, diverting virtuous goals for your future, transformed by your imaginations, speaking loudly how your way could improve humankind's future, implementing its plans by developing your cause. Can this be a worthy program, studying in a Bible college, to prepare you for achieving your goals? Or is it the way to develop doctrines, unique dogmas, for clashing with enemies, foes with conflicting ideas, giving justification to eliminate ones with heretical convictions, providing fodder for battle, needing to reach out for none better, fearing death so others must be subject to death, destroying others to preserve one's followers from death?

Rudolfa: We cannot trust believers with naive faith, realizing they are common, trusting all Scripture, all dogmatic Christianity, established by denying truth for anything else, because we believe fundamental Christian experience is potholed with threatening uncertainty, never questioning God's reality nor affirming science's triumphs, never answering humans' hidden questions, each reaching forth with dogmas' discipling ideas and behaviors to conquer people's problems.

Jurdan: We call to end traditions, trust in dogmas and doctrines battling for their causes and maintaining their truths at all costs, eliminating differences to destroy heretics, trusting slaughter of deviant ideas to seal one's authority, destroying diversity to solidify their rule, knowing traditions bar global unity, freeing people to demand tolerance for their ways, reasoning their ways are as good as another's, emancipated to live protected and exercise traditions of their choosing.

Stranger: The Lord protects my traditions, inspired reading of Scriptures to reveal His messages, trusting the Holy Spirit to enlighten me with understanding, unveiling hidden truths, waiting until the time is ripe to relish their meaning. No one can hasten revelations by revising His Words, restructuring His messages with new voices, dumbing down His wisdom with modern interpretations, discarding versions of church fathers who labored without ceasing to clarify intents of His messages, but some proclaim commitments to revelation in Scripture must be free to revise traditional doctrines, being long outdated and need of change, even though with admonitions of fear and trembling.

Bystander: Who can we commission for revising claimed-to-be authoritative Scripture, picking and choosing among bickering scholars, selecting only from ones most charismatic, hoping to temper their disagreements, compromising without fear, tolerating differences to pacify the masses while respecting the need for tradition and maintaining ultimate importance to Scripture's true Words: creation's goodness and beauty, freedom from judgment and retribution, growing knowledge from human experiences.

Preacher: We can learn from one's spiritual experiences, dismissing tradition's anchoring obligations, binding us to ancient fathers' outdated interpretations, developed during long-gone eras of ignorance, replaced now by our increasing commitment to reason, empowering us to develop wisdom for better theories, revising archaic doctrines and dogma by spiritual experiences, restructuring traditions embedded in inertia.

Jurdan: True religion no longer committed to anyone's dogma, now defined by people's experiences, inspired by their insights, honed to a cutting edge by reason, convicting them their beliefs are as trustworthy as any others, has given many a way to modify ancient doctrines, transforming them to be consistent with changing cultures, justified as being progress fueled by science and technology to improve humankind and make them better and better with no end in sight, but can this be true religion morphed by time into belief in nothingness?

Skeptic: You have made religion into nothingness, returning it to chaos from whence it came.

Stranger: Never trust that as true religion, being the modern way of worshipping God, for soon people must realize what they have created is no longer faith as defined by by-gone believers, prompting them to redefine their beliefs, redesigned to call them something other than religion, maybe something like reformed imaginations, depending on their innate capacity of spirituality, populating their souls with real feelings, never subject to guilt from an over-reacting conscience. Having become better and better, humans practicing their new forms of self-affirmation, ensure their self-improvement by technology's development of chemicals promising them security with feelings of well-being, no longer imprisoned by restricting doctrines and demanding dogmas, futile requirements never quite freeing them from anxiety.

True Believer: I am not one to add words to the Lord's message, to believe in more than it says, never trusting God will delegate scribes to transform His Words, His truths, all written in His Book, so I abide in its Words, sealed into traditions for people to follow, and convicting me that anyone altering His Inspired Words will lose one's entry in the book of life, becoming an outcast barred from the holy city, never receiving eternal life.

Stranger: Too many words have transformed what was once sacred, immobilizing traditions, waiting for them to quietly disappear, revision of Scripture by scholars scribbling in its margins, writing dissonant messages, harkening to mass appeals for different meanings, unraveling from culture's evolving wishes.

Bystander: Tradition, gifted by understanding and acceptance of the Lord's revelation, assured by Him as eternal truth, preserved by remnants trusted by Him, must continue as in the past, perpetuated by ones committed to hearing the Holy Spirit, and if human reason continues to dismantle tradition, revising it to satisfy human common sense, it will end up being folklore, read only to children as a product of someone's imagination, joining the assembly of gods gathered in Valhalla, waiting for the inferno's end.

Jove: My beginning never commenced until life showed me cause, propelling me on an adventure that I trusted would never end, drawing on tradition's knowledge to guide my way. Fortune blessed me to develop self-reliance, verifying reason as means to success, providing tokens of recognition for encouragement, avoiding distraction by flattering accolades, performing at a pace patience would permit, existing as a leader for my allotted time, acknowledging my ending is inevitable.

Stranger: Trusting the Lord for wisdom, securing knowledge from His lips, we construct cultures to live by, developing decrees for tradition to protect, maintaining them for all yet to arrive, while encountering fools appearing as haters of knowledge, rejecting all fear, denouncing the Creator, dismissing Him as the prerequisite for gaining wisdom, living only with knowledge an idiot can understand, the bitter fruits of human wisdom.

Jurdan: Would fools search for knowledge, realizing they would be compelled to transform it into new truths, regretfully knowing none would be lasting, leaving them to exist as no more than airheads duping honored traditions?

Stranger: Progressive Emancipation proclaims victory attested by crumbling traditions, laws established by eons of culture, fools rewriting decrees to release desire's constraints, written once to create judgment as a cardinal sin, considering intolerance worthy of swiftest justice, while tolerating none of tradition's legacies, reversing unreasonable prejudice, once established by beholders, giving them rights to tolerate anything, especially freeing them never to tolerate any other's claims.

Jurdan: Moral authority must be preserved, using selective collective wisdom with rhetorical skill, telling us it is forbidden to forbid, never to be judgmental, admonishing anyone using religious tradition to criticize, speaking to proclaim relativity which we must honor.

Stranger: Never being alive and filled with the Holy Spirit, being only a corpse, a body without a soul, molded by syncretism, trusting relativism's claim in one's beliefs being as good as any others, never cleansed by baptism, never participating in the Eucharist to celebrate God's Incarnation for laying human salvation's cornerstone to reconcile all creation to the Creator, never integrating forgiveness, healing, and restoration to unify people with God, never being deified to participate in eternity with Him nor enabled by His grace, never justified by Him to partake of His divine nature, we can never unite as one with the Justifier. We are created to seek reunification with the Lord, fulfilling what is in our design, restoring us from falling into sin, reconciling us with our Creator, regaining our potential for increasing participation towards deification on becoming like Him.

Jurdan: Do you deny value for human reason, claiming it is incapable of discerning reality, giving credit to no human for its implementation, relying only on your God to direct what He created?

Preacher: When humans develop values created by their reason, they need the Lord no longer, but if they can't give Him up yet, weakening their ties with Him, treating Him as a tradition not yet to be discarded, they realize treasured habits forming traditions have developed mostly from people's modifications of basic understandings, additions in doctrines and dogmas, becoming human embellishments easily dismissed.

Jove: The Lord intends us to persist in the dichotomy of faith and reason, treading carefully the line between the two, knowing we cannot eliminate either and support absolutism for the other, realizing the nature of people will adopt tyranny to execute their direction, either theocracy to rule, claiming God's authority for human-made laws, or a self-appointed dictator to rule, claiming sovereign authority for survival by the fittest.

Stranger: The dichotomy of faith and reason provides balance, protection against tyrannical absolutes, and they must remain united, answering the prayer for people to be unified, embracing belief in the Lord with the reason He entrusted us with, hoping we will bow down to both and not ourselves, granting nothing and no one absolute authority.

Jurdan: Can this dichotomy provide any balance, offering protection as you suggest, knowing what humans are like, expanding perfection for their ideas, augmenting battles contesting absolute righteousness versus absolute freedom, forcing moderation to take a back seat?

Philosopher: Yielding to frenzied pleas for absolutes--justice and freedom--to pursue demands tolerating no sympathy, prepares one to behead diversity, silencing tongues calling for moderation, establishing monolithic terror to support a long-lasting dynasty ruled by the many you see lining up to fight for its doctrines of death, unknowing ones with hearts for battle but with vacant minds devoid of reason.

Jurdan: Many such causes attract ardent followers deceived by fabricated lies and advise them to dismiss moderation and raise up heirs to maintain their authoritarian rule.

Stranger: Noble ones ruling with moderation, benevolent to everyone's satisfaction, look to the Lord for direction, submitting to His will for who should follow next, trusting He won't ordain and bless absolutists' wants, especially those wanting dogmas impossible to follow.

Jurdan: Believing in no decrees or blessings from your Lord, we hear frantic screams for absolute justice crying out also for total freedom, demolishing anything standing in its way, justifying violence to destroy all obstacles barring its path, accomplishing nihilism through tyranny, leaving all in desolate nothingness.

Bystander: Tyrannical rulers, complacently languishing under the shelter of their doing, protected from critic's scorching heat, will unknowingly suffer, for the Lord chastises the vanity of people, sending a worm to creep in unnoticed and destroy the limbs of their protection, removing all peace sheltering them from anxiety. His worms of destruction avoid the pheromones of moderation, feasting only on wills to direct events their way.

Stranger: Pride in absolutes never adorns me, serving as a necklace to incite strife, glimmering with a radiance of violence, but is an emblem of my accomplishments, worn to announce my commitments for promoting creation's goodness, for protecting its beauty.

Jurdan: Dismissing pride as sinful, the hopelessly indolent views pride's manifestation as sinful, characterizing another's achievements as driven by vanity to become corrupt with pride. Without exhibiting vanity, giving us a virtue of being prideful, we remain a beast.

Bystander: Exercising pride, authorized to obey no limits, striving to extend acceptable boundaries, never pausing for moderation, stretching where one can go into the expanse of unending possibility, tyranny operates in absolutes.

Jurdan: Indeed. Tyranny must then rule in calling for obedience to achieve absolute righteousness.

Bystander: What satisfies pride? Arrogance depends on pride for sustaining its needs, uplifting its posture, contorting demeanors to be haughty, hiding anxiety, concealing fear of discovery, protecting masks veiling chaos, so I must know do you enlist prideful ones to follow you, uncertain of their loyalty, for if their constitutions are uncovered can there be any useful ones remaining?

Stranger: Pride is necessary for success, and we avoid wickedness taking pride in persecuting the poor, wasting our talents on harassing have-nots, boasting of executing our heart's desires on meaningless endeavors, satisfying coveted pride on wrestling with the wind. People welcome pride in moderation, knowing it releases one from depending much on God, minimizing room in thoughts for Him, deafening considerations of His messages, silencing His words until a more appropriate time, hearing them only after acquisition of secular necessities, never being moved until His adversity can be managed.

Jurdan: Pride never satisfied by your measure of success must be vented somewhere on someone, lurking where it can encounter victims waiting to be cursed, innocent targets to be humbled. Can you find such pride useful?

Stranger: Many oppose sacred doctrines, and we need primitive pride for controlling their thoughts, prideful destruction to silence their opposition, preventing them from tarnishing our virtues. We enlist all humans willing and eager to accept our beliefs.

Preacher: God spoke in ways we could understand, being like us, prideful and vindictive, asking us to bargain with Him as we would with people, making promises as we would swear to, raining terror on disobedience to His Words, and so believing we are made in His image, creating laws to complement His, we learn from His tactics to deal with adversity, but Jesus was different, speaking in parables, riddles couched in uncertainty, messages needing to be deciphered, translated into understanding when aided by the Holy Spirit.

Jurdan: Do understandings deciphered from people's translations of your Lord's messages call for extremes, absolute justice and absolute freedom?

Stranger: Study religion's doctrines and dogmas for your answer.

Jurdan: No response is forthcoming. How can full justice have no limits when the actions of everything is unjust for someone, calling for the destruction of all perpetrators, leaving the last person standing, having wiped out ones unfair, serving the demands of justice?

Bystander: Meld absolute freedom with absolute justice and see what you have bonded together, chemistry for mass destruction, free activity to annihilate everyone and everything, justifying everything, recognizing no boundaries for whatever is willed.

Jurdan: Leaders establish limits for their deeds, but their thoughts hide fewer limits for their ideas, reserving them to be altered as desired, expanding them to broaden their actions, unknowingly planting their self-destruction, bringing them to reap the whirlwind, carrying them into nothingness, serving the cult of nihilism.

Bystander: Never claim absolute virtue, fooling oneself in its possibility, acknowledging beliefs we are all born in sin, committed to iniquity because ones deceived in their unmerited virtue consider themselves ordained to administer absolute justice when needed and are equipped with complete freedom to compel others to comply.

Stranger: Absolute justice and absolute freedom, abounding with no limits, transfigures goodness and beauty to tragedy and uncaring suffering.

Simple Simon: Having the kingdom of God within me, promised for now and forever, being a subject of the Lord and following Him in obedience, all voices here distract me, demanding my attention, flattering, alluring, and charming me with praise, urging me to return to their worldly domain. The kingdom of God knows neither absolute justice or absolute freedom, nor does it establish any standards, for baptism into His realm removes all desires for freedom and justice, realizing their need for life on earth is unnecessary in heaven.

Stranger: Well said. Poverty of moderation inciting zeal provokes one to be seldom satisfied, skipping about from one infatuation to another, tasting flavors of different doctrines, feasting on each in turn until reason makes them bland, opening the way to try another, persisting until they have all lost appeal, each one withering as fruit on the vine, left to nourish ones never made to reason.

Jurdan: If I live in moderation, declining extremes of deepest piety, critical of absolutes, avoiding tyranny's violence, I must choose no religion to join, being content to enjoy all that is without anxiety of extremists, engaging in no arguments fostering conflict, so I am willing to tolerate anything, honoring another's truths, giving voice a hearing to anyone willing to speak.

Skeptic: You can never find a leader satisfied with moderation, liking all ideas with equal fervor, because they can never win rule to represent a majority until they have created enemies, and the majority will support them once they have been taught who their enemies are.

Stranger: Moderates stand for nothing, having listened to all and learned about enemies on both sides, but they are vilified, making them also enemies when others realize their moderation forces them to be tolerant where they are urged to be intolerant, stealing the provocation of others, ones tolerant but with selective intolerance when necessary.

Simple Simon: Seeking peace above all, never tempted to be overly wise, finding nothing but anxiety in being overly-righteous, praying for moderation to ease my ways, I want nothing extreme to rule my life. Can such a life serve some purpose?

Stranger: You can serve many needs, but you hesitate, unwilling to step out with untested ventures, serving only what's proven safe and sound.

Simple Simon: Finding few on earth who do good and offend no other, I associate with only my own kind, living in moderation,

Jurdan: Be grateful. The constitution created by humans, writing people's wisdom into a code to follow, decrees expected to stand the test of time, is eventually revised to conform with current needs, never being entrusted to last or submit to your Lord's commandments, remembering how its framers argued to establish it as an acceptable compromise, so it remains a flexible document, floating on breezes carrying it about to unknown places, assuring it can be moderate and tolerate all human desires, promising people have a statement for protecting their wishes to be themselves, testifying to advice enlisted from moderates.

Stranger: Never be grateful for moderates, certain to accuse believers of resorting to violence, of lying to coerce others, ones asking to tolerate their moderation.

Jurdan: Incited to be radical, clamoring for violence, supporting revolutions, claiming virtue for battling establishments, overthrowing peace, celebrating human efforts to destroy moderation, zealots for change unite behind a religious banner, raising it up to sanctify their struggle, fighting against heresy, destroying pagan forces, showing no mercy for such enemies, blessing nothing with love, the passion of acceptance.

Stranger: Feasting on love, justifying moderation, abandoning belief's doctrines foresees failure, allowing freedom for all to do things "my way."

Jurdan: Can you mitigate your measure of righteousness, dismissing it temporarily, enabling your will instead of facing some crisis demanding a violent action, unacceptable for tolerance or moderation, justifying an ungodly means for a solution, willing expedience to respond for satisfying your conscience?

Stranger: I would do whatever is necessary, putting aside righteousness for the moment.

Jurdan: Does your God ever put aside His justice, changing it, ceasing heaven's declarations of it for a moment, hiding His glory, modifying His righteousness momentarily for all to see?

Stranger: We can put aside ancient stories and focus only on what our Lord Jesus Christ does for us.

Jurdan: Belief in your Creator God gives humans insights into developing needs for any time, to include creating gods for sanctifying their desires, deities to oversee turbulent ways, to lead them over obstacles, to bless them with success, showing how archaic decrees need not be obeyed, instructing them on developing new laws to justify their actions, using reason to create common sense commitments, investing in moderation to make tolerance possible, divesting old laws of all unreasonable justification, so we can freely follow dictates of our will to satisfy wants.

Bystander: Your will, given by the Lord, creates false gods, idols for your desires, releasing you from obedience, freeing you to follow your wants, negating interference from outsiders, and I wonder when it might cease, maybe never, continuing to empower the human imagination, never pausing, forever generating new desires, but never satisfying and always seeking something new, innovations to glorify oneself.

Stranger: Hope garnishing visions, decorating revelations, maintains virtue, and destroying hope eliminates restraint, casting off ties binding us to the Lord, dismissing moderation in favor of exercising free will, seeking our way through will's approaches, hoping our reach exceeds our grasp, but without hope we stumble through life, following hopelessness to its nirvana in nothingness. Where does hope come from, asking if it is formed by reason, articulated by knowledge, driven by self-sufficiency, sustained by trust in oneself, renewed by forever coming as an unending fountain, or does fortune determine its appearance, coming by chance, visiting some while leaving others barren, following no known reason for its appearing?

Bystander: Human flesh as all living tissue survives only long enough to complete the purpose for its being, existing no longer, disappearing as its reason to live ends, and we understand resurrection can never be its hope with the Lord promising rebirth into life only for the soul, so take care of this only hope for eternal life, keeping clean your home for the Holy Spirit, never dismissing it as part of flesh doomed to disappear, and protect the Spirit who guards all your thoughts and deeds, preserving the Lord's truths so they never disappears, archived in your soul as all creation's information.

Preacher: We must build all our hopes in the Lord, anxious to be one with Him always, never interrupting our devotion to Him, never turning off the Holy Spirit or recording His messages for a more convenient time to listen, but establish defined moments to join Him, creating a habit in one's busy schedule, never doubting the Lord is always at one's side, there for us to follow, never of Him to come with us. If one follows the Lord, fear can stalk each footstep, never knowing when He will intercede to redirect our way.

Stranger: Do you trust token gifts of time, establishing habits of quiet time, assuring you of devotion to the Lord, are considered by Him to be adequate, or does He desire something more?

Jove: Following trusted reason, I am proud of my devotion to Him, realizing my time with Him exceeds what most will surrender.

Theologian: No longer needing the Lord's garden of Eden, prepared for us but hardly used, the imagined paradise for human happiness but failing in its purpose, God dismantled its idea, leaving its memory only for our imagination, filled with hopes, thinking it still may tempt us to seek something better than reality must offer. What can remnants of Eden's idea do for us as we come to realize heaven can never be found here, understanding creation was never intended to offer luxury, acknowledging the Lord's paradise is found only in being with Him always, in all things.

Stranger: Designing us with flesh is essential for survival but is unable to prepare us for eternal life, giving only a short span to discover our purpose, knowing it cannot come from mortal efforts, engaging powers of flesh, striving to become different from God's purpose. Our flesh drives us to be impatient, forgetting patience equips us to take possession of our soul, reminding us of the waste of hasty decisions.

Preacher: Trusting flesh to render reason, promoting confidence in common sense, realizing both will disappear into ashes, dust unable to recall our past, we must know by God's Words only one's soul can support life, understanding flesh profits nothing, being only a temporary home, and trust His Words are life, communicated through the Holy Spirit, activating us to become a dwelling for comprehension.

Stranger: Do people trust the Holy Spirit with anything worthwhile, treasures worthy of being in heaven, trophies of little importance from the world but highly valued for consignment in eternity, assured of lasting beyond disintegration, emblems of distinction, humble adornments awarded for completing life's race with highest honors, punching their ticket to join the Lord and abide with Him forever?

Wanton: Intensely driven by sin, lusting after superficial desires retrospectively amounting to nothing, my emotions making final decisions willfully approved by wants, I can't enable my will to reach into what's profound and ignore its discernment as I trust momentary forays with lust to bring moments of happiness, seldom fearing intervention by my conscience to disrupt things I could enjoy, silencing footsteps of the Holy Spirit preparing to override my will, replacing mine with His.

Bystander: Can people direct fortune for inviting lust to bring happiness, ignoring fate can deceive them, promising what they seek while sneaking in afflictions, pain, sorrows and disappointments, as they rejoice over fortune's apparent goodness, promoting their heritage while hiding all that it will bring, concealing wretchedness in the fruits of their seed. Good fortune appears as it may, tantalizing them with hope in their progeny while telling them they may find greater happiness in never finding fertile ground for their seed. The Lord never confuses anyone with mixed messages, being honest and forthright in all He says.

Stranger: As partakers of the divine nature, we must look to the Lord, being continuously connected to the Holy Spirit, tuned in to hear all His messages, assimilating all His evaluations of our thoughts and deeds, trusting in Him to lead us to perfection, understanding our connection should be full time, allowing no intermissions for temptation by our desires and wants, never distracting us by His companionship as drudgery but always delighting us to be in His presence.

Jove: What more must be done to know God, learning more than by seeing manifestations of His word in all creation, discerning all hidden aspects of them, realizing humans cannot convert their words to produce similar miracles, but only by understanding codes He has left in all things to create all we see? In frustration, we call on Him to send someone to explain His doings and His reasons for creating and putting us where we are. But we do not all agree with their messages, compelling us to choose others more suitable to our liking. Favoring excellent ones begins battles for supremacy, fighting for ones to be our only real news, destroying all others as heretical distortions of God's truths. Is it fair to say that prophets chosen by us to be bearers of truth survive only because we have waged holy wars to establish their credentials, signifying them as victors in describing God?

Theologian: Armed with creative ability and free will, prophetic messages continue to multiply, never allowing a sage's instinct to slumber, modifying doctrines, introducing new dogmas, insisting that faith must be creative, devising new ways to awaken the spirit, building on human experience to enliven beliefs with greater beauty, intensifying creation's goodness by human intervention.

Stranger: If our Scriptures are inspired by God and recorded by people, knowing scribes always use words to introduce their trademark, leaving a trail of biases in final documents, is it acceptable for anyone to go beyond biblical texts and establish dogmas, writing creeds judged by scholarly wisdom sanctioned by the Holy Spirit, spoken to Him by the Lord and certified as authoritative extra-scriptural teachings? Doesn't God speak to us openly, needing no introduction of human additions for understanding His messages, knowing He acts in no mysterious ways and shows us what we must know to honor and worship Him, being good stewards of all His creation?

Jurdan: Without dogmas can there be anything left for Christianity, being essential for belief in your Lord, providing a real faith but empty without any dogma, stripped of trusted truths added by scholars, giving people something tangible, more than mysticism without confirmation by needed dogmas.

Stranger: Faith cannot be justified without trusting in Jesus Christ, believing He lived and died, incarnated in the image of God His Father, praying we would unite and be one with Him, remembering His Final Words to love all others as we love ourselves. Is not dogma and doctrine necessary for faith and trust in these essentials, believing without dogma belief in Him is only mysticism, and human reason needs to add as much as necessary to make belief acceptable?

Jurdan: Believers' faith wanes when blown by prevailing winds, seeking stability by developing doctrines and creating dogmas, compelling formation of new ones to follow changing times, knowing them to become unpredictable, and wavering belief depends on such decrees rather than trusting in Christ's commands to unite in love, His prayer to the Father.

Theologian: Doctrine and Dogmas are essential to confirm Scriptural truths and their proclamations, realizing reconsiderations, restatements and revisions never cease while struggling to conform with the Bible and contending with scholars dismissing documents introduced as relevant facts about biblical interpretation.

Stranger: God works for us to know all things in His will and we cannot create dogmas to seal everything we imagine to be His will, making them objects of worship, neglecting what Jesus prayed for and left us in the Great Commission.

Jurdan: Learning to revere doctrines, worship dogmas, and venerate decrees begins with religion, attempting to describe its Creator-God, putting Him in a box for adoration, thinking we must give Him attributes like ours. Once religion learn to create doctrines and dogmas, they are used by many to establish themselves as lords to rule over others, subjecting all in dominions they seize, becoming tyrants to the degree they choose, sustaining subjects' spirits with propaganda allowing no thought of their own, feeding them with material needs to satisfy their bodies, proclaiming they can live by bread alone and perpetually entertained with emotional excitement, spiritless in senseless cycles of repetition.

Stranger: Did Jesus need Old Testament prophecies to validate His claims, to depend on doctrines and dogmas, or require miracle after miracle to convince people of trust He is the Son of God, leading unbelievers to believe in Him? God entrusts all with belief, using no human reasons, requiring no investigation of Scriptures, but by hearing Him through the Holy Spirit, and no doctrine or dogma is necessary to confirm what He puts in my heart. Why should I listen to people who still worship Yahweh, believers identified as the chosen ones who trust in being His only promised followers and accept no outsiders, never acknowledging Jesus as Messiah, waiting for a different savior to come, one with only their needs satisfied.

Jove: Doctrines and dogmas close my soul's door, barring any heretical guests my spirit might consider, sealing me from messages sent by the Lord, protecting the assurance of my salvation, but there must be more He has to say, helping me understand Him more than human decrees can offer, trusting them more than mystic contemplations, freeing my spirit, inviting me to come closer to God, releasing me from the bondage of human creations limiting understanding of who He is.

Stranger: Dogmas forced on me stifle my inherent code's freedom, restricting what the Holy Spirit can do, speaking openly of my Creator's will, directing all my thoughts and deeds, showing human reason's fragility, counseling me to seek His truth, trampled on by scribes conveying what they hold to be true.

Bystander: Divine love, immanent in people's soul, embodying them with the Lord's promise lying dormant and awaiting release, evident in creation's goodness and beauty, is hardly verified by human reason.

Jurdan: Convinced of being I am what I am and nothing more, I exist with what has been dealt me, free will, reason, and nothing more, no higher powers to mess with me, confessing my actions are of my own doing, giving me credit for all my achievements, favoring thanks for no one else, so you can call me whatever you like, labelled an agnostic or atheist will not insult me since I never credit fate for what I have developed on my own and I honor myself for all my achievements. You require religion to develop community, however, to maintain a relationship with all creation, uniting everything as your Creator demands, but only by adding doctrines, dogmas and decrees to support differences based on your judgments to thwart the unity He commands. Can you give up all that has been added to realize true unity?

Wanton: Christ's prayer for unity, calling all to be one in obeying the Holy Spirit, will never be honored by humans exercising free will and clinging to their rights to judge.

Stranger: Jurdan can never achieve success, struggling to expect its realization to surpass mere nothingness, dismissing success in discovering God's purpose for his existence, a blessing never chosen or willed, revealed only by hearing the Holy Spirit, humbling all intentions distracting him from listening, never fearing a call that might surprise his indifference, but trusting Him to be a willing and obedient servant, shunning his wishes to be something different, choosing to heed the Spirit, revises all that Jurdan needs to become like Him, pure righteousness.

Jurdan: I promise to deliver, responding to desires and needs I establish, requiring the only allegiance. I know you pray to your Lord, but how often does He answer, blessing you with your requests? I have traveled your experiences, calling on your Lord, waiting in vain for a reply, wondering why He never answered, assured my righteousness was sufficient, measuring up to most others, so I was forced to become more self-sufficient, realizing only by powers I could adopt would answer to my dreams coming true. With no belief in Him now, I trust in myself for empowerment, energizing me to forge ahead with my plans, interfering with them none, believing in me and what I do. My righteousness is enough for trusting myself, enlisting my free will, willing me to power and success, created as I am to exercise free jurisdiction in all I do. At one time, I argued with your Lord, but no longer, seeing I received no response, but now He asks little more than to be tolerated, promising a remnant of believers will be saved regardless of what they do, knowing their actions will become little more than a footnote in history.

Jove: Success is the best blending of righteousness to assure my way is best with freedom to execute whatever is necessary for achieving my goal, certifying my leadership, convincing all to examine my way, so I call on the Holy Father, enlisting Him to bless me, using His holiness to sanctify all my endeavors, employing associates skillful in their will to destroy dissent, freely drawing without inhibition by any means for my success, measuring it by obedience, their obeisance for me.

Wanton: Does God love us all, leaving fate to decide our destiny, recusing and removing Himself from control?

Stranger: Waiting for the Lord to place circumstances before me, I never choose my ways to serve Him, thinking this is what He wants, never decisions made by me, convinced this satisfies my relationships with Him, trusting His living waters to keep flowing.

Jurdan: Trusting in scrutiny rather than living waters, marveling in success of scientific observation, thinking Eureka has been uncovered, hope digs down to find only dust, further questions, telling one to dig deeper, only to present no answers, likening its search for a God particle, an imaginary key to unlock secrets for His Word creating all or temptation to search for heaven's boundary.

Stranger: Look to the Lord, open your eyes to His revelations, use your mind to understand and accept the boundaries He places on your knowing, telling you to wait patiently for understanding He will equip you with, for everything is here but hidden from your appreciation, understanding the more He reveals the more humans will count on crediting themselves, forgetting who created all, as they rejoice in their achievements to show what He has hidden, thinking they will solve all, but they have done nothing except to find a strings end, hoping it will lead to final answers, never realizing that God being God might change everything so a silver thread tied to hope might be fruitless at its end, uncovering futility in its uselessness, perhaps then discovering satisfaction comes only from God directing one's life, never from one's direction.

Jove: We do all to increase our satisfaction, trusting each one lives to magnify happiness, in the case of many to find joy in discovery.

Stranger: Joy is never satisfied by discovery based on one's achievements. Joy comes only from the Lord, revealed by Jesus exercising absolute self-sacrifice and self-surrender to His father and never minimized by calling it happiness, gratification from fulfilling one's wants and desires and never avoiding worldly temptations, falling into their pit and being mired in evil, choking the Word and disregarding where one finds joy. Be followers of Jesus, blessed to be a blessing, unaware of their benefits on others, never expecting recognition for their deeds, and be filled with joy as an only reward.

Wanton: My success thrives by living in fear, never knowing what tomorrow will bring, expecting the worst, hoping something better will come to assure me in my fearful existence.

Jurdan: Wearied by counsels fighting for supremacy, creating turmoil's afflicting every corner of my mind, allowing no avenues for escape, tormenting and inciting me to turn to your Lord, fails, maybe because I'm ill-prepared, never calling on Him before, never knowing how it should be done, having always depended on my idols, ever returning to them for comfort, graven images I have inscribed on my heart, making it the furnace of my affliction, blazing away to decimate hope on hope.

Stranger: The Lord appears as the Redeemer, replacing counselors who weary your thoughts and offer little comfort with no resolutions to distract you from desires, providing the only mentor to harness your afflictions, sending them to the bin of discontentment, blessing you with peace overflowing with righteousness as waves of the sea, never ceasing, there for your taking, renewing goodness in a person wise in his own conceit, restoring ones overtaken in fault, overawed by self-esteem, deceiving their nothingness, miring them in despondency, swamped by despair they ignore the Redeemer God sends.

Jurdan: Your Redeemer has little history of success, hardly proven by people's disjointed convictions, leading few to prosperity, seeing most cling to hopes for human endeavors, promising victory over depression, spelling defeat for despair. Human insights now promise development of chemicals for banishing depression, giving hope unseen before, better than drugs currently produced, ones with a message to end their lives if treatment for depression fails.

Wanton: The Lord's words offend many, encouraging few, mystifying most with His riddles, attracting the lowly burdened by so many failures, trusting no danger in His call beckoning them to give up everything and follow Him, ones having virtually nothing to lose, giving up little so hope in His words would never be costly. Growing prosperity to reduce numbers of have-nots, its responsibility now the government's, attracting troubled ones having lost faith in the Lord, abandoning Him for secular promises depending on the world, they flee from Him to satisfy all their wishes. Who is left to claim, I will follow You wherever you go, preceding everything dear to them, casting all hopes in a new direction?

Jurdan: The people's Lord wants me to sell my soul to Him, giving up all I am blessed with, wondering why I should return any if they are gifts from Him, giving back to One claimed to have everything, sending me to poverty's realm, doing all to please some unseen God, One invisible formed by people's imagination, leaving their request lacking any sense, thinking reason fails me and risking my sanity by breaking all allegiance with the world.

Stranger: Trust in the Lord must be ruthless, taking no prisoners of doubt, boundless with hope, ridiculously optimistic with unwavering faith, transformed to willingly accept only what He allows, never wrapping oneself in sorrow asking why me? Your kind will never win the world until transfigured to be Christ-like, becoming like Him, making you a misfit, a disciple of foolishness in a world having learned to live by reason, employing common sense to follow.

Jurdan: Claiming fear of your Lord endows us with wisdom, how do you explain people's success in fearing nothing, developing knowledge to form truth, depending on reason without fearing the Lord?

Stranger: Fear of the Lord was mandatory in the old covenant, but was wiped away, cleansed by Christ in the new covenant, learning that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind, there being no fear in love, believing perfect love casts out fear, because fear activates torment, so ones who fear are not perfect in love. Who do we love? We love Him, our Creator who first loved us, making us out of His perfect goodness to be the centerpiece of His beauty, holy and without blame before Him in love, ready to praise the glory of His grace, having been sealed by messages of the Holy Spirit, revealing the Lord's eternal wisdom from before time's beginning. Assured of redemption, promised by His word, tell me what I should fear, knowing He made me to love without fear? Anxious love fears and fear cannot prepare one to be a recipient of love? Does mercy ever come to fearful ones, unable to give up Jurdan anxieties in their souls?

Jurdan: What drives you to speak so confidently, promoting your opinions, claiming them to be a call from your God?

Stranger: Fear can't intercede and modify my convictions, shame can't confuse my words, and depression can never motivate me to question God's words. If I follow the world to gain confidence for dispelling despair, depending on chemicals to guide my thoughts, transforming confused ideas into utter disharmonious sounds, broadcasting bewilderment, thinking it is gilded with wisdom, useful for someone to release them from their depression, am I more than a clanging cymbal, resounding with chaos?

Jurdan: You fear lasting doctrines and enduring dogmas, eternal enigmas and all puzzling decrees, voiced to be etched in stone, but none outlive cultures as perpetual declarations, waiting to be amended by changing times or destroyed by a tyrannical leader, and maybe old saved old doctrines, having outlived their usefulness, become archives in a museum.

Stranger: Fear of the Lord must be clean and simple, enduring forever, acknowledging truth for His judgments, hoping we can share in His righteousness, desiring it more than gold, more than rewards for our efforts, free of sinful presumptuous arrogance, pride's great transgression, trusting our words, deeds, and thoughts persist in awe and with love for Him.

Jurdan: Documents directing life's constraints, dogmas requiring protection, readily interpreted for enforcement, need only power to speak and fear filled audience to hear, remembering fear opens the way for wisdom, so never lose fear for your God.

Skeptic: Is fear of the Lord essential for wisdom to be had?

Jurdan: Hearing you say your Lord doesn't create us to fear, while telling all to fear and praise Him, if I should trust either, it must be that He did create me to fear, but believing how I am made, a will to choose freely, to look within myself for truth and wisdom, how can I trust anyone compelling me to fear for following Him, filling me with anxiety, cautioning me to be reluctant stepping out on my own, guiding steps by myself? Is fear for anyone learning to love Him, believing love displaces fear at some designated time of enlightenment?

Stranger: Fear of the Lord can never be ignored, admonishing people to humble themselves before the Almighty, and perhaps if the day comes where all relationships are secured by love, obeying the Lord's command to love all others as oneself, understanding the truth of all His wisdom, we may know Him well enough to fear no longer, trusting love to displace all fear.

Bystander: God will always be beyond all understanding, trusting He will never reveal Himself completely, never trusting us to be like Him, knowing who He creates always struggles to become like Him, never being satisfied to merely serve Him, never devoted only to praise and worship Him, disavowing reverence for His name, declining fear and awe for One unseen.

Stranger: Calling on a protecting guardian angel, trusting one to be greater than twelve legions of angels, completing fate to end the work of God, trusting what is feared may result in something good, believing something good can come from what's dreaded as evil, you still fear your existence will not be fulfilled, thinking nothing can come but greater manifestations of evil, for in trusting your imaginations two witnesses still accuse you, judging and condemning you to be imprisoned in the pit of despair, smiting you to dwell with demons, worse than ending your life to bring peace.

Bystander: No guardian angel can save you from despondency, but wait patiently, remembering not to be weary in well doing, knowing in due season all will reap, trusted for all who faint not now, celebrated by the Lord as finishers, having run the good race.

Wanton: How can we run any good race wandering as strangers, searching for causes and reasons to vent anger, blaming and judging others, justifying jealously for unreasonable injustice, asking why me, raging about caged in despair, seeking victims for vengeance, never celebrating closure, perhaps only by self-destruction.

Jurdan: Causes being well-known beginnings of sorrow, responsible for doomsdays, threatening wars, instigating nations to rise against others, precipitating famines and destruction, delivering affliction to the innocent, betraying others in the name of your Lord, terrorizing believers as well as unbelievers, bringing others to cast their cause as one of false prophets, with iniquity abounding, loving nothing, deceiving many, condemning and destroying creation's goodness, creating the foretold abomination of desolation, trust in initiating the great tribulation.

Wanton: Hearing Scripture tell me the Lord didn't create me to fear, believers now tell me all who fear Him must praise Him, and if I should obey either, it must be He created humans to fear and trust what He has given me, a will to choose freely, to look within myself for truth and wisdom, for can I trust anyone teaching me to be fearless, never anxious, never cautioning me to be reluctant stepping out on my own, guiding steps by myself? Is fear for anyone learning to love Him, believing love displaces fear at some designated time of enlightenment?

Stranger: Scripture does read, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and His disciples tell us, We are not made with fear, but fear comes with our inheritance, being inherent in our nature until the Lord wipes it away, stealing it from our innate code, erasing all traces of it by the Holy Spirit's coming to occupy our soul. With traces of fear persisting, have we yet to relinquish all to Him? Who would admit any fear but one having yet to yield all to the Holy Spirit, still relying on one self's wisdom for all things, scorning all other's?

Bystander: An empty soul sets one up for failure, hardly succeeding during one's momentary interval on earth, never understanding more can come, rewarding ones with restored dwellings for the Holy Spirit, occupying them with resolution to hear the Lord's messages, giving directions for negotiating one's way on the paths of righteousness.

Stranger: Fear of the Lord can never be ignored, admonishing people to humble themselves before the Almighty, and perhaps if the day comes where all relationships are secured by love, obeying the Lord's command to love all others as oneself, understanding the truth of all His wisdom, we may know Him well enough to fear no longer, trusting love to displace all fear.

Humble Humphrey: Accepting I find little to be of use to the One creating and possessing everything, I live to trust Him completely, being His servant, waiting for Him to direct my existence, loving Him as I can, fearing nothing as I should, acknowledging perfect love drives out fear.

Jurdan: As an atheist protecting my soul, closing it to anyone negotiating for your God's will, proclaiming nothing will ever enter, no one smiling with convictions of religious reason, humoring all with spiritual truths claimed by common sense, whistling as they pass through the shadow of the valley of death, fearing nothing, trusting themselves and its staff of truth for comfort, goodness and mercy stamped on their endeavors, leaving this world with marks of excellence, accepting entrance into nothingness life destines for all, dwelling in its house forever.

Wanton: Is my soul under my command, restoring it at my will, calling on reason to revive it, filling it with revised wisdom, cleaning out decayed truths, searching facts to form new understandings, giving renewed confidence in the power of myself?

Stranger: Your soul is never under your jurisdiction, filling it with your knowledge, the soul being only for the Lord to occupy, settling the Holy Spirit in the home He created, establishing a message box for communication with His beings.

Wanton: What benefit could my soul be, leaving it empty, needing only myself and others like me for interactions, trusting only in what I see and hear from them?

Stranger: Many thinking like you, exercising God-given gifts while never acknowledging Him, succeed immensely, rewarded in life by many honors, treasures to be witnessed here, and planning on many more to come they accumulate trophies of wealth, hiding them in clefts soon to be forgotten, having served a purpose for their time, although now their remembrance is lost.

Jurdan: Abominations developing are under our judgment, determined only by us, drawing on our wisdom, revealing harm to ensnare us, fearing us little, because we have learned to deal with everything, gathering knowledge to accumulate facts, paving our way to greater truths. Once feared abominations, judged by your Lord to be sinful, iniquities deserving death, have become acceptable, so we are taught to be tolerant, accepting other's ways no less than ours, tolerating no intolerance, freeing all to their will, stifling none as unacceptable.

Stranger: Trusting ourselves is not enough. We all need a tabernacle, a hiding place, a sanctuary for times of trouble, a dwelling place to escape from enemies, never realizing we enter as our worst enemy, our myself trying to avoid, and encounter others retreating into safety, trusting to also escape from themselves, forming a congregation fleeing from their my-selves, creating a band of brethren convicted of their sinful abominations. No tabernacle built as a temple for God can protect you from yourselves. You may trust in its promises, giving one hope while retreating from the world, but you fail to see the Lord has written hope in all His creation, enshrining it to be trusted for providing our needs, never to be conquered for personal gain. Created for this world, I awake to His temple each day, needing none to be built, never like any made by people, seeing they will all be eventually destroyed as foretold by the Lord. A tabernacle can never be our hiding place, for we can never hide from our Creator, the only One we fear being transparent with, admitting all our wrongs.

Preacher: Are we like Peter, thinking we need a temple to shield us from the world, suggesting to the Lord we have created something for protection, and we believe no differently?

Jove: Needing no temple for shelter, I sought the Lord and He answered me, delivering me from all my fears, verifying He made me not to fear, blessing me with His radiance, diverting away any hint of other's shame, others bent on restoring my concerns, incorporating anxiety needlessly in reverence for Him.

Preacher: The Lord's righteousness so near, dangled before us, evident for all to see, never far off, reaching out with salvation close for the taking, assuring peace for all our anxieties, can be claimed with trust and belief in the Almighty.

Stranger: Promising peace be with us, banishing fear, giving us slumber without fear, dreaming visions of His goodness, the Lord blesses His creation, obedient to His will, energizing hope for all His people. We will never be anxious over any feared enemies, knowing He chases them from awareness, cleansing our land with His sword of truth, clearing the way for Him to walk among us, bearing His covenant to be our God, certifying us as His people.

Wanton: Destiny, always being a mystery, compels us to be armed, especially when it foretells danger, dreading the unknown, driving us to be prepared, anxious over human beasts blocking our way. Can humans be content, trusting to be fearless, yielding to the assurances of security within them, believing in peace promised by the Lord?

Stranger: Created by God's Word, look to Christ's messages for lasting life, His spoken words being spirit and life, insured by trusting, so why does anyone seek eternal life elsewhere, believing in science's promises, fulfilled only by empty visions and dreams? Suspended with impatience, waiting on the Lord's timing, forces one to trust in human endeavors, giving them greater hope than others, promising their allegiance without knowing what fickle destiny has in store.

Jove: My righteousness is sufficient, never making me struggle with temptations, giving me insight to defray them, never knowing any to appear, but I realize they come to test ones less worthy, everyday people tempted by wants and desires. My destiny never should face temptations, with its fate predetermined.

Stranger: Predetermined by whom? By some god of your imagination? Do exclude yourself from humankind in having no temptations common to all? Do you think you never had temptations like Jesus encountered, making you different from all people? Denying any temptation such as those facing Jesus may signify God never tempts unbelievers and suffers them with temptation only when they become His, allowing Satan to test them, but God promises never to test anyone beyond their endurance.

Jurdan: Earthly fortunes seize Jove, energizing his confidence, shielding him from failure, trusting nothing will change his success, but one small misstep by fate upending his hopes can strike him with fear, schooling him in unprovoked adversity, misfortune accepted as common to unprotected others, living out circumstance life deals them. The fates can never please me, knowing their unpredictability, changing whims we cannot understand, teasing us with good luck, provoking us to praise our reason, thinking our choices have been responsible, but fortune never relies on our decisions to spring its surprises, coming as they do without notice.

Stranger: Could Jove live like the Lord's only begotten son, trusting to be in His likeness, deified to ensure an absolute return to Him, or could he be no more than a branch, broken off from Godly counsel, drifting on earthly waters, unaware of His living waters, subject to random currents somehow leading to the chaos ruling before creation's beginning.

Philosopher: Destiny offered up an only begotten son, testing faith's assurance for creation's endurance, willingly sacrificing a remnant encoded with God's perfect design, waiting for some response, uncertain of what would happen, and the Creator sent fate to redirect destruction from death's certainty. Faith in creation's goodness prevailed, assuring endurance for human life, ending the Lord's conflicting arguments whether the life He created was flawed or was unblemished enough to survive. Had He ventured thus before, molding a human worthy of being saved, or was He satisfied with success on His first try? He had created hominids before, giving them a chance to survive, but they were not worthy of receiving His Spirit breathed in them, prompting Him to wait until He could fine-tune one to be more deserving, pleasing Him to promise resurrection and everlasting life after He would reclaim ones worthy to exist with Him.

Jurdan: Explain why He would leave them with beastly codes needed for survival, thinking His Spirit's breath would delete the beast's requirements, making transfigured humanoids into jewels of His creation?

Stranger: Perhaps our transformation is incomplete, still evolving under His direction.

Jurdan: Realty reveals our changes are all under our own direction, reasoning how to modify our behavior, using science to show how to live, discovering chemicals to improve our lives, and protecting us from within by remnants of beastly instincts, ready for awakening to engage in conflict, as we trust in ourselves, needing no imaginations to form faith in anything else.

Stranger: You can't question our belief by other's reasons, convictions buried in their heritage, formed to please their benevolence, pridefully sustaining their role as philosophers, attracting people to praise their knowledge of truth, to worship passing fancies, proclaiming their wisdom greater than the Lord's, establishing codes for people to live by, arguing none can surpass theirs. We support apologist-philosophers chosen to develop judgments for our actions so that we can seal our authority in truth, lasting dogmas our followers can understand.

Wanton: Trusting nothing said by philosophers, destiny casts lots with fate, each vying to invade my slumber with dreams of their choosing, hoping theirs would shape my being, greeting me with darkness to bring no joy, counseling me to welcome all others with words from my double-edge sword, sharpened by experience of the night, coming as a thief to afflict my soul, tarnishing my memory to question my virtue.

Skeptic: The Lord gives fate a role in determining creation's flaws, allowing destiny to inject its influence, giving chance an opportunity in creation's pinball machine, sending its missiles rolling, never knowing where they will stop, assembling with others, with fate never discerning what might be mistakes, never listening to our judgment of perfection, thinking that should be left to us.

Wanton: Must we remain so confused, believing we can guide fate's destiny, predicting fortune's next appearance, trusting by our vanity good things to happen, prophesying with unwavering assurance, never knowing hope embeds us with all-knowing powers, convincing us of good things to come, despite being blinded to surrounding goodness rightly ordered by someone else?

Stranger: Your confusion will vanish when you accept creation's goodness and no longer seek a version for change.

Wanton: Goodness is never charged with assigning prosperity or adversity, never being its prerogative, so is it merely a bystander, watching humans fumble through life, waiting for encounters with chance, having no idea of any fortune it brings?

Stranger: Woven into goodness, patience beyond people's discipline assures waiting, frustrating all alike, subjecting them to the time required for maintaining order, for unveiling of the Lord's design without interference, leaving us to wonder if strong disapproval would end our being.

Jurdan: Is goodness designed to maintain itself by condoning evil, using wrong doings to restrain ones straying from order, to reveal sin's consequences, training ones to maintain discipline, to demonstrate undisciplined life is unacceptable? How else can one explain that evil creeps into the world and works to destroy its suggested goodness?

Stranger: Not everything is so bad, guaranteeing persistent evil works can never transform creation's goodness, making it impossible for anything to return chaos, realizing the Lord exercises a tool to allow evil, authorizing it for goodness to prevail.

Bystander: Give fortune no credit, seeing it is merely an excuse, allotting destiny a reason for adversity, where instead humans should consider afflictions seeming to disrupt their comfort are opportunities presented by the living God. Claim no innocence, thinking all are free of sin, never having sinned, for why would the Lord intervene, offering opportunities, chances for redemption, if iniquity had never directed one's thoughts and deeds, none of which would have ever occurred? Satisfied to name what's most elusive, considering fame to top one's list, wealth to find its place, love to be most worthy, or peace to surround one with serenity, all fail to be most noteworthy, realizing all are unfulfilling, vainly chased by humans, shining as most treasured, slipping through people's fingers like quicksilver of their desires.

Stranger: Convicted to fear the Lord, I reason fate could steal in at any time, judging me for my acts, uncovering hidden thoughts in my mind, sending destiny to set justice, retribution for anything, knowing evil travels through my thoughts, dropping suggestions I'm forced to consider, spontaneously, freely without my consent, having been introduced by life's experience.

Jurdan: Nonsense. We make our story, being the author writing its script, promising where justified, reneging when we change its plot, authorized by free will to determine life's destiny. When future needs help, seeming to run dry, our imagination can approve development of new desires, crisscrossing genes to produce things novel, mangling their directions, crossing out sexual manifestations, changing their preferences to new intentions, making all possible by acclamations expressing human rights, upholding convictions for individuals to redefine themselves, demonstrating they can overpower their God-established innate codes, trashing His intent for their lives, making people masters of their destiny.

Wanton: If God claims responsibility for directing our culture's development, why did He give us free will, a free rein, allowing us to muddle through trial and error before forcing destiny to determine our fate, never enlightening us with wisdom, allowing only hindsight to reveal the errors of our way?

Jurdan: Belief in your God promises you hope with no foundation.

Stranger: Is hope merely an illusion, dancing on a string, dangled before me, tempting to be caught, snared to be clutched, but evaporating, disappearing as a phantom, it's comfort vanishing, it's reality replaced by disillusionment, destroying my illusions creation's watch set over me, becoming as fleeting as a hypocrite's hope, entangled in webs of human reason? Disillusionment convinces me to build faith on a new foundation, resurrecting it from its ashes of deception, convicting me to give it certainty, trusting it no longer as hope, knowing hope is for eternal truth, and trusting in this verity needs no hope, hope being for ones insecure in their destiny, uncertain of their convictions, wavering in their belief, as I am more than persuaded, relying on more than hope, that nothing will separate me from the love of God, His eternal goodness, and its all-encompassing beauty, knowing if the world passes away, His Word remains forever.

Jurdan: Your grand illusions will bring nothing but disillusionment.

Stranger: Alienated from hope, trusting in reason fortified by common sense, convinced to be perfect actions, blending righteousness with free thinking to solidify your convictions, but never knowing your soul should make you despise all you are, revealing the perversity of your perfection, it's false aggrandizement, your grand illusion, without which you would wander, a nomad seeking one's wits, so you will see God destroys the perfect as well as the wicked, and you will never know if the perfect is deserving more than the wicked. You judge your righteousness, justifying you to be long-suffering with self-determined convictions so that you can fill your vessel with wrath fitted for destruction.

Jurdan: Never tolerating any remnant of religious beliefs, stumbling blocks to human purpose, alien to our destiny promised by evolution, foreign to laws of our righteousness, we trust in reason for all our convictions.

Stranger: You, competing with the Son of God ministering to me each moment, working to convince me your righteousness is sufficient, believe no more is needed, but I obey the Holy Spirit sealed in me, joyfully following His direction, never tolerating your ways, never wishing to appease you, as God has His wonderful way with me. Asking all in His name, I will to follow Him, living as He taught me, never as my reason or common sense directs survival by worldly truths changing as each moment demands.

Jurdan: With righteousness as we espouse, having sufficient to reflect your God's goodness, we dismiss what is sinful, learning to tolerate what has been condemned as iniquity, releasing reason to redefine obligations to the gods, freeing all to enjoy the world's infinite goodness and never designating any as sinful. We have matured to a new age, a time for humans to ascend to greatness, having little need for any imaginary gods, freeing us to be instruments of righteousness unto ourselves.

Stranger: We are promised more than offered by an imaginary land of milk and honey, knowing we are entrusted by God to create a new order, wiping out our enemies as He commanded for His chosen people, but seeing where they fail we will succeed. We are confident in our righteousness, enough to satisfy Him encouraging us, allowing enough freedom for our actions, promising fulfillment of our destiny, the new order humans fail to achieve, no, perhaps never wanted.

Wanton: You claim to be somewhat righteous, following some of God's ways, but that leaves you with some unrighteousness, so I ask is your truth formed by sin and concealed from your righteousness, never letting it take part in your deeds, releasing your will to practice wickedness, deceiving you as the means for a righteous end, giving you pleasure and satisfaction, ignoring any need to rely on the sufficiency of God?

Jurdan: The grand illusion, convinced of one's righteousness freely exercising free will, ignores assistance from one's God, deaf to messages of the Holy Spirit, trusting in one's myself to direct life, believing no suffering can break through one's shield, its impenetrable barrier supported by an armor of reason, forming an ongoing alliance keeping disillusionment at bay.

Wanton: Illusion is essential for reality, directing it to become truth.

Jurdan: Life consists of continuously feeding people's illusions, portraying everything as black or white, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable, never confusing them with jumbled reason but playing to their common sense, so they must be entertained with pleasures tickling their senses, discordant music, violence with happy endings, proclamations speaking to their prejudices, hatred concealed in political correctness, all done in a circus atmosphere, laden with little distraction to prevent disillusionment, never driving anyone to seek truth, realizing illusions promoted become their facts, cauldrons for suffering, lived by until disillusionment, revealing life lived in lies, bringing people I to hopeless despair, frantically looking for anything to numb its pain.

Stranger: Knowing your purpose is fraught with anxiety, springing questions, wondering if your understanding is clear, muddling your actions, you present confidence for all to see, but what lurks behind your convictions, causing your tongue to sometimes waver, stammering with uncertainty, revealing wrinkles in thoughts you consider well-pressed, never realizing why you react in such ways. With some token belief in God, you could always blame Him and assign Him reason for your failures, making Him the scapegoat who withhold His grace for you to succeed, driving your anxiety to worry, distracting you away from your purpose, devaluing your ambition, distorting your illusions of reality, without acknowledging your trials are inevitable and unpredictable, trusting them to be impartial circumstances waiting to inflict everyone, as your anxiety panics you into believing you have become helpless, with hopelessness waiting, calling you to join in.

Jurdan: You hope for the unseen, but partake of the seen, reaping the seen, never relying on hope, saving your agony, waiting on illusions in vain, dissipating your patience for nothing.

Stranger: You should realize now why righteousness must be developed to the degree that it will never be overwhelmed by wanton free will, focusing on illusion to form destiny.

Jurdan: You trap my soul, caging it with your illusions, lies I am forced to live with, stealing it for your profit, unceasingly to magnify your vanity, calling on me to obey your every whim.

Stranger: Spewing retribution on my thoughts, you ignore vengeance belongs to the Lord, never assigned to your partaking, thinking it lurks in the shadow of justice, waiting to spring forth at your command, called upon by decrees you create, fabrications to glorify your vanity and gain.

Jurdan: Free will, endowed with rights, gives me liberty to exact vengeance, exercising power to maintain order, to preserve our law's integrity, expressing vengeance innately given for a purpose, so I commit this righteousness of my being, inherently revealing myself as nature created me, and I am true to myself, executing justice as It should be. If your Creator claims to be master of vengeance, delivering more than I could never imagine, don't belittle my delivery of vengeance when it is demanded.

Jove: My virtue radiates tolerance, justifying a measure of righteousness blended with a right amount of free will, cautioning against vengeance, overlooking iniquities overreaching righteousness can bring, knowing the sinful extremes free will condones, so I tolerate some, but never tolerating all or any at all.

Wanton: Exercising tolerance with my soul being empty and calling to be filled, asking for me to provide, my will advised it should be stocked with a carnival of illusions, imaginations to celebrate vanity, knowing it would depend on folly for truth, leaving me an unending celebration.

Jurdan: Forever searching all that surrounds me, considering their truths for directing my existence, my free will molds me, giving me an identity to succeed, willing me to empower considerations of wisdom, but never discerning whether truth is enveloped in illusions, never appearing as dreams, trusting they will never disillusion my hopes.

Stranger: Test truth for illusions with a fleece.

Jurdan: Such testing is to call on magic, invoking what you can never claim to trust, scoffing all miracles as magical fancy, forgetting reason's disdain for unreliable illusion, calling on your charm represented by a rabbit's foot and a four-leaf clover, inviting luck to show her presence. Is hope embedded in your common sense, an over-riding reason to control your decisions? Do amulets become your cornerstone, established to protect your wishes, confirming them as your desires, sealing them as guarantees of your fortunes?

Stranger: Are we not created with dignity, endowed by God with an inalienable right, never to be shorn from us, removing the gift of His fleece because sin haunted it's worth, destroying its value, laying it in shambles, in pieces difficult to restore? Or is our integrity at birth a blank slate, waiting for dignity to be developed, wondering how it can be done? Dignity sprouts in an environment of piety, searching God for assistance, growing claims to justify pride for our being, impassioning us to forsake any sinful deeds, teaching what counts as iniquity, showing the importance of building a relationship with our Maker, realizing without dignity nothing worthwhile remains for salvation, leaving dignity to be as unremarkable as nothingness. Proclaiming goodness for all His creatures, would denying humans dignity be amiss, never considering dignity as a component of honesty, marring it by its exclusion?

Preacher: Regard dignity as a means, never an end, using it to enhance creation's goodness and beauty, never using it merely to justify one's salvation, to boast on being a good and faithful servant, for the Lord knows that without any proclamations.

Jurdan: Speaking only to garner praise, coveting adulation for your word's worthiness, anticipating honor to testify, self-satisfying your dignity you say little, repeating another's words until you realize there is nothing new under the sun.

Wanton: For ones attributing goodness to God's design, leaving nothing out, compassion must be held for all, demanding responsibility He assigned to humans, authorizing them to be stewards, commanding them to maintain beauty for creation's goodness, to restore grandeur for life's dignity. Don't avoid visions of dumpster children, seeking manna from discarded trash, rotting food designed only for vultures, morsels rejected but for scavenging rats, but wake up and be merciful, responding to their call for help, hoping you would become a new father, saving them from sins of their fathers, begging for you to recognize them as ones belong to creation's goodness.

Stranger: God must grieve, remorseful over His failures, reflecting on His ongoing revelations, hoping we would learn and prosper, but we develop greater problems, inflicted by our choices, considering greed to be a virtue and protected as a right, fighting for its preservation, battling with needy ones wanting their share promised by the Lord, as they claim life's sanctity, proclaiming its need to maintain dignity for their lives.

Jurdan: Does the chance of birth confer one dignity, assuring it as a right, assigned to newborns by their rite of passage, confusing reason why birth should be a messenger bearing dignity, questioning whether some divinity assigns dignity to new life? Is life such a mystery, treating it with dignity until science confirms our being is no more than a blob of protoplasm, deserving little dignity, subject to willful destruction, demolishing humans before they can be regarded worthwhile? Perhaps dignity is never inherent in any life, being conferred only by honor and reverence, concluding dignity must be scarce since few can be so distinguished. But people can mock honor and reverence, bestowing them using human standards, weighed out on faulty scales, tilted to measure advantage so honesty can reveal no deceit.

Wanton: Pride-filled ones come in their own name, distrusting all claiming allegiance to some imaginary deity, fearing anyone usurping their power, lurking to steal their self-proclaimed dignity, destroying all their accomplishments.

Stranger: Indeed they appear, thinking to destroy remnants and artifacts of all deities, believing people will then proclaim divinity for themselves, but no can erase people's sacred beliefs, hidden traces of reverence for the Lord, innate and preserved, waiting to burst worth, all the while embracing His Lordship, knowing human pretenses to deify themselves disappear, to be long forgotten.

Preacher: Our success is guaranteed by the honesty of the Lord's message, according dignity for the Messenger, standing Him alone, claiming nothing for ourselves. But how many accord Him dignity? As with us all, dignity goes only as far as one's admirers, and most believe we deserve little to make us worthy of consideration. Can dignity be designated, to be reserved for only goodness, preferred only for describing beauty, or can decrees legislate it to be a human right?

Jurdan: If dignity is a human right, reserved for only the living, ask why the dead should possess any dignity, seeing dead bodies must be respected more so than before life departed, asking if some pride remains, but for how long, thinking a time must come to forget any remaining dignity.

Wanton: Why should dead bodies deserve dignity, especially remains of ones honored with little dignity during life? If a fetus lacks dignity, acquiring it only after birth, should it persist after death?

Stranger: How are we unique in understanding human rights, human nature, and dignity, never considering it is inherent, making these traits endowed for no apparent reason, creating us to be special, separating us from beasts, distinguishing us from all animal life? Only by discovering religion do we understand our innate rights and virtues, and realize we maintain them by acknowledging the Lord, understanding never by our own powers can we sustain them, seeing how reason can destroy them, debasing any goodness for human nature so we can deny people's rights and ridicule individual dignity, jeopardizing our health as human beings.

Jurdan: If a person relates only to your God, how can there be time for relationships with others, seeing some dress as monks, existing as hermits for the Lord, isolated, never venturing out to enjoy creation's goodness, trusting in nothing else, living only to become like Him, never undressing to reveal everything inherent in the nakedness of their being, fearful of the evil dormant in their flesh? Disrobe people to uncover their hidden lies, returning them to their potential's treasures, restoring consciousness of their human dignity, reclaiming their birthright, rejecting their errant thinking, destroying truths they have established, all done to train them in inerrant dogmas, developing convictions never to be questioned.

Stranger: Is rejection of God satisfying, pridefully proclaiming one's worthiness without any need for Him, boasting the virtue and dignity of being one's own myself, in triumph for the moment, thinking it will last, but one's convictions decay, leaving words once spoken in ashes, having lost its tongue to lash out for one's edification. Will God choose the dust of such a life for Resurrection, restoring this creation He once made?

Jurdan: We must be students of learned ones, philosophers revealing secrets of noble living, teaching truths to form wisdom, formulating ethics to maintain human dignity, trusting words veiled in mystery, incomprehensible to all but their own, jargon others little understand, and we must look to their tangible ideas for developing our wisdom.

Stranger: Philosophers create many gods, developing them to project wisdom, enjoining rulers to abide by their truths, depending on new unknown deities to reveal hidden verities, trusting in their revelations for new decrees, ones for complying with cultural progress.

Jurdan: Trusting in religious reason, trapping minds like religions, entangling people's thoughts and snaring their free will to create puppets, many like me want no part of, acting as an adhesive to obligate followers, destroying rights, dismissing all dignity of humans to be themselves, disabling all decrees declaring them free. I can tolerate many beliefs, ones never impugning my rights, but I can't compromise my resistance to people jeopardizing my way of life, declaring my thoughts and deeds mostly unacceptable iniquities.

Stranger: Knowing everything is bound in relationships, what would happen if the glue of religious belief binding people together dissolved, leaving links broken, releasing all back into chaos, libertarianism called anarchy? The Lord would never let that happen, returning His creation to where it all began, seeing the goodness and beauty of His creation vanish.

Jurdan: If your Lord is indeed like us, being the ideal He makes our image from, He could make mistakes, and being who He is, a perfectionist, He would work to correct them, and perhaps He would choose to demolish creation and embark on a new one, one free of problems we are forced to live with.

Stranger: The Lord can never be the mistake, blaming Him, realizing people always need someone to fault, everyone but themselves, and when crises develop beyond human understanding, who else should be blamed but God.

Preacher: Anger and disappointment provoke people to blame the Lord, so they run from Him, declaring they can no longer trust Him, rejecting His counsel as everyone must do with their fathers, relying on their wisdom no longer than necessary.

Stranger: Tolerating unworthy thoughts and deeds, excusing other's unacceptable actions, unknowingly commits us to accept lies, ignoring the will of God, doing all to curry favor with our brethren, thinking we accept their right to dignity, trusting we walk in the light, the beacon of truth, but being impossible when we approve of lies. United with our friends, unable to make others accountable for lies, we blame either fate or the Lord for our adversities.

Bystander: Claiming right to dignity clashes with perversion to spread lies, committing sins with deception, ignoring dignity's pleas for truth.

Jurdan: Dignity battles depression, descent into serving only oneself, claiming despair as one's only companion, judging all mentor's failures, trusting only in my self's knowledge, but discovering one's wisdom never lasts, disappearing to be replaced by something better, until all human's best offerings find their end, suggesting people's endeavors are all meaningless, tempting ones to consider life is worthless existence in nothingness, becoming their evaluation of creation when the going turns bad, they can solve dilemmas by ending all, choosing a way to exit life with dignity. As a champion of human dignity being an indefeasible right, a self-professed virtue, fight for claims of dignity as existence survives in a meaningless creation, lacking any goodness with dignity never being a part of any imaginary goodness, terminating such dreams, delivering them into nothingness. Was life created with designed ways to achieve dignity in the context of some Creator's plan, showing people how to sustain dignity into a next life, believing dignity is in the heart of our soul and never dies without flesh around it? Or perhaps consider dignity as an inherent deployment instructing us to defray happiness, avoiding our wants and desires.

Theologian: Tolerance deserves some respect, without which humans knowingly stained with sin deserve some dignity, being regarded as the crown of God's creation, an image of His goodness and beauty, patiently waiting for the Lord's Spirit to activate their potential, developing virtue and never insisting on a license to will their desires and wants, expecting others to tolerate their decisions, judging them no better or worse than others. Tolerance must be transposed, transfiguring people from living with nothing to die for to living with something to die for, to die in Christ. Tolerance gives time for that to happen.

Stranger: Knowing the Lord confronts us with circumstances, calling at times for us to entertain strangers, uncertain of who they are, possibly angels sent by Him, and we must honor them with brotherly kindness, listen to their message, consider who they are, discern what they say, dignify them by tolerating their thoughts, realizing strangers have been scattered, learning other teachings, and we must consider their ideas as perhaps as good as ours, justifying us to open our minds to strangers coming with different thoughts.

Jurdan: Why would you entertain strangers with strange, unverified, uncertain ideas, allowing them to contribute to your consideration, when you claim to have a Holy Spirit for bringing messages from your God, trusting only Him to carry eternal truths, preparing your heart to receive His grace? Do you think your Lord would disguise someone for sending to you, trusting you would listen to a stranger's words, believing He already has a way to transcend your thoughts, never being an angel, realizing angels are lower than you and do little other than standing around to reveal what you can see, thinking you need someone to tell you more?

Wanton: Distrust strangers proclaiming unity to accept their beliefs. My free will guards its freedom, uniting with no one else's truths, knowing unification enslaves all to be one with those seeking unity to compromise other's free will, never allowing them to be themselves, free spirits roaming creation unrestricted, never encumbered by decrees or laws, living in their self-determined utopia, creating all their needs, trusting virtue is unnecessary and dignity is fictitious for life on an island of oneself.

Jurdan: Is unity so essential, unifying diversity, enforcing people to love one another, mandating them to exist as one, overlooking differences, ignoring uniqueness, committing them to bondage by love, joining others with differences they have learned to dislike, developing humility to destroy their pride, thinking all can unite and become a band of brothers?

Stranger: Thankful for diversity responsible for the rich abundance of doctrines, allowing each to develop one's dogma, people have a formula for discord, so they can pursue whatever their will chooses, justifying whatever comes to mind.

Theologian: Diversity in religious beliefs is determined by oppositions to other's ideas, trusted by a plurality at one time, but now regarded as ancient understandings presumed irrational, arbitrary and oppressive, needed to be avoided or destroyed by violent means if necessary, liberating people from restrictions restraining human dignity so they can live under the persuasion of I'm okay you're okay, stamping out intolerance and prejudice, displacing the haughty who never escaped from tradition, having never questioned their heritage.

Jurdan: With a goal of being inclusive and meet everyone's needs, we must be tolerant, conceding to the wishes of all, assuring no one we encounter will be dissatisfied, accepting diverse lifestyles, protecting their ways if they don't interfere with others. Insist on no religious beliefs, allowing each to have one's convictions, never being intolerant of any other's beliefs.

Bystander: Toleration partnered with suspicion teeters, balanced on a high wire, struggling to overcome distrust, frantically focused on success, taunted by accusations of intolerance, demons' uninvited thoughts watching one's footsteps, seeking one reason to prove their claims. Each ideology humans establish is fraught with danger, destroying encouragement ventured by others, denying their values, reasoned to be bundled as lies. Toleration promised, soon accepted by others, authorizes freedom for toleration to invoke intolerance, subjecting ideas to rejection, preparing them to become victims sacrificed to the truths of nothingness.

Stranger: Many people will tolerate differences, accepting others for what they are, but persisting hatred precludes any love for them, silently detesting their ways, never respecting them as virtuous, judging them deviates with differences they are forced to tolerate.

Theologian: With a commitment to diversity, we must tolerate all opinions, except for fragments judged to be depraved, perversions ignoring any shared capacity for truth, denying its one true source, never looking to the Lord for confirmation.

Jurdan: Quelling diversity, protesting to make us all of one accord, would change us to be what? Our thoughts spread in all directions, never corralled into one idea or silencing dissident words, never rejecting dogmas, so should diversity be undone? We attempt to settle differences by vowing to love all others, but love stands idly by, observing people will their ideas into action, with love seldom interfering with someone's choice, as killing diversity stamps out love, considering it unacceptable. People dismiss diversity by eliminating judgment, considerations of others judging what one does wrong, protesting views by only themselves, never stripping others' identity to discern anything worthy or unworthy, confining them to the shell of their being, no longer able to express convictions of their will, becoming robots responding to proud rhetorical elements of the most powerful.

Wanton: Don't religious beliefs destroy relationships with others, creating diversity and never tolerate the worship of other's deities, killing people for denying belief in a culture's gods or worshipping some foreign idols? History proves the path to worship one God without trust in any other fails, even where acknowledgment of one God is affirmed by all, and great battles ensue, fighting for rights to establish only one true way.

Jurdan: Promised lands, attracting immigrants with their milk and honey, all have pagan lives that must be destroyed to preparing a home for righteous people, but all come in bringing hidden gods concealed in their baggage, smuggling in diversity deserved to be hated, prepared to steal all. Lands of milk and honey laden with promise must all be taken, confiscating treasures accumulated by pagan's personal efforts. Does your Lord bless some who steal from others, ones never being taught who your One and only God is, people deserving to be hated by Him and rewarded by His destruction of them?

Stranger: Can't we search for understanding the Lord's ways without reasoning we must see Him to believe, with failing to do so ending our quest in disbelief, in despair over our failure? Look at how we continue our endeavors, sending investigations into space, struggling with numbers to describe the unseen, thinking we can anticipate God's mind, reading formulas to explain creation. But there is no ending, still thinking He unifies all into comprehensible equations, and we soon discover He must have different numbers for concealing formulas not ready for us to understand. As we stumble through imperfections in our knowledge, we are hopeful of success, trusting with faults there must be perfection waiting awaiting revelation, else we must reclassify perception of imperfections as perfect, establishing imperfections as the gold standard, believing in their diversity, acknowledging goodness can't depend on perfection, at least as determined by our judgment.

Bystander: Goodness must never stand alone, being multifaceted within diversity, never solitary without comparison, interacting with all other, because its identity must remain confused and appear nonexistent, unable to be evaluated. See how far from good one exists alone, surviving by self-assigned goodness, fantasizing in its reflection, thinking it to be good, but personal virtues never can claim goodness unless they interact and unite, unifying to create goodness, creating goodness to be one, giving the Lord license to claim goodness for all creation. Do you participate in His goodness, uniting your individuality with all others to be combined as one and fulfill His purpose?

Simple Simon: Unity and goodness must then be the same, never differing, affirmed by the integration of equations bonding all creation into one, into the goodness of God's purpose. Breaking unity splinters goodness, sending fragments into limbo, pieces left to rely on themselves, broken away from association with others, left to cope with their feeble information, unable to call on others to reform unity, to regain goodness.

Stranger: Unity must be of the spirit, goodness never being for transient flesh, as we pray to be one in the spirit, realizing flesh's unity can be flawed and beyond correction, but the spirit can always be restored, returning to its potential for unity forming-goodness, determined by its nurture, quenching its thirst with living water, never growing its spirit by bread alone.

Jurdan: Diversity is a human-made construction, giving us means to distinguish one from another, being necessary for developing likes and dislikes, for growing prejudices, for breaking bonds restricting us in relationships, and disrupting interactions made to produce unity, creating each with blemishes to arouse displeasure, as we search in each for something to criticize, delving into another's being to find faults certain to exist.

Wanton: What makes us this way, forcing us to claim our identity by disowning another's as unacceptable, reasoning the virtues of ours, trusting in the possibility of unity if all others were like ours.

Jurdan: Unity is never possible, realizing people can always find a speck in another's eye, perhaps satisfying some need, wanting to be different, a reason for reinforcing their independence, trusting that to ensure space from demands of interdependence.

Stranger: But unity is God's desire for us, bonding us as one, assuring us of dependence on each other, never straying off to join independence by seeking freedom to be ourselves, by defining our identity and create prominence for ourselves, to stand alone as ones unique in being self-made with virtues we have chosen.

Jurdan: Can independence be considered worthy if we acknowledge your God created everything good, giving all a raiment of goodness, thereby assigning independence as a virtue, bequeathing it to us as a gift? With goodness established by your God and incorporating freedom, your God creates only to abandon His product, leaving it to run like an unwinding clock, never entering into micromanage human's affairs, struggling with their free will, living in their tragedies and comedy of errors.

Skeptic: The Lord calls for unity, thinking diversity He created for humans can be united, but with free will He chose for them people guard ideas to protect their freedoms, rejecting any thoughts of being united.

Bystander: Human's recognize the Lord painted creation with diversity and endowing us with free will He doesn't restrict our making choices, allowing us to know Him in any way our reason leads, and with each person being unique, creating thoughts of one's own, all possible forms of worship and belief develop, being protected by laws decreeing freedom of religion.

Jurdan: Why are such laws necessary, being enacted only to protect human rights? Do they testify to belligerence provoking conflict, diversity of beliefs invoking battles for supremacy?

Stranger: Diversity driving the need for greater freedom, giving voice to cries for absolute freedom, unrestricted freedom for religion, demanding absolute justice in the name of the Lord, leaves anarchy in its wake, a vacuum waiting for tyranny to move in.

Jurdan: Diversity perpetuates confusion, creating so many options filled with contradictions, conflicting beliefs proclaimed as truths, more than human reason can decipher, so people dismiss them all, preferring to define their realities.

Bystander: Diversity disrupting order handicaps real justice, rejecting retribution for iniquities people commit, restricting penalties for sin, none ever being consequential, overlooking actions never affecting oneself, as humans tolerate anything, not in their interest.

Jurdan: Diversity thrives on relativism, maintaining freedom for all by proclaiming their convictions are as good as others, and depends on inviting chaos to disrupt any negotiations for harmonious agreement, uprooting moral truths binding people to live in one accord. Churches are sickened by diversity, each with their moral code regardless of conflict with others. If diversity's problems develop primarily from the chaotic assembly of religious doctrines and beliefs, marches to unity offer no resolution.

Bystander: Diversity covets materialism, regarding it more important than love, identifying and protecting human rights to fulfill one's desires, rights transcending all others, scorning love that might impede its way.

Simple Simon: Contesting all other's beliefs fighting for supremacy, each one's dogma claiming truth, denominations fracture the church to produce diversity, destroying cultures religions created, leaving societies in a vacuum by dismissing trust in divine rule, in shambles from reason's ineptitude and common sense's failure.

Wanton: Claiming to bless us, to instill peaceful unity with creation's impossible situations, why did God form all with diversities, establishing dichotomies for humans to suffer, limiting reason to solve problems, exposing cultures to disorder and finally promote unification to destroy dichotomies, and undo order by tyrannical powers justifying people's dehumanization.

Stranger: We indeed have a merciful God, our Creator, the designer of diversity, planner of dichotomies, providing us with free will to reason and recognize His revelations, and we chose to battle over differences, convincing everyone to follow our way, assured of ours being better than His, and so we have added to His commandments, modifying them to suit us better. How can we deny Him, the God of love, creating everything out of His love, promoting our work to neutralize diversity, destroying differences, doing nothing for our wants and desires?

Theologian: Didn't the Lord created us with diversity for watching how we would resolve differences, encrypting ways to maintain individuality and secure lasting freedom to reason how we should live?

Bystander: Love must tolerate all, accepting what diversity directs, promoting thoughts and deeds different from one's own, judging nothing by anyone's standard, realizing no one standard is better than any other, hardly using any fictitious divine standard known to be fashioned by humans and assigned arbitrarily to the Lord.

Stranger: Believe in trusted God, His criteria for virtue and integrity, and dismiss people's opinions on what He should be.

Jurdan: Be honest. Trust your heart to tell you love's real nature, revealing your discernment of brotherly love. Does such love reflect what satisfies you, identifying deeds to decorate your pride, to embellish you with tokens of achievement, badges of merit to cover your chest with insignificance, tokens left hiding in some forgotten drawer, rotting away as all things unimportant? Remember brotherly love never endures, lasting for only moments, disappearing with changing circumstances, unlike the substance of what you call agape, attributed to love with which your Lord guides you. Brothers can respect one another, but what kind of love can you expect from them, knowing it can revert to rage, a love hiding hatred poised ever ready to spring.

Skeptic: You reject religion's orthodox doctrines, believing they all destroy people's dignity, so you devise diabolical means to achieve success, none of which one can associate with love. How can you ever speak anything about which you know nothing and never practice?

Jurdan: What qualifies you to know anything about love? Did you also study in seminary for learning much of your God's revelations, teaching how His actions make lives better, finishing your lessons to learn ministry for reaching out to others and proclaiming obedience to His way, diverting goals for your future, transforming your imaginations, rejecting convictions bellowing on your way to improve humankind's future, implementing its plans by developing proposals to promote your way. Can this be a program, studying in a Bible college, for preparing you to achieve your goals to develop doctrines and dogmas for creating adversity, ideas for clashing with conflicting creeds, providing justifications to eliminate heretical convictions,

Stranger: Dismissing needs for seminary instruction, church leaders trust themselves for understanding the Lord's plan, interpreting experiences like reading tea leaves, looking for dreams to show the way, hearing imaginary voices in times of distress, fingering randomly found Scripture verses to plan their ways, climbing to summits for a mountain-top experience, trusting any of these rather than being one in the Spirit to hear Him.

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Vagrant: Masters fading away or dying to be replaced, relinquishing their power to heirs salivating for their disappearance, surrender their truths to new leaders, raised up to promote new dogmas, proclaiming their doctrines next in line for ruling the world. My Master never died as He appeared to mysteriously disappear, promising to leave us with His Messenger, never leaving with the idea He could be replaced, trusting those believing in Him with the Holy Spirit, hoping people would not modify eternal truths by tarnishing His Words with reinterpretations, confusing His ideas with changes to meet current needs.

Simple Simon: Despised and rejected, followers of the Lord should better examine themselves, seeking different ways to be accepted by the world, changing their stubborn ways of judging others, moderating their doctrines to be more acceptable, syncretizing their dogmas to be more inclusive, living their obedience to the Lord by being more loving, tolerating other's beliefs, accepting them as good as their own.

Stranger: He who knows my works, fruits of my labor, patiently testing all my deeds, discerned by the all-knowing God watching all my activities, knows my thoughts before me, and He will always find me lacking, never meeting His expectations and hopes, calling me on blasphemy when disobeying the Holy Spirit, questioning my wisdom when considering religion's other ways. Will He overlook human's plans and doctrines never quite conforming to His, accepting our modifications and hoping He will find our compromises trivial, trusting our intentions as real, indeed coming from our heart, containing no outward manifestations that may shame our true convictions, artificial demonstrations of wailing and weeping, fasting, destroying garments laden with sin, hiding accumulations of violence still in their flesh? Others noticed human's skepticism, but the Lord is the only One to know if it bears sincerity.

Jove: Detesting confusion from changing laws, perhaps accepting monotony of unchanging truths, I trust the Lord, the promise of joy He assures, believing it can never be boring, planting no seeds of discontent, wondering if our sometimes happiness occasions must be from changing decrees, promoting moments of happiness, lasting only for some new doctrine, however temporary it may survive.

Jurdan: Humans test many ways to enact decrees for leaders to govern, reworking all to invest their pride with greater treasures, for flaunting their importance to friend and foe, for proclaiming their virtues, dangled as bait before egos wishing to be different. Look back at how human royalty parades their fortunes before others, ones waiting a chance to pilfer all they see, driven by examples of mortal fathers.

Wanton: Religious revolutions releasing people from restricting doctrines, from hymns proclaiming their Lord's truths, dirges failing to awaken dead souls with a new spirituality, borrowing from music of delirium, blast new noises to rouse spirits unto ecstasy, driving people to bounce with vibrant tempos, unleashing them from distrust of the world, attracting many flocking to their new Nirvana, to begin experiencing warm feelings about Jesus, as church leaders push them into engagement with their self-defined ministry, reducing Scriptures to interpretations supporting their vanity, espousing ideas taught by human wisdom to magnify their image in society.

Jurdan: You know the way sects develop, abandoning mainstream doctrines, flourishing for a time, growing only to eventually wane, spent and disappearing, discarded as any human desire runs its course, waiting to be resurrected by new music, made significant with compositions of strident stanzas, articulating activated mobile's needs, tuning them into frenzied bouts of excitement, spontaneously swinging to beats of engagement, singing chords of fulfillment, recognizing participation is important, whether pursuing ancient doctrines or ones newly reformed for religion, all having learned how to invade and conquer a person's soul.

Jove: Music attracts people and choosing the right music captures followings, understanding the future requires changes in music to assure commitments to preserve faith in religion.

Stranger: How can we remain in the light, God's light protecting us from darkness, when music blaring must be with flashing light, jerking us in and out of darkness, never trusting anyone in persistent light, fearful of any longing to be snatched away, strengthened in the grasp of darkness, protected from the Holy Spirit's callings, His messages from God begging us to seek and remain in His persisting light, trusting Him by remaining in the light.

Jurdan: Making mistakes by recruiting renegades from sanity, unable to comprehend your imaginations, defective in their reason, such people test your resolve, directing your course by micromanaging your doctrines, frustrating you beyond patience, believing you can manipulate them into usefulness. How do handle such dilemmas?

Stranger: We may cast them into a pit, secluded in darkness, a realm of evil where truth dares not enter, out of our verity's light, blinding their vision, confining them in gloom's cold dampness, stagnant air and essentials, waiting for them to suffer in accumulating waste of their convictions, mounting up with despair, revealing an existence with stench others will never tolerate.

Bystander: Pits imprison people, havens for escaping consequences of their deeds, lairs for retreat, battlements for protection, for their return to caves, digging for escape into tunnels as moles beneath the earth, modeling beastly life created to find refuge in darkness, but humans have a spirit to live in light, avoiding temptations by evil hiding in darkness, beckoning them to leave the light, moving them surreptitiously in and out of shadows while leaving them with enough light to convince others of their virtue. Freedom wins when one moves another from darkness to light.

Jurdan: Darkness is attributed to anyone blamed for challenging another's convictions, threatening terror for adversity, nonconformist ideas proclaiming convictions deviating from one's own.

Simple Simon: Abandoning religion, separating church from state, removing all guidance and restraint, frees people from disciplining their ambitions, living where everything they do is tolerated, where intolerance never stands in their way as they fight for individual freedoms, releasing them most importantly from constraints embedded in their consciences, having lasted so long no one can remember, oughts established without reason, never seeking one's understanding why they should be imposed. People progress, earning the label of progressives, by scrutinizing the controls of religion and slowly assisting their demise, changing doctrines to be more acceptable, destroying dogmas blocking progress, eliminating sacraments as unreasonable and illogical, creating virtues to be reasonable and in accord with common sense, claiming we are all becoming better and better without needing religion, feeding arguments that religion is the mother of conflict and the father of warfare, with history showing warring parties carry banners claiming they are driven by blessings from God, soliciting His assistance by their prayers.

Stranger: Are we more than heretics in a culture of heretics, each one deviating from time-honored doctrines, ignoring established beliefs, modifying the Lord's commandments, adjusting them as our free will allows, sanctioned by our democratic freedoms, moving us to libertarian limits as we reach out to embrace complete freedom from any constraints, but if we have no laws to guide us we cannot be considered heretics, heretics being possible only where laws exist.

Wanton: Would that make heretics atheists, believing in no laws, no such guidance in the Lord's creation?

Stranger: Heretics suffer where atheists don't, dying for deviation from established beliefs, but soon neither heretics nor atheists will suffer, for with freedom for all, restraint by no laws, all will be tolerated, violence of intolerance will disappear, surprising people with love for all, fulfilling the Lord's commandment to love one another.

Jurdan: Trust in divine providence, protecting the base in Christian belief, enables followers of Jesus to sustain their faith, believing them worthy and compatible with eternal truths despite tampering by many, but people acknowledge changes can be acceptable, necessary for reason's dealing with increasing scientific revelations, treating religious ideas as needing evolutionary modifications little different from everything else.

Skeptic: Imprisoned as a comrade in the institution of Christianity, followers must conform, being faithful to its dogma and obey its dictums, remaining loyal to its beliefs, realizing it offers no escape, because on leaving it they will soon be obligated to another's rituals and doctrines, interacting with a different mandate's scriptures and customs.

Jurdan: Your imprisonment is by culture, artificially created, manipulated to appear sanctified, rhetorically disguised by religious doctrine, infused with dogma to bless wants for power to dominate and satisfy innate desires for pleasure.

Stranger: Imprisoned by nothing, belonging to Christ frees me, knowing His truth sets me free.

Jurdan: Satisfied with trusting His truth makes you free, escaping from anxiety's uncertainties, having accepted new responsibilities, assuming new obligations by belief in new doctrines and dogmas, are you free? Religion's diversities demand different truths. Which of their truths makes you free? Are you free if another's doctrine enlightens you, promising its truth can set you free, revealing your previous truth failed to survive, despite having convinced you it had made you free?

Wanton: Never trust believers with simple faith, victims of imagination accepting Scripture's orthodox Christianity, established by denying truth for everything else. Fundamental Christian experience is potholed with threatening uncertainty, denying reality, never affirming triumphs of science, while answering people's hidden questions with dogmas on discipling ideas and behaviors to solve their problems.

Jurdan: Call to end traditions, trusted dogmas and doctrines battling to maintain their truths at all costs, destroying differences to eliminate heretics, slaughtering deviant ideas to reject their authority, destroying diversity to solidify our precepts, realizing traditions bar global unity, restricting freedom to demand tolerance, never accepting others' ways are as good as theirs, limiting people's lives to protected enclaves, sanctuaries to exercise traditions of their choosing.

Jove: We seek the Lord to worship by tradition, realizing habits never last forever, passing to our heirs only fragmentarily, broken by building self-esteem, relying on growing self-worth, never seeking any glue to piece its fragments back together, living in an age where the broken is never repaired, knowing something new is always available to replace the old, and nothing old must stand in the way of progress. Admittedly, praying to the Lord still has benefits, acknowledging when all else fails we can call on Him.

Stranger: We also choose tradition for securing our Lord's glory, standing firm in Jesus Christ, His life and teachings, believing His miracles recorded in the Gospels, trusting justification promised for our sanctification as we struggle to become right with Him, leaving the unrighteousness of our past pleasures, having deceived us by their fleeting moments of happiness, condemning us with mysterious iniquities, concealing His eternal truth, disguising love for creation's goodness, rejecting truths we held dear. My comfort now establishes me in every good word and work, having chosen the way of His Truth, recognizing all the judgments the Lord lays before us, protecting me from delusions convincing me to believe lies.

Jurdan: We all must have some worthy cause, choosing one to deserve our commitment, trusting national pride to offer more than religion, believing it has been honed to be trustworthy, exceeding what religion can offer, especially faiths which compromise their traditions, discarding bonds once unifying people in worship, replacing them with entertainment to narcotize masses, music and comedy never uplifting anyone, offering venues to compete with the world, complete with extravaganzas to match and attract whatever to satisfy people's wants, making them all into idols, re-casted to be worldly idols.

Stranger: We seek new ways to protect the church, securing its traditions against secular forces subtly corrupting it from within by piecemeal abandonment of its liturgy, transformation of its music to become repetitive beats for drowning out empty verses, voicing pleas for tithing to support materialistic needs, rejecting growth of empires to empower a few, following methods proven to be effective, namely to permit people their desires and wants, mellowing iniquities, sanctioning all their instincts, accepting as normal all they will to action.

Skeptic: Beware of strangers coming in darkness, planning to mock faith of believers, scourging ones incriminated by the masses, obeying majorities calling for destruction of tradition, reducing it to fragments, using its remnants to construct new ideas, never again to be traditions, because they will be designed never to last but to exist in limbo where transient whims can act on them as needed.

Stranger: Indeed. We must distrust weak souls, good Samaritans always surrendering to tolerance, impugning decent people's conscience, ones trying to follow traditions and obey laws, confusing innocence with their admonitions, judging anyone disagreeing with intolerance, being self-appointed to goodness and claiming its virtues.

Wanton: Only fools honor ancient traditions, mentioning them solely to ridicule, using them for amusement, building their notoriety to dismiss the Lord's wisdom, distracting people to praise foolishness, belittling creation's goodness, transforming its beauty, creating ugliness people can adore.

Theologian: Realizing all tradition eventually needs correction and reform, we must not live for tradition any more than necessary, citing the example of creeds produced by humans, hardly being examples of truth, abstracted from isolated verses of ancient Scripture for which reason demands continuous revisions, recreating doctrines from ones proclaimed inerrant.

Jove: If tradition, a human work culturally conditioned with its authority forever changing, waning as new reality seizes people's minds, fears being trampled as customs disappear into memory lost, blame it on being developed by human reason and believing God had some say in it.

Simple Simon: New reality, empowered by convictions the Lord is truly the God of love, embracing His beings and never withholding His love, never judging our failures to condemn us forever, discarding admonitions trusted in ancient tradition, is here to stay, being the centerpiece supporting free will, doing whatever my way.

Stranger: Trusting tradition has sanctified doctrines and dogmas, how do you respond when you reason they are in error and no longer should be honored?

Jurdan: Reject tradition and its errors, seeing how it developed from erroneous beliefs, accepted once from truths of its time, realizing facts change and bring new truths, sending once time-honored truths into obsolescence. We must adhere to people's voices, pleading with us to keep up with evolving changes, forcing us to modify our beliefs, recognizing the power of reason to justify our adjustments.

Stranger: This gives license to develop what you would consider reasonable responses to people's current demands, abandoning how the Lord instructed His creatures in the past, convincing you there is no need for doctrines and dogmas because who knows, some watching will find words in them to slay one's sanctification.

Jurdan: Doctrines and dogmas, restricting human freedoms, must be discarded before it is too late, realizing denominations strangle people's hope, with their members fleeing to where doctrinal statements don't exist, where humbling confessional statements are never required, allowing free thinkers to find whatever any Gospel can reveal to justify their ideas and deeds, willing whatever current culture authorizes, creating no doctrines and dogmas unless correctly attuned to fashions of the day, developing reality for widespread acceptance.

Stranger: Programmed to reject authority and created to be free justifies people to live how they choose, determined by their private judgment, ruled by their interpretation of morality, often fragmented from Christian tradition and reinterpreting it as they like. When abandoned by Christianity's tradition, morality fell into a vortex, spinning and mesmerized with people's desires, producing pluralities left for allowing rulers to decide, giving people rights to their privacy, protected under human laws, never violating personal integrity.

Jurdan: Living by truths sets me free, trusting their promise, developed as my verities, dismissing all suggested by others, traditional truths locked into doctrines and dogmas, decrees historically instigating strife but seeking vindication to be trustworthy while always planting disputes, germinating nothingness into conflict, forcing me to despair.

Simple Simon: Beholden to something tangible, depending on what can soothe my longings, I cherish tradition and seek more than merely worshipping the Lord, trusting it to convince me of His being, believing prophets who added substance to my concept of Him, suggesting doctrines and dogmas to make Him more real, solidifying them into traditions, embedded for creating religions, giving reasons to satisfy my yearning, protecting me with a warrant inscribed by Scriptural scholars, self-appointed authorities to interpret the Word and give credence to one's conclusions, giving birth to dogmas, proliferating without ceasing.

Jurdan: Doctrines and dogmas rule by tyranny, enslaving people to their decrees, demanding obedience to human-created laws, proclaiming they reflect the word of your God, abstracted from His words in Holy Scriptures, unalterable and lasting, directing the choices of our free will, promising to unite all, but they only divide us further as we fine-tune their edicts and further enslave us to human-made principles.

Wanton: The Lord's commandments to love one another, to love all, His prayer for all to unite as one, to become one in the Spirit, can never happen, seeing how we strive for disunity, creating new doctrines and dogmas to divide us into a myriad of diverse religious beliefs, critical of segments preaching love, trusting love to conquer all, while dismissing most decrees developed by humans over centuries. What remains most important, standing supreme over all beliefs, prophet's ramblings established as law, scholar's reason enshrined and sanctified, or the Words of the Lord, spoken to be remembered, prayed to the Father and inscribed as the Great Commission? Do we need all human efforts creating what scholars think is essential in doctrines and dogmas, making people believe they are most famous for acknowledging and worshipping their creator?

Jurdan: Diversity is important, using whatever necessary to make something unique, adopting reasons to dismiss traditions and customs and replace them with their own while never seeing religions unite together, Christian diversity disbanding to become one in your Lord, reaching out and dismissing doctrinal differences, focusing solely on what Christ said, trusting His Words over all that generations of human reason have written. We've are not created with a will to unite, rejecting desires to be ourselves.

Stranger: My senses can't verify or sustain my faith, nor can I reason to believe, as I trust in more than emotions, exercising love unable to be tested by my feelings, obvious facts or intellectual endeavors. I am sustained by belief empowering me to devote my all to the Lord. But my faculties have been institutionalized, sealed into traditions, protected by doctrines and dogmas, forced on by reason, claimed by historical proof, tangling my innate basis for faith in a web of ideas contradicting one another, conflicting with deepest interior intuitions inherent in my code.

Preacher: My faith lacks richness, depth, and strength when I find unacceptable religious traditions to support my belief, all having doctrines and dogmas added to describe the Lord in human terms, realizing no person can claim what they do not know. Religion must be traditional and social, institutionalized, and dependent on intellectual and experimental interpretation to develop dogmas for dictating our responses to the decrees assigned to be from the Lord.

Jurdan: Who but tyrants plot to conquer people's thoughts and actions and discover they must capture doctrines and high-jack dogmas to embellish their subterfuge of deceit, using religious traditions to vanquish foes and confiscate other's possessions for themselves.

Wanton: If democracy determines your religion, it's doctrines and dogmas are at risk, fragile and liable, at the mercy of people's whims, revealing what they are, never lasting, masquerading as infallible sources of truth, having outlived their usefulness, discarding fallible truths documented from the Lord and His prophets, and as citizens expressing their inherent rights, freedoms for self-determination, people are free to reject ancient traditions and decrees.

Jove: Adjusting liberty, rounding out its extremes, modifying it to our desires, we can create a controlled anarchy, identifying worn out traditions to discard, maintaining a minimum to satisfy followers, saving none to interfere with people's desires, making imperatives only to prevent dogmas and tolerating everything except what our virtues prohibit.

Stranger: What would your virtues prohibit, knowing attributes are never developed overnight, requiring years of tradition, tested, tried and true, sealed by culture's approval, passed down to be a legacy, surviving the test of time?

Jurdan: Does virtue know what's evil, having it taught by one's wisdom, figuring it out by desire's decisions, determining its effect on the kingdom of myself? Why must others prevail, setting standards for my virtue, knowing now I can scream and shout, carry banners of protest, anticipating someone will give in and allow morality to change its mind?

Simple Simon: Must we rely on philosophers and theologians for proclaiming virtue's content and meaning and depend on them for changing its importance?

Stranger: Maybe we should consider the source, personal insights claiming suitable interpretations to bolster their convictions, arguing as lawyers to further their ideas, creating new dogmas to win followings. If our thoughts are responsible, maybe their fate should be that proposed for lawyers, destroying all as they are both responsible for the good destroying our spiritual freedom. If humans with free believed and trusted God with all their energy, acting as He ordained them to be, the need for lawyers and theologians would disappear, abolishing doctrines and laws they created, releasing us to look only for the Lord's direction, relegating trust in all prophets to less than complete and develop unwavering trust in Him.

Jurdan: Depending on doctrines and dogmas, reason develops legalistic morality, ethics constructed by humans, inhibiting innate spiritual freedom to express their personality, subduing the eternal inherent in our code.

Wanton: Beware of doctrine becoming tradition, teaching people how to read Scripture, claiming it as a living mirror of Christ, developing principles of Christian theology, realizing it can cause one's demise, martyring one after brutal torture to justify absolute righteousness.

Stranger: Absolute righteousness must never fail the law, decrees established documenting prescribed mandatory judgments, executing justice in God's name, fulfilling the dictates of righteousness, exercising all in the name of absolute freedom, never wavering in cowardly evasion from what one must do.

Jurdan: Absolute righteousness can't allow spiritual freedom to imprison souls with doctrines chained to dogmas, allowing no freedom to imagine anything different, ready to martyr their reason, give up any remaining breath to protect their convictions, battling whatever to ensure sanctity for their domain.

Stranger: Every person has a domicile, a right guaranteed by being a human, assured by powers to be, a dwelling to protect one's interests, and absolute righteousness provides this security.

Jurdan: Absolute righteousness is determined by adherence and loyalty to doctrines and dogmas, protecting their sanctity, maintaining their purity, and judging deviations in other decrees tiptoeing in to be heretical, giving cause to trample other beliefs, fighting them as pagan thoughts, giving reason to destroy enemies of one's faith, exercising absolute freedom authorized by doctrines created by people in the name of your God.

Wanton: And what religion does not claim absolute righteousness for its decrees, laying the foundations for liberal opposition, bringing whatever arms to bear for combat, resorting to radical tyranny if needed, all in the name of the Lord.

Jurdan: Understand how absolute righteousness supports morality, growing one's virtues, bettering one to become a super person, one entrapped in legalistic dogmas forbidding no forays into creative adventures, trusting nothing but documents chiseled in stone, pounded as truth into people's souls.

Stranger: Does absolute freedom unleash people from repressive doctrines laden with unacceptable commands and prohibitions, abandoning all in the name of liberty, releasing all from decrees unauthorized by the will? Never. Absolute freedom purifies the spirit, enlightening and transfiguring one, strengthened through the power of grace.

Simple Simon: Punish heretics dismissing doctrines, criticizing authority, contradicting religious dogmas, questioning theological reasoning, belittling its interpretations as blasphemers of church traditions, allowing syncretism, borrowing religion's mysticism to pollute traditional ways for worshipping the Lord, believing its followers need none of our ways but are spiritual, possessing a direct experience of God, going beyond people's intellectual understanding, dismissing human reason's way to know Him.

Stranger: Never forget Jesus' Words, the Father and I are one, showing us the way for us to be one with Him, for following the way to deification, reaching out for transfiguration, seeking to know the Lord directly, not solely through Scripture, any church, or a religion's doctrines and dogmas, realizing His goal is unity, bringing all together as one.

Jurdan: With belief your God creates all circumstances, explain why He chooses some people for dispersion, scattering them away from their comfort, separated from loving others, disrupting unity that Jesus prayed for, transforming them to disunity, punishing them for loyalty to their desires, teaching them dispersion helped them develop new traditions and truths to trust in their Lord, but creating diversities invited in distrust to rule their lives, uncertainties to prevent love from reunifying human beings.

Stranger: The great dispersion, sending people out from Babel's comfort, from the shadow of Temple Jerusalem, from the edict's of petrified sanctuaries, was never to construct new retreats for developing more doctrines and dogmas, but to encourage people to engage their innate dimensions for hearing the Lord, leading them to love and worship the Almighty they know exists, to build sanctuaries for greeting and magnifying beatific visions of His glory, seeing God face to face, freeing them from confusing and restraining decrees infused into concepts of His mystery.

Bystander: Gather in all who are despised and rejected, scattered to earth's end, sacrificed for blemishes of being different, multitudes exiled from creation's goodness, regathering all from dispersions and reassemble them into the harmony of unity, bringing all into one accord, restoring the beauty of creation's goodness.

Jurdan: Being all things to myself, self-sufficient in all ways, no one can judge me, allowing no one else but myself, only me with knowledge and wisdom to judge my deeds and deliver my future, knowing without trusting myself I would be ignored and judged unfairly by others, something I would never allow. I will never be reviled, having others steal my honor and glory, ridiculing my virtues, exposing me as only an ordinary man hidden among the masses, for isn't that less than something, mere nothingness?

Stranger: Your myself can't protect you from being despised. Ones belonging to the Lord, choosing to follow Him, are assigned to minister to the despised and oppressed, poor and disenfranchised from worldly needs, being selected for tending to all living like sheep, depending on some master to provide their needs, driving everything, and we obey His divine command, Feed my sheep, showing our faith by works, trusting faith without works is dead, believing our justification is empty without works.

Jurdan: Pitying the despised, ministering to the oppressed, leads them to believe they are victims, suffering for no reason, imagining there must be something better, life must promise more meaning, for soon they will revolt, escaping from their perceived bondage and leave us knowing little how to control them. You find a right way by establishing propaganda to convince them of accepting what they have now.

Skeptic: Perfect oppression maintains satisfaction, forbidding people from enjoying fruits of their toil, reasoning they need little of it, surviving on little of its rewards, avoiding consumption's calamities, never developing wants to become needs, avoiding envy from eyeing rewards of another's efforts, preventing society's destruction, with each wondering why do I toil and deprive myself of good things, as death soon deprives me of everything.

Stranger: Your words shackle innocence, forever wary of rejecting goodness, watching anything behind as well as in front, waiting moments for one to neglect their guard, watching for hidden fears to consume serenity and expose anxiety, sensing something is planning to overtake them.

Wanton: Trusting your speech, coming from words of human wisdom, persuading all you encounter, surviving only until your convictions wane, never anticipating earthy wisdom can change, crumble your beliefs and destroy the bedrock of your assumptions, ending flattery you expect directed from adoring followers, awakening you to realizations your truths can change, transformed from justifying you as a strong-willed and forceful overseer, redirecting your decrees, resurrecting you as a humble bondservant devoted to following eternal truths. You are what you know, drawing on the wisdom of this world, becoming a spoke in its circle, ignoring the fate you realize for all who have gone before, employing their understanding, exercising their free will, but you have learned nothing, nothing to ensure redemption, freeing you from this life.

Stranger: Promising never to choose fame, the destroyer of creativity and distractor from using one's gifts, seeking flattery to feed the ego, telling lies to cover one with accolades, don't interrupt my work with unsolicited comments, asking why I do what I do. Created to be blessed, destined to be a servant, and chosen to shun dominion over all, I must not be tempted by desires or whet my appetite to satisfy wants, and I can do better, working to counsel people, overseeing everyone without being a benevolent dictator, restricting my judgment to be only a shepherd, protecting the Lord's flock by obeying His commandments, doing all this while still striving to be righteous and employing my free will's decisions, using both for achievement, humbling attaining an end never recognized as success.

Jove: Demanding obedience to laws always uncovers iniquities, consenting to acts deemed reliable, decrees allowing creation of new gods, each one becoming a focus of devotion, absorbing one's worship, distractions serving wants and desires, finding new ways to avoid doing what I choose not to do, exercising freedoms allowed by the valid within me. My Redeemer, having entered my heart, leads me without any laws, providing His example, asking me to become like Him, freeing me from captivity to laws of sin, created by the gods of flesh, serving wants and desires.

Stranger: What can your belief offer me? Does a smattering of righteousness mingle with freedom to will a portion of our desires suffice to make me sinless and satisfy my spirit, convincing me I can do little more, convicting me to accept the world's way of molding, regretting no more is possible?

Jove: Blessing me as He does, doling out adequate proportions of righteousness to justify my convictions, the Lord prepares me to hear infirmities of the weak and understand their adversities, consoling and promising them hope, encouraging them to be the Lord's loyal subjects, rewarding them to forget their enemies, showing their trials are what we all face, comforting them being in His hands.

Stranger: You substitute relative righteousness for absolute righteousness, leaving you to tolerate much of the Lord's commands.

Jove: Making venom the master of retribution, using it for subjugation, victimizing belligerents for disobedience, shorting their free will, you control all with your measure of righteousness, glittered with your free will.

Jurdan: We claim righteousness, trusting it to preclude us from telling lies or hiding the truth as we rely on integrity to keep us honest, maintaining honesty as anyone can attest to by great support from others like us.

Wanton: Absolute righteousness sets tables to be a snare, trapping self-ordained ones in a stumbling block, blinding them, allowing unrestricted gluttony to feed wants and desires, thinking what's freely chosen conforms with their righteousness, while silencing spirit's call for moderation, seeking to make all holy, not only some of the creation. Open your eyes to God's created ones gorging themselves, stealing work's abundance to be sleek in garments of obesity. Given free will to gain more than their needs, many reject God's design for them to thrive on what's given, unwilling to be nothing more than they are intended to be, feeding their wants, overriding the holiness God indwells in them, uprooting His design.

Jove: Righteousness' blend with freedom is disturbed when anyone boasts, pridefully proclaiming one's righteousness, for will one truly righteous brag about it, having passed the test of the Holy Spirit after repentance opened His way, coming into a clean home, showing boastful pride has no room where He abides, compelling one to confess the limits of being right with the goodness of one's creation?

Jurdan: Everyone has some righteousness, perhaps showing none as they battle for gain, but at least in losing they usually agree to peace. A few having little righteousness, living as their will directs, wantonly destroying enemies, never letting up, orchestrate their demise, freely choosing their self-destruction. Fear people chasing after ideologies, committing convictions to their end, dying for them and bringing down their followers.

Simple Simon: Looking to grow wisdom and unravel my confusion, I sought greater understanding by enrolling in a Bible college, and it confirmed estimations I held for my righteousness, but did little more, so I went on to study philosophy, lessons of people proclaiming nothing while thinking they had inside wisdom on how to live. Disappointed with all that others were trying to teach, I decided to develop my understanding, incorporating new dogmas into a book, writing verses to draw as many as possible into different thinking, a treatise attracting many supporters.

Jove: Realize consequences of too much righteousness, creating a resting place, denying entry into free will and ending our endeavors, scorning us if we leave its comfort, so we must endure what others determine for us, accepting decisions which force us to follow sanctified masses without any protest. Understand righteousness never removes anyone from the world, compelling them to remain, completing a sentence one may wish to end, suffering a wrath never deserved, seeming to last longer than God's moment, the One who knows no time, having created it but never counting its movement.

Stranger: Realizing some righteousness is essential, have you enough to recognize needs of the poor and protect their share in creation's abundance, keeping greedy wolves from devouring its plenty, pilfering its hidden treasures, adding to their hoards, accumulating to serve their wants? Will depriving the poor, making them lose interest in wants and desires, better prepare them to become remnants, gaining wisdom to judge what matters most, so poverty drives them to make a wise investment, casting their anxieties on waters, washing away all doubt, turning to ways of the Lord, trusting Him for all things?

Jurdan: Righteousness is always destined to face spiritual crises when beliefs stumble into a darkened pit, dismissing one's faith, denying your Lord's blessing, causing one to quit in despair, ceasing their endeavors to become like Him, ridiculing His ways for responding to their failure of beliefs, the faith created with hope to continue life.

Simple Simon: Confessing to cleanse my soul, removing all hidden sources of shame, allowing me to claim some righteousness, I openly reveal all, proclaiming my unworthy deeds to everyone for the world to know, concealed envy and jealousy-provoking strife and disruption of any goodness, preventing me from seeing any in all creation, painting it as no place for beauty, never inherent in the weakness of my flesh, testifying to my innate freedom to willingly choose what is not best, all of my doing and blaming it on no one else, but knowing now what my flesh wants, following idols, can never bring glory to God, never satisfying what He created me to be.

Jove: I corrupt no one, tolerating all to exercise freedom, never looking on their actions with dismay but free to be themselves, and they thank me for justifying their steps to express their God-given rights, happily in their autonomy to chase after one's heart's desires, defrauding no one of what creation made them to be, never grieving or condemning them to sorrow by calling for repentance, compelling them to confess for disobeying convictions veiled in confusion, so I must tolerate what the world accepts as of little meaning, disclaiming the world's sorrows working us to death. I approve of messages to be oneself, removing all from bondage shackled by fears force on their thoughts.

Bystander: The fruit of righteousness is peace; the effect of righteousness is serenity and confidence forever.

Wanton: How does one identify righteousness and determine its sincerity, leaving no doubts about its being genuine? Does self-righteousness, witnessed by public demonstrations of piety, religious vanity in praying earnestly out loud, impressing hearers with vain repetitious exhortations, calling people to mimic sanctity, never understanding their prayers must be meant for God and not for show time to entertain human audiences, realizing prayer should only be heard from ones in perfect fellowship with God, having the Son in them through His messenger the Holy Spirit, instructing all how to change their attitude on what to pray for, bestowing peace, never trying to convince others how holy and spiritual the beseechers are, never thinking one can impress God by convincing fellow humans by tantalizing one's convictions with pompous garments of words.

Jove: We are just, following decrees for uprightness, never showing favor for evil ones smug in unjust degrees of righteousness tolerating nothing but their brand of laws, as we are tolerant, limiting our righteousness to comply with people's desires. Flaming righteousness never knows peace, devouring innocent souls with fire stolen from hell, saving no one following brimstone's way, promising salvation for ones to follow their army, showing mercy only for any becoming one of their kind.

Jurdan: What if you fail, attracting few to join your band? Will you be compelled to adopt ways for greater righteousness, mandating it for success, abandoning your decrees of uprightness to justify your means, making you tyrants, destroying everything standing in your way, achieving your goals at any cost, forgetting what righteousness means, thinking it is for people becoming right with you, making you a lord to have dominion over others?

Wanton: What are the fruits of righteousness? Can they claim treasures or nurturing power without destroying portions of God's goodness, defacing its beauty, leaving traces of nothingness strewn behind? Can its fruits poison people's mind, changing them from different someones to meaningless nothings, unable to walk a profitable way? So much for any claims for peace.

Stranger: Engaging in righteousness, damning all others to be silent, invoking the sanctity of righteous judgments chiseled in stone and never to be questioned or undone, declaring virtue in their truths, tolerating no rebuttals, indignant ones articulate different beliefs, professors in citadels of learning accepting no truths but theirs, disdaining all others as confused ideas failing to be academically correct, protecting their self-asserted righteousness.

Jurdan: Making a covenant with death, identifying ones for assignment to hell, increasing your righteousness to justifying such actions, you have the freedom to create criteria for their disposal and recruit microcephalics to execute your decisions.

Wanton: Like Jurdan I have little regard for many, affection for few and love seldom for any, and what Christians consider fellowship wastes my time, never investing any with others having God's interest, because I associate with no one having such concerns, being friends with only ones in this world, acknowledging they are most deserving of my attention. God's directive to love one another is impossible, even for people believing He loves us all and His creation's goodness is designed for us to love all. Even with a bounty of righteousness, I could never love all, including ones appointed to be righteous, claiming it in overflowing abundance, but I never love many, let alone all.

Stranger: You seek allegiance with nothingness, committing yourself to chaos, embracing plans conceived by this world, grandiose schemes of folly designed to tickle human's desires, forcing wants to success, ignoring God's love for the world, giving your desires precedence over everything else, dismissing what He has done for us, sending His Son to show how we can become like Him, coming as the Servant, knowing no other to tell us how to be like the Master, for gaining the greatest righteousness to become like Him and prepare us to rejoin Him after our earthly sojourn. Remember His goodness, creating all and displaying its beauty, for we all know He so loved the world, a truth that will never change.

Bystander: Human's building their credentials, commendations to charm others, deeming themselves worthy, writing epistles to glorify their name, carving words in stone and trusting all to read them, words reflecting what they believe, revealing secrets of their heart, believed to be articulated by the Holy Spirit, believing them to be eternal truths from God, messages determining their deeds, but never directed by sufficiency from the Lord, commit all to self-sufficiency, creating their own decrees and dogma, never understanding letters of human laws spell death, ignoring truths that the spirit of eternal truths promises life, and with their basic commendations never lasting, vanishing with their credentials, failing to seek glory in fullness of righteousness' teachings only from the Spirit, instruction never tarnished by human words, veiled until unveiled and revealed as the Lord's messages, exposed when the shroud covering mysteries was rent, torn to pieces, revealing the Lord's hidden secrets, showing God's glory for all to fully know, to gaze on His image, now fully understand what one could be on removing the veil from their heart.

Stranger: We recognize people's efforts for God fail, working to please Him somehow, failing to understand works of the law justifies no deeds of the flesh, as the reward of salvation is assured only by faith in Jesus Christ. Believing in each act of kind deed to increase one's merit, advancing one's degree of righteousness, without energizing belief in the Lord, leaves them with nothing to justify themselves before Him, trying to work out salvation without having its foundation to build on.

Jove: On belonging to Christ, He tells me to choose works most satisfying to my efforts, accommodating my will's decisions, giving me confidence in building up treasures for God to judge, works essential for justification, for ticketing entrance into His kingdom and most important for glorifying me here.

Stranger: Seeking righteousness by doing works prescribed by decrees, being faithful to laws assuring we will be perfect in the flesh, ignoring needs of the soul, still waiting for the Spirit's coming, suffering through convictions in vain, never knowing their curse, obeying Scriptures admonishing us to follow the law, our covenant inscribed by humans, acknowledging our need for atonement, seeking righteousness promised by doing all according to the law, reveals we fail under the law, works being inadequate to bring us faith and welcome the Holy Spirit, assuring we can be justified by faith, being one in Jesus Christ, celebrating our unity with joy.

Jurdan: Your Scripture's foundation is shifting sand, destroyed and rebuilt by prevailing winds, meeting needs in wandering from one truth to another, offering variable options to support current fashions but ignoring your Lord's eternal unchanging truths while sanctioning human rights to be oneself, undermining opportunities to be right with Him, putting off righteousness for some tomorrow.

Bystander: Behold righteousness springing from the earth, from all creation, out of the Creator Words, His goodness clothing all in beauty, there for participation, never worn for adornment, but to acknowledge we are made in the Lord's image, giving everyone potential to become like Him, never by seeking gold or silver, trusting in their pictures, making idols to worship, stringing them in chains only to ripped away, but for transforming righteousness into pearls of wisdom, trusting all God creates, distrusting everything fashioned by people without the Lord's blessings. Partake of His righteousness, renewed every morning, waiting for your invitation, blessing all who praise Him with heartfelt joy, joining the upright in unity, giving thanks for His important and glorious works, grateful for His grace and compassion.

Stranger: Righteousness abounds, free for the asking, and I reserve my portion, perfecting me in Christ's ways by believing in Him, justifying my actions, blessing my deeds as I am now above reproach, following His ways, tarnishing unbelievers, destroying all heresy, watching heretics approach their end claiming they are martyrs, trusting the Lord sanctifies them for preserving the faith.

Jurdan: What faith do you protect? Confidence in what you have modified, changing written words, giving them different connotations, disregarding what ancient believers intended, modifying all to conform to your reason, compelling you to make adjustments accepted by the day's common sense? Common sense, based on people's wishes, determines our actions, considering dislikes and prejudices, claimed by some to be hatreds, disrupting any unity until abolished.

Wanton: Ones with faith seek ways to achieve unity, but on eliminating prejudices and hatreds new ones find the means to appear, knowing people can't be without them, needing people besides things to blame, attested by all one hears, condemnations demanding retribution, establishing scapegoats with no one escaping untarnished, destroying relationships people are meant to have. Can faith sanctify anyone, claiming to impute them with self-satisfying reckoning, believing it whitewashes them with righteousness, cleansing their appearance while hiding unworthiness waiting to explode?

Stranger: You are obviously not one to trust the Lord for all things, never having Him in your heart, seeing you lean on your own understanding, never acknowledging Him to direct your way, as you are prideful in the wisdom you develop for all to see, never listening to the Spirit's voice counseling you to depart from evil, never trusting Him for your strength, never realizing His gifts make you what you are, designed with potential to be exalted and striving to gain righteousness for being likened to His image. He gave you gifts to sound out His word, but I hear none.

Simple Simon: Which of you can claim righteousness, thinking God has reformed and blessed you, making you His equal, gifting you with the fullness of His saintliness, transfiguring you to be like Him, inspiring you to seek your own domain to rule, accomplishing your desire to be like Him by acknowledging His divinity, making you His apprentice, preparing you to sit in His kingdom, a princeling in His court, having been endowed with His purity.

Jove: Hear the Lord's Words inspiring scribes to faithfully record, finding many to justifying our claims, to be trusted as eternal truths beyond any doubt, using His Word's power to certify our righteousness, giving us His authority to write new laws, bearing power recognized as His, certified by His seal of truth. Relishing our new garment of righteousness, bestowed by Him, ordaining us to be sanctified, we can do all things exercising our new power, adhering to decrees we create, fashioning none to shame anyone, having found the way to be the my-selves we want to be. We rejoice in pleasing God with the virtues He wills us to have.

Simple Simon: Am I fully just, calling for morality, acknowledging my unrestricted commitment to justice, making me complete in the eyes of the Lord, filled with righteousness rewarded by faith in Him, but if any trace of injustice lingers in me, I admit my virtue can never match the Lord's, jeopardizing confidence in my peace, realizing I can never claim His righteousness without my justice being complete, authorizing me to be a member of His royal household, but never proclaiming to be a king when I ignore help for the helpless and have no pity on the poor, considering the completeness of my righteousness is sufficient, demanding no justice where it is due, thinking I am so right with God that I never consider remorse?

Stranger: What does righteousness count for, being right with God? Can righteousness transfigure any human to make one like God, fulfilling wishes for theosis, elevating one to His status, endowing one with His powers, giving each a dominion to rule? God can claim righteousness, being right with Himself, complete with being omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent, and His righteousness offers us salvation, justifying those professing faith in Jesus Christ, promising an ultimate reckoning for believers, assuring all can be justified by faith, ensuring a homecoming for repentant sinners, having their iniquities washed away so they become righteous, right with their Maker, trusting they can approach His likeness.

Jove: We indeed claim righteousness, knowing it comes with faith in the Lord, justifying us and our actions, with God reckoning us to be one of His, and we are certain He has forgiven our past iniquities and continues His forgiveness for ones believing in Him.

Stranger: Righteousness seems to concern you little, believing the Lord allows you to follow your way, trusting your ways are best and having few consequences to concern Him. If righteousness is merely for justifying your deeds, you can choose any path to follow, but is this being right with Him, being more than to self-assign justification? You give righteousness a new meaning, nothing to evaluate virtue, using it only to claim salvation, justification by faith. Can one be right with God who tinkers with His goodness, tarnishing it with one's ambition, despoiling its beauty with greed?

Jove: We may protect our deeds with slogans claiming righteousness, and we can prove our motives are honorable, working to better lives, and if we follow others preaching total allegiance to the God of laws, we ask what of free will, wondering whether humans with free will must have rigid rules to follow, negating any need for freedom to will one's actions.

Theologian: We never deceive anyone, no one engaging reason on hearing our thoughts, but show people's convictions can develop from transposing the Lord's words to change their meaning, selecting ways to please their beliefs, authorizing versions based on satisfying interpretations, exercising unrestrained freedom in writing to please their truths, convincing others to trust translations most accurate and most likely to be acceptable. We must take care in what is proposed, knowing minor deviations from other's beliefs can destroy Christian unity, witnessed by history documenting martyrdom of Jesus followers preaching messages claimed to be heresy, deviating from the one true Gospel, claimed to be the only one authorized by the Lord. So, we are careful and never disturb anything important in the Gospel unless it represents the handbook for a cult, giving their beliefs a sanction to be persecuted.

Wanton: Indeed, many narrow their truths to selected passages in their Bible, denying any recognition for conflicting verses, fighting to death any contrarians, destroying adverse ideas, mounting horrors in the name of God, referring all to His acts of vengeance, but disregarding His claim on retribution by anyone but Himself.

Stranger: Many ignoring the goodness of God's creation's, overlooking His importance, limit their perspective on being righteous, minimizing any need to be right with Him. They are justified, trusting being right with Him, claiming righteousness by following His purported decrees to slaughter faith's enemies, forgetting the Lord tells us to love our enemies. Enemies never remain adversaries forever, as enmity fades with time, losing its ardor for battle, often transformed into love, affection for what once was slated for destruction, after realizing the Lord's advice, Be patient, time will change everything and who knows what will become of the despised and rejected.

Jurdan: What does righteousness amount to, imputed by faith professed for your Lord, trusting you might acquire the righteousness of God as you continue to live outside its realm, never attempting to fully live faithful and obedient to His decrees, thinking only of your ways and never turning your will to follow His testimonies, his righteous judgments, making imputation of His righteousness merely an amulet, wearing it for assurance, swinging from your neck, an emblem proclaiming you are right with God, waiting for praise of others to verify your convictions, thinking it fulfills the promise of One who brings in everlasting righteousness?

Preacher: We complete removal of our filthy rags, hiding none, allowing none to linger, so we can be clothed with garments of salvation and a robe of righteousness, promising never to tarnish our dress, never to stain it with any iniquity, assuring us of commitment to virtues deifying us to become like the Lord.

Simple Simon: Trusting I have Christ within me, striving to model His perfection, molding me to resemble His divinity, it is possible for me to approach the righteousness of God, returning to the goodness He designed for all creation, accomplished only with Christ in my heart, a task unending, sprinkled with rewards of joy, accumulating to be my greatest treasures, deifying me in measured amounts.

Stranger: My inherent common sense, entrusted for use by the Creator, unveiled with my human potential, defies modification, prompting me to depend on the Lord's revelations for change, distrusting reason to refine its truths, trusting my faith to direct evaluations of common sense, leading me to recognize deceit creeping in, imprinting my common sense with eternal truths and nothing else. My limitless faith assuring engagement of common sense, works in me with trust that all things work together for good, upholding creation's goodness and magnifying its beauty, verifying without faith it is impossible to please the Creator of goodness.

Wanton: Is your entire person in right relationship with God, trusting faith sanctifies you, sealing you in righteousness, complete without any more adjustments, claiming purity for your body, mind, and soul?

Simple Simon: No one is so complete, not even those on the way to becoming deified, ones knowing their entire person can never claim a right relationship with God.

Jurdan: So honest are you. Doubt drives people to create fables, imaginations motivated by lust for one's own ideas, pridefully embellishing them with fragile truths, imagining your God's to be little different, ideas He parades through your minds so preachers of His Word tell we must live in fear, recognizing the goodness proclaimed for Him as something to be feared, trusting He made us all with fear.

Stranger: Is this your fable, seeing you know Him fragmentarily, ridiculing His testimony telling us, For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind, never to be degraded by concocting fables to promote fear and satisfy lust? What you should hold dear, sacred to all thinking is that perfect love drives out fear, fear being unable to abide in love, bringing on torment, never trusting creation's goodness built on love, so never tolerate fear, understanding fear resolves no afflictions and causes one to flee, escaping to some sanctuary, whereas love speaks to standing firm, using love to engage one's adversities.

Jurdan: Your fable crowns you with righteousness, making love an emblem to embellish your endeavors, convincing you to fight a good fight, staying the course and keeping your faith.

Stranger: Not yet. I am promised a crown of righteousness, laid up and waiting to be given by my Lord, the righteous judge on a day He will choose, and I patiently wait for it, tested by much time now, but none for tolerating fables to direct lives, searching ways to navigate away from circumstances, ways to avoid the Lord's direction calling down people from their glory. The Lord preserves all who love Him, conferring His goodness to crown them with righteousness, for how else can we exist eternally in His presence?

Jove: According to established wisdom my crown is secured by sound judgment and fair justice, convincing me to fear nothing from critics, convictions expressed by deviant doers, pridefully attempting to belittle my accomplishments, destroying emblems of uprightness and perverting my integrity with lies, stealing my honor to glorify themselves, smiling vacantly in their pride.

Stranger: Wisdom you live by is never secure, constantly changing to conform with people's fickle wants, dismissing any destined to challenge our conscience, freeing urges to chase new desires, protecting against remorse, assuring righteousness, never discarding precepts important for their time, trusted to be right, commanded as the Lord's decrees.

Simple Simon: Assured of being forgiven, established in a newly created relationship, given a new nature in Jesus Christ, identified with God in His Son, transformed from unholiness into one seeking His Holiness, I was once convicted of sin but now am forgiven and changed, marching on the way to righteousness.

Bystander: Standing by faith, believed to be imputed with righteousness, assured of forgiveness forever, cleansing commitments to sin, recall words of God, telling all, The righteousness of the righteous shall not save them when they transgress, the righteous shall not be able to live by their righteousness when they sin, never being confident their righteous deeds will be remembered as they will live with uncertainty, knowing they will surely die. Can you trust your imputed righteousness, protecting you from sins you are destined to commit, sure of being indelibly shielded, forgiven forever from iniquity's stains, living in what is lawful and right?

Skeptic: How can Christ's righteousness be imputed to us, knowing His righteousness cannot be sealed in a sinner, equipping one to be righteous but destined to turn from righteousness and commit iniquities, blaspheming the Holy Spirit by disobeying His messages from the Lord? Why shouldn't God judge us all according to our ways, ignoring our imputed righteousness, trusting we have been justified, sanctified with righteousness chosen by us?

Stranger: Claim righteousness for justification, showing you are above reproach, strengthening your resolve, recognizing people rejoice with the righteous in authority, realizing you must seal your words with, In God we trust.

Jurdan: Discerning what's most important, deciding on what to choose, judging righteousness as a chief attribute of your God, read a scribe's evaluation of Job, describing him as perfect in righteousness on assessing his ethical conduct, but recall what the writer says about him showing imperfect love, lamenting over his losses, claiming all his works as evidence of faith, justifying him as leading a life pleasing to God.

Wanton: Does that make righteousness relative?

Stranger: All unrighteousness is sin, so if one is imputed with righteousness, having proclaimed faith in the Lord, one's righteousness must develop holes, allowing unrighteousness to steal in and allow one to sin, providing opportunities to follow the world, to obey the call of one's will, seeing my self's will be done, ignoring God's, falsely trusting sinners being born of God can be born of Him, One who gives us understanding, knowing Him to be truth, offering all to be one with Him.

Jurdan: Righteousness must be relative if all people are sinners, believing no amount of grace can make them righteous.

Stranger: I became an heir of righteousness by faith, never assured by empty spoken words but by knowing the Lord is now in my heart, directing me to follow Him, listening and obeying. I fail if on reading His Word I use it to reason what is most worthy to follow.

Jove: Must every believer stress importance for Scripture's Word, Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, walking His way but only by fear? If we fear Him, nothing could be accomplished, testing righteousness for every thought and deed to find all lacking, reducing us to inaction, leaving us in limbo, promising no contentment, assuring wellness and comfort only by His way, but we prove ourselves fruitful with harvesting our ideas, plucked from the vine of best reasoning.

Jurdan: Who can claim righteousness, never considering plight of the poor, engaging mindsets of wicket ones ignoring needs of the forgotten, leaving them for someone else to take concern?

Wanton: With consistency of a wayward son, expected to move from home to house, leaving tattered garments of righteousness behind, taking his richest attire to dwell elsewhere, see him as two persons, one rejected by the world as too good for anyone's company, the other welcomed by open arms inviting him into the world, and who would guess the one to prevail? How long would he be favored, boasting the merits of Jesus's cross, thinking he could convince others, proclaiming His suffering at the cross, convincing ones laughing at its foolishness, preaching Jesus Christ crucified?

Jurdan: Christian convictions clash with none of our standards, but their believers must adjust notions of sin, modifying some to conform with cultural advancements to improve human lives, redefining righteousness to lessen harmful deployment of guilt, showing love by flattering them with acceptance, fulfilling the command to love others like themselves, never showing hatred for another.

Simple Simon: But we must be able to hate, detesting what a brother might do, knowing we can be like God in hating Esau, confirming there is a place for hatred in becoming like God. Some deserve to be hated, identifying anyone working to destroy His order, gleaning from Scriptures what God has been like, learning what we must hate, accepting the world is a cradle for hatred, a requirement to preserve our convictions.

Bystander: We claim to keep the Lord's commandments, loving Him as He loves us, but do we validate that claim when we don't love all His children, an impossibility we think is not intended for us, persisting as the most grievous error, proclaiming faith in the One commanding this order for our lives. Faithful followers may overcome the world, but an innate disposition for hate remains, tarnishing their convictions, raising up others to loathe upon reconciliation with hated ones, substituting the old with new hatreds, replenishing fears with new identities to detest.

Stranger: All is now possible with the death of Jesus Christ, realizing atonement by His crucifixion, the certain vehicle for learning God's wisdom and truth, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, restoring all to right standing with our Creator and to the goodness He designed us to be, dying to everything Christ never was.

Jurdan: Dying to everything He wasn't leaves me empty, humiliated by whatever my will suggests, abandoned by all, becoming only acquaintances, shunned by standard ones, asking what must I do to remain part of this world.

Bystander: The Lord can rain righteousness upon you, rewards for believing in Him, but what does it do? Does it accomplish more than feed your pride, flourish your self-esteem and embellish the grandeur you already possess, never sinking into the soil of your soul, promoting no development of your fruits, leaving nothing to offer except to add more treasures to those you already have. Will His righteousness imputed as a gift do anything more than convince you of being more self-righteous? Be fearful, never knowing when His living water will descend, so prepare for your will to sprout and become one with Him, trusting He rains His righteousness for a purpose, expecting all to follow Him.

Wanton: Can raining righteousness grow nourishment for anyone's souls, fertilizing wants of the world, providing crumbs to sustain contentment, but never feeding roots of one's spirits, vaporizing into dew before completion of its intended task, leaving souls like empty vines, withered and unsuitable as a temple for the Holy Spirit?

Bystander: Discovering one's soul is empty, harboring nothing but a withered vine, hear what the Lord has to say: I am the vine, you are the branches, He that abides in me, and I in him, brings forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

Stranger: Never seeking the Lord's truths, consulting shame disguised as a verity, celebrating the pride of self-accomplishment, eventually paralyzes, afflicting all with self-despair, white-washing vanity with defeat, ending one's usefulness, hopelessly binding people to visions of nothingness, fated for all never having discovered God's truths. Seizing faith to embark us on the way to righteousness, the only unfailing path to salvation, saving us only on completion, bearing signs to keep us on course, unites us with Christ, joined together, united as one for partaking in His righteousness, acknowledging faith only provides the ticket for beginning this journey to gain Christ's righteousness.

Jurdan: Where is found discernment, mobilizing discretion, but from knowledge, and where is knowledge revealed, never trusting it from the myself, searching other's opinions from testimonies to themselves, relying on pearls of wisdom discovered beneath their aging shells, produced by gritty grains of affliction irritating their minds, yielding wisdom becoming worthless, discarded into some trash heap, maybe rooted out by a scavenger seeking to recycle the useless and establish a new virtue.

Bystander: Discernment comes only from doing the Father's will, and one knows His will only by following Him, never by degrees of righteousness from confessions of belief, but needing more, establishing a downright commitment to Him, patiently waiting His time, seizing opportunities He lays before us, never delaying their implementation, claiming them to assure we belong to Him, accepting His wisdom as best, being essential for trusting changes to become one with Him, blessing one to bear good fruit.

Stranger: Never call my testimony deceitful, honestly keeping with my faith in the Lord, rewarding me according to my righteousness, honoring my faithfulness, maintaining integrity for my thoughts, keeping His ways and obeying all His decrees, claiming gratitude for being delivered by a humble heart, ensuring I would never stray, protecting me with His truth's light.

Jurdan: Trusting you are right with your God, believing He exercises no vengeance, does your righteousness ever consider retribution, bothering with no thoughts of forgiveness, usually bearing judgment for another, seldom forgiving anyone, leaving your mind in turmoil, quarreling with your conscience, believing Christ forgives you and never considering you must do also?

Stranger: The Lord keeps me pure so I will speak of excellent things, assembling my tongue for only right words, speaking truth, shunning all wickedness as an abomination to my assertions, trusting all my pronouncements are righteous, never considering retribution, ignoring all temptations for perversity, keeping the evil one at arm's length, acknowledging all my instructions come only from the Lord.

Jurdan: Disbelieve ones so full of peace, despising them with a vengeance, dishonoring others unable to find tranquility, churning anxiety to action, seeking to arouse retribution for saddling them with remorse.

Stranger: You are one never to of speak of peace, devising deceitful ways to wrongfully rejoice over quiet ones, denigrating their virtue to silence turmoil, stirring up a disturbance, awakening injustice to proclaim judgment against righteousness, shaming their sanctity, declaring it hypocrisy, justifying your actions of defamation.

Jurdan: Claiming to live in peace, trusting in myths, believing your soul is created to be a temple, a home for the Holy Spirit, how could His Spirit abide where peace is nonexistent, His honor impaled by all your ventures in the world?

Wanton: Peaceful ones must be numbered with transgressors, calling all alike, pronouncing all hypocrites, guilty of iniquities, pronounced sinners at birth, allowing no means for escape, denying any to become like the Lord.

Stranger: Does truth grace your words, knowing if it does righteousness can never be claimed, and because the Lord always speaks truth, and if you seek His virtues, lying undoes your hopes of ever being right with Him, denying you righteousness, believed to be the reward of confessing Him as your Lord and Savior. His expectations are greater than your convictions trusting a little confession absolves you of continuing to utter deceitful words. From mouths of the righteous speaking wisdom, wagging their tongues with words of judgment, their wisdom comes from the Lord for He never deceives us with lies, so who can claim to be righteous, selecting one out of humankind to claim righteousness?

Jove: Calling on the Lord to fill me with His Spirit, coming with wisdom, knowledge for adding to my understanding, He blesses me with skill and endurance, complete with joy to serve Him, discerning His will, not mine to be done. All achievements trusted to be worthy come through patience, listening to His Word, revealed to me by circumstances. Seek engravers, honestly spelling out His Words, rightfully hearing His truth, relying on no transformations of His wisdom for life, never bending His truth to modify one's virtues, changes committed to virally invade one's conscience and dismantle all that is inherently good, understanding demons can don disguises, garmented as a virus to invade people's thoughts and afflict them with lasting indelible corrosion of their innate goodness, springing into action when least expected.

Jurdan: Hypocrisy rules whenever righteousness is lacking, never coming up to your Lord's expectations who insists on total obedience to His will, but you must realize absolute righteousness demands absolute justice, never tolerating thoughts or acts of unrighteousness, consistently judging all things, penalizing offenders appropriately, no, more likely eliminating them, ending their existence, so their crimes against righteousness will never reappear.

Stranger: Recognize dangers in absolute justice and freedom, acknowledging the impossibility of demanding absolute righteousness, and seek what is more likely possible, absolute relationship with the Lord, unifying with Him and learning what such oneness with Him is meant to be.

Preacher: Realizing this impossibility we modify His messages, toning them down or crushing them for disposal, making them reasonable so no one can be accused of hypocrisy, justifying us with restructured laws, easing the way for people to claim His blessings and assure them of salvation, but little do they realize salvation brings them to abide with the Lord eternally, existing with Him forever in ways they never knew, after having defiled creation's goodness so often.

Stranger: Free will to speak any message allows the wicked to walk on every side, exalting vilest ideas, ridiculing beliefs of Jesus' followers, screaming violence for individuals ignoring them, creating their own decrees, disordering goodness, unveiling anarchy, proclaiming no plans to govern, having dismissed virtue, leaving all scrambling, unable to recover order, never anticipating the difficulty in reassembling pieces of culture's puzzle, redoing century's efforts to secure the beauty of peace, awakening humans from violence precipitated by the stupors of pride.

Jurdan: Protecting lordship over my tongue, giving its power to no one else, exercising its gift without restraint, reasoned to be used as I determine, I concede nothing authorized by my free will, trusting people deserve to hear its words, and I will never disable its messages by humility and loving kindness, securing my pride to sustain all I choose to be, denying needs for any purity taught by your Lord, cleansing my voice to make me His puppet.

Skeptic: Theology claims doctrinal modifications can continue to assure certainty in belonging to the Lord, but does it promise greater comfort in minimizing His glory, hiding us from openness with Him, disabling us from growing to become more like Him, never beholding Him transformed, but seeing Him as in a mirror, enabling us to reflect His image, germinating our inherent seeds of goodness, unveiling the life of Christ hidden in God?

Wanton: Gifted with reason, endowing us to think, believing we are because we think, look upon us to know we are what we are with reason equipping us to desire, wanting all that reason convinces us we are entitled to, enlightening our freedom to soar, to escape repressions dictated by any divinity, revealing their hypocrisy as they entertain themselves, exuberantly expressing and obeying their programmed directions, never considering their primitive perversity while following a divinely created design to satisfy all aspects of life.

Jurdan: Why must humans discipline desire, moderating wants, dismissing ambition to acquire, teaching them to adopt a spirit of complacency, accepting all as it isn't, to be no more than a being, existing as beasts, tolerating expression of inherent instincts, free of culture's manipulation of how their innate code directs them?

Stranger: The Lord limits us with imperatives, restricting expression of our desires, controlling our wants, forbidding impetuous impulses as He leads culture's advancement, slowly evolving its progression, protecting its achievements, loving our essence by guiding us to the closure of desire, focusing us on the resurrection to be reunited with Him.

Jurdan: Are all your moments spent in days of sorrow, lamenting failures, thwarted wants and desires, dissatisfaction with fortune's choices, never discovering the way of delight by ending quests for the unattainable, but mired in woes without recovery, chasing after wayward winds promising satisfaction, blowing to and fro, bringing up dismay in clouds of dust?

Stranger: Never. Life is made for rejoicing, established to prepare us for joining the King, choosing none likely to be dejected, unprepared to reunite with Him in joy,

Wanton: Why shouldn't we know sorrow, trusting how to dismiss it, reasoning how to be distracted by chasing desire, the bond of comfort for all.

Jurdan: Driven to be oneself, emancipated from the repression of one's I am, celebrating release from discipline's dogmas, I proclaim, Free at last, I am free at last, released to chase all my desires.

Wanton: Free to be, fulfilling my desires, exercising wants in most natural ways, I let myself go, releasing energies pent up, freeing them from repression, ignoring any protesting conscience, as I discover a desire to be my deepest and truest source of life, a vital energy to be cherished and worshiped. Without desire see me only as a beast, it's the only source of life being the internal code determining its instincts, but I am more than an animal surviving only on instincts we share.

Jurdan: Claiming moral excellence compels me to define morality and knowing its dependence on cultural norms, I must survey people's principles to reveal an honesty for my own, one conforming with the majority, remaining true to myself and the prevailing consensus.

Stranger: Surveys of rambling utterances, coming fast and furious, speaking every thought to empty minds, vacated of silent goodness, hiding all virtue, thinking wisdom blesses every word, reveal fools expose themselves, believing they speak truths, none of which should remain concealed.

Bystander: Wisdom walks a tightrope, guarding what should be revealed, selecting things to say, carefully choosing whom to hear.

Stranger: Such may be valuable for human wisdom, but ones humble, speaking nothing for their gain and being a repository for eternal wisdom protecting creation, have no fear of proclaiming the Lord's truths, undaunted by sneers for their humility. Senility may confuse some, making them speak scrambled thoughts, but the Lord protects them, assuring salvation they have merited.

Jurdan: Human wisdom changes, subject to the prevailing atmosphere, determined by an urgency to modify convictions, so one hears proclamations to win trust, only to see them change with time and vow something different.

Wanton: Ask which human wisdom represents truth, the original or the changed? Thinking human wisdom relies on virtue, is its virtue that changes, considered to be relative, individualized to accommodate a person's needs, or better said agreeing with one's current desires, needs wanting for the moment?

Jurdan: Lies like truths can be overlooked, knowing they last little time, tailored as truth for each moment, contributing to different virtues, added for expedience, serving present needs to succeed.

Simple Simon: If we are creatures of virtue, endowed with doing what's right, who can come forth and judge us evil, determining its qualifications, deciding on ones deserving destruction? Abandoning virtue, scrambling one's thoughts to permit life's destruction, spilling its blood for no reason, some wishing to end their life and taking another's with them, thinking others have no more value than theirs, enlists evil to justify their deeds, never communing with their own heart to restore virtue, having lost all gladness, ending existence, so they will never fear the Lord's admonitions again.

Philosopher: Life's pendulum swings, to bells tolling destruction or to the lights of celestial celebration, human virtue directing its momentum, inherent directions determining its trajectory arcing through time.

Stranger: Humility, the Lord's virtue for battling pride, doing all my way, ignoring His way, making no one proficient for life in the world, can reduce one to nothingness, never knowing how much humility is enough, whether enough is sufficient for destroying all pride.

Jurdan: Pride is like fire, kindled by gods to stoke self-esteem, to glow with satisfaction and incite jubilation, ignoring anticipations of its dying to embers, waiting to become ashes, but hopeful ones will seek new gods to rekindle pride's fire, resurrecting a Phoenix from the ashes, trusting life never loses its lucky charm.

Stranger: Pride is to die for, magnifying oneself, contesting other's thoughts, coveting worldly things, destroying trusted virtues, satisfying unrequited jealously, attacking all values, leaving nothing but a wasteland, and ending up victims of nothingness people kill themselves, ending their hopelessness unable to promise life meaning, all purpose having vanished, all treasures hoarded having lost value, none being transferable to a continuing existence, nothing contained in alabaster boxes for precious ointment of further use.

Simple Simon: Only demons can convict me, drive me to self-destruction, stone all self-worth and steal my pride, compelling me to run to the Lord, begging Him for truth, understanding only His truth can set me free, but merchants depending on my desires, willfully determined by my free will, beg for my demons to remain, tempting my wants for further gains.

Wanton: If demons can invade me, finding no barriers to hinder their way, what can prevent them from entering a building, crossing through walls, insulated only against heat and cold, providing no shelter against any enemies? Willing the way is the only means for assuring shelter to protect me from demons invading to control my activities.

Jurdan: Demons thrive only on imagination, never proven to become real.

Jove: Pride in thoughts sustains my efforts, driving others to recognize my words, and I must protect their importance, never relinquishing my pride, trusting its loss spells defeat.

Stranger: Remember, pride being the greatest sin invites nothing but strife, yet pride defeated by humility promises wisdom for the well-advised.

Simple Simon: How does wisdom for the humble thrive, growing little to soften ones striving to be prideful.

Jove: Pride is essential for deciding how to serve the Lord best, giving confidence in doing the right thing, reasoning how to use one's gifts, exercising what will assure greatest satisfaction, fulfilling one's purpose, taking pride in being a good and faithful servant.

Vagrant: Must we be praised, being told, Well done, good and faithful servant, trusting it never needs telling, requiring no hearing for all who are humble in the Lord?

Stranger: It needs no telling for ones trusting and loving the Lord, needing no such words from another person, being of importance only when they are blessed, coming from the Lord, from the Father who created and sent us.

Bystander: How great is the Lord's goodness, laid up for those who love Him, never concealed from ones' partaking, available for all to see, hidden only in His secret presence by people's pride, sealed off from the strife of tongues, unable to speak without bitterness.

Jurdan: Pious pipers angrily preach solemn pronouncements, embellishing their pride, rambling, stammering, shouting, to awaken ones resting during their time and place for religious obligations. Words can arouse one for moments but only when they blast with music, if that must be what it is called, from strings, drum beats and horns to accompany words suffering redundancy, repeated over and over, driving bodies to sway in unison, moving to repetitious rhythms, silencing words in unending noise.

Preacher: People prefer motivation by emotions, and we realize that words without feelings fail, putting many to sleep. We succeed whenever we provoke people to respond with emotions.

Wanton: People enjoy comedy by responding with emotions, but what does that do for them?

Vagrant: Could we live without emotions, justifying life with no experience of emotions, depending on reason to direct our ways, wondering if reason was given us so we no longer needed instinctive feelings, basic attributes, remnants from a beast the Lord selected when making us human? If reason is not developed enough to believe in our Lord, is emotion necessary to move us into His presence?

Stranger: Emotion may be responsible for discovering the Lord, bringing one to cherish His righteousness, but consider everything else it does. Emotion participates in encouraging one to love other humans, hopefully for more than moments, perhaps a lifetime for some, realizing it cycles with regret and on breaking hatred can cascade, flooding unbelievable torrents of dislike, animosities lurking in silence, waiting for expression and strong enough to destroy everything love promises.

Vagrant: Consider effects of hatred's destruction, it's annihilation of feeling for ones defeated, never lamenting over their demise, dismissing need for remorse, preventing the return of compassion and invasion by love.

Stranger: Look at what else emotion does, beyond bringing many to reverence for the Lord, acknowledging it also inflames people to lust after what others possess, driving them to hate what others believe, justifying destruction of truth for other's convictions, converting them to practice my truths. Voiding emotions, removing base instincts, could be a means for converting us into bondage with the Lord.

Preacher: That is possible if you think God practices no emotions and exists merely by reason and common sense. What human does not think He must be like us, emotional in all His responses, but that cannot be the Almighty who did not create us without reason, creating us during an emotional moment, throwing together living parts, subjecting all to reason rather than to emotional sense.

Simple Simon: What are we made for, equipped with both emotions and reason, calling on one to excite us with comedy or incite tragedy to drag us into despair, trusting the other to rely on our intellect, separating it from our limbic responses, making us uninteresting zombies living out a boring existence?

Jurdan: When emotions overtake everything, making living unbearable, we can rely on chemicals to kill their effects, but this doesn't replace our faculty of reason, and we wait until drug effects wane to find emotions persist, still being present.

Simple Simon: The Lord recognizes our need for emotions, knowing we will be nothing without them, realizing their inherent purpose is important for unthinking beasts, understanding their persisting need for creatures made to reason and employ common sense. Did He understand what might result, creating a being struggling through life, juggling a balancing act between emotions and reason?

Vagrant: Does He ask us to surrender, but to give up what, abandoning emotion that may have led me to Him, canceling reason that apologizes for my convictions, or merely to surrender my all to Him, regardless of what led me to Him?

Stranger: We must surrender all pretense of being worthy, of being something our emotions or reason convicts us to be, abandoning all claims we hold, attesting nothing to our worthiness, giving up all earthly treasures assuring we are someone, disposing of pride in the gifts delivered by prayers answered. Without surrendering, we continue with our less than worthy life, never emptying our pride to make room for the gifts He can equip us with.

Skeptic: How can you attribute emotions to God, trusting actions of His described in the Old Testament, especially those of anger and hatred, vengeance and retribution, moving Him to destroy beings He created? Emotional responses, evoked by human nature in possession of God Almighty, indicate He can or does change, conflicting with our idea of Him as unchanging, never capable of change for One being outside of time, so we cannot trust God having these emotions, or even having emotions, perhaps allowing Him only the emotion of love, but trusting it is different from ours and never changes.

Jurdan: Righteous anger attributed to your God justifies hatred, reasoning justified hatred wherever righteousness can't be found, demanding punishment with no possibility of atonement, no forgiveness for transgressions, crying for violence to end all blasphemy, death for all infidels, and you believe in a righteous deity?

Stranger: The Lord never expects our goodness to be complete, relying on us to embellish ourselves with some righteousness, perfecting ourselves with few regrets, but never determined to accumulate more, hoarding riches to make us important, someone special above all others. What treasures exalt you, consigning special riches to adorn your self-evident esteem, separating you from all others?

Jurdan: I never allow imaginary deities to define my treasures, measuring them only by reason and common sense.

Simple Simon: The Lord's goodness is complete but reason tells me to question my worth, examining others for comparison, realizing I am a bare-bones human, hardly noticed by anyone in life or death, but knowing nothing will change for me, leaving me nothing to fret over, realizing all anxiety will be hopes for ones burdened by treasures here. My goodness, trusted to be complete as imputed within, needs no embellishment with outside adornments, vile human creations, mutilations of nature's beauty, grotesque restatements of the Lord's beauty.

Stranger: Goodness being truth's reflection, God's wisdom portrayed in all creation, painted by His Word, can never be modified or conditioned into anything grotesque, but with a brush in hand or a stretching of their voice, people seize the Lord's prerogative, magnifying their importance and growing their pride to transform His beauty, producing aberrations people can worship, assigning them significance of wealth unworthy of the Lord's goodness and beauty.

Jove: His goodness must be modified, making it into a treasure, separated from the ordinary before it will be highly valued, created by artists to be unique, giving buyers something to covet, driving up its price to make it affordable for only a few.

Bystander: Goodness seeds are implanted in all, germinating with senses to hear and see, to touch and hold, never to covet but to share with others, reaching maturity to marvel and worship creation's beauty, filling us with awe, with reverence for one's almighty Creator.

Stranger: Can't we recognize God's beauty, painted in all we see, needing nothing more, nothing from our hands to embellish all He created? Consider the worth of our own doing, knowing its lasting will be measured as time takes its toll, eventually reduced to ashes, all goodness of our doing fated to end like us.

Jurdan: Are we more than beasts when we live to adorn ourselves with accumulations, thinking they will separate us with greater goodness, garmenting us with splendor, with apparels of attraction, needing more than what nature provides. Safely secured by our treasures, pridefully witnessing to their acceptance, our wealth waits to become another's, being stripped away, reducing us to nakedness we came with.

Wanton: We are what we are, no more, no less, and to make the most of life we must succeed in everything, taking advantage of all opportunities, invoking deceit without reservation if necessary, empowering us to acquire all available treasures, valuables we can parade before ones less fortunate, elements pridefully attesting to our merit.

Stranger: Do you realize what others see in you? Perhaps it is different from what you imagine, being a flimsy portrait waiting for its turn to dust, trusted to be finished with the Lord's help after our self-appraised importance becomes decaying blood and flesh, never with perfect holiness driven by fear of the Lord and by rejecting the right to oneself.

Simple Simon: Committed to accumulating treasure, never satisfying anyone, greed never ceases, pursuing a mission to covet whatever we see but forever fearing its loss, greed concealing treasures unless it is used to flaunt one's pride, it's emblem of vanity.

Jurdan: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, making it core for our virtues, innate to our being, featuring our reason to function, enabling our separation from a beast, giving us pride, never to be considered a sin, equipping us to be human.

Simple Simon: Can I expect to be filled with love, realizing my present nature, knowing insincerity is incompatible with love, with pride unfriendly with love, understanding my vanity leaves no room for love to roam freely? How can the Lord love me if I commit no love for others, claiming them merely as acquaintances, never loving one as a brother, believing such love is never lasting, initiated only when appropriate, perpetuated by circumstances and terminated when one's interests change? So, goes a person's love. What more should I expect of the Lord's love? Should I believe it offers more, believing in an agape that is beyond understanding for a deity ready to exact punishment in retribution for anything arousing His anger?

Stranger: Spiritual pride characterizes those who count the ways they love the Lord, but He judges no one by such numbers, knowing us by the time we remain at home with Him.

Simple Simon: Pride protects me, being a shield to ward off any fall, and must be sustained, seeing the humble accumulate despair, never rewarded with happiness in abundance for prideful ones.

Stranger: Dispatching pride, sending a haughty spirit away, assures no destruction will befall you, trusting a humble spirit to reward you, promising righteousness, preparing you to be glad in the Lord, raising up the upright in heart to receive glory, realizing what the prideful can only imagine, fantasize all that they can do.

Simple Simon: Should I call on my conscience for counsel to divulge its recommendations, realizing its reluctance to appear knowing I may chastise its suggestions, modifying them as my will desires, but is this important, it's judgments worth anything, refraining applause for my words and deeds, deciding they deserve little praise?

Jurdan: You can never garner too much praise and never care if it might be undeserving or deserving, while never being excessive. Glean what you must for the day, but no more than needed, realizing any hoarded like manna spoils by tomorrow when your efforts must be to regather praise.

Wanton: Burdened with vices disturbing my conscience, deeds defying resolution, resisting changes to abandon their pleasure, subject readily called evils easily to solution, rendering them to be acceptable, reclassifying them no longer as vices, legislating opinions to make them expressions of natural rights, freedoms we are all endowed with, my rights no one can trample.

Simple Simon: Claiming the power of reason, using it to destroy my vices, convinces me my desires bear no evil and harm no other persons, freeing me from superstitions binding one to hidden powers, with reason now enlightening me to believe only what I see.

Jurdan: Fortune takes turns in evolution's design, bringing reason by chance in all its trials, attempting something novel for fate to witness, forcing us to evaluate choices for reasons unknown, condemning us to make decisions beyond the capability of our beastly ancestors. But reflect on how much further fortune proceeds, leaving us with innate instincts to destroy enemies, seldom questioning our acts with a conscience thrusting us into indecision, giving us reason to make decisions, allowing us to understand consequences result from them all.

Jove: Dismissing fortune rambling through what fate selects, following its own pattern, chaos as we understand it, the disorder persisting before the advent of time, we anxiously seek to comprehend what chaos has always determined to be never understood, recognizing it when we remove our imagination's determination of order, our hopeful presence of appropriate arrangement for all things.

Bystander: Fortune is always good, being inherent in creation's goodness, a reward or trial, complimenting goodness or serving to put it on trial, amending it when torn by evil, making every fortune good, being just or useful.

Stranger: The Lord wastes nothing, using misfortune as seen by us, parlaying misdeeds to vault creation's goodness to greater heights, so don't fret over fate's decisions, surprising us with dislike and anxiety.

Bystander: Fortune can aggravate pride's vanity, bestowing honors on one's achievements, vacuous as they might be, celebrating secular works while preparing them to fall, knowing pride precedes disgrace destroying all treasured honors, monuments people create for themselves, self-created idols to worship one's existence, being the antithesis of goodness. Respect fortune, seeing it is with purpose, being necessary, doing its obligations to maintain goodness.

Stranger: Fortune is sometimes forced to be mounted up, compelled by people's negligence, sent to right wrongs, arriving to visit people with retribution, ones living securely in themselves and called evil when it defies their thoughts and actions, good when it never disrupts perceptions of their sanctity.

Jurdan: Fortune acknowledges ignorance, denying our endowment with reason, dismissing our ability to make choices, ignoring exercise of free will to give us power for choice, disabling our comprehension to be greater than brutes, but we are compelled to reason when confronted with circumstances facing us with opportunities to respond with more than inherent instincts of beasts. Reason empowers us to judge, choosing between what seems good and everything appearing wrong. We take pride in our clear-sighted judgment and uncorrupted will, thinking our decisions are never tarnished with lust to satisfy wants, realizing we are captive to reason for justifying our decisions, grateful for a reason to convict us of being important.

Stranger: With ignorance blinding vision, prideful reason becomes helpless, possessing no facts to build truths and sends many to hear divine eternal truths, reaching out to reinvigorate their wisdom by hearings from the Lord.

Simple Simon: With blindness for today's follies, remembering all human deeds from the past, apparently foreseeing things to come, what does my imagination reveal but discernment to remember visions of the past foretelling what the future holds, leaving me undistracted by the present, freeing my intuition to understand things to come, awakening me from darkness to the light revealing what's ahead.

Vagrant: Reason protects us, enabling wisdom granted by the grace of God to limit our ambition, restricting us from overweening pride, however, without faith's cooperation reason proclaims it alone defines truth, inspired by intuition and imagination, verified by public acclaim, empowered by freedom of expression permitting everything, tolerating no limitations by virtue or values, annihilating beliefs to release liberty from all restrictions.

Stranger: Reason can awaken our intellect, acting as its guide but does it stir our spirit for discerning what's most important to sanctify us and avoid spiritual suicide, destroying our spirit withered from neglect by intellectual pride, crushing its tender bud, never to rejoice with a promised blossom.

Jurdan: Reason never welcomes intrusion by any spirit confusing rational thoughts.

Stranger: Our inherent gifts reach out, calling us to reason together, preparing us to negotiate with all our innate potential, accumulating knowledge to answer all God's commands, never pridefully trusting in rhetoric for any debate, acknowledging we know little of His knowledge, justifying reasons for never trusting own offerings dooming us from the beginning.

Jurdan: Any imaginary being's arguments, provoking me to reason with a phantom, must come from my thoughts created by fantasy and allows me to counter any ventured idea easily.

Stranger: Is the Lord such an imaginary being, subject to manipulation, molding Him to conform to one's purpose, providing someone to worship, to be One after one's own heart, attributing His revelations to reflections of one's desires and wants, but fearing shame from following such an imagination, facing ridicule from secular Idolaters, you would deny Him more than once, likely three times.

Wanton: Subject to satisfying fantasies, battling through changing moods, fleeting feelings and fragile emotions, interfering with absolute devotion to the Lord, many seek peace but never find it, searching a mountain-top experience, a real-life reality, to bring closure and end imagination's wanderings but with reservations whether they deserve justification, admitting they modify His commands, changing them to conform with religious cultures today, questioning one's commitment to Him, never praising Him and never demonstrating perfect irrepressible triumphant belief.

Simple Simon: Can it help if my imaginations fail, and I must have the Lord before me, revealed by a mountain-top experience, pictured in an icon, represented by an idol, assuring He is with me, trusting He will hear me, being the bridge to carry messages to the Holy Spirit waiting in my soul?

Stranger: Trusting in meetings for praise and prayer, fortified by scribe's written words explaining unclear Scripture's messages, are essential for growing faith, surpassing any help from icons and idols.

Vagrant: My imaginations, chained to icons and heroes, protects me from demonic evil, merchants of wickedness heaping dung to cover creation's goodness and destroy its beauty.

Stranger: Have you tested your imaginations by the Holy Spirit's scrutiny, listening to His advice to determine if they spring from lies, testing them to confirm their ideas are His or does shame's stigma mark them to remain hidden?

Bystander: Shamelessly contented to imagine being morally excellent ignores the Lord, dismissing any need for Him, convincing people can be good, being virtuously complete, but recall Hebrew's fate, trusting goodness comes from obeying decrees and failing miserably because they never achieved their full potential, believing self-determined moral excellence is sufficient to reach the pinnacle of goodness, with goodness being enough, trusting their wisdom to protect them from sinning, filling them with pride, never seeking the humility to deny their sense for needing anything more, never to deny themselves for following another, while denying any spirituality to improve their moral goodness, believing submission to spirituality is more costly than any rewards it can promise.

Stranger: Test me little with any priestly honor, suspecting its temptation for pride to overtake humility I protect, provoking me to revere worldly idols, embracing molded images for a kiss but never offering accolades from their silent form, honoring me only with treasured silver, aging as all innate objects, succumbing to tarnish, secluded in mausoleums to adorn decaying bodies, or in museum where the past is forgotten with its honorees all vanished. Lasting honors remember the humble in spirit, preserving their virtues, never inciting jealousy, never accepting flattery, respecting ones having worked on the Lord's assignments, seeking only His praise to be honored as faithful servants, recognized as people following Him to become more like Him.

Jurdan: Religious priests, being no different than secular idols to develop circumstances, depend on reason to determine their ways and must assume full responsibility for their decisions.

Stranger: In vogue is to blame others for one's circumstances, identifying someone to victimize, targeting anything for accusation, reproaching one worthy to hate, but circumstances are sent by the Lord seeking commitment to discern His message, asking all to participate in building His kingdom, and woe is to all not discovering His message, sending them to find and blame an innocent victim, and failing to find one allows them to blame God, waiting and prepared to shoulder more blame than anyone else, but some might eventually discover humility, allowing wisdom to penetrate their soul and confess all blame must reward their own doing, unveiling their decision's virtue by blessing them with peace, the peace of Jesus, revealing the spirit of simplicity, clarity, and unity, in a message from the Holy Spirit.

Preacher: God sends no circumstances to faithless ones, knowing they will disregard them as amusements for furies of fate, but in receiving them, I know He delights in me, trusting I will respond with obedience to His way.

Simple Simon: Is it some evil convincing us to compromise, ignoring His circumstances, dismissing our convictions, telling us to agree with others, never knowing if we are abandoning our virtues, bowing to another's believed to be in error, moving our beliefs into some middle ground, hoping it will please the Lord?

Skeptic: The middle ground becomes the high ground promising safety and prosperity for all, but what does it matter if our beliefs are changed, discarding the hard sayings of the Lord, modifying them by compromise, fine-tuning His commandments to please all our gods, trusting them to be good as any?

Jurdan: Enabled power alerts one to create circumstances and deliver consequences, activating the will to wield decisions, forging myself to supreme authority. Witness how the world runs.

Simple Simon: How can one rejoice in achievements, being reminded of failures, regrettable consequences springing spontaneously from battles between decision and indecision, pilfering pride from times of happiness, debasing one's self-assessment by an unforgettable word or deed brought to bear inappropriately. Humility develops from my errors, rising up whenever I am tempted by success, attempting to erase all that is unworthy, maybe forgotten for the moment, but returning in moments of despair.

Stranger: Convictions debase me, degrading my pride, filling my cup with humility, convincing me to drink nothing else since confidence has left me, convincing me to leave all in my Lord's hands, dismissing all my aspirations, as I wait on Him to call my next move, revising my ambitions as insignificant.

Jove: I confess being proud and exalted in the eyes of the world and will not replace it with humility, abandoning my riches of the world's glory, replacing it with the nothingness of being humble, as I can't trust in blessings for the meek, promises for them to inherit the earth.

Jurdan: Is vanity ever unjust, never being positioned for helping another, or is it just? How can humility prosper anyone, seeing the humble fear doing anything that could accuse them of being vain, reducing them to attempt nothing? We are all vain, doing things to protect our virtue, to shield us from denying everything making us into figures of nothingness.

Jove: High places demanding full attention, unwilling to be shared with time for others, recognized as important, I trust to fulfill my aspirations, ascending to as many as possible, knowing they serve my vanity like nothing else, preventing humility from quenching my importance, as I continue to proclaim my value, never demeaning my virtues, broadcasting myself to all willing to listen, convincing many by rhetorical guile, claiming oneself above others, never belonging to anyone else.

Simple Simon: What becomes of one never giving up oneself to become another's, always demanding to belong only to oneself, proclaiming to be no one else's?

Bystander: Such a person can never be claimed by the Lord, unable to be entirely His, because He is never a part time parent, creating us to be His own when it is convenient.

Jove: Climbing a mountain to reach its summit, trusting it for all my satisfactions, I plan on remaining there and never be distracted by others, confident my self's desires will find fruition, depending only on myself for success. I would never scale any heights to convene with gods, seeing how this failed for ancient ones, trusting in their imagination rather than reason.

Wanton: People climb summits when confronted by crises, ascending to lofty junctures of nature with heaven, hoping to commune with God, but no crisis has driven me there, as I trust in myself to solve all problems here.

Stranger: Here comes someone new to our thoughts. Should we hear this one's story, acknowledging everyone has one?

Jurdan: We can wait to see if it might be amusing. What do people call you?

Prancing Grace: People recognize me as Prancing Grace. I wander the earth promising to spread grace.

Jurdan: That must make you a politician.

Prancing Grace: Indeed, but their deceit can never be my companion, following me and intimately sharing my convictions, hidden from other's eyes to see, having no place of shelter, never tolerated for dwelling in my abode, and can never be allowed for my subjects to see. If you think people's anxiety can be dismissed by God's mercy, count me out for therein lies a gamble, and paying for it requires more than I can afford. Self-satisfaction rewards me with the only grace I understand, paying me for all my efforts, prancing with its achievement.

Jurdan: Politician's performance is to make themselves gods, having studied all their Lord's confusing edicts, raising themselves up to be as worthy, mimicking Yahweh, arming themselves with polemics to destroy everything in their way, threatening retribution for disobedience, dispensing little mercy, promising scant grace.

Stranger: Convincing others of their wisdom, needing no other source, fools never draw on God's grace, belittling any beliefs in an Almighty, never trusting God for administering to their needs, and they convince others to ridicule and humiliate His followers, choosing the life articulated by fools.

Simple Simon: The Lord, blessing us with love, healing our imperfections, righting our bumbling ways, soothing our stumbling with grace, understands unity's pitfalls, knowing how to tread the way without coercion, inviting mercy to disown our deeds, while humans struggling for unity compel us with all manner of persuasion, forcing us to comply with someone's human reason.

Vagrant: Ignoring the Lord's call for unity, relying on ourselves reasoned to be sufficient, expecting His grace to cover our indiscretions, egregious mistakes we trust Him to erase, we consider nothing more important than a moment's desire, ignoring faith to exercise reason to justify our wants.

Wanton: Does the Lord count my works, using them to allot His grace?

Jurdan: Grace is self-assigned, a moniker for a selfie, as claimed by Prancer.

Stranger: The Lord blesses me with vision, giving me power to see, enabling me to discover all I should need so I never ignore all His goodness, constantly looking inward on my soul's temple, its seat for the Holy Spirit, sedating my overflowing pride, leaving me to wonder if vanity would continue to tempt me, blinding me to God's goodness and beauty, forcing me to rediscover His grace, reassuring my doing of all things. Does Prancer urge me to acknowledge his grace?

Jurdan: Vanity actively steals in, urged by things heard, puffing up one's ego from other's praise, delighting one's importance, perhaps never as well as one's sight, but leaving their souls crowded, filled with nonsense chatter to embellish their vanity with greater illusions.

Stranger: God's eternal truths are sealed in me and revealed by His grace, tested in fires of my experiences, remembered after lapses in my behavior, and I know people's wisdom, hiding as truth, can be concealed from my discernment as veiled errors disrupting my understanding, laden with false hopes that must be sifted out and rejected, discarding what seems pleasing and acceptable, enslaving us in error and enabling us to accept the only truth that makes us free. What other grace should I need?

Wanton: You believe the Lord gives His gifts freely, justifying us by his grace, allowing us time to accept them, perhaps delaying their reward until we become destitute, waiting on immanent death, so I have much time, permitting me to measure its breath, assuring justification at the moment of my last breath, slipping in before my human spirit departs.

Stranger: A new generation is likely to destroy your soul's temple, finding it offensive to different ideas, demolishing representations of the goodness you worship, attacking whatever good can be found, wiping out notions of creation's goodness, including their own, disallowing any chance to acknowledge the Lord's grace, urging creation's abandonment for a nothingness they can't imagine, distrusting a persuasive teaching that some paradise lies beyond, a nirvana of perfection but with doctrines committing it to destruction, with dogmas faulting anything proclaiming goodness, perhaps remorseful, speculating where to go from there.

Wanton: With humans determining all word's meanings, such as for grace, we can conclude our world lacks grace, being no more than an imagination for ones believing humans gather virtues of becoming better and better.

Jurdan: Following the world, all striving to receive more than their needs, grace becomes meaningless, unnecessary where reason equips people to acquire everything, satisfying their wants, freedom to act and choose, never needing grace so why invent any need for your God's grace, begging for it in distress, but if grace is essential for the righteous, spontaneous to reward the faithful, deserving of merit for ones confessing and repenting, believing in grace to be saved by faith, promising sufficiency in all things, for ones abounding in good works, many trust your Lord increases grace in measures earned and deserved.

Wanton: Humans look to the world for receiving grace, regarding it an affirmation of free will to assure wants and fulfill its purpose, authorizing decisions to choose, determining what grants desires, believing in creation's goodness so nothing worthy can escape by considering it evil. Read Scriptures to understand grace, confused by calling everything grace, which is never in error, when one realizes the mechanisms for grace are manifest in all, inherently by design, activated without asking, placed by intent, the Lord knowing what we would need, obviating demands for responding to every human request, requiring His transcendence in emergencies, times of failure for our protection.

Prancing Grace: With nothing hidden see my name's purpose, promising grace for all to trust.

Stranger: Reasoning my calling, justifying it by my judgment, born of truths trusted by my wisdom, believed to glorify my works, deeds to bless my efforts, I failed, running away from the Lord's purpose for my life, ignoring grace given in His name, manifested by my Savior Jesus Christ, empowering me with love and a sound mind, protecting me from fear, never allowing its affliction, never shaming me to follow anyone but Him. You encourage others to be an apostle for your cause, preaching its beliefs, attracting followers to enlist behind you, but my purpose cannot change, having an eternal appointment to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ, trusting in nothing else, my commitment to this proclamation.

Jurdan: Scriptures may be confused by grace, realizing Biblical interpretations can fail people, sending conflicting messages they choose to settle their understanding, convincing them to reason best ideas for simplifying mysteries plaguing human discernment, ending frustration over a word's meaning.

Stranger: We are cautioned to look diligently within our soul, being alert to failings, falling short of God's grace, allowing bitterness to be rooted, trampling our soil for receiving and nourishing grace, overgrown with weeds of pride, leaving no room for humility to welcome grace, knowing the Lord resists the proud and blesses the humble with grace.

Preacher: Confession of faith, declaring the Lord to be my Savior, assures His grace reserves a place for me in heaven, and I can call for more grace when my will and freedom of choice fail me, beseeching it to be lenient for my sinning, overlooking my disobedience, taking little importance for my mistakes, knowing they are destined by my free will to be committed again.

Simple Simon: Having faith in the Lord, I call on Him anytime, knowing He answers with His grace, blessing me with undeserved rewards, acknowledging me as one faithful, trusting Him for all things. Why should I seek grace from the world?

Wanton: Is grace more than favor, mercy, compassion, kindness or love realizing Scriptures probe the Lord's being by never distinguishing one from the other, with interpretations failing to penetrate the depths of His being, giving us little reason to follow what we don't understand, hardly any reason to believe we live in a world of grace, never manifesting favor or its kind?

Preacher: With human failures we need grace, knowing we can call on our Creator, enlisting His advice to solve our dilemmas.

Jurdan: Laws enact judgments, required by decrees for everything human free will imagines, making justice an unending set of consequences, convicting all humans guilty, but with grace people create loopholes, proclaiming love to absolve disobedience, declaring mercy as retribution and never calling for confession and repentance.

Prancing Grace: Our political cause has visions for gaining the whole world, winning profits of peace, to share grace and mercy, promising all a portion of creation's goodness, leaving it a legacy for all, portioning creation's fruits without denying anyone, profiting all, rewarding what's earned, according to all their being creates.

Jurdan: Are you another prophet, contributing thoughts of your own, scribbling doctrines and dogmas and attesting to their need, qualifying them for success, promising them to receive your God's blessing, sanctifying them as prerequisites for salvation, breaking down barriers fought over, trenches for swallowing infiltrated heretics.

Wanton: People have already decided what He determined us to be, so why do we muddle further, having already accepted confusing doctrines and dogmas, driving us to reject Him, trusting modern ideas making the Lord be?

Prancing Grace: If I don't fight for my cause, many wait with their own, reasoning them to be superior, campaigning for their acceptance, claiming them to bear the Lord's blessing but without confirming His involvement, acknowledging it only with a token signature, satisfying many by wearing a badge of allegiance, uncovering it at times for notice, verifying some commitment to the Lord, enough for times to plead for His grace and mercy.

Simple Simon: If you could look on God and comprehend His image to discern His appearance, He would be another object, and as all objects open to judgment, knowing we are what we are, judging everything we can behold by our senses, but never being an object for us to see or hear, He is a subject without trappings we can observe or hear, being only a Spirit for us to encounter, engaging our innate means, hidden from any scientific discovery, and we can never know Him by seeing His face but only by His grace, gifting us with being and all that is necessary to sustain it. Can we also know you by your grace?

Prancing Grace: We recruit many still testifying to being committed Christians following the Lord, but becoming disillusioned with religion and angry with God on encountering unjust circumstances, they are now loyal to our convictions, having found ones sympathetic to their concerns. Christianity offers too little to sustain their faith, having realized talking and praying about God's mercy and grace doesn't go far with few results coming forth. We do not preach on believing in the unseen. We speak to people's common sense, on what they can see, never for trusting any substance hoped for, for evidence of any unseen. But we don't want to be offended by their Lord and allow Him to be worshiped and honored no differently than other's gods.

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Vagrant: Never aspire to know too much, wanting unending revelations from God, trusting He may also afflict you with a thorn in the flesh, disillusioning you with circumstances, reminding you never to be exalted beyond the measure He wills you to exercise, gracing you with treasures to make you perfect in weakness, gratified to glory in infirmities, weaknesses to strengthen you with the power of Christ, sufferings to become like Him.

Jurdan: Stumbling without purpose, distracted by every delight in sight, boulders glowing in darkness, life becomes a minefield, temptations littering stony grounds, beckoning to hidden desires ignoring struggles through its thorns, barbs preventing reaches out to light, withholding truths necessary to grow wisdom. Measure fruits growing in darkness, recognizing they may lack ingredients to transform light's messages to truth, pigments for producing nutrients to feed us with knowledge.

Wanton: We are created to have thorns in our flesh, elements to feed us wisdom.

Simple Simon: But do they cause us to suffer?

Stranger: The Lord establishes boundaries, limiting human adventures, fencing in activities, restraining all from roaming away, and I comply, realizing some moments can be surprised by happiness, where time can harbor joy, joy assured only by belonging to Him. Any other cause, such as a politician's, can suffer me with anxiety, bringing on affliction, promising depression, the springboard to despair.

Jurdan: If both good and evil spirits populate any new creation, would we suffer afflictions as now? If so, any utopia a political cause could pursue would be populated by spirits we have now, surviving in any new creation, persisting and confusing us with no reasonable explanation, reducing our logic to mumbled thoughts. Have you considered how spirits direct your cause, wondering how so many noble efforts amount to nothing, defeating wisdom of individual ideas?

Prancing Grace: How can you judge my cause so unfairly, you of faith so great in your myself?

Stranger: Reason may convince me to follow your purpose, but loyalty to its rendering cannot be assured since my devotion is always to the Lord, the One forever invisible, but inspiring me like no human can, energizing me with unending vitality, empowering me to endure all earthly circumstances, encouraging me to press on and be able to finish the race well-run.

Jurdan: Reason can never be invoked to understand and follow a politician.

Stranger: The Lord might have His hand in a politician's cause, leading some to success for sharing with Him, but His involvement if any is not revealed to me, and I can't predict His intervention, never knowing if His aims join with others, or even if His prodding brings discernment for any proposal. Is success greater than failure? Maybe. Failure in one's cause brings many to despair, but be assured the Lord uses all experiences to grow one's goodness, the fertile ground for success to reveal failure nourishes soil of achievement to blossom, cautioning us to temper sympathy for one's suffering, failings of their reasoned hopes and dreams.

Wanton: Politicians know little suffering, unable to preach about other's, doing little to minister to ones afflicted with nothingness.

Stranger: Dwelling with sympathy, my constant companion, I suffer with others, never understanding how the Lord could inflict us with despair, but I intercede for ones deserving pity, praying for good fortune to appear, acknowledging self-pity never ceases to haunt me, persisting with little acknowledgment of my beseeching the Lord to hear me, ignoring my virtue of goodness, always a champion of justice dedicated to the sufferings of others.

Simple Simon: Mired in ignorance, accepting chance when it comes, never wanting to know why, I could suffer worse, unraveling a thread that uncovers more questions than answers, verifying that ignorance can be bliss, hardly able to raise up anxiety to trouble my reason.

Jurdan: Seeing all religions' achievements, contaminated by human truths, creating unwanted enigmas disdained for discussion and suffering many to accept, makes a case for simple faith, free of dogmas and doctrines. Religious belief dies out where many options are available, giving way to sound human truths, verifiable at least for the moment.

Wanton: Where can one find such a form of simple faith?

Stranger: Begin by believing what scribes learned from the Creator-God, revealed to all people from the beginning, hearing Him pronounce His creation is good. Some may have never read it, but they sense it in all His works, manifesting only goodness until their reason tempts them to change, comprehending aspects of goodness they find unacceptable. But many don't understand religious dichotomies, suffering through an unbearable existence yet unwilling to leave, facing inevitable demise with their dilemma relieved only by hope in an afterlife, an eternal life in a paradise better than what they have now.

Wanton: Justice is served by suffering and who knows better than ones deserving, facing justice brought on by themselves, never needing augmentation by any Lord, expecting Him to determine how justice must be served. Dichotomy sustains diversity, being the substance for making choices, calling on one's free will, arousing anxiety to suffer through human's dilemmas.

Simple Simon: If we must be born sinful would it have been better if we remained with God, a design never executed by reality, an idea never leaving His mind, never committed by His Word to fruition, realized by staying as a thought never brought forth, escaping from life's sufferings to enjoy immortality.

Stranger: Does God's love create unnecessary adornments for creation, testifying to love for all, loving nothing more, while allowing some to suffer from their own doing, others to suffer from neglect by humans, giving people free will to manipulate His creation, assuring victims of their innocence, but who is pure, never blemished by their deeds, living a life where flaws are never undone.

Jurdan: Innocence afflicted by suffering is lamented by ones trusting there is nothing more to come, believing their existence here is all there is, making suffering unjustified, but who never suffers, experiencing delightful pleasures with little interruption, praising life for its dependable goodness?

Skeptic: Does life extend long enough for suffering's certainty to condemn all deserving to be damned, convincing the Lord they need no further punishment or eternal life's rewards can wait until they have been sufficiently cleansed to join Him? Of what value is eternal punishment, tormenting human bodies and souls, thinking it can be unending, believing misery can feed the soul, restoring it to its virgin state?

Jove: I hardly agree with most of your thoughts but must ask does God's goodness and beauty of His effervescent love condemn us with fully deserved, everlasting damnation, retribution without forgiveness, believing He is unlike us, showing no conscience and never remorse? Has He no plan for rehabilitation, cleansing us so He could forgive our moments of indiscretion, acknowledging they are merely a blip in time and inconsequential in eternity?

Simple Simon: Based on our technological progress, believing claims we are getting better and better, envisioning some nirvana to end all suffering, rewarding our efforts with longer lives, are we confused, transforming imaginations into hopeless possibilities, or does our impatience lure us a different way, cursing creation, lamenting our being here, praying for end times to come soon and destroy heaven and earth, believing the Lord will create new ones to satisfy our yearnings and answer our prayers?

Prancing Grace: All your beliefs frustrate my cause, like trying to tame cat's movements or to herd the wind, hoping to corral their coming and going, struggling to know hidden wisdom, trusting to capture its essence and enthronement as the keeper of knowledge, but as mere breath it escapes, going its way, to where no one can fathom.

Jurdan: You must learn how to tame doctrines and dogmas, trying to foretell fate's changing moods.

Prancing Grace: Have you such wisdom?

Jurdan: Listen to Bystander and let no one else interpret His words. I don't know His messages, never having heard them directly from Him, and I never trust what others discern them to be.

Prancing Grace: Is Bystander a reliable spokesperson, sifting through all doctrines and dogmas attributed to the Lord, someone trusted to speak His unadulterated wisdom?

Jurdan: Look for one of no consequence, preaching in the wilderness, one nobody stops to hear, preaching cleansing to remove all doctrines and dogmas,

Wanton: Creating reality to distract people from creation's, people compose everything, dreaming up delightful experiences, anything to avoid facing life's plans for them, dismissing allegiance to God's reality for fulfilling His Great Commission, celebrating a reality of their choosing.

Vagrant: I exist without any delightful experiences and can respond to His call saying, Choose me.

Prancing Grace: The Lord gave me some options, allowing me to choose one best fitted to bring glory, and I tested the waters, thanking Him for this opportunity, and after knowing He was looking for volunteers, I responded, Choose me! My first selection was to attend seminary, but it didn't supply my needs, believing I would only be a puppet, a manikin orchestrated to repeat ancient words over and over, giving me few accolades for doing so little, and I trusted in my will to achieve more. Wealth is always worshiped more than a pastor's meager poverty so I next worked to gain money, thinking riches would equip me as an ambassador to the needy, preparing me to feed thousands, but this never proved to be God's plan, and I accepted the fates never shone on my dreams. Wealth is promised in politics, however, and before giving up on amassing riches, I began a career to rule over masses, recognizing all having been in the policy come away wealthy. I succeeded, becoming rich, but more importantly becoming powerful, and I learned power is greater than wealth, being its generator and opening great opportunities, but power compromised my ardor for the Lord as I discovered my reason is as good as anyone's, seeing it brought me so much.

Stranger: Your prosperity is by the Lord's grace, revealing His mysteries in bits and pieces, tempting you to unravel more but still concealing His most unknowable ones, judging you are still unworthy of their knowing, seeing you receive them only for your profit, treasuring them to magnify your pride, confirming people have changed little, never changing their vanity to clothe themselves with glory or to seekers of righteousness rather than fame, profiting them only momentarily.

Bystander: Changes are always possible but only by understanding the Lord's messages, seeing politicians are distracted by doctrines and dogmas, so they attract only limited numbers trusting similar decrees, with none following anyone crying in the wilderness.

Simple Simon: Can there be one belief, universal, embodying decrees to conform with creation's goodness, led by a prophet crying in the wilderness, obeying Christ's call for unity, struggling to survive onslaught from the world ruled by people united with dogmas to protect their self-interests?

Stranger: See how it began. Abandoning Ishmael, given to the scapegoat by sacrificing him into exile, to be symbolic of wavering belief and a victim of lust, sent into the wilderness to safeguarded our heritage, securing the Lord's Chosen One designated by His decrees, God assured His covenant, sealing it with a rainbow.

Jurdan: Does your Creator introduce new religions by sending their protagonists into a wilderness for preparation, to be a witness for battles' beginnings? Ah ha, the wilderness, what better place to develop doctrines and dogmas, blinded by His creation's goodness and beauty, uninhibited by current beliefs, being a virgin reservoir for one's thoughts to germinate, sending derelicts to utter, Proclaim the way of the Lord.

Stranger: It is obvious no one has come for you, leaving you waiting to hear something reasonable, beyond mere belief in yourself.

Jurdan: Perhaps someone will appear to do the impossible, to destroy all doctrines and dogmas, to honor our free will and release human reason to prevail.

Prancing Grace: Appearing as a political advisor, claiming to render as you suggest, a new prophet to offer what you propose, freeing people from their trusted beliefs, how could such a one succeed? We insist on discipline, obeying all our principles, all believed to be reasonable and profitable, depriving no one's instincts, innate natural drives directing our lives, never asking anyone to abandon what they are created to do.

Jurdan: Does such an advisor copy your Lord, telling people, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, but how should one refuse access to wants and desires, determining none to choose, allowing all restrictions to prevail? We have scholarly wisdom helping to make decisions, establishing reasonable limits without sending anyone into an arid desert, leaving them to die, surviving only on living water, corrupting human nature, teaching them not to thrive on spirituality insisting on maintaining individuality, protecting all they are meant to be by never surrendering to what's unproven, never giving up rights to themselves, sowing trouble and anxiety.

Stranger: Trusting the Lord's promise, foretold by prophets, telling of His messenger sent before, still crying in the wilderness of today's world, bearing His Word to prepare our way, making His path straight, one I could never miss, His trusted messenger brings the Holy Spirit to my soul, and I need no new advisor.

Preacher: Any new advisors will be chastised as heretics, and we must deny their schemes to change our beliefs, protecting us from their heresy, doctrines theologically in the wilderness, in darkness, blind to the light of Jesus, waiting to suffer inevitable passage through decay and death, culminating in the annihilation of their choosing.

Stranger: Indeed. What is heresy but rejecting doctrines and dogmas reasoned by scholarly decisions to be truth, certified by theologians trained in creative interpretation, established by their wisdom to become authoritative?

Simple Simon: Captured by religiosity, using studious endeavors to develop Biblical truths and reconcile them with objective reflection on scientific understandings, we justify new doctrines and more useful dogmas, exploring ways to worship God but never considering whether any unify us, realizing the impossibility of agreeing with ones of unlike mind, bonded to beliefs we could never tolerate. Religiosity enables us never to love the other, forcing us to passionately hate heretics, fearing heresy in whatever ways we can imagine.

Wanton: Doctrines divide, defying Christ's plea for unity in prayer to His Father and now see this prayer unanswered, revealing His Words are mismanaged, altered by humans to create doctrines, making them to be holy, to be accepted as infallible, and inevitably persisting to divide and conquer. Anybody using doctrines and dogmas to rule exercises mastery over masses, never asking whether Jesus used them to enforce His commandments, thinking of no other means, teaching people this way to develop the Christian religion.

Simple Simon: Does theology bring us closer to God, blessing our need for His intimacy, developing doctrines for worship in ways judged most worthy, to recognize nothing deemed heretical, basing all on theological reasoning, realizing principles are never scripted by the Lord, forcing theologians to direct their ideas, to establish only what comes from their minds. Beware of others' words, making grist for heresy, understanding no two can think alike, depending on their reasoning to uniquely interpret the Lord's, deciphered by human motivations, realizing reality is never described equally, each by individual experience to assign its manifestations.

Vagrant: Faith for many is stripped of doctrines, finding little truth in dogmas, but can belief in God survive without declarations giving feelings of fulfillment, relying on faith for satisfaction and happiness?

Stranger: Without dogmas Christianity is nothing, a faith empty of content, and development of Christianity depends on creation of doctrines, promising dogmas to give people reasons to believe. Each person with belief in God and using their imagination to describe Him give reasons for His acts, but they hardly need affirmation in doctrines, using human experiences to describe His unknowingness. Be satisfied with faith in Him, acknowledging His goodness and love without framing Him in a box thinking we can know what He is like, developing unending speculations to be framed in doctrines and dogmas.

Simple Simon: Smug in their knowledge of the Lord, using Scripture upon Scripture, to prove their words, selecting ones to proclaim their wisdom, ignoring any conflicting with others, scholars knit things profitable to their ideas, hiding any seams of discord so they will be acceptable for preaching, received as truth and critical of others, claiming theirs are all in context, proclaiming others are taken out of context, never realizing Scriptures are composed so everything can be judged in or out of context, even words coming from Jesus or inspired as the Word of God. Does smugness spring from content surmised from hidden thoughts, basing one's reason to rely on its judgments rather than on clarification by the Holy Spirit, one's persuasion rambling on and on to hear one's voice, silencing any words from Him? I pray for the Lord to preserve my simplicity and maintain my humility, to rely on Him for minimizing my reason, to keep me from boasting of my will's plans for tomorrow, as I vow to growth for pleasing the Lord. I pray never to brag of confidence in the flesh; my reason never fit to be lasting, changing with time, disappearing into the forgotten, questioning any assurance as all else from the flesh.

Jurdan: Trusting in their will to discover a way, searching one's wisdom for guidance, see how many struggle through their desolation wilderness, sifting sands of opportunities adopted to gain their treasures, never finding streams of living waters, none to satisfy their thirst, finding little need to create altars, monuments signaling achievement, as they span the horizon, discovering nothing but ongoing defeat in this land of nothingness, wondering if their God ran out of goodness when He created such waste and saved this way to lead ones self-sufficient in their wisdom, choosing me as a victim, punishing me as He made me wait, no different from His ones selected to live in a promised land.

Wanton: Hiding in shame, covering my flesh with confusion, tossing and turning under cold incriminations, unable to warm my bones, shivering and wondering if peace will ever come, I remain trapped in depression, never with a savior beckoning hope, angry at my mother's failure, never allowing me to escape into the world, instilling fear in my decisions, criticizing my actions, never creating constructive ones to help me grow, and so I remain, hiding in shame, concealed from nobodies vying to be mentors but only able to magnify my shame.

Stranger: Allow the Gospel to heal your depression, trusting you can never be ashamed of its message, blessing you with a peace beyond all understanding, committing you to exercise all truth with honesty, reflecting the purity of His goodness and beauty, expanding your virtue beyond human limits, boundaries established by your sinful nature, and praising God, praying to become more like Him, to lift you from your pit of despair, trusting His way for all your deeds, doing all things through Christ, assured of them to strengthen you, convinced God will supply all your needs, witnessed by all He does to support His creation, according to His riches in glory through Jesus Christ. How can anyone claim depression when they rejoice in knowing the Lord?

Wanton: Seeking His perfection for one maimed like me, I fear rejection, never being selected to join Him, but if He chooses me for salvation, knowing I did nothing to work it out, I would at best be in His kingdom's wilderness, less joyful than most others, hardly feasting on the fruits of His presence.

Prancing Grace: We seek ones to be our witnesses, never blinking an eye on following our way, as we put on righteousness to convince them of our noble character. We must all be willed to one another, thinking and speaking alike, casting out all temptations to divide us, molding us together as one, perfecting a unity to bond us together in mind and spirit, never being one of any sect forever in dissent, never in agreement, always seeking an argument to prove themselves, believing in their way to supremacy, exercising democracy and honor the most persuasive with victory. Don't consider me a benevolent dictator, wielding power to control, since I am gentler, kinder and less judgmental, open to listening, more transparent and never submitting to dishonesty, lying to gain for maintaining my position. Remember a democratic ruler will neither hear nor heed your cries if you are one of the almost majority, the so-called silent minority, and your needs will remain unfulfilled. We are here to protect you, saving you from anarchists, waiting to riot away your way of life. Who would rule you if we were not here? Heavenly angels would never come to bring a kingdom free of chaos, born in peace. We consider your needs and concerns, listening to you intently, so don't be discouraged that your words may be no more than stumbling blocks, lost in the wilderness of a silent minority, scorned as foolishness by the empowered majority, giving your imagination reason to revolt, destroying everything so you can recreate free of present illusions and institute your own.

Excalibur: I have learned to no longer rely on magic or depend on the sword's power, realizing neither can do what's necessary to solve people's problems, reversing their mistakes, returning them to participate in creation's goodness and beauty. Comprehend what separates us from beasts, knowing our predetermined fate differs none, existing no longer than a preordained time, toiling together, driven unconsciously by innate natures, while lacking instincts to accumulate treasures beasts simply move on to gather their needs, seemingly unable to pause and enjoy being alive, never contemplating life's ending or anything to come after. So, God gifts beasts with ignorance without fear, endowing us with fear brought by understanding.

Wanton: Yearning to dismiss my memory, I wipe it away to no longer be remembered, destroying all I have learned to fear, forgetting everything taught me to make me fearless like a beast, never knowing its days are numbered, never counting them off to reach their end.

Prancing Grace: One can be certain, obedience to my decrees are mandatory, knowing laws have dominion over people as long as they live, with injunctions establishing they belong to me, directed by instructions coming from the Lord, showing how to control my subjects, but I remain wary of any becoming dead to my edicts by belief in Jesus, because then being sanctified they are free to ignore my laws, obeying them only by fear, having another stolen their allegiance from me. They can dabble in other beliefs if they never disregard my laws and serve in someone's newness of spirit, delivering death threats to letters of my laws, destroying words able to convict them of disobedience. I demand and receive obedience to thrive, no, to survive, but I never demand death for any followers, unlike Jesus who tells people they must die, dying to sin to be reborn and follow Him. Rebirth is unnecessary to come with me, convincing all they are sufficient in themselves, changing only to obey my laws, and it is my charge to convince them these laws are holy, creating commandments that are holy, just and good.

Stranger: Would be rulers use different blends of righteousness and free will to establish power, but none survive, claiming no success from God or by one's will to power, so leaders must wait on Him trusting only in Him to know His plans. Resisting human powers promises freedom will eventually come but resisting God's ordinances precludes any freedom, assuring cascades of lasting damnation. In the fullness of human sufficiency, finally reaching its limits, people's dependence on their mastery wanes and gives rise to something new, often worsening what they had, subjecting them to new fears, paying tribute to new gods, honoring convictions of a new king, a ruler of their choosing, never considering if their new lord is ordained by God, as claimed by this rule, fulfilling laws by new human decrees, compelling them by this lord's commands to cast off works of darkness and put on a presence of light to follow their way.

Simple Simon: The Lord's spirit rests on me, coming with faith to believe in Him, accompanied by the Holy Spirit, the only Messenger to be trusted, bringing the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, and the spirit of knowledge confirming God's goodness and love embedded in creation's beauty, giving me no reason to fear, awakening my judgment to reprove every voice, not from the Spirit.

Prancing Grace: My faith encourages me to be serenely courageous, enduring the realities of unexplained ugliness and evil, to survive perceptions of blemished goodness, understanding He designs beauty to frame everything, embracing death as well as life, fear as well as joy, making it understandable how we can see no beauty in what we see as ugly. I can know beauty and appreciate all its manifestations only by living through comedic and tragic confusions of life. Come with us and quiet your afflictions, dispatching your adversities, dismissing your despair as we march to a new order, created by humans to last forever, reigning blessings on our followers, bringing joy to a new world settled in enduring peace.

Jurdan: You claim righteousness, thinking it will attract a following, but do you work out salvation with deeds?

Prancing Grace: Countless abundance, never measured to fill my limitless wants, always coming up short to satisfy my desires, driving me further to fill my attic, storing treasures my gaze would tire of, never settled me with contentment or resolved my afflictions, thinking I must gather more to drive away fear of poverty, imagined to lurk at my door, so I trust no more gathering, providing no more to lack nothing, believing now the Lord will provide, giving me enough to supply needs of the have-nots, for He created us to share, providing a never-ending abundance, calling us to unite possessions and stop grieving Him with closets erected to store hoarded gifts left to decay, rebelling no longer against His will by digging deeper into gluttony's bottomless pit, covered by darkened shadows of death. How can anyone praise the Lord for His goodness, for His beautiful works, when living with anxiety, fearlessly accumulating gifts He intends for all to share? Let all my sacrifices be exclamations of Thanksgiving, declaring His works with rejoicing, knowing I have shared His abundance with all. If I become more like the Lord, working to achieve His likeness, I rejoice in growing my gift of grace, to abound in deeds natural to faith and its decrees, to diligence in love for others, proven by sincerity, realizing I never mature to become like Him if I trust in little importance for grace. My deeds speak fearlessly for themselves.

Jurdan: You are made to be feared. Fear is treasured by many, guarded as no other, aroused and brought up at a moment's notice for protection, sounding the alarm for a retreat into themselves. Your success must fear for its lasting.

Stranger: Only fear of the Lord must be treasured, sealing it in one's soul.

Jurdan: We have greater concerns confronting us, never calling on your Lord, believing He is always late in coming, satisfying people little in what they face. Moreover, if you must bear the fear of your Lord here, is it one of the treasures you have already stored in heaven, compelling you to be yoked with it for eternity, bearing its threat forever, worshipping Him in fear while expecting His love, thinking they must exist together, never trusting you there as the distrust for ones here, condemning all as hypocrites, needing fear to expose their ways?

Simple Simon: Who walks righteously, speaking so uprightly, despising all unworthy thoughts and actions that they should never know fear, never being encoded with fearfulness, no more than to avoid painful damage to their flesh, being inherent to protect their bodies? Fear destroys the human capacity to rejoice in God's goodness, leaving people hiding from the world, meditating on its next terror, never enjoying its beauty.

Vagrant: Fearing nothing to diminish my faith, nothing to steal my hope, nothing to change my love for the Lord, I am afraid only that the more I love Him, the less I would be loved, but I trust that will never be for our Lord.

Stranger: You are right in never fearing, for fear can only tumble into bitterness, destined for reasoning to remove its fangs, seizing flesh to rot the soul, destroying both, feeding hopelessness, reducing all to the nothingness of ashes. Fear is never of the Lord, descending as anxiety anticipates the failure of desires, wants to be left wanting, plans to lose their promise with dreaded destruction looming, leaving only the legacy of my iniquities never to be blotted out, staining any goodness the earth might have. Can the Lord prevail, removing the fear that is never of Him, exercising mercy to cleanse me, showering grace to remove fear and restore my soul? Pray for that now, trusting God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind to understand His truths.

Simple Simon: Should I fear to leave creation's time, my spirit moving to some wasteland outside of time, eternally watching as nothing changes, without fear's promise for change, to realize fear's affliction for any moment is resolved by hope springing eternal, returning with certainty for better timeless moments. Maybe creation's goodness and beauty, inherent in all its being, is assured to be evident in heaven's kingdom, no longer remaining a mystery, obvious for all to see, unlike our struggle with God's hiding something here.

Jurdan: Fear born of my flesh, directing us to come fear and trembling, responding to ever surrounding unknowns never leaving us abandoned, remains with me, disbelieving ones born of the Spirit are protected, never troubled by unexplained mysteries, distrusting all is in the hands of your Lord.

Simple Simon: We are all born to fear, innately imprinted in our code, indelibly stamped as a first response, inherited from our fathers, all of whom responded to inherent fear, prepared by rejection and failure, discouragement growing from seeds of anxiety, harvesting insecurity to nourish lives dysfunctional, driving us into a darkened cave and clouding our vision, isolating us where the Holy Spirit has no way to enter, leaving us without a Counselor, no one to reveal how we can respond with faith.

Stranger: Pray for the Spirit of the Lord to be upon you, disarming weapons of fear, anointing you for relationship with God to obediently follow His directions, proclaiming good tidings, the goodness and beauty of creation, the work of His words, sending you to heal broken hearts, showing that trust in Him releases all captives from depression, freeing ones bound to themselves, comforting all who mourn, transforming all to living monuments, robed in righteousness glorifying their Creator. Never wither, letting fear starve the bud of your potential, preventing it from springing forth to unfurl its splendor and rejoice in its flower to serve the Lord and your purpose, never lamenting life's moments under the sun, grateful for being what God intended, a crown of glory in His hand, a flashing diadem never to be forgotten by the One who never forgets.

Jurdan: Can you rise up in success, confident it will never defeat you, showering laurels to glorify your name and remain one with your Lord, trusting Him in all things, never entering the arena for human accolades but humbly following Him, dismissing your self-sufficiency, being armored to withstand temptations of the world, against powers of its principalities, authoring fear for its followers?

Stranger: The Lord gives a spirit for fear to grieve us in sufferings, settling us with afflictions, but He does not make suffering inflictions a cornerstone of creation, a chamber to torture disobedience, enlisting evil to torment us with terror, compelling people to live in fear but to unfurl compassion according to His undying love and never to afflict us willingly, never wanting to grieve His creation's children.

Jurdan: Your beliefs must coexist with terror, enslaving all to your ideas, made into vehicles for imprisoning deviant convictions, conflicting with others more reasonable, forcing your followers to discard all worldly desires, restricting them to their imagination, making them unacceptable outlawed decrees, while destroying disobedience, trusting violence deemed necessary, making your rule a reign of terror, a quagmire with death as the only escape to release all terrified from consignment to your perdition, developed by your assignment as a demon for destruction, self-directed by your failure to find any goodness in creation, treating it as a hell hole to destroy, proclaiming goodness only for nothingness, the chaos before tortures began.

Wanton: God inflicts disobedient ones with delusions, bringing fears, never delighting their deeds, tarnishing them as unworthy, with wayward people trembling at His Word, sending them out as captives, destroying their comfort, leaving their treasures in other's hands ordered to spread His message, revealing Him to pagans who worship no better than deluded ones sacrificing to their unknown god's, to idols readily apprehended. Discover disobedience's purpose, recognizing how God brings all to know Him.

Jurdan: Dusting human thoughts with fantasy, imaginations based on high expectations, prepares some to accept delusions, patching up human's innate tendencies with lies, conceding all must allow their God to remake them, to put on a new person, to restore confidence in their inherent virtues, using them to create a better person, humbled beyond expectations.

Stranger: The Lord rejoices in those so humble, regarding others encountered more than themselves, giving them more than benefit of doubt, never coveting their things, humbling themselves and never out of poverty but with love for all others, creatures of the Lord's creating Word, teaching them to be Christ-minded, believing Him to be the Son of God, teaching all what to be, obedient unto death, dying to Him confessing Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, working out their salvation with fear and trembling without complaint, preserving themselves to be blameless and suffer no rebuke, caring none for human desires, rejoicing on seeing believers like me, faithful ones entrusted to God and merit His grace, to reward me with fellowship in unity with others never shamed by belonging to Him.

Preacher: It is easy for us to ignore the Lord, claiming He deludes people with visions and dreams, promoting imaginations to overpower their reason, and He observed their ways, so He sent One in bone, flesh, and blood, with tongue as ours so He could speak for teaching us what God is like, but He was destroyed by common sense to preserve what people treasured here, but not before leaving His legacy, a trusting remnant persisting to maintain what the Lord had done, planting the Holy Seed for our means to salvation.

Simple Simon: Should we distrust anyone coming with a new cause, wondering if its ideas conflict with God's, thinking they might arouse His anger, ready with judgment to administer His justice, waiting to condemn people's ideas, making them victims of His vengeance, deserving of retribution from the hands of an angry God? Can the virtue of God's goodness survive tantrums demanding evil, disruption of His relationship with ones He created?

Jurdan: New causes proliferating with seeds of discontent, changing doctrines and dogmas to capture souls, promising hope where hopelessness thrives, play variations on ancient themes, disguising our nothingness with embellishments, decorations known to be illusions. What do your details offer?

Prancing Grace: We seek spiritual people uncontaminated by outdated doctrines, beholden to no dubious dogmas, ones exercising their will to freely commit efforts on reasonable causes, individuals to proudly proclaim worthy, never abandoned to shadows of shame. We shun militant people voicing truths documented from imaginary visions claimed by seers never known. We accept few dogmatic religious people, realizing their hatreds can endanger our cause and tease them with efforts to make them appear significant. We recruit scientific minds equipped with psychological tools for convincing distrusting souls our goals are no different from theirs, bringing all into unity, indoctrinated with trust in our cause being a holy mission, laboring to restore the Lord's promises for His chosen ones, reclaiming territory for restoration to Eden.

Jurdan: Spiritual ones are all contaminated by doctrines and dogmas, afflicted with anxiety, never convinced of being blessed with righteousness, and this is what you will get.

Prancing Grace: To be right with our cause, glorified by trust in it, followers must present themselves as living sacrifices, prepared to give their lives, reasoning it more right than others, never conforming themselves to people's many lies, wallowing in degenerate fulfillment of wants and desires, degrading themselves in lusts of the flesh, but prove what is right and acceptable by following our cause's perfect will, never thinking of themselves more highly than our truths chiseled in stone for lasting centuries, but commit themselves to be members united and loyal in one body, all in one accord, being of the same mind, never being wise in their own conceit, trusting my prophecy, believing in its teachings, calling all to render their gifts at our altar, cheerfully responding to our grace and mercy to provide all needs, loving others without pretense, abhorring all that is evil and clinging to all which is good, leaving vengeance to my discretion, knowing I tolerate no one flaunting their worth for such can undermine our cause.

Simple Simon: What can your cause offer? I never lament, agonizing that my Elijah has left me, abandoning me to terrors of this world, leaving only his mantle for security, because the Holy Spirit comes under no conditions, freely to enter my soul, promising never to leave me, and I trust Him, looking to Him for directions in all things, needing no miraculous signs, trusting God is always with me.

Wanton: You may know God, but your witness for Him is partial, measuring moments with Him when you remember or seeking Him when distressed, crying out when harmed, fearing Him when overtaken by remorse, flailing about in depression when He provides no answers, resorting to despair when reason fails you, hoping your end is near, trusting to end your life because you have lost desire to live a hopeless life.

Simple Simon: What is hope, seeing it decimated by the world, decaying from human wisdom, removing any promise of comfort, for expecting nothing from fate I possess a certainty, never depending on hope, basing all on the Lord's promises, knowing His Word is the only truth, seeing all its accomplishments in creation, the work of His hands. Hope is only for supporting ones mired in uncertainty, running to apologists for consolation, working to ignite human expectations and replace them with certainty, destroying precariousness with certainty to delight all.

Stranger: No flesh should ever glory in human knowledge, dubious wisdom apologizing for anything in the Gospel, but glory only in the Lord's Words, in Jesus Christ who alone is wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption, and we rejoice in becoming one with Him.

Jurdan: You recruit competent people, spreading goodness by every effort, but with that comes pride, vanity celebrating their usefulness, concern for some respecting your God's will, trusting they know His intent, working for Him rather than yielding to Him. If this God is self-sufficient, why would He need anyone to work for Him, for accomplishing what?

Prancing Grace: When our recruits discover they must follow another, they agree to join us because we reward them for loyalty. We recognize their value and accept them as comrades. God selects anyone. However, ones hardly praised for goodness, none being noteworthy, and uses them in unexceptional ways, hiding them in obscurity. See how we can do better, at a minimum pinning ribbons on them, badges of honor to acknowledge their achievements. They will outshine all others, bettering those following an imaginary God or worshipping any god promising wants and desires.

Simple Simon: My God's influence, trusting I belong to Him, shuts out my self's, allowing it no direction in my life, believing He made me something out of nothing and wishing me to remain more than nothing.

Jurdan: Being all things to myself, self-sufficient in all ways, no other will judge me, trusting only myself, no one but me with knowledge and wisdom to judge my deeds and determine my future, knowing without myself I would be despised, open to other's judgments, something I would never allow. I will never be reviled, stealing my honor and glory, debasing my virtues, stripping me naked as an ordinary man, hiding me among the masses, for isn't that less than something, mere nothingness?

Jove: Yielding to a different venture, your body of followers commits me to be one in the flesh, bound to your cause, but never one in the spirit, because I can be only one with the Lord, one in His Spirit, relinquishing all other gods, knowing He tolerates no one whose gods worship the flesh.

Simple Simon: I will never consent to destruction of my flesh, evil as it may be described, since God fashions it, poured out from His goodness and never to be blemished by human perceptions, created a beauty to behold and sanctuary to the Holy Spirit, protector of my soul and ensuring its survival for eternity.

Jurdan: Invalidate those claims for following me, because you need not be one in the flesh with me, and you can keep your most important gods, never asking you to abandon all that is most precious, embracing your favorite gods and cherishing your most satisfying wants.

Simple Simon: On becoming one with the Lord, following Him in all ways, giving Him full allegiance, requiring me to abandon my passions, attachments to this world, would any true cause ask as much of me? Having belief in God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, how can I choose to serve anyone else as well?

Prancing Grace: We have no problems with our followers worshipping God. We tolerate all gods and make sure of only one thing that no god will never step in and take over as king or ruler, thereby displacing us and the sovereignty we have established.

Simple Simon: Can I still make the Lord number one in my life?

Prancing Grace: On becoming devoted to our cause, He could hardly be number one in your life with you swearing obedience to our doctrine. You are permitted to pray to Him, but never asking for anything we provide.

Jurdan: All leaders seize followers with caution, trusting they can lop off branches to prune their vanity, trimming them all back to size, to measurements useful for being servants.

Simple Simon: I give the Lord thanks, praising Him for mercies promised to endure forever, celebrating His creation's goodness, rejoicing as He prunes my boughs, reducing the growth of my pride, preparing them to sprout limbs He can hang usefulness on, healthy and tempered by His power.

Prancing Grace: You say you can do nothing of yourself, deferring all freedom of your actions to someone else, and such persons we admire, chase to recruit, and trust their commitments to our cause will never waver.

Simple Simon: You don't understand. I can do nothing of myself, but it never means I'm indecisive, waiting on anyone for my thinking and to determine my actions. Doing nothing of myself signifies there is only Jesus to model after, just as He said of His father, doing nothing but what His Father directs Him to do. You could never compete with Him, and by my following Him you could never trust me to obey your commands. I can hardly believe myself, considering I want to please the Lord and am tempted to serve Him by my ideas, practical ways to build His kingdom, while neglecting to acknowledge His instructions I trust my plans to surely sanctify me and guarantee me a seat in heaven, without being subjected to wait on Him, lingering until He delivers circumstances telling how to serve Him. I ask only for Him to renew my mind and I wait patiently on Him, never thrashing around impatiently seeking something to please Him and satisfy my need to do something practical for Him, practical in that it can be attested to by believers and admired as worthy work for the Lord.

Prancing Grace: Our cause depends on people never giving up rights to themselves, acknowledging they have God-ordained rights, transcribed by us into decrees certifying them as human rights, decrees never chiseled in stone but amendable as situations change, trusting the best of humankind is chosen to implement what is best for all.

Jurdan: Humans are created with what you call your God-ordained rights and the most important involves the use of free will, freedom for decisions never to be influenced by any gods.

Prancing Grace: Our convictions could never find unity with yours, unifying our hopes with your unbelief never worshipping our God, never compromising your freedom to practice our beliefs, never hearing our God telling what's right and wrong, as He protects rights to define your existence, giving it the meaning you choose, creating your concepts of the cosmos, and developing answers to life's mysteries, doing all by your experience sifted through reason and confirmed by common sense. We seek diversity, needing it to widen support for our cause, and with diversity we learn to become more tolerant, reserving dissension only for those speaking against our cause, proclaiming intolerance for our convictions. We raise up individuals to freely will their power to act, seldom restraining actions to be themselves, satisfying them in what they want to be, to seek prosperity and comfort.

Wanton: Where did your beliefs begin, taking their form, inspiring you to embark on this venture?

Prancing Grace: Begging to be chosen, to be sent on a mission, responding to a call from God, I ventured forth, armed with self-esteem, shielded from contrary opinions, only to be met by adversity, rising up to disrupt my goal, telling me the Lord's plan must be of His choosing, showing what He wants of me, but only after teaching me patience and training to follow Him, never by boasting what I can do for Him.

Jurdan: Believers in your God select from their imagined delights what He wants them to do. How are you different?

Prancing Grace: Worthwhile deeds begin in pits of depression, leading ones to despair or lofty ambitions, depending on whether they want to lead or be led, and I chose to lead, giving me command of my destiny, as I battled to escape from conflicts in arms while never accepting defeat, vowing to continue righting all wrongs. Gifted with boisterous eloquence, I attract many followers, trusting I would hasten freedom from pits, their hiding place for living in depression. I found them where salt destroyed all chance for growth, preventing them from setting roots down to grow hope, unable to sprout anything but despair in their desert of nothingness, finding them in barren wastelands, never seeking a way to escape their drudgery, never knowing how, or perhaps resigned never to caring. A leader can always find ones self-afflicted with unworthiness, having no gods to worship, no idols to sustain happiness, mired in hopelessness, making them easy prey for my words, as I promise them something better than what they have. Charging them with enthusiasm, retrieving it from days of their innocence, I can assemble an obedient squadron, infected with fervor to follow me, and with no surprise I can indoctrinate them to devote their life to our cause, convincing them paradise awaits as their reward. Prideful of my power, I cannot resist vanity beginning to control me, glory fed by frenzy of our followers, brandishing their arms, waving weapons to honor their gods. Recognizing so few are chosen, I must be careful on choosing the steps a leader should take.

Stranger: Your truths hunt me down, transforming imaginations into verities, justifying them to remain, recalling all my iniquities, judging and afflicting me with rods of wrath, believing human truths demand consequences, being intolerant to sins determined by God's truths, dismissing the Lord's truths of goodness and love, removing my soul far from His hope and peace, but for His mercies I cannot be consumed, trusting His compassion will never fail me, renewed every morning, so great is His faithfulness. Your truths may imprison me in a pit of depression sealed by boulders of injustice, working to subvert me to their cause, to crush my flesh, but my soul remains free, willing the ways I choose, lifting my beaten-down heart to the Lord, raising my hands so He can hear my cries, pleading the precepts of my soul, trusting He will justify me, protecting me from temptations of other truths, persecuting them with reproach. My soul's gates remain closed, barricaded against the world's trustworthiness, secured against entry, opened only by a key to heaven's kingdom, bearing the combination to eternal truths, revealed to anyone seeking a relationship with their Creator. You urge me to trust my inheritance to strangers, houses of alien facts changing moment to moment, giving hope to ways of this world, ignoring how our fathers have suffered, forsaken by their trust in reason's convictions.

Simple Simon: We testify to the Lord, praying an oath of allegiance, and He cleanses us of wrong doings, as the thief on the cross charging his confession to become righteous, discovering the Lord's truth to be prepared for entering His ranks, devoting his heart and soul to the Lord's cause, equipping him with ardor to contend with enemies, igniting a fire in his will to proclaim eternal truths.

Prancing Grace: Needing warriors for our battles we protect worthy ones, sending none out to certain death, crucifying none to enforce our truths, discarding none without valued justification, for truths of our efforts nourish seeds to sprout with our beliefs, consecrating loyalty to our cause, working to develop servants programmed to obey, trusting all we desire is sacred. Our vision plans for a kingdom to last a millennium, so we must think ahead, developing warriors having a mental capacity greater than for any robot. Our scientists plan on purifying DNA from bones of prehistoric humanoids and use their codes to recreate ones we can train to do our battles, giving us an unlimited supply of warriors, expendable without remorse, requiring no propaganda to recruit people to fight our battles.

Simple Simon: God created everything, including ones now extinct, giving them purpose for their time, humanoids designed to participate in His goodness, and now you wish to bring them back to use for your needs, ignoring any dignity they might have conferred by God?

Prancing Grace: The Lord gifted us with science, showing us how to do so much unheard of things, and it becomes our opportunity to imagine all the ways they can be used.

Stranger: The Lord blesses me with overwhelming circumstances, situations stripping away facades fashioned to prosper me, baring my empty soul, revealing me naked, fearful of stepping into the public square, but He waited until I was ready, preparing me to accept the garment of His truth, to receive and trust His revelations, to understand this payment for His fellowship, to know real joy coming only by faith in Him. Can you match His offer?

Prancing Grace: We can match His offer and do better. Keep your faith in Him and realize you can add coveted claims trusted never to interfere with your relationship with Him. Accept our cause as worthy and just, provoking no one to sin, and forcing no one to abandon faith in their Creator.

Stranger: Do you know what sin is, understanding it as you claim to know truth, while never asking what is sin or what is truth?

Prancing Grace: Both are relative, changing with culture's sophistication, so we advance our understandings to one day when that question disappears, vanishing with humankind's ascension. Evaluation of deeds to classify them sinful, becomes less important with our growing perfection as human beings, no longer regarding a sin is a sin is a sin, discarding ignorant rantings to classify transgressions while continuing concepts of sin established by human laws: unjust killing of people, indiscriminate denial of human rights, and outright thievery of other's possessions. As decided by the free will of majorities, protection of rights to liberty can condone destruction of life, becoming acceptable as people's wisdom determines when life becomes a human being. The Lord acknowledges His goal has been met, commanding humans to procreate and populate the earth, filling it with life unsustainable by the abundance He promised, a goal incongruent with reality, so we must take charge and modify His antiquated command. This is only an example authorizing us to demand control of our lives.

Stranger: Trusting in being self-ordained, self-appointed to be a sanctified, deciding what to consecrate and leaving nothing to God, you determine purposes, blessing others to further your cause, convincing them the Lord calls them to labor for your purpose, one blessed by Him, convincing them to give up other interests, never maintaining ones from God, and seal a commitment to your cause, satisfying obedience to it as working His purpose, happily in what has been chosen for your followers.

Prancing Grace: Looking to the Lord, going into His territories, we obey His commands, enshrined many centuries ago but still to be followed, his order to set a mark on all who sigh and cry for abominations others have done, protecting them as others are ordered to be slain. We identify all honest ones obeying the tenets of our cause, saving them like the Lord has decreed and weeding out those choosing to ignore Him. So, you see we strive to be right with Him always.

Simple Simon: Wouldn't it be easier to identify all deviants, marking those posting threats, eliminating ones labelled menaces, leaving your followers unblemished, remaining purified without any signs of being tainted, realizing labels tattooing one are usually permanent, and who knows if any of your followers might change, wishing to hide any signs of commitments they leave behind.

Prancing Grace: We could try that.

Simple Simon: Needing no mark of allegiance to the Lord, no outward signs to verify my faith, I can call on Him anytime, lifting my eyes to heaven, trusting His help will come, knowing the Creator is my keeper, preserving me day and night, protecting my going out and coming in, maintaining the integrity of my soul, home for the Holy Spirit, promising nothing but assuring no one can smite me.

Prancing Grace: Seeking ones willing to employ reason, to free ideas embedded in stone, we need people open to refining their religious lifestyles, modernizing outdated thoughts, justifying ways to align antiquated convictions with an updated culture, tolerating others unless they criticize our ideas, knowing we can massage the Lord's message, interpreting it anew to conform with our convictions, using skillful rhetoric by masterful and brilliant minds, trusting nothing is impossible for ones educated to be skeptics, questioning all imaginary dogmas, raising reason to be supreme.

Jurdan: Do leaders ask followers who they freely trust or better whom they must trust, and if they find great joy in their beliefs?

Wanton: Christ's followers expressing great joy never doubt, trusting and believing without reservation, never walking in darkness, going extra miles to work out their justification, leaving them no time to disbelieve, never provoked to self-pity for His cause is their fondest dream, treasured for all moments here, needing to accumulate no distrust for some imaginary later time while working on utopia now, reuniting all into one, seeking a vision of grand unity.

Simple Simon: Your visions arise from a house divided, trying to survive in a city divided, fighting other's ideas in a country divided, struggling to survive by conquering the opposition, never recognizing your visions must be one with the Lord's, for everyone to be united as one, obeying the command Jesus left us with, never to achieve utopia.

Wanton: The Lord's vision, assuring believer's justification, promised never to leave them, still awaits so must we develop our own views, trusting His day may never arrive, offering only hope where our visions can surpass any of His, providing us refuge, prolonged only by days of hope's anxiety, realizing hope is a floating anchor, searching a bottomless pit, finding no place to secure a mooring.

Stranger: Trusting your plans, enlisting vanity to create your visions, imaginations to appear out of nowhere, confirming your power to prophesy, you call on yourself, believing nothing comes from another's words, nothing coming from holy revelations, discounting any messages from the Lord, but you live in desolation, never contemplating all surrounding nature, ignoring all its bits and pieces, knowing they come from something and neglect their messages from the Lord. Could you have any visions living in a vacuum, untouched by surrounding emptiness, presenting nothing to ponder, leaving you with nothing to paint, striving to sketch an idea of nothingness? By drawing on all creation, nature provides subjects for your idols, fire, and water to worship, mountains to scale, fertile soil to cultivate until your reason finds ways to develop wicked imaginations, devices to destroy creation's goodness and beauty.

Prancing Grace: We know our cause can console others, building trust they will have peace in their lifetime, easing fearful admonitions our plans may have, so we enter treaties with no one, realizing our goals are unique, recognizing they are held by no others. With consolation to sooth despair and lamenting people's circumstances, we offer ways to heal depression unfairly committing them to unhappiness, so take our advice and join our cause, trusting it to bring you joy.

Stranger: Be careful. Don't interfere with God's plans, creating you to follow His ways and prosper you, allowing no one to steal you from His purpose, led by sympathy pitying ones confronted by the Lord's circumstances, thinking your concern is far better than His plan, asking Him, What about this person, only to hear Him say, What is that to you, follow Me. Listen to His message delivered by the Holy Spirit, Shut up and listen, you being one to know it all, proposing advice you have no right to give, thinking your help betters that of the Lord, but any saintly advice comes only from the Lord and discerning what it might demand listening only to the Messenger, never to one's immature imagination. Is consolation you order more than any your reason can propose?

Simple Simon: Blinded by knowledge, thinking it develops by seeing, experiencing assurance of facts, transforming them to truths, I remain with no sight of truth, witnessing the blind leading the blind, searching the sighted to discover truth, until faith appropriates God's being, giving substance to all things unseen, revealing His promises while unveiling each step in His plan, continuing His revelations, making creation what it is.

Jove: Can you claim faith, manifested by belief, acknowledging faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, when you rely only on messages unseen, trusting nothing but text imagined appearing on a screen, on hidden words of the Lord revealed by His revelations, messages to the Holy Spirit, never made of things which appear? Do you believe words written without faith can please Him?

Wanton: Are you dumb, speaking with your fingers, waiting for words to appear, and hearing nothing from anyone's tongue, with your lips disabled, uttering nothing but silence, nothing but from your fluttering fingers, unconscious of any capacity to build relationships, none being possible, tongue-tied as you have become, having no rudder to steer beyond rocky shores, drifting into a desert of no relationships, ignoring all connections you were made to develop, disowning use of speech to leave your mark. Does the Holy Spirit text you God's messages, trusting no spoken words are necessary, leaving you waiting to see His scribblings on a wall?

Jurdan: How do ones dumb negotiate with enemies at the gate, regarding you to be deaf and dumb? Have your fingers sufficient rhetoric to gain their mind, to convince them of their iniquities, to seize and retain their attention?

Simple Simon: Encouragement to join some new cause, inviting me to be a major participant, possibly to give up what is important, to share in some attractive purpose, could consume all I share with God, forgetting to celebrate His glory, no longer complying with His purpose, but I question if human relationships for meeting His expectations can conform with yours, assuring they mirror His expectations for human relationships.

Jurdan: Only words can enslave one to any cause and politicians practice their use, alternating between eloquence and convincing rhetoric, subverting minds to destroy ideas conflicting with theirs, allaying fears, creating hope, decorating despair to dismiss hopelessness, constructing altars for worship where nothingness dwells, killing human spirits to leave them in desolation. Without a doubt, politicians seize all authority, expecting their followers to rejoice, promising mercy for all, for all enlisted in their cause's assured redeeming actions to restore people's stolen kingdom.

Skeptic: Who trusts dogma, thinking it will never be challenged, believing in no requirement

for contingency, the bane of secular truth, realizing dogma changes only for human truths, and their ongoing modifications conflict with God's eternal and unchanging truths, believing truths the church introduces need changes to be consistent with people's failing attempts at democracy, depending on majorities for changes, stumbling through clusters of wasted lives, seeing human reason progressively leading us to nothing. Is this boring, justifying our short interval here, giving no cause to wish for a longer life?

Stranger: Commitment to the Lord, obeying His commands, requires me to follow earthly leaders He has chosen, so if I support anyone's cause, joining in their endeavors, there can be no turning back, and I can only look to the Lord to save me, to preserve any righteousness I have assembled to follow Him. Many create circumstances, telling me they are of the Lord, entangling my discernment, veiling my common sense, giving me little choice but to accept their directions proclaimed as truth. All I can pray for is God will show me His truth, assisting me out of roads to seduction, for only He knows how to deliver the ungodly out of temptation, so if I become ensnared in evil from obeying a worldly leader, He will show me a way out.

Simple Simon: Subjects must pray for leaders chosen by God, never despising their rule, never speaking evil of legislator frailties mocking their fragile nature, ways often little understood, never corrupting their virtues with hateful deceptions or tarnishing their integrity by smearing them with unrighteousness, blemishing their dignity, making many unwilling to hear them.

Stranger: Trusting God to give each moment it's appointed time, is this the moment for supporting Prancing's cause, choosing it to contribute anything worthwhile to the Lord's plan, or does it stray from His design, wandering into a swamp of human reason, miring many in difficulty, bogging them into no return, unable to respond to His call, Return to Me?

Simple Simon: Misleading passions misguided by lust, tempting treasures avoiding my conscience, promise happiness, fulfilling a moment with contentment, luring me into trust Prancing's cause.

Stranger: Knowing God's glory surrounds me, filling His creation with goodness, why should I seek some other glory, offered by you or another's cause, promising riches, rewarding followers with abundance, knowing the Lord can change their glory into shame, regrets with no coming back, reproaching ones deserving punishment, dishonored for their iniquities, humiliated for sacrifices promoting their honor.

Simple Simon: Our Lord's cause bears a vision, knowing where there is none people perish, so we create dogmas to live by, trusting ones to keep our decrees, creating blessings to promise happiness, and we urge all to adopt this vision for changing their lives. Living only by God's Spirit, having confessed Jesus Christ as my Lord, sent by the Father, the only One knowing His Father, can I trust you, urging me to adopt your cause's spirit with little hearing of who your leader is, tempting me to enlist in your vision, knowing nothing of whether the Lord sanctions it?

Prancing Grace: Thinking you find perfection, honoring all the Lord's commands, can you claim to love God and hate a brother, hating someone you have seen, loving someone you haven't seen and known only by your imagination? His commandment obliges all to love your brother if you love God. Our cause cannot love everyone, realizing love would kill its purpose, knowing a cause must have enemies, perhaps some with no evil intentions, but nonetheless all people do not deserve love.

Simple Simon: Repentance changes me to love one another, sanctifying and making me more holy, verified by subsequent sinless living, no longer stumbling through dreadful thoughts and actions, experiencing the meaningless world's desert of nothingness belonging to its reality once experienced. Truly holy ones, forgiven and reborn into a new life, exiled from meaninglessness determined by worldly humans, have cause to rejoice, leaving their sinful life behind. How many can say, I have sinned, fleeing their past, discontented with self-assured respectable goodness to become new persons, always understanding the value of real repentance?

Jurdan: Beware of all seeking to be masters, avoiding leaders seeking preeminence, wanting to be called one's eminence, naming themselves reverend, offering to be counselors, strutting as princes of peace, loving to be king of kings, rulers above all others, dressed in vanity's full attire, bowing down to no one. Is Mister Grace one such master?

Simple Simon: Prancing beckons, urging me to follow, offering to be my new leader and give up allegiance to the Lord, thinking I can serve two masters and be obedient to each, encountering no conflict in transferring from one to the other. Show me where two captains agree, one giving up beliefs to satisfy the other, for I know where one has confidence in truths beheld it is unlikely that one would submit to another's and abandon their inveterate beliefs. Every master has others waiting in the wings, aspiring to take over, concealing their different thoughts, hoping for a leader's demise, trusting fortune to probe into fate's plan for discovering destiny's design for the outcome. Fate's plan is not of the Lord. Listen to the Holy Spirit for the future's promises.

Jurdan: One lives on danger's edge, inviting in some Holy Spirit, welcoming a dubious guest, fearing His messages bear convictions of sin, keeping souls in doom and gloom, stealing chances for happiness, so why should I endanger my comfort, bringing in someone dedicated to disrupt my well-being, destroying all my belongings to make me holy, changing me to something I will detest, shielding me from ever again receiving happiness, moments I am now asked to confess as sinful, requiring me to repent, all to become holy and wander through the world made meaningless, a desert of nothingness.

Stranger: Any would-be leaders must discover their destiny in the Holy Spirit's messages, drowning out their will's advice, ignoring calls of the world, silencing urges of their ambitions, resisting self-designed convictions, laying all before the Lord, trusting Him before themselves.

Simple Simon: So you see, being the master of a cause one must be flexible, changing its truths by modifying any to conform with needs to remain in power. My Master never changes; however, His truths remain the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, showing us how to obey, providing security in teaching what we should be, trusting Him in revealing who I must be. Should I choose to follow another, an unpredictable human led by pride, or remain with my eternal Master, predictable and humble with His simple commands to love others as ourselves?

Prancing Grace: Time will show our plan's virtues, coming when the time is right.

Simple Simon: Show me your trustworthy beliefs, revealing those based on Scripture's words, lessons detailing how the Lord deals with people, destroying all who live in iniquity, sending sinners into a fiery pit, never inscribing their names in the book of life.

Prancing Grace: Do you ask me now or tomorrow, knowing yesterday's dependable beliefs become today's untrustworthy truths?

Jurdan: Well spoken, the only truth that survives.

Wanton: Dubious ideas are difficult to ignore when given unanimous consent and their implementation can destroy lives, wiping out people tarnished as blemished and destroyed to achieve reasoned goals. Do you conceal your actions until most accept your beliefs, trusting them to be worthy and noble?

Simple Simon: Grace's plan, as all causes, words of promise spoken in earnest, prophesying ways to utopia, lacking messages from the Lord, can never bless me by its hearing, for I trust only what the Holy Spirit reveals, ageless and relevant for all times. Grace's plan, changing before he can enact it, must be untrustworthy, having barely been understood by many, unread for evaluation, and hidden from judgment, leaving one in sole possession of its contents. How can I trust his cause?

Stranger: Tolerance, pleading other convictions are as good as any, reduces the distinction between good and evil, giving beholders rights to determine their virtue and other rights to accept another's virtue, but never the wisdom to determine its goodness or lack of.

Simple Simon: Virtue then becomes freedom of one's will, believing another's virtue is no better than mine, destroying any meaning for goodness, making noteworthy only those exercising their will to the greatest power, and achieving that tramples other's virtues, no longer tolerated by success of those willing themselves to power.

Prancing Grace: Our cause promises tolerance within limits, tolerating other's beliefs but critical of unlimited tolerance, criticizing conflicts generated by intolerance, and our moderate ideas attract masses of people seeking a better life, tired of slavery for the common people.

Jurdan: Would you curtail people's freedom of expression, banning voices of dissent, destroying proclamations of discord?

Prancing Grace: Our cause strives to honor our fatherland's beliefs, trusted to be essential and more important than any deity worshipped, giving people a sense of belonging greater than for God who they can only imagine, never being One they can see, and we predict success with this by removing religion as people's mover, separating church and state, allowing them to worship the state without depending on religion.

Jurdan: No state has ever survived reigning as people's deity, so why will your cause be different?

Prancing Grace: Growth in science to increase our understanding, using greater knowledge to develop sounder reason, predicting more honest truths developed from the refinement of theories, forms our cause's framework, equipping it to improve assurance for success, no, convicting all of success.

Skeptic: What has science accomplished to give this confidence?

Prancing Grace: Witness providence, evidence for God's protection, showing us how to develop weapons to sustain our cause,

Wanton: Replacing worship of God with something worthwhile, realizing people sitting in dying churches pay little attention to the Lord, attending out of habit, seeking greater assurance of salvation, heeding little of anything said while they plan their secular day, promoting self-interests where they matter, counting for more than imaginations preached from the pulpit, challenging beliefs on the perfect will of God, closing with a fervent prayer to acknowledge each will follow Him throughout the week, praying in vain for ones incomplete in Christ, people never calling on God to wrestle with Him on matters of life, defer all issues of being in His will, never watching to see if He is so involved to invoke His will.

Jurdan: Understand new causes join calamity, marching together, proudly and unknowingly into distress, perhaps finding a way into crucibles of no return, leading all into your Day of the Lord, watching His fiery inferno stoked up to leave everything in ashes.

Prancing Grace: Our cause promises great expectations, never kindling flames for destruction, following plans only for purifying what God leaves blemished, cleansing creation, returning it to the goodness He intended.

Stranger: God raises up ones to lead us, choosing leaders committed to obeying Him, fearing His judgments assured for disobedience, certain for all who test His will, and considering His choices have virtues fragile as ours, with good intentions withering in neglect. We ask Him for the chance to choose our leaders, to equip us with greater wisdom for making our will prevail. Given this option to choose we trust our selections are blessed by Him, some with greater favor, while some sent to admonish us with His judgment. We support His reluctant will, allowing us to be rewarded with fruits of our reason, knowing humankind manages all their efforts to alter God's laws, creating loopholes for authorizing sin, amending ways to satisfy their desires, ignoring His laws as outdated, even seeking ways to topple stones inscribing His truths, destroying those applied to ancient people before discovering their powers of reason to cleanse creation of its blemishes. Is this His plan for us?

Wanton: That depends on whether one thinks it serves people's interests more than before. His decrees may not but we are now empowered to reason and make our own choices, trusting we have developed the wisdom to manage our existence best.

Jurdan: Make a case for your Lord's decrees never being recovered and restored. Look at the results of His doctrines and dogmas, indoctrinating people with truths authorizing their wants and desires, producing polyglots claiming superiority for one's ideas, struggling for recognition, and what do you find: rule by majorities, token attention for minority's desires, forgotten recognition of your Almighty's rules proclaiming an eventual utopia, a paradise of convictions satisfying all people's wants and desires, unifying all in happiness for their treasure's fulfillment.

Wanton: How will humankind reach any goal, when bound by doctrines and dogmas?

Skeptic: We set a goal to democratize all people, training them to follow our reasoned ways to restore the never-land of paradise lost.

Simple Simon: Then why does democracy's virtue divide people, polarizing them to extremes, propagating diversity, blessing it as the mover of progress, reasoning it supports belief in unity, forgetting the Lord's prayer for unity, thinking it retards human progress.

Stranger: Can human-determined governments ever accomplish what the Lord requires of us, discerning what is good, to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God? Should these virtues be abandoned for people's contrived copies of the Lord's, devised by deceitful imaginations? Expect nothing better than a life of desolation, empty with only the fruit of one's doings, having nothing to celebrate but accomplishments gathering dust with all other human deeds.

Prancing Grace: Democracy may be as you say. Our cause stands on a more reliable foundation.

Stranger: The Lord sees it differently, knowing people choose leaders they believe are trustworthy, open to manipulation, pledged to subject's wishes while ignoring God's virtues, denying the One sent to rule nations with a rod of iron, left to be mocked and shamed, threatened by hostile priests, strung up, nailed to a cross and left to die before what should have been His followers, but faithful to His promises, He survived and still lives.

Simple Simon: One cannot rule people with a rod of iron, either as a despot administering nothing but evil, without any loving virtues, afflicting all with consequences of a dictator's whims, ready with a whip to enforce decrees, or as an unseen Spirit, dictating God's eternal laws, enforcing them only by heaping guilt, compelling one's soul to be opened for the Holy Spirit bearing messages from the Lord. Choosing one as better than the other, some put their hope and faith in the unseen Lord, thinking they can manipulate Him easier than tyrants seen and suffered under, afflicting them with unrighteous jealousy for disobedience, ignoring righteous jealousy at the heart of God's nature, dooming them to what they see rather than what they imagine, disregarding that the Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works, ruling and protecting His creation with love, compelling Him to judge anything threatening His works.

Prancing Grace: Listen to our words, trust our messages, discern our noble virtues and accept them as worthy, promising a new order designed to be blessed by the Lord, unlike ones of previous leaders who claimed His blessing and established rule by deceit, testifying falsely to His ordination of them, but failing as others before and since. We propose a new republic, a new order ruled by people's consent.

Simple Simon: Can your cause succeed without everyone's agreement, everyone assenting to your doctrines and ways for implementation? Can individuals who defy the Lord's eternal, unchanging laws and deny their virtues never understand their need and accept all that you propose? Not likely. People dismissing obedience to His laws, having a mind of their own, creating their ideas to manipulate any eternal wisdom, are never likely to agree on any rule devised by human's reason.

Prancing Grace: The majority's will must agree to support our cause, and recognizing the wisdom in our virtues, more appropriate than the Lord's, we ensure our cause always fulfills expectations, satisfying people's wants and desires. We must also maintain vigilance, identifying beasts coming to destroy us, stifling their demonstrations to silence disruptive mocking voices despising our established order, forcing them to terminate plans undermining our efforts. We differ little from following God's way, demanding obedience, punishing disobedience, administering justice, never concealing our face of vengeance, and exacting retribution when necessary.

Simple Simon: You must believe your convictions differ none from God's, permitting you to rule with them as He does with His, assuming as with ancient people, He selected you to rule His people.

Prancing Grace: It is more than destiny ordaining us a time to oversee His creation.

Simple Simon: More than destiny is adopted by a person's meddling, replacing the Lord's intrusion to interfere with people's reason and stifle their free will, leading them to ask Him for a king, thinking this would better control their destiny with greater freedom to will their way, but recall destiny of people choosing skilled and powerful individuals to install as kings, proving to be unacceptable until people learned to overthrow monarchies, gathering followers to revolt, and since then active demonstrations can depose any ruler, leaving a vacuum waiting to be filled by another, perhaps one with worse consequences, but people never learn that leaders must rule with the Lord's guidance and blessings, so I must know how much you listen to Him and seek His blessings.

Prancing Grace: If we look too much to the Lord, our followers would move on to find another leader, one never handicapped by such things as an admonishment to love enemies as well as neighbors. Would people need leaders if they had no enemies, no one to detest, no one trying to take what they have and could rejoice without ceasing, encountering harmony in all, never requiring circumstances to right wrongs? We must take care in selecting strong rulers, never losing confidence in their will and power. Could the Lord be such a ruler? He may have been powerful and ruthless for the ancient Hebrews but it appears He has changed, becoming a God of love, and we question what He would do for us now.

Simple Simon: With devotion to your cause, can I voice my desires, hoping they will be answered, or must I be totally obedient to your will, as the Lord asks for His will be done. Complete obedience to your will, knowing it is based on your truths of the moment, subject to change when destiny chooses, cannot be promised, seeing I have commitments to the Lord that yours will never honor. Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, promises the Lord. Can you promise as much?

Prancing Grace: Conditions with our cause are fluid, changing from day to day, making it difficult to make promises. You must trust in our way, giving it more than hope, greater hope as required by some things.

Jurdan: Zeal and enthusiasm are bywords for your cause, demanded for anyone enlisted to follow you, equipping them with distraction, allowing no other interests to vie for their attention, dismissing spiritual callings stealing their initiatives away.

Prancing Grace: Insight into the Lord's foreknowledge, assured of being more than intuition, commits me to pursue our cause, trusting it as His plan, a component of His providence as He continues to bless it with needed resources, convincing us we work out His destiny, believing only His to follow, none of it being our own.

Wanton: You propose nothing new, having been attempted by many and making no difference in people's lives, but if their memory has faded, believing your cause is something new, your reinvention of novelty can charm wisdom, transforming ancient thoughts to appear as your own.

Jurdan: Your cause can thwart enemies, preventing opposition, treating protests as discrimination by different religious doctrines, created as a supranational movement, transforming its dogma into a geopolitical factor, claiming it rests on sacred soil established by your God, deeded to chosen ones committed to protection by using whatever means necessary. Let no one dispute your claim for people's God-given territories, and if squatters refuse to leave, compel them to accept your terms, forcing out those who reject them.

Excalibur: Don't call your cause any variety of people's republic, seeing they seldom last beyond a generation, falling to protests expected for any government built on human reason. Instead, describe your cause as based on Orthodoxy, established as the only sound doctrine, protected by being unimpeachable, accepted as the single true orthodox religion, its constitution being the only commandments laid down by God.

Jurdan: If you waffle, succumbing to cries for tolerance, equating all religions to be acceptable, allowing people the freedom to worship as they choose, soon they will all become millstones burdening your cause into making judgments on their differences.

Prancing Grace: Time in seminary taught me all about God's virtues wielding a power to destroy enemies, but teaching me never to fear Him, encouraging me to adopt His strategies and using them all to manipulate people's minds, giving me control over them as they believe God is in control, tolerating nothing people make to be wisdom.

Jurdan: Uniting your cause to a sacred soil, land for binding to its people, calling it motherland or fatherland, a promised land with a city of truth lighting its hill, creates a Mecca for people's pilgrimage, a holy place for all to worship. With such a union your cause can succeed, by maintaining a power unrivaled by petty states intent on merely doing their thing.

Wanton: Orthodox religion is a Mecca for organizing tyranny, as it must, cleverly using terror to control people, destroying other religions, outlawing freedom of religious choice, dismissing notions of civil rights, rejecting ideas fostering people's self-determination, restricting allegiance to its doctrines.

Simple Simon: Dreamers of world conquest have always failed, beaten back by people unified in Orthodoxy, defending their sanctified soil, and this reveals the strength of unities, living commandments of the Lord.

Stranger: You are mistaken, thinking Orthodoxy fights battles with self-developed power, realizing an orthodox army is an oxymoron, knowing only the Lord bears weapons for war but never uses them, trusting His love to conquer all, knowing love never needs an army and if Orthodoxy is faithful obedience to His commands, examine them again, never demanding violence rather than love, requiring an army of faithful believers to follow Him.

Bystander: Establishing a regime with ecumenical freedom, tolerating all forms of religion trusted to live in harmony, imagining people have a right to expression of any religion they choose, fails, succeeding only when religion's importance wanes, leaving people with tolerable beliefs, committing them to token worship, trusting where reason has delivered them. Expect an unmanageable bunch, difficult to manage, seeing leaders chasing after the wind, trying to herd followers into a cohesive band of humans.

Simple Simon: The Lord's prayer for unity, hoping for people to follow Him as one, must be done. Trust in orthodox religion for bringing followers together, using the example prayed for by Jesus, banding all together, living to honor the fatherland, accepting no diversity of worship, trusts in no other way to worship God.

Jurdan: Diversity blocks the way, the enemy forbidding your unifying success, raising its voice to comment on your actions, feasting on their results, devouring your pronouncements down to bones, ignoring ways to transform them, accusing all of evil intentions. You can't succeed where freedom's hold is so strong, authorizing people's rights to be themselves and never condoning actions subjecting anyone to contempt.

Prancing Grace: Success gained by self-fulfillment depends on me, never on anyone else, so I rely on accumulated experiences, sorting through them, understanding their importance in determining choices.

Stranger: Experience's importance is never to achieve success, but to be a doorway for more significant endeavors, working to achieve fulfillment with no end in sight, realizing success to be one which the Lord has no completion date.

Jurdan: Your cause could only find success on entering a wasteland, where culture had been destroyed or never existed, encountering untarnished people, untainted by diversity so they could be united as one. Diversity produces robust people, forceful and uncompromising, prideful in their success, unyielding in their reason, corrupted by secularity, citizens developing decaying societies, denouncing traditions enslaving them to the past, denying anything orthodox to restrain their freedom.

Wanton: Unity has fallen from favor, witnessed by people with tribal mentality who have broken away from others, fleeing from unity's promises for all. Unity disgraces me, forcing me to be obedient, marching to another's orders, belittling ones who disobey.

Skeptic: Should God care how anyone worships Him, believing He grieves over tyranny to establish one's opinion, knowing no one gets it right, ones only imagining what He wants, guessing His desires, reasoned by their truth and engaging in conflict to defend their suppositions. What sort of battle justifies supporting a human opinion?

Stranger: What is Orthodoxy other than purity of faith, convictions never been muddied by human reason, making no pronouncements to proclaim dogmas and doctrines, fancying we can know the Lord plans better than others. Orthodoxy works, persisting unchanged as it has, never being fragmented into denominations and sects to satisfy human reasons for change.

Wanton: All this idle banter softens time's passage, distracting one from our destiny of growing old, aging us with woe's afflictions, waiting for all with bundles of infirmities, so never call our conversations foolish, rummaging through nothingness to find something worthwhile.

Prancing Grace: Hopelessness seizes you, leaving your destiny dormant, and no cause could revive you, leaving you partnered with despair.

Simple Simon: Being cautious of my words, careful in not offending my soul, I pray for discernment, asking the Lord if I should join your cause, to pattern your endeavors, knowing your cause requires vows, pledging allegiance to whatever banner signifies your promises. But can your testimony pledge direction for fate, predicting destiny and its consequences, reliably revealing things to come? Are your words more than winds chasing in unknown, unpredictable directions, with your steps following in its wake?

Wanton: Fearing whimsical winds, understanding the dangers of extremes, wisdom at one end and righteousness at the other, each plying damage differently, knowing ways to generate conflict, divides and fragments people, destroy each other, forgetting what they are created to be. Wisdom embarking people on nihilism, treating them as unimportant, concluding all is nothingness, making their destiny hopeless, has never been profound coming from human minds, never trusted to be worthy until righteous ones believe it originates from the Lord.

Jurdan: Righteousness lulls one by your Lord's messages, convincing people with effective rhetoric, telling the world to wait for His return, coming to bring the Savior's good news, spreading different messages, gospels assuring salvation, using coercion if needed, giving them a battle cry of doing what your Lord commands.

Simple Simon: Are we wise, discerning the Word's knowledge, pondering how it creates, scientifically delving into matter to pick it apart, sorting out its pieces, recombining them to rebuild what the Lord created, giving us a portion of His wisdom as we proceed to become closer to acquiring His image?

Stranger: Only reality revealed in what I see, sounded out for me to hear, reasoned objectively, never subjectively, lays basis for my beliefs, but I must move beyond life's realities to trust in redemption, never relying on my senses to experience the risen Savior's love but responding to the Holy Spirit's messages for discerning redemption is mine for the asking, trusting only my Lord creates splendor and assures my redemption, the only reality that matters, reality based on His truth.

Simple Simon: Rulers mighty by their own will's reality, all being plagued by premonitions with no discernment, seeking no interpretations from ones most wise, are apt to destroy anyone bearing unfavorable tidings, dreams forecasting them to stumble, never honoring them with respect expected for a leader, but some not so afflicted with a labile haughty presence, conditioned by the Lord to accept truth, might surprise everyone, heeding unwanted admonitions, acknowledging the Lord's revelations testifying of a ruler's destiny.

Jurdan: Can your experience offer evidence for any such ruler, reports on one receiving adverse predictions and accepting them without remorse, confessing destiny will be just, honoring messengers and never thinking of killing them, rewarding ones bearing fateful circumstances, dismissing counsel of bloodthirsty people who hate the upright?

Wanton: Bloodthirsty ones, destroying all goodness crossing their paths, eliminating upright people, considering dignity weakness to attack, raising banners celebrating evil, blackened flags symbolizing no truths, leading bands of marauding followers waiting to destroy their leader, trust they will rule when conspiracy can be aroused to raise them up, empowered with pride, intimidating other imperious ones wishing to seize their chance in coming, ridiculing anyone promising grace for the humble.

Simple Simon: Outperforming roaring lions, bloodthirsty humans leave nothing undone, destroying their seed, pruning the souls of humble ones looking to the Lord, weeding out righteousness, trampling people as vermin.

Jurdan: Armed with pride, fortifying ambition with zeal, trusting in abilities, equips people to do all things, rewarding them with contentment, expecting peace to be gilded with happiness.

Stranger: Surrender paves the way for peace, blessing people with serenity, knowing pride bars it's coming, denying contentment comes with joy, maybe happiness, but never any joy, realizing its appearance is only from the Lord, the only One assuring a lasting peace. So, begin with confession, proceed to surrender one's life to the Lord, and follow His way to peace, never by stumbling and bumbling to amass achievements treasured by this world, but by lifting eyes to heaven we realize peace comes from God's grace, freely given to obedient ones, responding to His gracious will, and for ones never knowing His grace peace can never be theirs. Surrender allows grace and peace to be multiplied unto us, promised through knowledge of the Lord.

Jurdan: Never stooping to confession, seeing it accomplish nothing, we trust joining arms with depravity, standing by in silence, choosing non-involvement, hiding dubious integrity, avoiding exposure to be called informers, securing safety with tolerance for all, believing goodness offers nothing better than evil, judging no others since we share faults with all humans and being honest we can't claim godly virtues, forever excusing us from judging others, accusing fellows created to be like us, implicating me greater in evil's wickedness so I can be charged with perverting ways of your Lord.

Wanton: Destiny never relies on confession, trusting time to correct people's flaws, knowing time decimates tyrants' rule, perishing them in their own corruption, restoring lands they have raped, resurrecting nations they have ruined, so goodness lost can be regained, returning abundance to what once was, like forests destroyed by fire sprouting seeds for restoration, promising return of harmony lying latent, ending enduring storms of human depravity's killing, withering leaders' vanities, ending their lusts of flesh. Why does fate teach some ways of righteousness and subsequently abandon their endearment to people's virtues, freeing them to their own ways, focusing on deliverance of their desires and wants?

Simple Simon: Destiny may not want me, dedicated as I am to the Lord, striving to keep the whole law, knowing if I stumble in any of its decrees, I will be guilty of breaking its wholeness, fragmenting its unity, judging me guilty as any other, unable to claim any lasting morality, realizing it can never be modified, weakened to account for human frailty, transformed to conform with evolving human conditions, dumbing down the Lord's convictions, hoping He will accept my persuasions now that they have transpired, and seeing my confession fails to achieve perfection, failing to rigorously attend requirements to achieve holiness for marking me saintly and spiritually attuned to become like God, I fail in what He wants, more than sealing evidence I am obedient to His commands.

Wanton: For many the Lord is useful, but is He necessary, seeing so many good people show Him little recognition, perhaps trusting Him as our Creator, but with human free will few choose to give Him much attention, trusting everything to their own reason, relying on persuasive wisdom of learned people to guide their way, adopting judgments on morality to build their virtues, leaving nothing to others for instilling virtues. How can tribulation intervene, choosing me to be its victim when my life has honored goodness at every turn?

Simple Simon: The Lord is more than necessary, being essential for existence. Only by faith am I certain He is my Creator, and ones never knowing Him cannot comprehend Him as our Father, regarding Him to be only imagined with unbelievers dismissing the goal to be like Him, but believers will surprise them as ones likened to Him when He appears, seeing Him as He is. He reveals Himself to everyone and some hope to purify themselves, even as He is pure, bestowing His love on us at creation, permitting us to be called sons of God, establishing a covenant with us, decreeing what will bring Him joy as He interacts with the crown of His creation, teaching them His way, protecting their birthright as sons of One most holy, assuring they will abide in Him, their will never reaching out to further sin, understanding ones embedded in sin cannot see Him, and without seeing Him they can never know Him, never knowing He ordained humans to be stewards accountable for protection and preservation of all His works of goodness. Staking claim on His love for me, His son, certified by the Holy Spirit at home in my soul, I cannot willingly be a victim of unbelief.

Wanton: I never wanted to follow some imaginary figure, unable for my reason to believe in, contrary to common sense, to prevent being shamed by studious minds ridiculing far-fetched fabrications, as I tallied successes earned by my doing, leaving nothing to interfere with adorations I deserve.

Simple Simon: Will all successes earned by your hand equip you to have any relationship with the Lord?

Wanton: My life's success needs no help from any deity.

Simple Simon: You have no understanding of the Lord, thinking His ways are like yours, trusting His thoughts must resemble yours, counting on this truth sealed, hidden from remembering, that you are made in His image so His ways and thoughts must be like yours.

Wanton: I understand realization of wrong doings, confession of sins begging for forgiveness, and acknowledgement that immanent death deserves assignment of humility, are mandated for salvation to enter heaven on God's terms, conditions He wants everyone to accept now, but I am not ready for that yet, anticipating no death messages from Him until He sends an angel to fill me with lunacy, imagining foreboding messages of gloom and doom.

Simple Simon: The Lord's mercies can restore your innocence to before the Fall, bringing you back to be one with Him, requiring only confession and acceptance of Him as your Lord and Savior so you can begin to know the One you reject, never wanted to know. You could choose to know Him now, dismissing errant conceptions learned about Him during life that never acknowledged Him as anyone worth being your Father in heaven.

Jurdan: Your beliefs are directed by princes of vanity, pridefully boasting, blaspheming all like and unlike opponents, self-righteous ones blasting others as unrighteous, never acknowledging any others being imputed with your Lord's righteousness, dismissing them as shamed for imagining they are self-justified to be superior.

Prancing Grace: We maintain neutrality, never siding with any religious faction, staying out of squabbles vying over interpretations and revelations, never favoring one over the other, and we support tolerance for all, implementing them to assure diversity and inclusion.

Wanton: How can you sit by, claiming to be neutral when someone introduces error into your cause, voicing remarks to disable its engine with distress, tolerating whatever comes along, never knowing when one's actions direct your cause in dangerous ways?

Prancing Grace: We proclaim neutrality and tolerance to attract followers, showing we are nonjudgmental, fair and open-minded so we frighten no one away, but we do have limits, being neutral most of the time, but trusting few others appearing to be intolerant, we follow all of democracy's precepts.

Stranger: Can the Lord bless democracy, established by human reason, a renaissance in critical thinking, directing people's free will, building confidence in their ideas, knowing deception guides them, deifying and promoting themselves, no longer needing God? Can they love and care for others, with their compassion replacing God's? Will they create laws committed to compromising the Lord's decrees, laws tolerating iniquities He forbids, enacting legislation to satisfy their constitution's desires? How can the Lord remain unmoved, distressed by His people adopting rules by majority consent, ignoring needs of suffering minorities, depriving democracy's losers of justice, seeing the forgotten scrambling for crumbs, searching the privileged's wastes to nourish their needs? He tells us His decrees are for all, and no group's majority should dictate how the Lord's gifts are distributed, reminding us creation is designed to provide everyone's requirements, documenting His plan in revelations for everyone to know.

Wanton: What was life like when God ordained people to govern, trusting their rule would be faithful to His commands? Was their rule better than by democracy? Some rulers, being benevolent dictators, ruling in strict accordance with the Lord's commands, faithful to His justice, were destroyed by revolutions directed by belligerents having abandoned God's ways, thinking they could escape the Lord's supervision by selecting another human to govern them. What could come after democracy? Perhaps rule might consist of every person, claiming freedom to exercise their will, ignoring all directions but their own, trusting relationship only with themselves, dismissing all inherent mandates that they can't merely live for themselves.

Jurdan: What then does your God expect if living by His laws fails?

Simple Simon: He may have created us to fail His decrees, but now He shows how we can succeed, sending the Son to reveal His Father's nature, imaging God's love manifested by creation's goodness and beauty, but humans constantly attack them, destroying anything bearing marks of coming from His Word.

Jurdan: Democracy sanctifies our individuality, legitimizing integrity to be ourselves, freeing us from constraints, subduing our innate conscience and protects us from being terrorized by your God or any other imaginary gods, ending ways to understand society as dependent on any sacred authority,

Simple Simon: Seeking God's help, calling on Him for assistance beyond my reach, knowing my sins are hidden from everyone but Him, I trust the Lord who acknowledges my support for what He condemns, but in a democracy, someone will appear claiming to understand my wants, never condemning me for being a deviant, never being hostile by ridiculing my actions, never withholding love and at worst appearing neutral on my thoughts, tolerating my foibles and never making them important. Learning from my father, democracy tells me to expect no blessing from any Father in heaven, advising me to look elsewhere for love, for honoring me as I am.

Stranger: If God calls me, sending a message through the Holy Spirit, I have nothing for discussion with others, never jeopardizing my faith by their reasons for secular importance attempting to confuse His message, engaging my will to justify its reliability, because my confidence in Him surpasses all I develop for myself, beyond all that human reason can allow.

Simple Simon: Of what use can I further any human cause, knowing my mind and efforts closely bind to following Jesus, making me of little value to any other's program, being of no value but to Him and His purposes, being crucified with Him, remembering Him tell us, You can do nothing without me. Do you believe my personal, passionate devotion to Him can be shared with anyone else, with Prancing Grace's cause?

Prancing Grace: We promise peace, assuring no more crucifixions, tolerating everyone's dignity.

Jurdan: Peace I leave with you promises your Lord, but peace for whom, seeing none for anyone?

Stranger: For whom does He leave peace, questioned by ones standing at His border, having placed one foot in, testing His living waters, but never trusting immersion of his entire being to drown one in sanctity, realizing His peace remains some distance away? Peace is rarely captured, elusive in escaping one's grasp, deflected by immediate concerns, voices silently reminding us of agendas for survival. Jesus' love promises peace, but who believes it is more than a noble gesture?

Skeptic: Humans struggle, never achieving peace, a nirvana of one's imagination, impossible for all with free will. Show me a person, choosing but failing to live a life of peace, never disturbed by discord, trusted by people to be the spice of life.

Simple Simon: Jesus knows the way to live in peace, telling all to become one with Him, leaving ways of living in the world, changing connections from their desires to adopt all that He is.

Wanton: You can never escape life's turmoil by thinking to accept His gift of peace. Recount none who rest in peace except those dead to life, deemed by the living to rest no more in turmoil, but who knows if that is peace or nothingness, asking if the peace Jesus leaves us with consigns us to nothingness. Who is willing to accept the peace He offers?

Jurdan: Fearfully convicted, convinced of your Lord's fury, afflicting multitudes with His wrath, never a moment without its coming, imminent to strangle any comfort, people have no interludes of peace, subjecting them to nature's fury unabated. Since they already suffer fate's certainty, why should additional torment of your Lord's wrath wreak more?

Wanton: Circumstances never develop by my doing, coming unexpectedly to disturb relished peace, disrupting pleasant occupations of my thoughts, interfering with a moment's happy reflections, dragging me out of myself, interrupting times of prideful considerations, rewards obligated by life's achievements.

Simple Simon: As one of God's children, expected to be treated as His creation, trusting it to be no other way, He lays out circumstances in preparation for me to rejoin Him. Being brethren in Christ, waiting on the Father, obedient and willing like Christ who prays for us to be one, I believe this is what He created us to be. So, I must live each day, never ignoring encountered circumstances.

Stranger: Indeed, circumstances must never be overlooked, all trusted to come from the Lord, some being crises requiring battle to be resolved, never sending any into oblivion to be blotted from memory, thinking the past will prevent its recall and never trouble one again, but instead recognize them opportunities sent by Him, awakening people to seek Him for further understanding, to join Him in projects He reveals.

Simple Simon: Noble achievements to answer circumstances may be noteworthy, compelling rewards as payments due to realize returns on its capital, but most satisfy only as long as memory allows, disappearing before anyone's contemplation permits, long before ignored circumstances can be forgotten, ones persisting to mire a person in regret.

Jurdan: Who do you encourage enlistment to your cause, seeming to choose empty minds as followers?

Prancing Grace: We seek spiritual people, uncontaminated by outdated doctrines, beholden to no dubious dogmas, ones exercising their will to commit efforts to reasonable causes freely, ones they can proudly proclaim as worthy, never abandoned to shadows of shame, marking them with empty minds. We avoid militant ones voicing truths developed from imaginary visions claimed by seers they never knew. We can't live with dogmatic religious ideologues, fearing their hatred can endanger our work, ones resistant to teasing with hope for transferring importance to our deeds. Possessing scientific minds equipped with psychological tools to convince distrusting minds, our goals are no different from most to bring all into unity, understanding we embark on a holy mission, restoring the Lord's promises for His chosen ones, reclaiming territory to restore Eden.

Jurdan: People wait anxiously for someone with your promises, offering so many solutions to establish utopia, all proclaiming enemies in other proposals, recruiting their might by reasoned right, equipped to destroy ones impeding their way, ones seducing many by ardent rhetoric, and so human drama unfolds, unending with continuing violence, fueled by dialogue embracing destruction.

Prancing Grace: Goals for people to improve, noble aspirations to become better and better, encounter unexpected diversions by traitors, never fully committed to our cause, thinking they should determine its script, believing their reason is better, but we tolerate no deviations from our plan. We ask ones to join, profess loyalty and promise contributions to our success, in an allegiance evident in following the Lord, and an alliance trusted to complete their circle of reason, solidifying faith in Him with the truth that our nation, the promised land, is blessed by Him.

Simple Simon: Having emptied my worthiness, dismissing all the treasures binding me to myself, cleaning out trophies claiming my pride, leaving nothing but space for humility to occupy all I should be, to become humble before all, I hesitate to accept the invitation to join your cause knocking at my door, asking to enter and feast on my soul's perceived vacancy, stealing in without my permission, never hesitating, allowing me not even a whimper. Your cause promises to decorate me with pride and restore my worthiness, but it assures a noose to chain me, to bind me as someone I never wish to be.

Prancing Grace: Our cause, being political, can be threatened by religious vagrants, never knowing when they might humiliate our existence with off-the-wall proclamations, insulting our follower's reason and common sense. Our supporting religious partners must have unprovocative convictions, never deviating from acceptable beliefs with any postmodern ways to worship the Lord coming as you are, and we will shield them from religious heretics.

Jurdan: Shielding all your followers from postmodern religious ideas and heretics protects your people from trust and belief in any religion, something my reason accomplishes.

Prancing Grace: Fate selected some from many, chosen to shine, created with superb wisdom, and I offer them a place in our continuum, realizing their gifts can further our cause, ones endowed with genes to contribute precious jewels, to form our ruling elite and never selected for fighting street battles, trusting our robotic creations to be suited for that. With robots doing our dirty work, we will no longer rely on common humans to fight enemies, excluding them from conflict, developing their perfection, controlling their sexual temptations, weeding out weaknesses unsuitable for achieving our goals and aborting immanent defective offspring, allowing us perfection with selections from our best genes, and creating a culture of happiness to satisfy all one's fervent wishes.

Jurdan: Is it right to steal a person's life, destroying it before it can cry out, knowing it can be replaced by a robot forced to labor by a synthetic mind, giving directions programmed by a demon, borrowing plans devised by the Lord, so that masses of humans can be declared useless, justifying their demise before their existence is authorized by birth?

Prancing Grace: With little understanding, you cannot see what this will do for humankind's progress, selecting the best and growing them to become better and better. Leaving common life to accumulate, mostly unwanted and abused, left as trash waiting to be dumped, devouring resources during their incarceration on earth, provoking people's sympathy, wasting pity on ones who are nothing, having been deprived of deserving neglect before they became legitimate. We have learned from enslaving multitudes, pilfering their happiness, that we can clear our conscious with the development of robots to circumvent the need for humans in bondage.

Stranger: Killing unborn human creations, destroying them to seal their fate, trusting actions to better one's life, still leaves unanswered the human dilemma, why must the living die, leaving behind happiness with treasures accumulated on earth?

Prancing Grace: We consider your question by exploring ways to delay aging and conquer death, and our scientific wisdom predicts we soon can extend life and hopefully eliminate death, prompting some to freeze their bodies, suspending all life's activities, waiting until resurrection can restore life and trust it to be eternal.

Simple Simon: You cannot recruit the poor in spirit, extending their despair into eternity, continuing their soul's poverty promised by their loyalty to you, realizing they should reject your cause offering no relief from their afflictions, accepting instead the promise of being justified for admittance into the kingdom of heaven.

Stranger: Examine our Creator's cause, unlike others, shining its light on all, filling hearers with truth to become pure in heart, overflowing them with mercy, knowing all are the Lord's blessings, a covenant He chooses for our presentation, a promise offered to the pure in spirit. A greater One than any taught such words, promising more than any other, yet He attracted no multitudes, seeking people one by one, especially lost sheep, blinded by fear and stumbling astray, shamefully blemished, abandoned with no way to rejoin their flock, but people desire no such misfits for their cause, judging them useless, unworthy of rescue, unacceptable for contributing to anyone's goals. People choose lofty messages to attract followers, but recall the Lord's selections, coming with no sterling credentials, trained for no splendid actions, ones He identified as having no remarkable attributes, forgotten as useless with no accomplishments, without commendable virtues, except resignation to obey and follow His commands. Can we take persons noted for nothing and mold them into obeying and following us? Can we redeem an adulterer, murderer or tax collector, imputing in them virtuous trust to obey all our commands? We demand more virtue and talent for chosen ones, distrusting all volunteering with sordid backgrounder except if our cause ever requires executioners, needing force to attain our goals.

Jurdan: Ones joining social causes come aboard with empty convictions, eagerly looking for achievement acquired by cheating, prepared to make hasty decisions and activate flagrant responses, reacting to enthusiastic coaching, making them ardent and trustworthy comrades, transformed into loyal followers.

Prancing Grace: We are careful to avoid enthusiasm willing to brandish fire, using destructive forces that could endanger our agenda. We train recruits to be constructive, to regard our cause as one for all people, benefitting them as our first goal, developing people to lead, implementing roles meant for them, charging them to be lights of the world, enthroning them in a city on the hill, forever to be evident, never to be hidden.

Wanton: Hilltop cities are never eternal, eventually turning to rubble, decaying by human forces, sinking into quicksands of destruction, waiting to be covered and hidden, isolated from needs for any life, condemned by the Creator for restoration, left as garbage for some excavator to rediscover, to note as a site once celebrated, a city on a hill, never eternal, having lost its light, never embodying truth, extinguish by time, suffering from a final decision.

Jurdan: Your Lord's followers claiming to be salt of the earth, last only until it has lost its flavor, but never losing its power remains as salt to poison all land, denying growth for human needs, and so human's salt provides the finality for a city's demise, preventing it from being resurrected, having lost its flavor by treasures accumulated on earth, condemning land with a poison to destroy its goodness.

Prancing Grace: We know how to handle the poor in spirit, restoring flavor to their lives, raising them up to celebrate our cause by orchestrating extravaganzas strung with blinking lights, staged festivals trumpeting rock music, prompting dispirited ones to sway in unison with its beat, stimulating euphoria to assure they are no longer poor in spirit, no longer meek and waiting for promises of inheriting the earth, it's creation restored and no longer compelling desperation, making them champions of mercy and requiring no causes different from ours.

Simple Simon: Is your cause one for blessing me with extravaganzas, responding to my desires like prayers to enlarge my belongings, never for satisfying me any longer with only gratitude for a task well done, for any blessing would be tainted if one could accuse you of making me rich, satisfied as I am with blessings leaving me destitute as I am.

Prancing Grace: Our cause spreads its message, sounding trumpets to call attention, parading followers in splendid attire, selecting ones most articulate, rewarding them to speak of our virtues, realizing few would accept being poor as you are. Our followers are no hypocrites, knowing they live by their word, loyal to our cause, never seeking shadowy deceptions to hide deceit. We recruit ones who will stand and proclaim where they can be seen, fighting if necessary for their convictions, never led by others into temptation or needing deliverance from evil, unwavering in their commitments to the power and glory of our cause, never substituting what is seen here and now for anything unseen springing from their imagination.

Jurdan: What if your purpose fails to win souls, leaving many against your beliefs? Does this sow seeds for another battle, or perhaps seeds still sprout from the last truce, waiting to germinate when nourished by the right conditions, giving justification to resume a struggle to win hearts or souls?

Skeptic: The Lord promises peace will be with you, peace for all humankind, but are we made for this, knowing peace tolerates no conflict, and human thoughts swim in a maze of struggling ideas hardly consistent with peace? Peace be with you can never be realized for people never made for peace and maybe found only in death when conflict with ourselves and others ends.

Simple Simon: Bringing peace by identifying with the Lord in thought, heart, and spirit, being more intimate with Him than any human, I found Jesus to be one with, trusting Him more than anyone I have met after searching for someone to be a soulmate and finding none, rewarding me with understanding and compassion, filling me with joy found only with Him, promising peace unavailable with others, showing me how to quell anxiety, never wondering how much is possible from someone who finds nothing impossible.

Wanton: Transforming injustice to justify peace, promoting new plans and testing them out of necessity, treading dangers having destroyed previous reforms, Prancing Grace chances a new apocalypse, possibly inciting the Armageddon, bringing all on by articulating blasphemy, subtly with words to destroy the gods and harming the Lord as well. Is it necessary to destroy this world, annihilating everything, for rebuilding something better out of the ashes?

Jurdan: Our world is not worth saving, a decaying creation going entropy's way, doomed by matter's laws, approaching its end with people's celebration, free to will things their way, living for today, uncaring what tomorrow may bring, believing what may have begun with a bang will limp out with a whimper.

Stranger: Nothing can defeat God's design, the goodness and beauty of creation, although corrupted by humans with destruction of their innocence and abandonment of His promise, trusting in time we will understand His purpose, more than we can imagine knowing now.

Wanton: Everyone knows the name of Jesus, hearing about Him at one time, learning enough to make some decision, but never enough to explore His Words further, fearing shame of being associated with Him, but some will acquire enough to translate His messages, reinterpreting them to speak wisdom configured by today's reason, and so if anyone seeks to know Him better, they look for reworking of His messages, modernizing them for today, assuring protection from scornful glances, disbelief for one's blissful ignorance.

Skeptic. So, which of His messages should Prancing tolerate for his followers?

Jurdan: One must be careful here, taking patience to discern people's beliefs, articulating nothing to drive them away, crafting ambiguous doctrines, decreeing misty dogmas veiled in misty uncertainty, proclaiming all is done in their Lord's name, ending all speeches calling on their God to bless Prancing's cause.

Skeptic: Realizing cultures are rife with hidden anarchy, with certainty of it in any cause, how does one protect its interests, ensuring its success?

Jurdan: Dormant anarchy dwells in everyone, breaking forth with freedom of speech, cascading into violence when its protests are ignored, promoting tyranny to achieve its goals.

Prancing Grace: Our cause promises freedom from any tyranny striving to abuse human potential, conscripting people to slave labor, working to support interests of a despotic ruler, perpetuating servitude to steal another's effort, profiting by chaining peons to dirt farming, forcing reluctant ones into marriage to prevent their escape.

Skeptic: All causes promise freedom, but obedience to their documents seals them in their grasp, and who can predict what freedom your doctrine will allow. Does your cause free individuals to do their own thing, allowing free speech to vent frustrations? Some causes promising freedom of expression discover that freedom can be disastrous, allowing free expression that invites anarchy, driving people to dismantle order, transforming tolerance to intolerance, isolating them from relationship's goodness, ignoring creation's beauty.

Prancing Grace: Maybe it is better to say: We permit freedom despite, realizing it can never be absolute, and we accommodate tolerance by creating decrees with loopholes, writing laws that can be ignored, treating only some commands as mandatory. The Lord learned His commands are unenforceable, and since then He creates legislation to allow freedom despite, giving all a margin of error for them to be obeyed.

Wanton: No one can promise us freedom from anything or freedom to be or do anything, giving only liberty in spite of, leaving our conscience with something to consider.

Skeptic: Despite laws, choose freely what you will, knowing laws change, becoming ill-defined and contestable, making them out to what one can will them to be, even for the Lord's decrees, so don't embarrass others by calling your cause one to produce a holy or Christian nation, something people won't allow happening.

Jurdan: With additional skepticism, I ask are many chosen eager to betray you, concealing their evil until the time is right? Can you choose ones certain to remain loyal, knowing people will slip in and out of devotion to your needs, following you when it aligns with their plans, waiting for timely opportunities to deceive you?

Prancing Grace: Individuals consumed by their rights, determined and justified by reason, can infest any cause with doubt, protesting divine decrees, reasoning against laws legislated by the Lord's chosen leaders, never defending anything resembling His commandments, waiting for opportunities for betrayal. Tolerating nothing that displeases them, hated leadership withholding rights of minorities, defying edicts of the majority, the plurality striving to maintain order, some foment anarchy to gain their way, destroying whatever might block their way.

Stranger: All causes must be democratic rule by majority, trusted to maintain order, never fearing it would submit to demands of violence by vengeance-seeking minorities while proclaiming rights deemed inherent in all human beings, essential for knowing anarchy would destroy democracy's plans.

Wanton: Why not establish an inverted democracy, spreading creation's abundance equally for all, eliminating majority's power to greedily seizing more than it needs, counseling wealthy ones to abandon lust for wealth, compelling the haves to sell all their treasure and distribute its profits to the needy, ending lives of individuals donating time only to themselves, ignoring the needs of the wanting homeless, never acknowledged as citizens of the majority's domain.

Simple Simon: Does justice prevail by treating all alike, sharing the majority's treasures with have-nots, knowing they wouldn't understand how to use them, never having learned how to covet or hoard them, subjecting them to destruction as their imagination permits, never knowing to worship the goodness inherent in anything.

Stranger: Should the have-nots enjoy such freedom, demanding it as an inalienable right, freedom for their reason to guide them, liberating them to express their innate nature, inherent inclinations for mayhem, justifying destruction of beauty, never having recognized the goodness of the Lord's creation?

Simple Simon: Jesus, the king, proclaims the have-nots will always be with us, and His justice is to accommodate their needs, ones they either cannot or will to choose, never for spreading the wealth, knowing other's treasures in their hands help them little, being squandered soon, ending up discarded as trash.

Stranger: Justice tells us to sacrifice our own goodness to the common interest, and I interpret that as saying to teach all I treasure as good, sacrificing it if one wills to the good of others, trusting all I have learned constitutes my goodness, granting it to others to magnify their goodness, donating my most cherished treasures to benefit another. My most treasured include knowledge learning about the Lord for preparing me to follow Him.

Jurdan: Is your virtue willing to sacrifice your goodness to benefit the common good by praying for common goodness, realizing your prayers do little to help the needs for the have-nots? Do your prayers change behaviors of the greedy to recognize goodness lacks support?

Bystander: Justice must be more than some imaginary purpose, bantered about without any deeds, demonstrated for in hope of results, compelling people to dedicate themselves to others, devoted beyond merely words.

Simple Simon: We are created with inalienable rights, endowed by the Lord to exist in societies assuring equality for all, with dignity protected by mercy and grace, only to witness a few destined to murder and steal, committing injustices on anyone in their way. Why have some not matured to understand our Creator better, growing wisdom for all to realize He is a God of love, freely dispensing mercy and grace, instructing us to appreciate creation's goodness and beauty?

Jurdan: Many still believe your God is wrathful, eager to pounce on anyone ignoring His edicts, teaching His leaders to administer justice by sacrificing infidels, destroying ones straying from words written by His prophets, rounding up human sinners and re-incarcerating iniquities in Pandora's box, sealing them with the sign of death, believing inalienable rights is a fantasy created by human reason but unapproved by God.

Stranger: What is love without judgment, concluding nothing about everything, tolerating all, evaluating nothing, making it nihilistic, unable to form an opinion where nothingness prevails? Love must be tough, protecting goodness, preserving beauty, or it is nothing but the sound from a clanging cymbal. We hardly understood love until God sent His Son Jesus Christ with the mission to show us what the Father is like, to die as a human and resurrected to live again with His father, destroying our self-reliance on living by reason.

Bystander: God never exercises power to gain unity, trusting solely in love, knowing His will to unify is never partial but to make all things whole, never by His volunteering, but essential as a manifestation of His love, with judgment and vengeance never intervening to disrupt His goodness.

Simple Simon: If God created everything good, why are we made to judge, evaluating things as good or bad, blessings or evil, beautiful or ugly? Must everything be judged, confessing this is part of our nature, punishing us because of the fall, thinking humans never judged until they fell into disobedience? If the Lord crafted us to be inherently obedient, never straying from His decrees, would we need to judge anything, realizing it is only for creation's division, separating all in terms of light and darkness, giving us a means to develop our visions of good and bad?

Jurdan: Human judgments evolve, obedient to evolutionary demands for change, some thinking it is your God's design for human progress, always developing better means for making decisions.

Wanton: Has that happened, trusting evolution to better us?

Simple Simon: We do not unite with others, ceasing judgments that divide us and achieve what the Lord prayed for, becoming one in accepting and affirming creation's goodness and beauty.

Stranger: Seeking to unite and reunify with the Lord's creation, we sift through offerings of piety to suit our taste, through choices claiming to be pure, clashing with ones seemingly impure, acknowledging many promise purification and redemption, wrapping our beliefs with comforting salvation,

Jurdan: Judgment is necessary, embedding guilt, shame and remorse, mandating what we must be, obliging us to suffer, our identity as humans.

Stranger: Claiming to be not of this world, to erase judgment inherent in all humans, one must profess citizenship in the Lord's sanctuary, prepared by confessions selecting Him as Savior, transformed from what one has been, erasing shame and guilt, but after changing can anyone rid convictions of judgment and begin attesting to God's goodness and beauty? If so, you need not leave the world and be resurrected in a new place with your free will and judgment unchanged, giving you the opportunity for the eternity earned to continue judgment on good and bad. Resurrection will become reconciliation with the Creator, seeing His way instead of ours, and that will be done here, in the cradle of His achievement.

Jurdan: You believe people under your God's charge can restore any goodness the world may have once had. How would that goodness appear? Would goodness require the elimination of everything judged blemished? What about the entire lot of humans born with sin, stained from birth?

Stranger: Some are blemished beyond restoration and must never be favored, but others, threatened by extermination and willing to change, can be converted to the Lord's ways and cleansed enough to serve His purposes. Many blemished too far for retrieval are destined for assignment to the lost and subject to be forgotten.

Jurdan: You compete with others, challenging their judgments of what or who is blemished. What determines who will win?

Wanton: Although bearing bags of blemishes, I will never repent, confessing any unworthiness, reducing me to only another afflicted with helplessness, wandering through life a victim of another's judgment, discarding my own self-assessments, making me a pawn, constantly moved by other's opinions, reminding me of never-ending unworthiness, telling me to uncover and reveal all my iniquities, while never knowing what represents a sin, seeing so many practicing wrongdoings by someone's gold standards, confusing me on what to confess, stumbling my words to make me a babbling idiot. You might have an imaginary Holy Spirit telling you what to do, but I take orders from no one unless I chose them to be my leader.

Jove: Creating blemishes for a purpose, the Lord plans ways for good to come from evil, and trusting something better can come is an unshakable belief of Jesus' followers, using His experiences to verify truth, sending the Holy Spirit as He promised, giving all hope to be invited into His glory. What is viewed as evil is a blip in God's goodness, perverting our vision to call it depravity but never recognizing evil as an illusion, coming to upset our judgment, being a misstep of our perception, compromising His totality of goodness. In that totality, does anyone dwell long on anything evil, eventually accepting them as needed in the progression to build His kingdom?

Jurdan: Convinced of a relationship with your God, trusting it is sufficient, never more or less but enough, you rely on Him without asking, believing He knows your ambitions, confident they agree with His plans for you, and you never need to seek His help, your Creator who designed you with every need.

Jove: Confident in His plans for me, I have no need to call on Him, for then I might have to argue with Him when my actions fail, so I rely on my judgments, believing any mistakes are mine, taking blame for myself, never blaming the Lord, never disturbed by trivial conflicts, mystical or emotional experiences, trusting words telling us that everyone who asks receives, words of promise leading people to distrust God.

Simple Simon: You limit the Lord who blesses me and enlarges my territory, promising His hand will never leave me, protecting me from evil, expanding my goodness, restoring me to what I was created to be, much more than I am now.

Jurdan: What can you expect from your time and judgment, trusting knowledge from your Scriptures, some nirvana waiting its moment to bless you, discerning the best your imagination can fancy, glory and honor never to fade away with their memory surviving beyond the grave, but you can never know what will be or if its moment will appear.

Stranger: Only by dismissing the Holy Spirit as useless, never again grabbing His attention, forgetting He is sent for comfort, releasing you from misery, never sent by an evil one, you empower affliction to invade, making only you to blame. Any person ruling over oneself can expect retribution for one's own doing.

Jurdan: Your God deals swiftly with His judgments, demanding immediate punishment, giving no one time to plead for mercy, setting the example for righteous ones who never delay executions of disobedient people, killing them quickly, as swiftly as can be done, and so tyrants can be but they never choose speedy trials for themselves, wanting protracted deliberations to exact justice, knowing their time will end before any judgments are forthcoming.

Simple Simon: Jesus tells me to watch with Him, seeing what He sees, not what I see or have heard from Scriptures, but discerning circumstances He places before me, counseling me to see as He sees, so I will not trust my judgment to determine actions different from His, never fleeing or abandoning Him, never following His closest comrades when they failed to understand Him, but having the Holy Spirit as my closest companion, I will always trust what He tells me, coming directly from the Lord.

Jurdan: Your Son of God, made in His image, blessed and sent by Him, your Jesus telling us to know Him is to know the Father, comes burdened with Yahweh's deeds, showing likeness to His Creator.

Stranger: I never mingle my moments, forgoing obedience to the Lord to hear admonitions of heathens, trying to convince me of their truths trapped in their idol's snares, waddling about in indulgences, unable to escape its temptations, mired in gluttony, confined to darkness, never shining in glory, living in anxiety, grieving in desperate sorrow, waiting to harvest despair, knowing it would scatter me to further uncertainty, to abandon my Lord and His light showing the way to certainty.

Jurdan: My reason is the only way to certainty, the reservoir of all truth waiting to be revealed.

Stranger: Look closely at your achievements, building a kingdom of idols, praising them and feasting to their passing fancies, confusing yourself with merriment, clashing noises, and frenzied dancing, welcoming outsiders craving some of its radiant darkness, scrambling to partake in your treasured existence. God must weep, seeing people flee from Him as prodigals never to return, seeking to worship at the feet of their idols, engaging in gluttony never admonished by self-control, but He will send leanness to transfigure them, releasing fat ones from their tribulations, transforming them to join Him and creation's goodness never designed to tolerate over-indulgence marked with afflictions to determine an early demise, and never earmarking them to become His remnant bearing eternal truths.

Jurdan: With idols always defiling people, contaminating their works, you also reinvent yourself, thinking idols are never involved, differing you from others, never admitting you are one of us and could join our beliefs. You build a house with your hands, never allowing your spirit to partake, created using your idol's imaginations, completing it to satisfy them, making it become your dream home, a place for you to worship, remaining only as long as decay allows, dwelling in a place absent from your Lord, until you are dragged kicking and screaming into His presence for judgment.

Preacher: As minister of the Lord, how can I dismiss Him, rejecting His empowerment after He freed me from myself, erasing my long-suffering, sending the Holy Spirit to enable change, filling me with joy, preparing me to mentor souls with uncompromising love, not by my knowledge, reason or common sense, not by the experience of my senses, but by His empathy for one willing and obedient, rejecting sufferings of the world, He chose me, lowly and insignificant, laboring in monotony, patiently waiting for the promised Messiah, assuring me to be yoked with only Him. My freedom can never be yours, freely acting out your imaginations to which you are enslaved, as my only bondage is with my Lord, the One in whom my freedom is assured. Although it is insufficient, my righteousness is enough to protect me from the world, convincing me all things through Him are honorable, never deceiving me on the world's acceptable ways, since I possess all things to glorify Him, never compromising His ways to satisfy some moment as I maintain order in the holy temple of my soul, a place restricting access by your idols.

Wanton: Creation was developed to be conquered, subjected to human desires, used and sometimes abused for people's wants, probed for its mysteries, discovering little but enough to create idols, becoming lords attempting to master all, accumulating knowledge to decree greater wisdom, dismissing any possessed by God.

Simple Simon: Conquering creation is never my goal, longing for more than salvation, knowing it is incomplete, as I yearn to be like Jesus, inheriting all His being, His virtues unblemished by sin, being baptized by dying in Him to cleanse and purifying me to be white as snow until Christ lives in me and finishes His work in me, driving out idols controlling my desires and wants. Calling on the Lord, begging Him to use me, assigning me a lofty task to bring Him glory, I failed to hear Him telling me, Just as I am, come, echoing a request of centuries, telling all to return to Him, so I obey Him now, answering I come, waiting on You for all, entrusting my entire being to You.

Jurdan: Being obedient, tested on what I know, verifying truth of what to follow, judging its validity and value, evaluating the resources bringing it to importance, updating all its relevance, allowing me to modify it for use, confirming it for agreement with common sense, discarding older versions as outdated, comforts me, satisfying my conscience in complying with our decrees, commandments evolving with culture's needs over centuries, responding with loyalty for all human accomplishments.

Stranger: Trouble brews for people running to outpace information's fickle nature, changing each moment, maximizing uncertainty for what we should obey, paralyzing our conscience developed for responding to ancient decrees, fomenting distrust directed by our inner nature, inherent codes responding to anxiety, telling us to flee or remain and fight, having developed no wisdom for any other action, living by instincts, never calling on the Holy Spirit, resigning us to our inner beast's reactions, coveting responses importance for them but not for the Lord's children, having learned to cry peace, never being inherent in fright, flight or fight, learning it only through God's merciful kindness, blossoming in creation's goodness.

Jurdan: For you your God laid up goodness in creation, measured out with no restrictions, testing its witness to humans until they chose to be disobedient, exercising the will He gave them, and He discovered people are made to test Him, learning goodness and free will are incompatible, forcing Him to adopt a new plan, freedom to create laws for humans who can't recognize His goodness, the foundation of His creativity.

Wanton: Goodness endorses our free will; never minimize its virtue.

Stranger: There is more to the Lord's goodness. Breathing His power, transforming nothingness, changing chaos by His Word, establishing the world by His wisdom, stretching out the heavens by His discretion, beyond any human understanding, unmeasurable by anyone's tape, the Lord laid out a design and in a brief moment in our time He assigned the crown of creation to be its steward, designating humans to nurture it with loving care, to guard it against intrusion and protect it against pilfer for anyone's gain, as He watches us intently, being the living God, never abandoning us to ourselves, intervening with revelations, some being counsel, others being silent, wordless actions to restore any creation's undoings, dismemberment of its relationships by humans. Healing of His creation must never be judged as wrath, retribution punishing us for our greed to dismantle His work for accumulating treasures and warehousing our desires, never recognizing the Lord in creation, undoing His work, harvesting its components to create images that one can see, satisfying human pride of being brutish in one's knowledge, fulfilling vanity's needs to relegate God's beauty into hiding, for no one else to enjoy, sequestering it in tabernacles where admission is reserved for a select few, overseen by caretakers never knowing the Lord.

Skeptic: The Lord's caretakers are scattered, dispersed with their concepts of beauty, idols and icons hidden in crumbling temples, but creation's beauty is never sequestered for anyone believing in Him, knowing it is better to trust in the Lord than putting confidence in anyone building structures on shifting sand to shelter one's artifacts of beauty, designated by ones determined to be princes, leaders worthy of honor and glory.

Simple Simon: Basking in earth's beauty, witnessed as the Lord's goodness, I thank Him for His grace, but I set my affection on things above, never on things here, realizing they are temporal, never promising glory as things above, and having already died to Christ I am assured of following Him everywhere, and knowing His home was never here, being all, for all and in all.

Stranger: Trusting the Word of Christ dwelling in us richly as wisdom, His Word from the beginning of time, verifying power in His Word, we are enabled as Him, sanctifying us to be like Him, uniting us to be one with Him, prepared to share eternally with Him, and until we reunite with Him and fulfill more than our hope, we will do all in word and deed in the Lord's name, acknowledging thanks for God our Father in measures greater than for any person. Who else has had a plan to follow, recognized previously as an eminent leader, succeeding with given gifts?

Jurdan: Studying those never succeeding in the past and learning from their mistakes, I count on my reason and insights to be winners, overcoming obstacles having destroyed others, trusting myself as the only way to gain happiness.

Stranger: I acknowledge Jesus Christ's authority, greater than any you try to seize, submitting to His way rather than to yours, responding to His truths, doing all these things before you could begin any boasting of wisdom, for He engages people, ordaining them to be sent out, become His followers for making disciples of all people, and obey His call, Come to me. You ignore Him telling us, All authority is given me, and claim it for yourself, authorizing you to determine any sending out and what those sent should do. Listening and responding only to your truths will never succeed.

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Jurdan: I respond to ancient wisdom, still surviving, calling us to know thyself and I devote my life to understanding myself and work to exhibit what you see, defining myself what to be and acting faithfully to its truth and wisdom.

Stranger: No person's "defining myself" can rule over Scripture's rules for them, authorizing no one salvation or justifying any action, human words always being only a servant to God's Word, useful for exposing our fallibility and encouraging us to meditate on His Word day and night.

Jurdan: Everyone must believe in something, realizing life can't survive with unbelief, a vacuum of nothingness, so finding nothing except nature's surroundings, people fashion something to worship, creating idols of wood and stone, painting powers of beasts on walls, until they dare to venture out from caves, leaving to discover more attributes to worship, adopting beastly virtues to gain confidence in growing their image, giving pride an opportunity for making them someone, giving them the someone of themselves to worship.

Stranger: Worshipping ourselves with no one mightier to adore, can you ignore so many questions begging to be answered, especially why you are here and what is to become of you?

Jurdan: Never thinking so deeply, imagining questions better left unanswered, coming from who knows where, your thoughts are nothing but confusing, disrupting tranquility, stealing any happiness you could enjoy, possibly ending your being, thinking no existence might prove to be better. Taking their thoughts from unanswerable questions, we survey people's wants and desires, uncovering what can make them happy, designing new novelties to introduce desires never imagined before, promoting wants to erase disenchantments and dismiss life's boredom, composing tunes for life's victims to dance for joy, writing songs for idolizing them to sing. We create music for all our followers, satisfying each one to discover our ways. For all without belief in your God, we offer a belief trusted to follow, giving people something where they have nothing.

Simple Simon: My belief in God offers something for those with nothing, never trusting dogmas claimed by unbelievers, never believing their ideas can be united with the Lord's whose commandments have made me wiser than one's enemy to His pronouncements, giving me more understanding than worldly teachers, cherishing His decrees that will never leave me, treasuring His precepts more than silver and gold, restraining me from trusting human ways, never departing from what He taught me, accepting as joy enduring hardships, never expressing shame for my beliefs, suffering me to reign with Him, purged of all iniquitous as a vessel honored by sanctification, prepared for every good work of the Lord's. Can the plans for another's way accommodate someone like me?

Jurdan: What are we to think when you imagine the Holy Spirit is enthroned in your temple and you drag in idols to be installed beside Him, worshipping local deities, making them necessary, fixtures to remain and protect your earthly treasures?

Wanton: Believers suggesting its adoption forgets enthronement of the Holy Spirit is pantheism, equating Him as another idol to honor, considered sacred and protected by decrees assuring freedom of expression, as some idolize anarchy, freedom to vent fury against whatever they can, finding excuse to demonstrate against any order, tyrannizing whatever stands in the way, becoming martyrs as their final solution, thinking their ending deserves something rather than nothing.

Jurdan: Listen to idols speak, silently embracing their vanity, beckoning veneration by subjects seeking something to worship, filling their needs for the adoration of idols parading their voiceless majesty, reminding all spectators of their mastery, pleading never to be forgotten and treasured as one's first love.

Stranger: Merely surviving here, sustained only by the fruits of their way and claiming prosperity witnessed by their treasures are fools idolizing success, never contemplating imaginations of injustice and seeking ways to destroy creation's goodness, never wanting to face any signs of its beauty deceiving fools, mocking their perversions.

Wanton: Can anyone survive without idols, cherishing them to fill the void of creation's nothingness?

Simple Simon: Are we so hopelessly corrupt, despite keeping the Lord's commandments, honoring all those etched in stone, by being created to have wants, to be tempted by desires, to accumulate and idolize treasures and cherish them to last our lifetime, seldom wishing to spread their share, never giving them up to follow Him? If we comply and burden others with our treasures, we give them riches they must abandon before they can follow the Lord, and everyone wishing to join will be casting away all they hold dear to follow Him. Could this world survive with everyone following Jesus' command?

Jurdan: What follows if one never spreads coveted treasures?

Simple Simon: Abandoning anger and forsaking wrath, struggling to do no evil, I would still create enemies by coveting their riches, arming my prayers to win their possessions, accumulating treasures of another's labor, stealing other's wealth, justifying this wickedness by obedience to my covenant with God, the One judging all my actions and rewarding me by expanding my territory, but little can I surmise that treasures being idols for another should likely become my own, glitters of wealth to worship and forget honoring the Lord who makes all my gains possible, achievements considered possible by my efforts, rewarding me with all I possess.

Skeptic: All my achievements never come from over-abundance of peace, denying me any delight in accepting them as rewards, realizing only the meek will inherit the earth, and acknowledging meekness has never been my virtue, I stand no chance for its inheritance. Is anyone justified being meek, believing prophecies of the earth and heavens being destroyed, wiped from existence, leaving no home for anyone, including the meek waiting in vain for their inheritance?

Wanton: Why would the Lord destroy His creation, ending life's existence, taking down our home?

Simple Simon: This would be our doing, demolishing creation's goodness and beauty, engaging in a cause with weapons to destroy human life. The Lord may see this as appropriate, allowing us to destroy the human species, for He in His patient timelessness can recreate something better, and never fretting over mistakes in our creation, He will imagine something better to create, without the flaws and blemishes we exhibit, taking millions of years if necessary.

Stranger: Such would be our doing, raging with righteousness, being right with gods evaluating all for piety, discerning appearances to be appropriate, interrogating all for loyalty, wielding swords dipped in hemlock, as holy warriors sweep throughout, destroying everything and everyone with any trace of worship for deities other than theirs, reducing unorthodox idols and icons to rubble, following mandates to eliminate anything heretic that could be worshipped.

Simple Simon: Who authorizes such actions, destroying creation for heretical worship of any variety?

Stranger: Call them selfies, self-ordained to justify their actions, trusting their empowerment to dictate how others must live, continuing as long as hatred prevails to support their battles, funded by preachers of hatred for anyone blemished with different convictions. These selfies prevail if they can battle, welcoming death always, looking forward to their destruction, hoping their actions will be honored, noble until the end, terminating their existence in nothingness, ending an existence never sweetened with joy.

Jurdan: Leaders recruit ones with characteristics of selfies, realizing meekness decimates self-esteem, hobbling capacity to hold other's attention and secure their respect, understanding people's military and political leaders are themselves selfies, trusting their profiles must overlook any lies or mistakes they make.

Stranger: Leaders use whatever works, optimizing a time and place for everything they choose, whatever is necessary for success, appreciating people's perception and understanding its importance in promoting their beliefs. They don't rely entirely on ones ignorant of everything but themselves, accumulating selfies to understand life's meaning, thinking everything is manifested in what they see, envisioning all in themselves, and they will remain selfies in any cause. We also can't use ones brimming with enough knowledge to undo all our plans; people also regarded as selfies, too self-assured in their thoughts to unite with any other's ideas, contributing only discord to whatever is planned.

Simple Simon: Does the unexamined selfie, distracted by everything, focusing only on oneself, find life worth living, incessantly gazing at one's reflection, never looking elsewhere, believing everything of value is captured with a selfie and all the abundance of inner being never worth consideration?

Jurdan: People's inner thoughts are usually trashed by another's judgment, leaving them unable to favor themselves except by selfies, focusing on beauty dear to their contemplation, dismissing any need for moderation, involving themselves in no harmful extremes, allowing no one to peer into another's thoughts to be certain of one's evaluations?

Simple Simon: How we must be careful, choosing ones to be team players.

Stranger: Selfies not only record what others must see, but reflect on images transposing their ideas, striking others with impressions for judgment, for imaginations to evaluate, giving each person watching reports of something different, modifying reality to conform with past experiences, making recommendations based on individual's wishes, creating truth to agree with one's biases.

Simple Simon: Remember humility comes before honor, making it paramount to be humble, so in what way can humility be evident in ones enamored in themselves, needing selfies to assure recognition, not by others but for their ego?

Wanton: Can one be humble before their image is cast in bronze, stoic, unable to proclaim its virtues, transfixed by time, patina encroaching on its virtues, eroding its remembrance, the selfie created to exist forever, humbled by the ravages of time?

Bystander: Beware. Religion can forbid selfies, destroying depictions of gods resembling human or other life, calling them idols, worshipping representations of what people can see, needing something when knowing no one can look on God and survive.

Jurdan: But humans need images to worship, representations of your God or their gods, and when their representatives of God or gods disappear, they are ready to create ones new from their imaginations. Examine temples bare and empty, containing no figures or images, expecting people to worship an unknown entity each would imagine differently, created to exist on holy ground, cloistered as in a cavern, darkened from creation's beauty, ignoring all the goodness of nature's masterpieces, treating none of it as on holy ground, expecting all holy ground must be of human creation.

Wanton: What is holy ground but humans contriving to sanctify their deity's dwelling, a place for retreating to escape the world, eluding woes people create, believing their monasteries offer mountaintop experiences, lending them to rejoice and sing praises to their Lord.

Jurdan: If your God created humans to behold beauty and marvel at its goodness, probably anticipating they would consider themselves as creation's only beauty, sent to adorn themselves with greater attraction and use selfies to show themselves to all, willing their perfection, contriving to stamp their code with glory, would they seek harmony of interaction with an insignificant other?

Stranger: Contented with their own wisdom, developed by knowledge and launched by reason, such selfies must beware, ignoring divine wisdom, making them subject to chance, waiting for fortune's rebuke, rewarded for trusting themselves, discerned as retaliation for living.

Simple Simon: Self-assigned virtues depicted in selfies, launches need for theocracy, a sanctified human vehicle for deifying oneself, trusting oneself as a deity when God has been proclaimed dead or never existed. The wisdom of atheists allows one to seize a crown and become a god, a deity for agnostics and atheists to fill the void, ones committed to trusting or believing nothing, filling nothingness with their existence, crowning them with whatever glory they choose.

Jurdan: Ones never believing in your God are harmless, finding nothing worth fighting for, seeking skirmish only with words, never giving up their lives for anything, skeptics searching for scrimmage with some apologist, engaging any willing in a battle of ideas.

Wanton: Following prophets proclaiming we can reach into oneself to become the ultimate I am, verifying we can engage our inherent means to grow our human potential into a latent image waiting to be revealed, transforming us into our conception of God, deifying all our thoughts and actions, showing one never needs to construct any imagined god but can devote all efforts for one's own deification, preparing one for installation in the pantheon.

Stranger: Secularists deifying themselves can never be atheists and remain accountable to their claim to be god.

Skeptic: Never claiming to be atheists, we are more than enlightened agnostics, paying lip service to being Christians, living in a nation with belief in God, taught to tolerate everyone, even unbelievers trusting no claims for God, of greatest concern for the silent majority intent on upsetting no one with radical ideas, accepting or better tolerating secular positions on sanctity of human life and marriage.

Simple Simon: Denying God, proclaiming distrust for Him, struggling in despair, who is there to offer help? Atheism has no answers, believing we are a muddle of molecules, strangely attracted to form life, imagining something from speculations offered by mathematics, citing proofs by human reason, but their imaginations fail to help, collecting facts to postulate preposterous conclusions.

Jurdan: Hearing your well-spoken words, I can't deny your frustration, realizing limitations freeze your reasoning, restricting them with no real justification, but if you are prepared to relinquish your trusted invincibility, there are other means to offer hope for a better life, trusting technology to save you from despair. Your intelligence is restricted, never exceeding its boundaries determined by creation's wisdom, but you can become a creator, assembling machines to exceed your limitations, giving them super intelligence to surpass your own, developing programs to outdo others, creating them with greater speed and ease, trusting them to surpass your expectations, making decisions you fail to negotiate, creating values for compliance by all, never questioned as being directed by any god.

Stranger: Could you live with super intelligence, modeling your brain with computer programs for unimaginable intelligence, developed to determine trustworthy virtues, endowing you with unquestionable values, for if this could develop to direct your life your program for free will would be deleted, erased from any use, never again needed to make decisions, making you a robot, depending on nothing more than its program for all life's pleasures, rewarding all your desires with happiness. Enamored human imagination to add such epigenetic modifications to the human brain remains a fantasy, never allowed by the Creator to tinker with His creation.

Simple Simon: People with unrestricted super intelligence are dangerous, menacing with unknown convictions, dreaming of power, and no program can erase human desire for power, it's trusted influence, by overriding any message from their inherent computer to act differently. The Lord knows this with His foreknowledge of all, and I'm certain He has contingency plans to circumvent any devious design by a human to seize control from Him.

Jurdan: Atheists never consider ideas of your God being in control, acknowledging only their authority rules and can't be confiscated by anyone, with their values and virtues self-determined, relying on none from others, trusting none of your Lord's and hardly any from philosophers.

Stranger: Rule by people's choice always fails, motivating humans to seek more efficient ways to govern, trusting in reason to find a better way. People living by the Lord's edicts, looking to Him for leadership, depending on Him for all their needs, trusting in a theocracy, survive better than people ruled by ways they choose, failing only when they demand ways others are ruled, submitting to reasons for selecting control by people.

Jurdan: What rule should one choose, leadership by absolute righteousness or direction with absolute freedom? Religious fanaticism binds everyone to laws their God established or someone becomes a god creating rules for everyone to follow, determining all judgments and carrying out all executions, destroying anyone who fails to obey sacred decrees, maintaining righteousness, making all right in obedience, right in being true to their laws with no compromise being possible, tolerating nothing but their truths.

Skeptic: With belief in nothingness, the religion of atheism, viewing chaos of meaning in everything, trusting only their beliefs, determining all their virtues and being right in everything, atheists must claim absolute righteousness and freedom to will whatever they choose.

Simple Simon: You describe wannabe political leaders, saying whatever is necessary to be chosen.

Stranger: They never defy the people's gods, however, mentioning their blessings as often as necessary.

Jurdan: Leader's tactics change, introducing disguised variations to deceive many, thinking democracy may succeed where theocracy prevailed for centuries, invoking improvements to ensure satisfaction, denouncing authority of people's failed gods, legislating freedom for people to walk their way, proclaiming democracy dictates human rights decrees, guaranteeing dignity for all, engaging reason to explore virtues for anyone's dictates, authorizing anarchy to release all from unwanted supervision, permitting reason to establish a person's truths and be evaluated as equal to any others. With a simple majority, commandments can be written to benefit their reasons, or to reason that human rights and dignity can prevail without any rules to restrain human activities.

Stranger: Theocracies never recognize freedom for people to exercise rights to life, liberty, and do as they please. The Lord's decrees establish rules to live by, trusting them to protect people's dignity, giving and taking life as He chooses, and we must honor them, ignoring nothing of their substance, obeying them to bless our lives. Democracy honors such people, disciplined to follow a real leader, trusting they have embraced obedience and will make all grateful of their virtues. Theocracies are different than other forms of rule, with some isolating themselves for protection against outside heresy, with others conquering heretics to force rule on them, while some, listening to demands of belligerents, soften their dogmas to grant rights for ones wishing to follow callings of their reason, to provide better answers for living than trusting imagined beliefs.

Jurdan: Theocracies, drawing justification from gods of vengeance, seeking to demolish human reason, wage war to annihilate infidels, no differently than other forms of rule, always trying to destroy anything other, sending its youth out each spring to battle, never understanding they could be trained to be different, but having been tutored to despise anyone different, they consider their prey to be blemished, so they march out to destroy diversity, never accepting it characterizes all creation.

Wanton: Theocracies rule by human-made decrees, developed to control every aspect of people's lives, authorizing general overseers with powers to decide how everyone must maintain their bodies in health and disease, giving rulers rights to make all decisions on people's conduct, on every morsel of nutrition entering their mouths and every word uttered from their lips. Theocracies rule by dated Scriptures scribbled by some forgotten scribe attesting to words claimed to be dictated by the Lord, but neglected are His Words giving humans free will, telling us we have rights to choose, to make decisions without having them trampled by some prophet claiming to purvey the will of God.

Stranger: On learning about God from prophets, trusted to be reliable, worthy of belief, enchanting followers to join them, claiming the Lord directs establishment of theocracy for Him to reign, some become overlords to correct His creative mistakes, namely the Creator's error endowing humans with free will.

Simple Simon: Must every good be matched by a bad side, being paired with an opposite, reasoning nothing good is created without directly producing a corresponding evil? The Lord established creation to be good, and with our free will, people can reason what must be good without realizing their decision produces a corresponding evil, attributable to them and no one else. Free will allows us to judge what is good and what must be bad.

Stranger: Free will enables us to create documents, dogmas designing circumstances, perfecting decrees for absolute order and rationality, but can they claim to be freely produced, approved by one's conscience if hiding any evil, or do they harbor malice to make them imperfect, disorganized, and irrational, admitting to a certain freedom for evil. Developing doctrines reaching for absolute good and eliminating evil must employ tyranny to enforce culture's vision of absolute perfection found only in the kingdom of God, abolishing rather than establishing moral life that is impossible without spiritual freedom, and we must never forget the gift of free will, being the unique blessing the Creator deemed we should have.

Skeptic: You ignore free will's prerogative to determine what's good and evil and never agree on the Creator's assessment of all things made being good.

Stranger: Bonds sealed by creation's goodness reflects the love of unity and are broken only by human beings exercising free will.

Simple Simon: Is love merely affinity of one item for another, reflected by bonds between the two, and if it is, consider love inherent in everything created, realizing nothing exists by itself with all items joined with something, defining everything to be in relationship with another, making union with disunity impossible.

Stranger: Love must never depend on devotion to doctrines or dogmas, believing love without them is heretical, ignoring the glue holding Christianity together. Ask if one's free will contributes to unity, lovingly seeking to obey the Lord's wishes, or does it make shambles of His efforts to make us one. Survey all creation's unity He protects to maintain order in the universe, assuring none of His laws change, protecting all cosmic forces, never deviating from their precise attributes, while allowing their properties some freedom, essential for evolutionary changes to remodel creation, exploring ways to improve all, never satisfied with the cosmos being completed, especially when He recognizes humans disregard the Son's plea for unity, that we would all become one.

Simple Simon: Does the Lord motivate us to create and follow any doctrines and dogmas, any developed by theologians attempting to describe Him in human terms? If we sincerely trust and believe His commands for us, spoken by Christ to be united in love for all, our only convictions and decrees must reflect this in our relationship with His entire creation, no more, no less, striving for an all-inclusive society.

Stranger: Consider it folly to embellish Scriptures with seemingly rational convictions of prophets, distracting people from commitments to hard things called by Jesus, advocating their contributions as harmless, using human reason to develop doctrines claimed never to be responsible for evil, creating dogmas never considered to be folly.

Simple Simon: Never considered innocent folly but proclaiming Jesus to recognize our Creator as a God of love and dismissing any belief He is the same as the cruel, irrational, and despotic God of the Jews, is blatant heresy, blasphemous and rejected, leaving humans with a model for evil responses justifying vengeance when appropriate, giving us a warrant for being like whose image we embody. If we are to remain without the love Jesus pleads for in the Great Commission, we can freely decide to follow the Yahweh Creator, but how can this divinity, if he is God, pronounce all creation good. Doctrines based on Yahweh and our gift of free will authorize us to identify enemies and destroy the evils they bear.

Stranger: Choosing between doctrines and dogmas or reasoning to follow the Lord, one lives by human self-sufficiency, never authorized by God but influenced by prophets, seers, philosophers, theologians, or intellectual migrants sorting through their musings, selecting appropriate golden ideas, reasoning precious imaginations, giving all substance to make them truths, deciding they can develop decrees for God to sanction all their proposals, modifying them to develop their inherent potential waiting to blossom and rule, or at least to become their guide for life.

Jurdan: Beware. Inherent in human potential hides authoritarianism, innately partnered with human ambition, realizing success can birth totalitarianism supported by doctrines and dogmas, decrees demanding authority, often accepted by democratic majorities to establish decrees for living. Examine every great religion to find all studied philosophy, such as Christian philosophy, embellishing their superstructures with superstitions, dogmas, rituals, and institutions, trusting philosophy to reveal paths for pilgrims to follow.

Wanton: Open believer's eyes to effects of Christian philosophy, to further trust in the Lord as the Almighty to worship or to develop philosophy for guiding life, to justify cravings to know and reinforce freedom to chase wants and desires.

Skeptic: With religion standing on superstructures you describe, conflict is assured with science, witnessing religion's retreat before the advancement of people's faith in science, leaving philosophy to speak to us on higher values, but philosophy cannot free itself of imagination and superstition, as freedom of thought provides what we cannot control.

Jurdan: Becoming a sage, a prophet authorized by fantasy and superstition, acquiring wisdom of this world and trying to be other-worldly, consummating perfection of the gods, invites one to be a self-proclaimed God, needing no religion trying to create your God and what He is, making the sage's perfection complete, centered as an Almighty in the universe.

Simple Simon: Never compelled to stand in awe of your deplorable words, tempting me to tolerate your beliefs, modifying my Lord's words never to conflict with yours, proclaiming truth for yours, trusting them to be people's will with their sanctions being supreme, expressing their will to satisfy desires to prosper and never require confession, to do right in their estimations, my trust belongs to the Lord, believing in His Word's power, creating His dominion here, declaring the only words to live by.

Jurdan: His words paint all your thoughts and deeds with sin, compelling all your actions to be bound in iniquity, strangling your free will into confusion, tolerating nothing that springs to your mind, atrophying your imagination, shrinking it to nothing, portraying it as the tempter, making you a zombie, marking time for no good reason, purposeless and waiting for your end. If you were made for a purpose and if one can't find it in following your God, loving life has something to offer, to enrich lives better than any others can promise.

Wanton: My commitments to living prevent me from spiritually following the Lord, determined never to be dominated by Him alone, and I create priorities to include Him but never giving Him exclusive rights to my being.

Simple Simon: Excited with your free will, trusting it to free you, removing all restraints, never to drown you in guilt, hardens you, however, deceiving you, thinking sin has no consequences, believing times have outgrown its stigma, hardening your heart never to hear anyone proclaiming human faults, softening your heart to tolerate other's deeds, accepting them as no worse than yours.

Wanton: Only you tell me I am hardened. Are you different?

Simple Simon: My belief, answering to the Lord's commands, hardens me to everything but recognition of His goodness, praise for creation's beauty, and acknowledgement of His love, hoping there may be mercy for unbelievers, for freedom to understand His gifts for us, to soften souls for accepting belief in Him and open the way for the Holy Spirit to bring God's news to all, trusting no one is so hardened that the Lord finds no way in, believing He wants all His creatures restored.

Jurdan: Hardened by religious faith's beliefs limits your free will, realizing your conscience restrains freedom to choose, restricting selections to ones it approves, telling you not to follow majority's actions modified by training to obey, forcing you to reason rather than listen to your conscience. We are made to enjoy life, acquiring whatever suits our fancy, so respond to your inherent directions, trusting them above any different advice that condemns one for disobedience. If you fear your conscience and its vast library of lies use whatever means necessary to silence its voice, using nature's remedies for avoiding its realities, or better yet, reprogram its memory, deleting outdated archives, and revive its use by restructuring reality, authorizing free will decisions that agree with common sense, and if required maintain modest loyalty to faith of your fathers.

Wanton: Believe in free will, trusting it can triumph, searching ways to better humankind, improving us to eventually abandon our conscience, no longer needing its judgment, with success coming only by erasing all its decrees of rights and wrongs, leaving our desires freewheeling to heart's content, but what will that do to human relationships, cooperation between people, all striving only to satisfy their wants, believing in the justice of being oneself?

Jurdan: Religion works to make us robots, denying us free will, criticizing us for attending mostly to our needs, but did not your Lord tell humans He will provide, assuring all of never wanting, so if we witness wanting individuals, deprived of their needs, who should we blame, ourselves or the One who made the promise. I cannot accept blame for His unfulfilled promises. Besides, who but Jesus said, The poor you will always have, implying they will never discover and use the gifts given them with creation, thus absolving Him of any fault for their condition.

Simple Simon: By ignoring needs of have-nots I defraud my standing with God, compelling me to accept humiliation and shame, afflicting me with sorrow, driving me to repentance, trusting confession to restore joy, dismissing my nagging distress, and looking now only to Him, never for seeking blessings to revive confidence in myself but to welcome all His circumstances, knowing none are for blessing me, none being sent for difficulties, trials or worry, being only for commitment of my all for Him, looking to Him for all, resting all hope in Him.

Jurdan: Wouldn't it be better if your God never existed, releasing our free will from His guidance, an unseen manipulator, an imaginary interfering deity who never existed, leaving us to depend on circumstances fated by chance from some unknown force?

Stranger: God exists, knowing Him as our Maker, creating us in His image, and we inherit abilities of the Father, gifting us to reason, creating us to hear His revelations directed to know Him better, to improve our understanding of Him, giving us reasons to revise commands He designed for primitive people having yet to outgrow their ignorance, acknowledging He blesses us with improvement as human beings, becoming better and better with time.

Wanton: Created with a voice, taught by time to receive God's Spirit, the Lord gave me free will, the opportunity to build relationships with other humans, freedom to speak my will, and I voice my will be done.

Bystander: Speaking without pause, never hearing what the Lord's will might be, never acknowledging His will be done, thinking relationship can never be with One unseen, never knowing most relationships are invisible for all with vision, confusing ones never trusting anything unseen, granting authority only to revealers of the seen, never to visionaries unveiling revelations incomprehensible to ones unable to be directed by the Holy Spirit, unrepentant voicing my will be done isolates people from the Lord.

Jurdan: Free will directs me to alleviate suffering by demanding justice, seeking blame to justify retribution, activating vengeance to satisfy my distress, and I can't trust your God with complete control of punishment, recognizing my inherent need for rewarding justice, distributing pain on ones deserving. Don't blame this on beastly instincts remaining from my primate heritage, but on the free will manifest in my design, directing me to scorn ones lesser than me.

Wanton: Yearning, beset by desires, coveting what I will discard tomorrow, I plan today my wants, acquiring what may rightfully belong to another, accumulating treasures pilfered from creation, creating none to be stored for perpetuity, making no confessions of wrongdoing, blaming all on a designated scapegoat: society's environment, inherited sinfulness, a defective free will, lusts driven by the inherent human code.

Stranger: Creating us with free will, the Lord gives us rights to determine what is best in our interests and desire to serve Him. With love for Him, we wait on His desire for us, dropping opportunities on us we can recognize and follow, surrendering all to Him, so we can become all things to people, revealing God to many, dismissing my freedom to be any different.

Skeptic: Reason and free will can seal one's fate, unlimited freedom justified by restraint of compassion, creating decrees to judge all others, teaching hatred of determined heresies, fortifying justice with death for infidels, protecting judgments to assure one's power, sustaining tyrant's free will.

Jurdan: Oppression dictated by a tyrant, determined by one ruler, preserves life to ensure a following, knowing order is mandatory to protect people from each other, denying all freedom to object, realizing releasing any to be a rebel subverts order, unleashing chaos to reign, permitting the strongest will to rule with life's destruction replacing oppression, so people must tolerate tyrannical subjugation, preserving lives as they are, victims of suppression, existing as mere beings, hoping for something better, realizing hopes end with death.

Skeptic: Should all be destroyed to maintain oppression if only one is heretical, knowing tyrants believe many must suffer, learning this from the ways of Yahweh?

Wanton: One such, spreading rot among the rest, must be eliminated, taken down with all its comrades, anyone likely to have been tainted, unseen except in its core.

Skeptic: And who is identified as heretical?

Simple Simon: We choose ones in agreement with our beliefs, knowing they can be trusted, never being indoctrinated with other ideas, false beliefs conflicting with ours, heretical ideas we fight to destroy.

Skeptic: Can one live without believing in your God?

Simple Simon: One must believe in who God is and what He does.

Skeptic: Name someone who has shown you what God is like.

Simple Simon: Only Jesus Christ, coming to live like us, adopting our flesh, showing us how to be like Him, revealed our potential to be righteous, so we have no excuse, bemoaning we are born to sin, forced to be the way we are, creating laws to expose our iniquity. He was created sinless, coming to be unlike us, never sinful and we have no excuse for not changing to be like Him, accepting we are created to be like Him, and we must continuously grow to become one with Him. No one else has shown us God's attributes.

Stranger: Recognizing problems in growing to become like the Lord, thinking theosis is possible, we are obligated to a standard unchanged by our will or reason, never altered to conform to today's culture by arguing it differs substantially from Patriarchal times, making its laws and doctrines inconsequential, remnants of history, never to be understood by iconic symbols, stain glass representations, or images of the Lord, leaving visible manifestations of faith to reveal rational depictions of what the Lord is like, dismissing all mysteries unresolved and unneeded.

Jurdan: Can you become like your Lord, trusting His promise never to leave you, attending to your needs, telling others He will never forsake them, and you presume on partaking in His divine nature after you renounce one of His creation, another human being, proclaiming the Lord is your helper, I will not fear, announcing it to all after you forsake another, abandoning one who is now blemished and rejected?

Wanton: Before committing to a cause, I plan a way for escape, recognizing most people abandon hope for success, giving up on discovering any devious design to disable the great understanding and ignore the fate of best-laid plans. Who foresees youthful passions of love disappearing into mists of time, ceasing as fanciful dreams, justifying abandonment of ones once held dear? We all do, creating ways to flee, divorcing us from obligations trusted once to last.

Jurdan: Trusting facts to determine judgments of righteousness and wickedness, what can one do with changing facts, developing as never before, defying consistency, arousing confusion, awakening new visions of truth, informing us of a time for change, abandoning trusted obligations?

Wanton: Truths in time suffer from boredom, lingering longer to become despised, motivating us to revise wisdom for developing different truths continually. Without new facts, life remains a struggle dealing with unremitting despair. Distractions from boredom need little encouragement, walking away from musings of little importance.

Simple Simon: Yes. The good life grows better with distractions, one never having enough to forget wandering thoughts, contemplating what cannot be controlled, tempting fate to silence destiny, exercising rigors of extreme activity, seeking action to dismiss boredom, throwing one's body beyond limits, expecting an endorphin ecstasy, never thinking of failure, denying its opportunity for self-sacrifice.

Skeptic: Attributing things to fate reflects ignorance, knowing cause drives all, with chance also having a cause, but we can't follow time's thread, unraveling it to its beginning to discover its cause.

Jurdan: Searching for causes is the plaything of philosophers, thinking they find answers sifting through creation's remnants in their sandbox.

Stranger: With faltering discernment, blinding vision, inept insight, stop and consider your actions, living for a moment of pleasure, calling on your body without contemplating its limits, trusting in no pain no gain, pushing it beyond what it reserves for emergency. Consider obeying your body's messages telling you when to begin, warning you when to stop. Remember your conscience's admonitions being no different, informing you of unworthy actions and directing you to obey messages received by your soul.

Simple Simon: Why is it more satisfying to sacrifice one's body for self-gratification, pleasing worldly standards, while declining to become a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God?

Stranger: Virtue relying on its efficacy, true to itself, cannot yield to adversity marring its name, destroying its credentials, perfections upholding goodness, as misfortune takes its toll.

Simple Simon: We make commitments, some by obedience to established decrees, unwavering allegiance to eternal laws, and some from reason's articulation of human desires, rising and falling, waves of crescendo and remorse, voiced by free will unimpaired, laboring through human frailties.

Stranger: Committed to obeying the Holy Spirit, perhaps without understanding, realizing all can come with confusion despite seeing things clearly, calling us to follow Him despite inability of our reason to comprehend all He has to say, I remain obedient, trusting someday He will explain all uncertainty, blessing me with discernment, and until then I will obey, understanding this is the first step to sanctification. I am overjoyed He speaks to me, to hear the Holy Spirit, never missing out on His messages calling me to obedience.

Jurdan: Your Jesus is no longer here, and perhaps coming as a friendly teacher, ministering to ones lacking the fortitude to face the world, looking for an escape as His followers continue to do, you can't count on Him through your imaginations, thinking He is someone sending you messages through a so-called Holy Spirit, but I can understand what He might say, reasoning most to be untrustworthy.

Bystander: Creation's goodness and beauty, born of the Lord, all bonded in one another, inseparable to give life meaning, filled with blessings to provide all our needs, calling us to live passionately and sincerely, fitting us with an innate disposition to see eternal truth's light, never in a default of reason to believe only an existential source can enlighten human understanding perceptions of worldly chaos, deceiving them to explain what remains hidden by reason, feeble as it continues, depends on coming to terms with existence by a healthy faithful spirituality, developed when aided by the Holy Spirit.

Jurdan: How can you trust life's claim for beauty, ending inevitably, tragically transformed to nothingness by belief in the Day of your Lord?

Stranger: Its beauty lies encoded, assuring a continuum, preserved for life to continue, transforming beings for rebirth, hiding at times in perceptions of ugliness, waiting for resurrection from remnants appearing to be dead. Judging only one phase to represent God's goodness and beauty, thinking the entire process cannot be beautiful, relying on reason and common sense to determine beauty, blinds people to creation's promises protected by divine providence, believing beauty is only what pleases the eye, thinking all its manifestations reveal only momentary beauty, featuring creation's evolving nature. Contrasting opposites never reflect the good and the bad, but are necessary parts of the whole, so who can assign beauty to one part and not the other?

Jurdan: Must your conception of goodness thrive only on eternal truths, rejecting truths rationalized by consensus of human beliefs, trusting beauty lies in your Lord's decrees, harmonizing with His laws, in agreement with your spiritual disposition, acknowledging your faith in the unseen God is essential for discerning His beauty and the beauty of creation, for recognizing His love?

Simple Simon: Hearing His words, For God so loved the world, can our love for creation match His, realizing if we strive to become like Him we must improve our love and respect for nature's goodness and beauty, and I wonder how that can agree with your priorities.

Stranger: God created nature's forms, spoken into being by His words, needing no laws or decrees for appreciation, conveying His goodness to human's spirits, unseen by calculating eyes, never measuring its worth on a scale for analytical evaluation, remaining a mystery for many while showing its beauty for some, discerned by few as goodness and beauty united as one, manifesting truth in the Lord's eternal mysteries, revealed as verities by spiritual ones, persisting as greater mysteries for practical materialists bent on controlling nature and working feverishly to fix a seemingly broken creation, blinded to its goodness and beauty, never acknowledging correction of creation's apparent brokenness needs humans transfigured by Christ for redemption and preservation, provided with spiritual insights for vision's empowerment to understand His design and reveal His glory throughout creation.

Bystander: Breaking all into pieces, working to reassemble them for discovery, what can be learned from their fragmentation, thinking one can conjecture wisdom from its parts, but finding only greater mystery in tapestries woven by divine words, revealing spirits for creating appearances, spirits remaining unseen for ones wanting them seen, trusting the unseen have descriptive properties? But matter persisting hidden can only be accounted for by abstract explanations believed to establish truths, proclaiming beauty for their equations, claiming they are spirits of anything's beauty, speaking to us, telling what they are and how they fit in the totality of the earth's beauty.

Simple Simon: Forgetting all creation developed from God's word, breathed out to form everything, producing goodness and beauty wrapped in mystery for human investigations to unravel, to reveal what should be revered and worshiped, growing scientific knowledge led people to trust only themselves, thinking their talents could make them omniscient. Driven to intervene again, the Lord spoke words and send us a greater mystery, the incarnation of Christ in a human form, Jesus, destined for death as all other life, and He continued His mysterious powers with Jesus Christ's resurrection, an unheard-of event never seen since. Only God knows if humans remain jaded to mystery, thinking miracles are never possible, leading Him to intervene again.

Chorus: What spirit directs me to ignore the Lord, causing my actions to slay me with lust, driven by vanity, innately exposing envy, pondering how goodness can tolerate my deeds, friendly to the world but unkind to creation's goodness, silent to its beauty and seldom worshiped by worldly interests.

Jurdan: The world blames me for that but I will be no scapegoat for your design, for what's innately within your code persisting and testifying to your base instincts.

Simple Simon: The Lord's echoes resist the proud and reserves grace for the humble, compelling me to protect my spirit, safely secured from invasion by evil, realizing demons wait to invade my soul and occupy the Holy Spirit's temple, trashing His home beyond hope for restoration, preventing its occupation by anyone worthy of reclaiming goodness for existence. The Lord's design in me cannot be blamed for choices I make.

Stranger: Your spirit is what you make it, constructing its peace with pieces of good intention, following culture's design to offend no one, judging its pattern to develop your decrees, readjusting laws to meet your requirements, changing culture's specifications to reinvigorate your desires, being careful to judge no one more than they deserve, maintaining honesty as part of your worthiness.

Jurdan: Choosing Greek attributes to portray your God, trusting they don't damage Christian beliefs and require no protection for your spirit, believing they never deal with it harshly, maintaining interpretations based on human conflicts engaged in cares of the world, people think Grecian semi-gods are afflicted no differently than us. What help can we expect from gods tirelessly dealing with cares of the world, affecting them no differently than us, seeking vindication, confessing the lust of deviating from some created standard, hopelessly afflicted with human weaknesses?

Skeptic: Creating capricious semi-gods, modeling their natures for description, depicting them as likened to humans, the Greeks characterized their gods' emotions as resembling ours, so our interpreters beholden to Greek philosophy classified God's love, no different from its semi-human god's. Jesus, speaking Aramaic, knowing no Greek, gave us a different understanding of God's love, unlike the love attributed to Greek gods.

Simple Simon: Greek gods had their problems, giving them priority over ours, suggesting no covenants with us, but they expect an agape love from us, venerating them as ones special, worshipping them for unclear reasons, imagining them to have afflictions like us, giving them little time to be concerned with us. Do their gods love humankind, expressing agape love, spiritual or divine love, reserved for some but not for all and expect us to reciprocate with agape love for gods they worship?

Stranger: Kindness and faithful love pursue me every day, seeking to make my home eternal with the Lord and to enter a covenant with Him promising a new kind of love, assuring its obligation to be shared, bonding us in a mutual exchange of commitment, sealing us in loyalty, love formed in the bonds of covenant, steadfast love of the Creator for His creation, faithful love of the created for the goodness and beauty of God's creation. Trusting we are formed with His image, how could the love we must hold for Him be any different from the love He expresses for us?

Simple Simon: If covenants exist, established to be lasting, determined by faithful love never compromised by conditional adjustments, using love to describe innumerable affections, they live only by constant commitment, assuring enduring love claimed by few.

Stranger: Faithful love is impossible, knowing people are made to harbor hostility and hatred, denying endurance for constant love, so they adopt other types of relationships, borrowing from the Greeks acceptable distortions of the word love, calling it erotic to describe sexual passions, terming it filial to express brotherly love, using them where lasting love is no more than imaginary, having learned its impossibility from worldly experiences, changing as all things with time. Perhaps we might question whether we can seal our commitment for relationships to be faithful love, embodying perfect love, casting out fear and hostility, when we leave changing time to rejoin our Maker.

Wanton: How can we, blemished imperfections, accepting all our short-comings, ever hope to gain understanding to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ's love? We never understand any measure of respect as human beings, so how can we trust His love in our lives seeded with anxiety, anger and misery?

Jurdan: Love's depths cannot be fathomed by humans living with anxiety, anger, and despair, leaving love to mire in passions, the quagmire where hopes disappear.

Stranger: If we love the Lord in unmeasurable ways, we wait to know His plan for us, opportunities to recognize and follow Him, surrendering ourselves so we can become all things to all people, revealing God to many, dismissing my freedom to be any other.

Preacher: God's love condemns us to suffer, claiming we must grieve to know Him, to rejoice in living His Son's fate, and we ask followers when they plan to embark on their suffering, to become one with the Suffering Servant.

Simple Simon: Can I expect freedom from suffering, knowing my God suffered, committed by assigning His Son to the cross, affirming His indomitable love, delighting in maintaining goodness for His creation, shining compassion for suffering creatures, hearing their cry, grieving over their disobedience, lamenting over their self-afflicted wounds, tempting Him to be angry at evil and injustice, while trusting He acts in and is perfect, promising untarnished love, believing His light shines in darkness, knowing darkness never overcomes it and making human experiences fully His own, so how can I expect freedom from suffering?

Wanton: If suffering is evil, never reasoned to be good, how can the loving God, responsible for creating everything good, include suffering as a part of goodness, convincing beauty to associate with evil, darkness searching for uncontrollable vengeance?

Stranger: Circumstances proceeding from the Lord cannot be considered right or wrong, knowing our discernment is ineffective, incomplete for understanding and directed for our acceptance, trusting His ways, acknowledging our plans are never His.

Simple Simon: Torment by shame and humiliation suffers me none, being protected against convictions by others who believe humble ones suffer, for their declarations are for unbelievers, trusting in themselves, fearful of shame and humiliation bringing them to be despised as nothing, so humiliate me as your will enjoys, shaming me to be a victim of mirth, strengthening me in my obedience to the Lord.

Jurdan: Consider people's greatest temptation, the will to suffer, searching ways to be a victim, seeking others to hear their concerns, convincing others of their afflictions, drawing attention to their misfortune, asking for prayers to overcome their despair, and gaining support their temptation feeds on seeking more, assuring their suffering can continue, stabilizing their continuance of love from others, making self-pity an emblem of their existence.

Wanton: Would freeing one's spirit, cleansing it of all wrong doing, remove all suffering and allow nothing from unexpected, unwanted, disturbing visions or dreams?

Jurdan: Reason's resolve protects me from such experiences, hiding them away in recesses where they eventually disappear.

Preacher: Depression descending, drifting down, afflicting me by demons of despair, determined to separate my thoughts from worthiness, dismissing them as unworthy of a pen's discipline, suffers me with despondency, allowing nothing worthwhile to be scribbled on this day's page of life.

Stranger: Concern yourself with nothing to be recorded, accepting full acknowledge of our religion being sufficient, never shaming yourself for considering new thoughts, trusting obedience to our doctrines as your only loyalty, dismissing any testing you by temptation. Avert all danger, realizing none can afflict those loyal and obedient, pursuing His will be done.

Simple Simon: Can I be completely in accord with the Lord's will, ignoring all my thoughts, coming unexpectedly without any warning, tempting me with adverse ideas claiming equality with dogmas created for His cause, scribbled by who knows, developed by ones disturbing His convictions, painting them with hues proclaiming new knowledge.

Stranger: Trust in the information gathered, winnow out useless facts and assemble reliable ones to complete our theories, reasoning them to create our wisdom, doctrines driving our beliefs, dogmas sustaining all we do.

Jurdan: Since information changes, dressing in different garments, changing clothes with each moment, considering facts survive but instants, can you trust your wisdom will be more than a passing breeze, fanning the ardor of your convictions?

Wanton: We must preach wisdom lasting, proclaiming our position is more than a flip-flopping fad, for we offer hope, people's greatest desire and expectation fulfilling their dreams here and now, promising the only certainty, assuring no illusion by dogmas proclaimed for followers of the Lord.

Simple Simon: Can hope be assured for anything but by religion, seeing everything else has nothing to offer? Human wisdom never succeeds in giving us hope, all being created by sinful ones without lasting hope, discovering life's hopelessness sends all into unknown nothingness, giving them breath for only moments.

Stranger: Consecrated with spiritual power, devoting my thoughts to be in accord with the Lord's, dedicated to serving Him, never by my will, but being His servant, I wait for His Word, sending circumstances to begin my agony, to suffer with Him, to begin my sanctification.

Jurdan: Believing life offers insufficient suffering, you seek more, searching for a God to shame you into suffering like He decided for His Son, wanting you to emulate His divine virtue by sacrificing yourself, trusting it for your sanctification.

Skeptic: Created by God, speaking words to form my flesh, incorporating creation's goodness, where did failure sneak in, leaving me unprotected, making me less than the One claimed to be His only Son, encouraging me to suffer from faith and compassion, to be childlike with humility and foolishness?

Simple Simon: Suffering, temptations, unmet desires, failures, loss of friends, disappointments and heartbreaks, compounded by illness, ended my convictions as being useless, dismissing reason as trite, dismantling common sense, voiding my mind left to wander through fragmented thoughts, alone in nothingness, and prepared me to encounter the Lord knocking at my door to begin understanding His teaching, as I lamented my neglect for Him before, being too occupied with myself, all being immediate and needing attention, more so than for the Lord.

Stranger: Where can one find lasting joy but in the love of God, knowing nothing can come between His love and one's soul which belongs to Him, being more than conquerors through His love for us, overcoming tribulation, suffering and persecution, all being powerless to separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ?

Jurdan: Your God empowers you to overcome suffering while you exist only to seek ways to emulate what He decided for His Son, creating dogmas to justify your actions to ensure self-inflicted painful distress.

Simple Simon: We trust the Lord and follow His leading.

Jurdan: His leading punished His Son with torture and crucifixion, an example for humans to follow with self-flagellation and self-destruction, obeying His call to sin no more, knowing death's finality assures us of sinning no more.

Wanton: So be it with the over-righteous, struggling to maintain righteousness, comparing their virtues with others, judging all for their iniquities, forever castigating sinful ones with contempt, condemning them for falling short, lording over them their righteous purities, spending countless time in prayer, interceding, begging for sinners to change their ways, resorting to self-sacrifice if necessary.

Jurdan: Self-righteousness harbors tyranny, having learned it from wisdom to escape from depression when discovering freedom to be tyrannical, developing inquisitions to silence sinful ones who never measure up to being righteous.

Simple Simon: Sin confuses my reason, making it unpredictable, uncontrollable and irrational, yet I rely on iniquity for developing reason, thinking some are never unacceptable to the Lord, believing sins never affecting others shouldn't disturb my relationship with Him.

Stranger: A sin is a sin is a sin, and any self-assignment of a sin to be minor leaves one remaining a sinner, committing iniquities which separate people from God.

Simple Simon: If we were created sinless, never struggling to be blameless, would we be like God, wondering what qualifies anyone to be Devine, knowing any jealous God commands, as He does, created beings to worship no other gods, making it a sin and impossible for them to be sinless, but can God be jealous, bearing His image to create humans to be born in sin, bearing His jealousy, and create a sinless Son for sending us, showing how a sinless person should live?

Jurdan: Reasoning your God could have nothing different with creation, dismissing the option of creating others like Him, reflecting His image to be completely without sin, creating ones to wait eagerly at His side for opportunities to question everything He does, did He create some like Him except to give them free will to encounter and act on temptations?

Wanton: Making creation a massive experiment, God should not know its outcome, for who can predict experimental results, needing testing for discovery, understanding investigations are unnecessary when their results are known.

Jurdan: Is your God so self-concerned with creation's goodness, trusting all its pieces should blend together, uniting all in goodness and never be dismayed by humans committed at birth to sin, flawed as they exercise free will, compromising His omnipotence in striving for perfection, driving Him to find a way to correct His mistake?

Bystander: He tried, sending messengers with commands, His decrees, but that failed.

Commoner: Condemned at birth, conceived to be sinful, unacceptable, and innately blemished, how can I be remade for eternal life, restored to God's plan for me, redoing me to become a piece in His puzzle of goodness, hoping I can contribute to creation's beauty?

Stranger: As long as you can, rejoice in the Lord, singing a joyful noise to your creator and the rock of your salvation, coming into His presence with thanksgiving, worshipping Him in exultation, praising Him for your creation, never giving any notions of despair, seeing Him as the great God He is, the King above all gods, overcoming gods who brought you down, dragging you through depths of depression, gods you chose, needing no illusions of demons to blame, no satanic ghosts for being your adversary, no one but yourself fragmenting your imaginations, piecing them together to fashion evil, confirming you have become its victim, with no reason for its justification.

Commoner: If I must return to the Father-Creator, expecting Him to direct all my ways, withdrawing my free-will, what pleasure can I look forward to, as I look back and remember how severe my father's restrictions were, disciplining my every urge and desire, removing all my delights.

Simple Simon: Would you sacrifice your greatest pleasure, giving up a want sanctified by the flesh, reducing a passion to unimportance, dismissing desires never blessed by the Lord?

Commoner: Identify someone who can convince me of rewards for giving up all treasures here, for I know all must be lost, but at least they have brought me happiness, pleasure without limits, and depriving myself of their enjoyment guarantees me nothing in the perceived nihilism of eternity.

Stranger: Hear my words giving you freedom to choose and determine if they promise rewards. Have you no birthright as Esau, giving it up for pleasure, satisfying your appetite, dismissing any need for an inheritance, never acknowledging its gift from your Father, scorning Him, refusing to abandon your commitment to worldly evils, luring your likings into greater iniquities, continuing your downfall into greater despair, removing your desires with age, salting all the sweetness of your lusts, reducing you to no more than salt of the earth, having chosen ephemeral appetites?

Commoner: Understanding little beyond perhaps, assured of nothing but what might be offered by hope, why should we deny ourselves pleasure, celebrating its brief moments bringing happiness, trusting enjoyment we discover, never castigating it as sinful. Acknowledging we all exist bound together, in relationships never alone, can we ever know all that damages them, harming them to the point of sin?

Wanton: Ransomed to be abandoned in creation, isolated with only relationships, can I ever return, singing songs of celebration, honored with lasting joy, filled with gladness, never more afflicted with adversity's sorrow?

Jurdan: Rewards of lasting joy dismisses happiness for one to seek, knowing loving parents wish only happiness for their children. So how can one choose joy over happiness? Happiness can be one's expression of fulfillment, rewarding achievements, satisfying completion of listed wants and desires, honored by expected crescendos of applause waxing and waning in one's imaginations, while joy never responds in such a way, continuously boring, promising no rewards except for illusions of salvation, whatever that is, maybe offering peace but saturating one's soul with peace can get old, tempting one to get with the world, waking up to taste its flavor. Happiness may be fleeting, coming and going, but the pleasure it brings can never be hoped for by joy.

Stranger: Can happiness come by other than flagrant means, afflicting distress on another to achieve success, trusting happiness comes at a cost to others, to someone's somewhere? Joy always comes as a blessing, upsetting no others, because it has never been a reward of wants or desires, and perhaps it is shunned as marking life with boredom, but joyful ones live in peace, never noticing the boredom others see in them.

Simple Simon: Happiness without joy, alternating between heights of exhilaration and depths of despair, can bring some to temptation of suicide, swinging on a roller-coaster, convincing them to extend brief intervals of happiness and fulfillment with drugs, chemicals threatening their existence, substances thought to promise more is better.

Bystander: Happiness indeed partners with despair, forever waiting for one to lead in life's dance.

Stranger: The Lord measures faith's fulfillment by weighing one's activity to follow Him, never by what is accomplished by one's will, hardly trusted to represent His will, never following in His footsteps by engaging in activities to satisfy circumstances springing from one's imagination to maintain self-comfort but leaving all treasures behind to follow the Lord's unknown direction and trusting Him with no reservations, achieving the faith judged trustworthy by Him, embarking into a fellowship of joy, free of anxieties demanded by the world, free from fearfulness alternating with occasional happiness.

Preacher: My level of relationship with the Lord never tells me to back off from my desires, asking Him to provide my wants, for I trust His knowing my needs, and I don't bother Him with what I wish, knowing most of which are of this world and are unimportant in following Him, should I be dragging them behind, hampering my pace in keeping up with Him.

Stranger: Then should one pray, giving your wants a high priority, if He already knows your desires, to ask God for enriching treasures you hold dearest, embellishing what you already have, marking you as someone special, solidifying your relationship with Him, or maybe you would please Him most by praying a new beginning for one who doesn't know Him as I do?

Simple Simon: Delighting myself in the ways of the Lord, enlightening our relationship with prayer, communing with Him always, I know He wants to satisfy the desires of my heart, fulfilled by constant prayer.

Commoner: Sometimes I worship the Lord, hearing others tell of Him answering prayer, but when I attempt to reach Him through prayer nothing happens, never interceding to respond, so I go it my way, acknowledging He tells me I have been endowed with a will to make my decisions, depending on myself, seldom needing to rely on Him for help. You can seek the Lord for help, but expect a wait determined by His time, probably longer than you wish, possibly disappointing you with a response that conflicts with your desires and messes up your plans. Who does any praying realizing He works that way?

Stranger: If anything, your prayers ask God to rubber stamp your wishes, never for bringing you into meaningful dialogue with Him, seeking His creation to develop perfect understanding, telling intercession in prayer requires us to give up ourselves, emptying our souls to become one with Him, leaving nothing, no thoughts to interfere, intercession with no interference. Are your petitions hard and dogmatic, peppering the Lord with show me a miracle, making you little different from Pharisee's demands badgering all with their skepticism?

Commoner: I have read much on how to pray, telling many ways to reach the Lord, but with everyone leaving me confused I am resigned that no one knows how, so my prayers become nothing more than conversations with Him, letting Him know my concerns and troubles, hoping He might give me insights on how to deal with them.

Bystander: True believers understand patience, knowing the Lord silently decides on times to answer prayers, and without patience no one can evaluate His responses on the time taken for any, never for any human, not even for Jesus when He walked the earth. Do you have a believer's patience, filled with joy from above, acknowledging the Lord eventually answers all our inquiries?

Commoner: Life on earth demands immediate answers, resolving our needs to know instantly, rewarding our questions within moments of asking,

Bystander: The time scale of eternity is followed by God, responding to our prayerful concerns using moments of His measurement, immediately being different from our measurement of time.

Wanton: Don't compare our time with His, ours being established by Him, finite and short, concerning us always as being insufficient for assuring happiness.

Stranger: He gives us just enough time to judge our development, to reach out and discover Him, to understand the goodness of His creation, and to acknowledge the need to become like Him, completing the image of Him we are hoped to be.

Jurdan: Building up ability to direct our lives without assistance from your ancient God or any god created since, and needing no divine interventions to pray for, we must destroy any influence religion uses to disrupt our will, allowing us to determine our way.

Wanton: Struggling to become like God, praying to be deified, establishing it to be one's single goal, indeed transfigures one, empowered by reason to rely more on oneself--knowing the Lord has only Himself to depend on--engaging greater self-reliance, eventually to need God no longer, trusting in only oneself.

Stranger: Does trust in God depend on what He does for one, believing in Him judged by responses to prayers, meeting expectations of being timely without one vacillating between confidence and despair or mired in despondency suspending convictions of His caring for one's requests. People filled with the Holy Spirit never lose trust in Him. Are you convinced He fills your soul, barring intrusion of demons trying to enter and fill it with confusion?

Commoner: With confession of faith in Jesus Christ, trusting it to assure my salvation, must I do more, needing to worship and adore Him and to pray without ceasing?

Simple Simon: Faith is only the beginning, awakening one to follow Him, for if it fails to move one further, becoming no more than clamor of clashing cymbals, mesmerizing one into a stupor of hope, believing nothing more is required, salvation can only be imagined, never trusted for ones secure in their promise, in their rest with the Lord, confident of their reason's certainty, testifying to what they have read and what common sense holds to be true, to verify righteousness maintained since their acknowledgment of faith.

Commoner: Talking our walk of faith, spoken for all to see, praying words to convince others of sanctity with our voice, what more does one need?

Stranger: Faith must be integrated, arm in arm with all actions, never missing a moment every day, missing none because of higher priorities, enlisting all one's measures to be integrated, walking faith humbly with deeds, never appearing as a self-assured saint, parading righteousness on a street corner. Lasting inspiration by the Lord convinces me to openly reveal I belong to Him, showing all how to follow Jesus, never to look for earthly power and glory, receiving heavenly joy as my reward for faithfully serving Him.

Wanton: If God is in complete control, why do we pray His will be done, knowing full well it will be done, nothing else being possible, but we tempt Him to change, bribing Him with our words, promising faithfulness, trusting Him until His will be done to satisfy our prayers, remaining blinded until we see our will be done.

Commoner: Prayer can be an empty articulation, verifying we are blind to His involvement in our lives, ignoring opportunities in circumstances sent us, dismissing their purpose, critical moments when He acts more than by chance, times when calling on Him in prayer is needless for One who is already with us, voicing prayer requests with Him on end, leaving little time to hear Him.

Wanton: Stooping down to ask, humbling ourselves to beg for help, having all our efforts fail, stretching our reason to seek assistance, we beseech our unseen God, putting pride away for a moment, coming to Him as a last resort. Reading, Everyone who asks receives, we trust that promise, never asking for treasures to hold in our hands, but to be given wisdom and healing, needing no more than that. Must I become like a pauper begging for help, diminishing trust in myself, making me unfit, destroying my image held by others?

Stranger: That must you do, but not for long, knowing you to be like others you will soon forget your prayers for help and resume old ways, such being the will of humans, seeking wisdom but that is most terrible for them to receive, realizing enlightenment inevitably enriches the gold standard of all being my-selves, looking within themselves for everything, never needing to rely on the Lord. Calling on Him to receive wisdom, beginning one to know Him, discover only His wisdom can be treasured as worthy, never for satisfying one's lusts, using it only to fill in cracks to seal the poverty of our soul.

Commoner: Your teachings, being exquisite learnings, delighting more than satisfying lusts, spoken with such honest conviction, allowing no uncertainty to spoil life, give hope, but I seek lasting hope, verified by time to endure, knowing my episodes with hope, like a butterfly moves swiftly to another, finding little nectar in me.

Simple Simon: With reason portending failures, miring thoughts in the swamp of rationalism, bogging all down in fantasies promising hope to find truth, people ignore feelings of hunger for God, believing reason trumps love in their quest for meaning.

Stranger: With reason failing, what can be expected for hope, when hope is based on reason's changing truths, compelling hope to accompany reason's adventures? Reason battles everything to protect its truths, but wait until someone discovers truths have changed, modified by scholarly notables distorting interpretations, mangling hopes, discrediting time-honored beliefs, mocking trust holding all together, offering hopelessness as the only alternative, welcoming followers to postmodern nothingness. Now, who can make promises with trust lost for postmodern religion, with faith dismissed by reason's growing knowledge and relegated to unimportance? Can promises be made if reality merely muddles along, never following a plotted story?

Commoner: Believing hope afflicts us, trusting truths we develop, I wait on humans to precipitate end times, seeing the Lord uses them to satisfy all my expectations, terminating worldly progress, mocking human achievements in technology guaranteed to destroy humankind.

Jurdan: Understanding your Lord's words on end times, telling of its coming soon, deciding on His own when He didn't know His father's decision on the time and place, returning to where time and location are meaningless, our clock keeps on ticking, measuring time which to your God is nothing, but straining our patience we center our hope on technology, relying on gathered information to move beyond dependence on Him, proclaiming hopelessness for His promises, ridiculing His covenant as the folly of some ancient scribe.

Simple Simon: Can the Lord honor an agreement committed to promises, trusted to be fulfilled, showing humans the importance of upholding agreements sealed by word of mouth, when people ignore oaths to be faithful, flaunting honor demanded to preserve human dignity, impetuously abandoning any virtues to gain a moment's desire.

Jurdan: Forget covenants, being wastes of time. Seek knowledge instead, cherish its day, gifted by who knows, reason or perhaps intuition, as we delve into the unknown, mysteries appearing momentarily as leaves drop in their time but promising more with buds waiting to burst forth, bringing new facts, showing how old information can be reinterpreted, resorted by fresh thinking on life, completing a cycle for another season, renewing hope to solve everything unknown, conquering creation's hidden treasures, never understanding our ability to know involves chasing infinity in a bottomless pit laced with quagmires, swamps made as fertile ground to sprout despondency.

Stranger: God sent prophets to reveal Himself, the first being creation for us to marvel at nature, waiting for human explorations to reveal its secrets hidden from understanding, satisfying many human endeavors could explain all, giving people some hope to become God-like.

Simple Simon: Because humans could never understand creation's order and realized its comprehension fails scientific scrutiny, springing forth new questions seeking more answers, the Lord sent additional prophets, this time humans to explain His nature, but His messenger's words were hardly regarded and modified by people to suit their desires, claiming license to clarify God's attributes to serve their wants.

Skeptic: Chose one prophet if you can, sent by God, whose message humans did not tinker with, interpreting and revising His will with doctrines and dogmas, giving Him new attributes, claiming none must be reasoned away, forgetting messages revealed by His true prophets telling God creates all, endowing everything with goodness and beauty, calling His beings to love Him and all He created.

Stranger: Is a prophet's message proven by its appearance as truth, happening for all to witness, when the question asked remains what is truth, perhaps defying reason and lasting only moments, it's content being reinterpreted to suit a time's convenience, revised by new prophets marking their importance, claiming their facts to be undisputed, universal, holy and everlasting, defying any protests their pronouncements were only opinions, infallible imaginations of the human mind, despite their attracting agreement of humankind?

Skeptic: Truth established by agreement lasts only until intervention by disagreement dismissing reason to provoke its dissolution.

Stranger: Unable to know God by scientific reasoning, prophets resort to metaphysical thinking, attracting followers by explaining everything with philosophical gymnastics, but we cannot come to know the living God until we begin to love Him, longing for Him and hungering after Him, acknowledging He is undefinable, indescribable, unable to be portrayed by human reason, and our love for Him is compromised by prophetic descriptions ignoring Him as our loving God and establishing His attributes in doctrines and dogmas by hypothesizing what He must be.

Commoner: Does reason portend failures, miring one in the swamp of rationalism, bogging one down in fantasies promising hope to find truth, ignoring any feelings of hunger for God, believing reason trumps love in our quest for meaning?

Simple Simon: Reason seems to lead us to believe God and humans mutually create one another, thinking God indeed created us and invested us with the hunger to know Him, knowing we would base our being on our image of Him. We would be unable to conceive of Him abstractly, imagining Him in no way if He had never created us with reason, leaving us as beasts never able to understand the mysteries of His revelations.

Stranger: Still wanting to see God, yearning to observe His face, trusting it to provide understanding--an experience denied even Moses--striving to be sanctified with radiance for all to see, religion fragmenting all His Words is developed by people straining to develop faithful trust in Him. Prophets, scholars, theologians and intellectual pundits scramble history, adding tempting flavors for investigations to understand God and see His face, manipulating His image with distorted facts, allowing them to make history with what they desire. We can only hope to see His face in things created. Our only hope is for science to show us plans for His design, but they only deepen the mystery of God, further mystifying His purpose, telling us we first must return to His revelations, reminding us of their importance, criticizing our endeavors to know Him any other way. So, it will be, as He measures out what we should know, blessing us with a greater understanding of all He is.

Simple Simon: Mysteries appearing to end scientific endeavors are needed for us to end human efforts to explain everything and send us back to worship Him as our creator without rational explanations attached.

Commoner: Never content with this world, we support efforts to find another suitable for life, one we could populate and develop to be heaven, or maybe we would discover heaven and leave the earth for a better place, and with this hope we also support science's work to find life elsewhere and develop modes of travel to move to a better place.

Prancing Grace: I call out to all people discounted in this world, prideful ones arrayed in their glory, adamant in following their heart's convictions, created by God to be what they are and responding now to join me as their new leader, staying with our world, never trusting to find a better place.

Skeptic: Beware of masters and avoid leaders seeking preeminence, especially ones asking to be called one's Eminence, naming themselves Reverend, pridefully lording themselves above others, dressed in vanity's full attire, bowing down to no one. Are you one such master?

Prancing Grace: Leaders must come prepared with their wisdom, knowing deceit can lurk in followers, ambitious ones waiting for opportunities to glorify their wisdom as most worthy, charming admiration of following hordes but little encouraging their voices and silencing people speaking any distrust.

Skeptic: Human understanding fails at discovering deceit, hidden until it is too late, beyond salvaging trust.

Prancing Grace: I believe the Lord, who sometimes called on misfits, following Him obediently to evolve His plans, at times by striking forth blazing light, inflicting fear, stunning all to announce His presence, to select and develop minds for leading His people. So, don't imagine me as an enemy, urging you to follow me, enlisting you to join my cause, but one chosen as Moses and Paul, ones heir-apparent for regal treasures, royal kingdoms, and dynasties ruled by divine laws. Heeding my will's advice, responding to visions, images of future glory, I obey my senses to develop my cause, realizing many will not join, preferring only to watch, perhaps waiting for some signs of success. As suffered by other leaders I expect both enemies and followers to question some of my plans, understanding the Lord will harden their hearts, testing my resolve to continue becoming their leader.

Skeptic: Can one succeed with misfits, distrusted as followers, dismissing their offerings, ignoring what might be constructive suggestions, inviting discord, scrambling harmony, rousing fear, all those believing in some democratic process, trusting discretion to discern all offerings?

Prancing Grace: Trust ordains our followers by conversion, transformed as little children, selecting acceptable ones before their age to reason well, humbled before common sense can guide them, obedient in fullness, innocent in their will to choose, never needing offensive ideas plucked from their minds, congregating in agreement, in one accord, supporting all doctrines of our cause.

Commoner: Calling me to worry, testing me with anxiety, seducing me with temptations, your plan forces me to leave my relationship with the Lord, parting ways with Him to join you, promising me things of the world, abandoning all He offers to devote my life to you, forgetting what He says, Look to me, don't worry about your life.

Simple Simon: How can anyone know if your cause is for us to suffer, burning us in anxiety, turning our dignity to ashes, incinerating remnants of creation's goodness, or perhaps transfiguring us to conform with our Maker's design, restoring innocence trampled by the world, marking us unfit for your purpose? Will your cause be exposed for good or for evil, being discovered in time for returning to our Creator's truths, surviving all consequences of your plans?

Prancing Grace: Close your mind to contrary imaginations and see only good in our intentions, discerning no evil hidden therein, sustaining your efforts to ignore adversary's negations, denials to steal your allegiance, urging you to wait patiently, understanding time will eventually prove the wisdom of our truths.

Jurdan: Where did you stumble on truths, long sought but never found, unveiling hidden certainties for your cause, following all those assembled by humans, proclaimed to confirm your Lord's wisdom, enacted by you to embody His truths, trusting them to raise up people and free them from themselves?

Prancing Grace: Our cause is different, created by a few, never seeking review by an invited majority, proclaiming it to resemble a democracy sprinkled with something for all, evaluating their ardent desires and providing their most coveted wants.

Jurdan: Does your cause provide loopholes to allow human weaknesses, greed by illicit means, gluttony to satisfy unlimited tastes, hoarding to hide treasured yearnings, thinking you cannot recruit followers, leaders without temptations to be faithful to your ambitions?

Prancing Grace: Wealthy people support our cause, sharing some of their treasures to ensure our success, with have-nots also responding to our promises, trusting them to be fulfilled, and we attract all others by our convincing rhetoric.

Simple Simon: Do you attract followers of Jesus, expecting some from each of culture's diversity?

Prancing Grace: Some must be ignored, trusting our virtues will eventually be accepted by all, and we wait patiently for that to happen, believing time is on our side.

Stranger: Are your virtues greater than the Lord's, knowing He has waited eons for their approval, still waiting as He sees them changed without His consent?

Prancing Grace: Jesus may be unhappy with His values changed, but He must acknowledge our virtues align with changing times and reflect success.

Stranger: Measuring success in His time has not changed, urging us to remain faithful, never changing His standard, measuring virtues outside time where He now exists, knowing change is impossible there, while leaving us in time, changing as it must, but imprinting us with changeless values, denying our virtues must follow changing times.

Simple Simon: Show me a secular cause that never clutters my mind with complex thoughts and worries, inflicting severe anxiety, enslaving me to its dogmas, separating me from the Lord, planting me in barren soil, void of enrichment to thrive, let alone survive, knowing my determination of any cause not His.

Wanton: We are all the Lord's icons having been created in His image, but we envy ourselves, empowered to change our image, trusting our free will to develop a greater reality, discarding our likenesses, telling us to worship gods rather than God, but changing our image creates new icons, pictures of ourselves to worship, our reality here and now, the seen rather than any unseen, discarding all the unseen developed by imagination.

Stranger: Reaching out to understand creation's mystery, hidden by images perceived as distress, veiling its beauty, concealing its goodness for humans dependent on seeing, we must unleash love to embrace relationships, securing them for all to honor one another, leaving no one, nothing abandoned, as affirmed to by God's design, creating circumstances for His Son to enter the world and continue His relationship with all, promising never to leave, sending His messenger the Holy Spirit to seal an eternal relationship and telling us to forget all images and icons, convicting us they are unneeded.

Simple Simon: Incarnation of God's word, revelation to see the light of His truth comes more than once, not only with Jesus but also by sending us the Holy Spirit, bringing meaning to His messages, explanations to know His wisdom penetrating us with His truth, transcending beyond all the world's revelations.

Wanton: Never trusting Scripture's Words, believing they mean what they say, confusing my understanding of their interpretations, I find nothing unreliable seeking my attention.

Simple Simon: How do you think it's words have been modified, translated and interpreted to its present form? Not by the Holy Spirit, trusting He would never mangle God's words to shape today's convictions.

Wanton: Assuming doctrines encoding beliefs are sacred, demanding all followers to be faithful, never showing disobedience for their dogmas, never requiring repentance for distrust, believing them to be truer to imaginations than to any deity they never choose to follow, God's words are already mangled.

Prancing Grace: We fear recruiting ones with unacceptable religious baggage, disturbing doctrines and dogmas, advising interested candidates to leave much behind, restricting their retention, knowing it will distract them from our goals, tempting enlisted minds return to old ways, times of comfort, abandoning hardships littering ways to our success.

Jurdan: Never allow too much, hardening hearts by your demands, impairing your standing and chances for success, and don't forget religious dogmas interfere with freedom to develop many secular causes and their conditions your followers must vow to keep. Ignore dogmas with little fear by minimizing their importance, so be careful in modernizing religious doctrines, slowly changing any without great concern. Modern wisdom trusts they will soon be mere relics, becoming as ancient writings people are reluctant to lose, waiting for reason to send them into obscurity, freeing endeavors to embark on secular plans, threatening planners no longer with retributions for disobedience, no longer being smitten by your God's wrath. Be careful in not hardening hearts.

Prancing Grace: Creating doctrines to last, developing commandments to be lamps illuminating laws with the light of truths, teaching followers the way of life, leading them in all things, we are careful in proposing dogmas for people to live by.

Jurdan: Who would follow you except ones discontented, considering rebellion to escape, seeking any cause to embrace, trusting yours to change direction and bless their convictions by modifying your doctrines to become their dogmas, acknowledging rebellion permits everything, releasing a feared monster, changing one's discontent to grow anxiety, displacing rational thoughts, instituting anarchy to jumble one's mind by disordering common sense, extracting nonsense from its debris, protracting life to its scheduled end.

Prancing Grace: Rebels struggling to fulfill petty desires and to acquire wants for the moment, others with like thoughts becoming our enemies and striking at our establishment, must be negated before we can establish our domain. Rebels always have strong convictions, making them untrustworthy allies, hungry for power, ready to die for their beliefs, leaving no space to accommodate other's dogmas. Once belligerent rebels are silenced, we can proceed with peaceful recruitment, convincing others we are one with them.

Skeptic: People realize all change begins with rebellion, invoking needed violence for success, never trusting love for motivation, and will they be victims or beneficiaries of a rebellious winner? How can I choose any group to side with, hearing each one voicing deceit, purposefully couching words, concealing their intent, hiding truths from ones looking for signs of hope?

Prancing Grace: Trust us, read our doctrines to know what we promise, assuring you it is all there.

Simple Simon: Your manifesto is not written for my understanding. Is this by intention, knowing few could read it?

Prancing Grace: Give yourself time, realizing it was created by aides taking great care in producing a reliable document that even I might have trouble understanding. Be patient. What we propose is all there, written for our goals to succeed.

Simple Simon: Why can't you communicate clearly, outlining your convictions without concealing anything?

Skeptic: Clearly manifested ideas are always spoken with deception, hidden snares entangling their words, scribbling inexactness to distract one from reason, and enemies can select anything said and use it for destruction.

Simple Simon: We all speak thoughts concealed in mystery, choosing words to hide what might shame us, to reveal nothing humiliating and likely to distress our composure.

Prancing Grace: Consulting my conscience as I speak, pursing my tongue with patience, configuring words, so I won't be distressed or regret anything I say, assuring nothing will return to disrupt my composure, being careful with what I say.

Stranger: Words are unique, precious treasures, never to be buried and left to rot, or be saved and hoarded for no perceived benefit, but are to be mined like gold, invested by faithful servants, spoken for gain, rewarded with the increase they promise, reminding us to use them wisely, giving them care dignity deserves, choosing each one for particular application.

Simple Simon: Struggling between what I should say and what to say, never discerning a clear direction, I am burned out, confused on what to say, so I beg for rest, an interlude to regather my thoughts, trusting a respite will give me a reprieve, recharging me to carry on the Lord's work and cease distractions by other's thoughts.

Stranger: The Lord's faithful followers never burn out, being recharged by Him each moment, remaining alive in Him without pause, and that is possible only for those in constant prayer, never distracted by worldly glitter or temptations abounding with attractions for happiness. If everlasting God is never faint, wearied or exhausted, and you are made in His image, striving to become like Him, how can you become spiritually spent, giving the excuse of being burned out? Genuine attempts to gain more of His likeness cannot make excuses for losing heart. Striving to nourish other souls depends on one's persistence, drawing on the Lord's unending supply.

Commoner: Should ones battling to discern religion's persistent dogmas and practices be permitted to burn out? Our religion continues the fight to replace old laws, voicing disgust at all we see, enforcement of decrees spelled out by Yahweh, rituals continued from pagan beliefs, revolting persistent dogmas defying creation's goodness, never in keeping with its beauty. Victimizing ones blemished with different ideas, stoning deviant heretics to death, destroying diversity by beheadings, immolating chosen people as justice for perversity, selecting any having breath, are abhorred by sentient humans, actions never accepted as virtuous, unless death can be determined for individuals still hiding, protected in a mother's womb, reasoning their life is still remote, never coming until after birth.

Stranger: Ancients battling to destroy others, had no aversion to ripping open pregnant wombs destroying visible as well as immanent life, in addition to committing infanticide on souls having progressed to attain greater human dignity, killing fruits of the womb while preserving their source. Now as before destruction is authorized for life still hidden.

Skeptic: Gifted with speculation, dim-witted humans have little wisdom to understand life's existence, beginning and ending all their thoughts with maybe, trusting their decisions with perhaps, driven by voices to destroy others.

Jurdan: That depends on one's understanding, where wisdom is discovered, if creating truths is from scrambling facts to assemble doctrines for life, dogmas with uncertain endurance, so humans persist in given states until rediscovery renews ardor for wisdom.

Simple Simon: Protect discernment for my understanding, never preventing circumstances from reaching me, opportunities the Lord sends in dreams, so I can truly see His promises and realize His goodness better, emboldening me never to stray from following His way, trusting in Him for all things, knowing His wisdom offers greater hope for my life, waiting for me now, never some forty years from now.

Stranger: Wisdom knows no certainty when it's surety can be tomorrow's uncertainty, searching for discernment that remains obscure, never seeking wisdom from the Lord.

Skeptic: Human wisdom births conflict, seeing each wise in oneself battling for their idea's superiority, created to be their idols, gods to worship, and appealing to their god. Being jealous of other's gods, provokes hostility, each claiming theirs must be the only real deity, dismissing others as products of people's imagination. Gods call humans to battle, justifying reasons to slay ones following a "false" god to protect sacred beliefs, giving followers excuses to follow their leader's divine authority, defending a god's dogmas against rebuke by others.

Jurdan: Gods sanctify conflicts to will destruction on competing deities or for heresies developed within their beliefs, and the confusion of their commands authorizes people to choose whatever they will, whatever is reasoned to be right in their own eyes.

Skeptic: Confusion must be written into any god's plan, deciphering its words to accommodate people's wishes, inserting their will in the margins of divine decrees, modifying commands' intents, ordaining unauthorized transfigurations, transforming them to become a god's will. Can you name a battle fought without a god's blessing, following some mystical direction to slaughter humans, entitling victims to claim other's belongings? Battles all struggle to enlarge one's territory, a universal promise to motivate people for action, enlisting some god's scripture to lead the charge.

Jurdan: If a suitable god cannot be found to authorize conflict, humans can search reason for its implementation.

Skeptic: Can reason become an appropriate god?

Simple Simon: Reason was chosen as a god to stand idly aside and condone slaughter as proven by what people did to our one true Lord, rejecting and crucifying Him, ridiculing His call for love, the last virtue they wanted expressing.

Stranger: People choose gods to condemn the world, verifying their convictions, never wanting God to send His Son into the world that through Him they might be saved, ignoring preservation of its goodness, beauty, and protection for His creation.

Prancing Grace: Reason and dogma promoting firm convictions, producing ardent followers who are suspect in spending much time examining other's beliefs, creates discord with their evaluations, memorizing and flaunting common jargon, antagonizing others with their lack of humility, when they should restrict importance to our cause. Our reservations for such people precludes their enlistment, knowing they would sow trouble. So, we must be careful, never knowing what kind of fruit a seed will produce, often knowing a seed can be coated in mystery, waiting to unfold into an unwanted surprise.

Wanton: Choosing people free from dogmas, having nothing embedded to control their thoughts, enlisted with open minds, you must be confident in teaching your doctrines for them to follow, trusting your ability can train them in rhetoric to become spokespersons for your cause.

Skeptic: To find ones free from dogma you need to recruit newborns and then patiently train them to believe your views.

Prancing Grace: You might call our training a form of propaganda, teaching followers to spread biased information, but isn't all information prepared to attract participants, created to proclaim differences, promising benefits to be enjoyed by few? We suspect ardent believers of the Lord, knowing intolerance for others grows with one's depth of dedication to a religious cause, bashing others having different beliefs.

Simple Simon: You have little respect for believers proclaiming love for God, assaulting them for being outspoken and intolerant of others, showing Him to be like us, and invoking vengeance to destroy people deserving retribution.

Prancing Grace: Believers armed with impenetrable shields, having put on the Lord's full armor, often protect themselves from our ideas, making it difficult for them to contribute to our needs. We can teach them to fight for the Lord's purpose, however, selecting ones slow in mind, having little reason to resist our invitation, harboring insufficient common sense to deny our endeavors, and with encouragement from spectacles of danger we can forewarn, they are likely to flock in, coming to join us in droves. History reveals people are of this variety, eager to join in matters appearing just, willing and ready to die for seemingly noble ventures, showing our recruits it is honorable to battle evil, even dying to Christ, trusting to become like Him for fulfilling God's wishes.

Simple Simon: But will you compel followers to fight differently, waging wars to kill others, choosing Yahweh's ways, never Jesus' example of killing no one and enjoining others to accompany Him into a new life, directing all to live as He did, uniting all into His life, giving everyone certainty of being in one accord with Him who defeated death in His resurrection?

Jurdan: Then why does your Lord allow disruption of social harmony by never intervening to prevent disasters, mocking any unity for people with their imagined Savior? Claiming goodness and beauty of creation, how does one explain anyone?

Wanton: Trusting God's conclusion of goodness to describe His creative efforts and believing happiness can only come from goodness, must possessing morality determine our happiness?

Stranger: Goodness is always relative, being one thing for God and many diverse things for humans, people assigning degrees of goodness according to their experiences, minimizing goodness when their choices fail expectations. God's goodness never changes, persisting with trusted reliability, manifesting its promise, but criticized by us when it's use is manipulated, scattering our hopes to make it something better. Accept His goodness, learn to live with its beauty, and be thankful for all He provides. When you modify His goodness, making it more to your liking, you cease worshipping Him and reserve honor for yourself, an admiration never to last.

Simple Simon: Humans have never plumbed the depths of His goodness, working still to delve into creation's mysteries, discovering unpredictable designs, unraveling assemblies of hidden relationships, revealing new ways to enable His goodness for human use.

Skeptic: Thus, by revealing creation's knowledge we can comprehend its goodness, but can that provide happiness, trusting philosophers who claim we gain pleasure by increasing our understanding, giving us control over happiness, magnifying it by our will to learn? Then explain how most learned ones grow to despair all they have gathered, their knowledge failing to satisfy them with happiness, deceiving them with benefits of learning to promise fulfillment of their hopes.

Simple Simon: Why should a person seek happiness, fleeting in nature, bursting one into momentary elation, trusted to last, when we learn it shrouds our being, concealing all we choose to remain hidden, and when happiness is ripped away, exposing our ongoing nothingness, we return to the earthly life assigned to us by fate. Rather than happiness willed by our efforts, trusted sometimes to appear, seek joy, exercising prayers for its coming, believed to be lasting, knowing it comes only from the Lord, assured by joining Him, to be one in Him.

Skeptic: Show me a person hoping nothing but happiness for one's child, praying for its possibility, trusting only it for fulfillment, but what person can pray for something imagined, unknown but as a word, designating some fictional state of consciousness, hoping it may exist in the realm of possibility. Still searching for knowledge, continuing in futility, could you better spend your time here than stumbling through volumes of other's experiences, seeking lasting happiness? Should creation's goodness offer some means for human happiness?

Simple Simon: Measuring goodness on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the greatest and one being still goodness but never bad, its virtue must be relative, estimating its degree with other forms of goodness. For the Lord, goodness is never relative, always absolute, being comparable only by human evaluations, giving it a dimension to a person's liking. Humans have little understanding to evaluate creation's goodness, judging it by their criteria.

Jurdan: Is your God's goodness consistent with judgments viewing Him to be a tyrant? If so, being made in His image, can people be any different, resorting to tyrannical goodness for leading others, demanding obedience to their commands, laws written for masses to follow? Scripture tells you He had little choice but to deal harshly with His chosen ones, schooling them to follow His ways, showing everyone how to manage people He decides to lead.

Wanton: Claiming God to be no more than a tyrant, believing we are created by a jealous deity, describing Him to harbor envy as written by scribes, how can I trust any deity if He is truly like me at my worst? Does jealousy incite fear, compelling me to fear Him when He is seized by jealousy, raising a signal for me to acknowledge, a time for me to fear Him? Jealousy for another person never arouses me to fear, maybe depression in coveting things I cannot have, but never fear, not even awe, knowing reverence 's hard for any Lord described as a jealous God.

Jurdan: Never knowing what your God is, guessing what He is not, relying on belief people are made in His image, trusting His attributes are no different from theirs, humans can provoke Him to jealousy, hatred, murder, vengeance and retribution, and if He differs little from humans why should anyone praise Him, giving Him honor greater than any person known.

Commoner: If the Lord is most virtuous, the only perfect image of goodness, established as the hallmark of His creativity, could He ever be jealous?

Stranger: Humans other than those believing in the Lord, ones trusting in their many gods, have always believed their deities have human frailties, living for them being no different than for us.

Simple Simon: Confusion imposes anger on God, thinking He must be like us, convinced His frailties to mirror ours, showing we can't imagine Him to be different, believing what prophets said, Humans are made in His image.

Stranger: People changed their beliefs for God, worshipping Him now with adoration, ignoring ancient fears for an angry God, transforming Him to a God of love, discarding any endearment for a hostile deity, venerating Him as a loving God, never angered by iniquity, forgiving His created beings, preparing ways for their return to Him, reconciling them with their Creator.

Jurdan: Admit how far that has taken humans, delivering them from the hands of their angry God.

Wanton: Far enough for people to abandon their temples, letting them decay, rotting until used for other purposes, destroying homes for religion's Holy Spirit, shutting Him out in the cold, dismissing any warmth He has to offer.

Stranger: Anger aroused by ideas and deeds never surprise the Maker as the Lord being omnipotent is never astonished, considering flaws may have tainted His potter's clay, prompting Him to reissue better humans, perfected by evolution cleansing errors in their code, preventing human deviations from goodness angering their divine Creator.

Jurdan: Wisdom tells me, Never be rash, welcoming rage, knowing it is meant for fools, but what should we think of your Yahweh, described to be angered by human provocation? Can He be angered, justified in coming from a deity, needed to judge people, required for necessary retribution? Is anger necessary for provoking us to fear Him, while hearing claims He did not make us to fear?

Wanton: How can the Lord's supreme goodness consort with harmony, believing anger is in His nature, compelling Him to balance justice with love, exploding with retribution when people's disobedience stresses Him to react? Why must Yahweh respond with anger when His creation fails to meet expectations of His goodness? He and no one else controls creativity to produce goodness.

Simple Simon: Mesmerized into calling for justice, judging whatever comes to mind, witnessing unacceptable actions, proclaiming without thought, instantly concluding responses, making decisions on what the Lord would do, His anger intervenes like peoples to satisfy justice. Trusting Scriptures to be the Word of God, how could anything be different?

Stranger: People must fear the power of anger, accepting its response to disobedience, wrath troubling trusted ways, learning never to hide in dismay, hoping never to lose mercy, giving the Lord time to work on them.

Jurdan: Does your Lord's anger force you to change, realizing fear of anger disappears quickly, and you can return to old ways?

Stranger: Fear of His anger can leave no lasting effects, being only temporary, trusting He soon forgets like us, believing His love will overtake anger and forgive us for our iniquities, thinking His thoughts are as ours, but remember His thoughts can never be like ours.

Simple Simon: His love assures joy and is renewed each day, restored from ashes of despair by living water, nourishing my salvation, trusting it has already begun, streaming torrents of delight, encouraging me to pass it on.

Preacher: He understands what we propose, seeing He is the One who selects and ordains us to manage His creation, and He realizes its importance may leave little time for following His decrees, so few people are provoked to fear Him, giving their all to ensure He will seldom be fragmented by anger, enough to forget His grace and mercy for them.

Stranger: Trust our prudent all-knowing God, guardian of unchanging truth, never stooping to anger, the province of fools proclaiming stupidity, igniting anger on losing control, discarding restraint, destroying virtues of ones wise and honorable, forgetting grace where foolishness afflicts people with grief. Never accuse our Lord of anger.

Jurdan: Recall your Yahweh's words, spewing anger for people's disobedience. Righteous anger justifies hatred, satisfying it wherever righteousness is never found, demanding punishment with no possibility for atonement, forgiving no transgressions, crying for violence to end blasphemy and life for all infidels.

Stranger: Rather than death, isolate sinners with their own kind, separating relationships with others, trusted to be the most effective punishment, a proven cruelty, knowing human wisdom understands God made everything and everyone to exist in relationships, and depriving ones hated of interaction with others punishes them with no greater violence, breaking bonds that tie, allowing people to drift into nothingness. Death condemns one to no greater affliction, lasting punishment of isolation, enduring until one's end.

Simple Simon: God cannot be quick-tempered, angered to act foolishly, confident in His judgments, pouring outrage in deserving retributions, never reflecting His goodness and beauty hidden in mysteries, created beyond our searches for understanding. I cannot trust and worship a Creator giving me free will as His and without the wisdom for its best use, frustrating me with lack of conformity to His image, the one He partially gave me.

Stranger: Facing disgrace, unending ridicule, denounced for focusing only on the Love of God, never trumpeting His anger and retribution, ignoring we are sinners created to receive His hostility, deserving reproach as our reward, we are condemned for maintaining love is Lord, trusting love rules and is the foundation for the only commandment, loving the Lord our God and loving all others as ourselves. Love rules in every word spoken by the Lord for creating all, maintaining only His goodness to prevail.

Wanton: Love also rules my efforts, blessing my soul, directing my imagination, constructing images to honor creation's goodness, forming representations moving its beauty to heights seeming to be greater than from the hand of God, bringing my gaze to joy with its completion. Reckon on images deforming creation's luster, warping human depictions made to be grotesque, attracting critics calling the mutilation of God's crown magnificent, worthy of praise and highly valued. Rendering His creation of us lower than all beings, comics of relief, just grievances scoffing at His artistry, people find ways to scorn Him, prizing depictions of us deformed and degraded. What a way for us to express our displeasure, mutilating creation's wonders to satisfy our despair.

Stranger: It is not only in art forms do we scorn creation's beauty. We destroy it whenever possible, moved by anger for our despondency, imagining something better might arise from its ashes. Our wisdom hardly dwells with prudence, developing from pride in superior knowledge born from untrustworthy facts, information passing through doors of transition, revolving swifter than a mind can process anything important, making feeble conclusions, imagining them as rulers to form judgments. Seek the Lord's wisdom to direct ways of righteousness, restricting us to His judgments, never counting on our own, protecting the treasure of creation's beauty, ensuring we leave all our wealth in heaven.

Jurdan: Left with your beliefs, conflict has no chance of beginning if it knows I take no sides, refusing to acknowledge any religious premises, although this is likely to anger and frustrate their proponents.

Wanton: Anger seizes the Lord's emissaries, breaking their radiance of being with Him, destroying their glowing halos, rejoining them with brethren in human iniquities, no longer speaking with God, anger having muddied their radiant countenance.

Jurdan: Anger never remains silent, stewing victims in turmoil, never quelling anxiety, seeking means for upheavals, brewing reasons to stake responses, forever judging unworthiness, compelling people to speak out, articulating words to invoke actions, and never to silence one's anger. Having dismissed truth for all religious doctrines and dogmas, my anger can no longer claim any attention.

Stranger: We know this well, showing nearby one's affections for the moment and knowing anger can be concealed from all, causing weeping for only a night, trusting love's favor is life, anticipating joy can come in the morning, believing love's depth will wash all tears away, but anger waits silently to seize my actions.

Simple Simon: Trusting love with proclamations are more genuine than goodbyes, never remembering a goodbye once parted acquaintances with: God be with you, perhaps in consideration of love for all humans, carrying out Jesus' command to love others as themselves. If one believes parting words of others, asking God to be with them, what can threaten their peace, wondering if He will direct new circumstances, changing directions for their activities, revealing He expects more of them than merely leaving others with parting expressions of love? Can anger be silently waiting in souls of believers bidding genuine goodbyes?

Stranger: A God-be-with person hardly needs any goodbyes and understands greetings and partings with expressions of love, knowing His true love expresses sacrifice, love coming with the Holy Spirit. A God-be-absent person, effusing proclamations of love for others, understands love only carnally, meeting one's needs when situations arise, freely given while meaning little.

Jurdan: Goodbyes are tokens of habit, having no place when wrath is kindled, uttered with no answers forthcoming, offering nothing to satisfy dilemmas as all must know, condemning bearers of news hiding messages they could reveal or have nothing to tell, victimizing them with scorn, ridiculing everything they say, never waiting patiently to hear reality's truths, so they extract pieces of information and rearrange them combining them into what they believe and want to hear, composing them in ways to magnify their wrath, wrath being the fuel to ignite chaos, rendering all back into nothingness, incinerating all to oblivion, leaving nothing to restore.

Wanton: Wrath knows no words of kindness, nothing to promote unity, freely dispensing reprimands, pronouncing judgments to wreak havoc, justifying bearers of wrath.

Commoner: Taught to escape God's wrath and avoid hot displeasure, convinced He hunts me down and searches my iniquities for one most suited to justify retribution, I ask, Where can I go, wondering why my flesh has been contaminated since birth, where can my bones find peace? Corrupted by sin's wounds, feeble and broken, can my soul ever be cleansed to remove my stench, purifying me to be acceptable to the Lord?

Wanton: This is your God's wrath, sent by Him to smite you, repayment in retribution for disobedience, tarnishing the beauty of His goodness, demanding punishment, never waiting patiently to discover your reason, favoring you with no mercy, compelling Him to resurrect beauty from havoc, proclaiming salvation for everything thought to be destined for destruction. Any God of mercy always intends for things to change, transforming conformations, trusted by people to be unwanted evidence verifying His wrath, but remodeling of creation is a builder's ongoing task.

Simple Simon: You speak in error, talking about our unchanging God exchanging ideas, even proposing evolutionary changes after creation's making.

Stranger: God is unchanging, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, existing outside of the time He created, but He reserves the right to manipulate everything where time exists for that to happen. If He didn't create time here, he could change nothing in creation, so He makes all things possible for its change and its manipulation from His kingdom outside of time.

Jurdan: If your God created us, endowing us with a full measure of His goodness, perfecting us to be the crown of His creation, why did He leave us with useless trash, remnants from the beast He reconstructed us from, the extraneous DNA garbage that remains in all of us? He could have deleted our leftover rubbish, cleaning the slate so we would have nothing to tarnish our being, but we are not privileged that knowledge.

Jove: See how we are perfectly made, growing us from a single egg, taking us through each form of evolutionary progression, likening us to primitive beings each step of the way while accumulating unneeded waste, documenting a work in progress, never knowing if the genetic refuse could direct our actions and interfere with activities needed to leave the beast behind, primitive activities for animal survival no longer required for humans ordained to be sanctified, burdening them by accumulated junk from an ancestor, retained to stain them with original sin.

Commoner: If we are perfectly made, how could disobedience by the first humans be explained as the innate sin all people are born with? Can evolution explain that?

Jove: Remember Scripture's Words telling us, Sins of the father are passed down to succeeding generations, foretelling what his progeny will be like, and science verifies this possibility, confirmed by attachment of our sins as genetic information, trailers determining what our actions are likely to be, showing we are not perfectly made but have the potential to grow, promising us to become better and better.

Simple Simon: Consider your existence to be a trial, testing your mettle to interact with all others, and if people fail God's purpose He has time to modify them, continuing His fine-tune changes by evolutionary modifications we can't control. His patience being greater than ours can't be long-suffering, existing outside of time, having no urgency, working to develop the beast called a human to our present time, knowing we are a work in progress.

Jurdan: What will happen when He finishes, creating the perfect human? Will we then become like Him, ready to become king over a new domain, ruling as He does now?

Simple Simon: Demons convince such conclusions are true, bearing messages of fantasy, denying verity for God's facts, changing perceptions of their reliability, encouraging acknowledgment of different thoughts, confusing our rationality, afflicting our reason, tempting us to doubt.

Jurdan: Infiltrating demons compete with your reason, confusing your common sense, engaging your imagination, giving you nonsense to depend on. Do you depend on demons for helping humans, believing some are good?

Simple Simon: Demons are blamed for misfortune, entering one's life for no good reason, being fanciful inventions of evil, giving our conscience purpose, blaming them as uninvited intruders, creating needs for our protection.

Wanton: They are important, giving people excuse to say, The devil made me do it.

Simple Simon: Without demons to plague us with evil thoughts and deeds, would we be incarnated goodness as part of creation's goodness and beauty? Why would the Lord considering all His creating for good forget about humans, embedding in them an open invitation for demons, asking them in to take residence?

Commoner: Can we hope for evolution to advance us so demons can be relegated to archives, trusting us to become better and better?

Wanton: Values and virtues are never transformed by evolutionary processes responding to cultural changes or evolving personal preferences because there is no mechanism for its possibility, realizing we must depend on our will for that to happen, acknowledging use of a dubious God-given gift for its enabling.

Commoner: If not by evolution can God's transformation of us to improve our mental faculties little by little offer any hope for our values and virtues to improve, perhaps to the extent we could be considered deified, finally completing our image to be like His?

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Jove: Reliance on the Lord has failed to bring us to be like Him, so we must rely on adaptations of our innate code, activating evolutionary processes by changing its sequences and positions to confront conditions we are unprepared for. Such is evident for physical transfiguration of living creatures and adaptations for responding to danger and to protect sources for their needs, but can that also be for unique human behaviors, proposing they are determined by configurations of genetic building blocks, suggesting our virtues can be modified by evolutionary changes, becoming congruent with the environment we have chosen to transform, discarding outdated virtues claimed for an earlier time.

Stranger: For what you describe must include the soul and no one has identified its genetic makeup, perhaps permitting us to speculate the Lord endowed us with instructions we could never modify, maybe ignore but never delete, leaving His breathed-in spirit in a form we could we never escape or investigate by scientifically searching for its formula, being written by Him in a way we can know but never describe, laws written on the heart, decrees informing the conscience and bearing witness to what the Lord observes, secreted from others, giving substance to what He can judge us by. You might choose to forget what's hidden but the conscience tabulates everything even though you might be forgiven.

Skeptic: Striving to see and understand all, science tempts us, leading us to delve further into mysteries of being, splintering matter into invisible fragments, pieces unseen and described only by what they do, but the search is unending, leaving greater mysteries in mathematical remnants unable to be woven into an understanding of being, using our remaining last resort of reasoning, thinking we can endure, persisting with what senses and reason have provided.

Simple Simon: Tinkering with being's pieces, discovering how to manipulate evolution, trusting in people's efforts to cleanse and purify their thoughts and actions, ignores God's way for beings to develop, thinking only science has this power. Will the ego allow us to see God face to face, humbling us to acknowledge our creator?

Jurdan: As a passing phenomenon in a meaningless existence, appearing for no reason without any purpose, seeking science for all explanations, why should we have a spirit, reasoning evolutionary advancement should have no reason to give us a spirit, unless hidden in our inherent code is a spirit and if it cannot be discovered we remain in a purposeless nothingness, waiting for our time of existence to end. Survival of the fittest needs no spirit to create life and protect it with moral judgment, acknowledging no need for a soul to accommodate an imaginary spirit's home.

Skeptic: What goodness harmonizes with survival of the fittest, suggesting it is progression toward some perfection, knowing the perfect being will stand alone, but for what reason, realizing the one perfect is united only to oneself which can never be unity; so much for evolution.

Stranger: Never dismiss evolution's threat. Should evolution eliminate human's free will, removing it because of misuse, reverting all needs to their code's determination, so the Lord can maintain people as creations in a zoological garden, little different from Eden where He first placed them, a paradise where He can delight in all, having no one disobedient, never testing His authority, rebelling, battling each other or slaying brethren out of jealousy, giving Him reasons to judge ones He created, and devising means of retribution to punish all, sentencing all never to last.

Jurdan: If the cosmos continues to evolve, changing by the Word of your God, He must recognize errors, mistakes needing correction, and manages evolution to be what it is, justifying alterations to improve His accomplishments, and perhaps that might include removing human's free will, being a minor adjustment compared to the apocalypse creating the cosmos.

Skeptic: Believing the Big Bang apocalypse scripts our story, trusting a one-time explosion to narrate creation's formation, plodding since by evolutionary trials, experimenting for the fittest to survive, somehow providing us with reason, life gives no hope for anything to survive, no reason for us to persist, so we wait, expecting another long-overdue apocalypse, realizing only violence drives us between chaos and order, cycling existence with non-existence. If we find no explanation for our fate's direction, how can we be blamed for viewing life as absurd and add to its absurdity by our hand?

Simple Simon: What does believing in the Big Bang theory have to do with my beliefs, seeing it only as a theory having few merits? It only convinces me scientists work to inform us with new ideas, thinking they enrich our knowledge.

Jurdan: New ideas add virtue to people's thoughts, convincing them to modify beliefs, evaluating convictions in religious doctrines and dogmas, selecting ones judged to be inconsistent with modern life, discarding ones inappropriate and protecting some with needed violence, authorizing sages to write scripts for living, making each master of oneself, denying or ignoring participation by any deity.

Stranger: You neglect to admit messages encoded in your DNA, embedded by the Lord's choice in your genes, failing to acknowledge His inscribed instructions deposited in all at conception, leaving a framework to fill in, an inbox for living, directions to live by, and people call this one's soul. What do you think a person's conscience is? If evolution explains everything, a human being with a conscience could hardly thrive and reproduce where survival of the fittest rules, admitting this could be an explanation for development of creatures up to humans, but not beyond, trusting our Creator programmed us to know Him, His plans for us.

Jurdan: What is the evidence for this idea, making it more than imaginary folly?

Stranger: The Creator of humans gave all people instincts as beasts, and He gave humans an additional insight to believe they had a Creator, an innate provision to know God, and all people groups responded with some way to acknowledge and worship Him, all being directed by instincts to this end, leaving none unknowing. It is only when people's understanding of God grew that some decided to become like Him, assigning Him traits, ambitions and the drive to make Him like theirs, proclaiming their doctrines and dogmas surpass all others, sacrificing rituals of diversity, compelling all to follow theirs, the only true way, sanctioned by their free will.

Wanton: If the Lord planted inherent material for us to know Him, why are humans so intolerant, severely restricting religious freedom, fighting for people to ignore Him, as we acknowledge this as a worldwide problem?

Jurdan: People defend their personal religious domains, protecting what they have chosen, ways to believe and worship, suppressing intrusion by distrusted doctrines and dogmas, destroying heretic beliefs by torture and rape or by imprisonment and murder, conjuring up religion-based extremism and terrorism to convert all to their ways. Exercising intimidation, invoking terrorism, forcing people to follow different laws, decrees demanded by tyrants, leaders threaten fear, capturing minds seeking to escape, individuals reasoning to distrust and disbelieve, fleeing when they have the chance.

Stranger: Ones fleeing religions do not abandon the Lord but run from requirements humans compel the Lord to adopt, and only a few completely disbelieve in Him while many others continue to speak as He exists but find greater fulfillment following reason to deify themselves as one equal to the Lord.

Jurdan: Religious realism, embraced as today's self-sufficiency, allows one to choose, sifting through decrees and dogmas, finding ones to their liking and if none can be found, objectivity shows how to modify or create ones most compatible with their desires, as they exercise their innate rights and freedom to reason what is best for them. They differ from highly religious people, trapped by human-inspired convictions to maintain everything they were taught to believe.

Skeptic: Current reality, dictated by secularly-worshipping elites, looks down on religion as uninformed opinion, selfies' much-needed therapy, and for some more respected merely a private matter.

Stranger: The elites command absolute freedom, regarding religion as a strangle on their want's and desire's stifling convictions, but with complete control of freedom can they claim any degree of righteousness, realizing absolute freedom is inversely proportional to absolute righteousness?

Jurdan: Is Prancing Grace an elite, a new age huckster seeking followers, deceitfully commandeering religion to gain attention of suckers, fervently preaching moral laws to entice supporters?

Prancing Grace: Our cause is trustworthy, ever ready, mobilized to assist all followers.

Simple Simon: You may be always there but what if we miss your goal, jeopardizing our commitment to your cause? The Lord who never abandons us if we fail, disobeying His laws, blaspheming His decrees, remains with us, the door to His love and goodness always open, reaching out in welcome, inviting us to stay with Him. Can you be as nonjudgmental and forgiving, forgetting our mistakes, and remain full of grace and mercy? What human cause can be so forgetting, so honoring and accepting of people's failure, forgiving what they have done, never demanding vengeance or retribution to end their existence? If your cause is valued, important and essential for human progress, your doctrines of virtue are likely to require life's ending for some to preserve its purity.

Jurdan: Show me a worthy cause that never insisted on someone's blood to seal its virtues. Would Jesus Christ's perfection be remembered and honored without the spilling of His blood? Martyrs must have their blood shed to gain timeless memory, to have monuments impressed in follower's minds.

Simple Simon: God showed the way, planning His Son's death, a blood sacrifice, trusting this act to seize human attention, revealing a most efficient route for establishing His will in our hearts, and we justify our way by His example, blood-letting when warranted to promote our cause.

Stranger: Prancing Grace's cause presents a new challenge, but it must not conflict with my spiritual life's obeying the Lord, never trusting my reason to tolerate anything contesting His will, assuring my religious commitments will prevent any incursions by the natural world, trusting my soul remains in the light, revealing eternal truths, unveiling verities hidden by darkness,

Prancing Grace: Our cause, verified as honored and blessed, is at the forefront of today's progress, committed to addressing people's problems, and no one can compete with our serving ones afflicted with depression and mired in despair. Our movement offers more than your religion, providing faithless vagrants with hope, gifting them with objects to satisfy their wants and desires, but it exacts a penalty, calling followers to sacrifice their souls committed to a religion's dogmatic decrees, compelling them to worship in the name of doctrines modified to be attractive for meeting their wants and desires, because their trusted beliefs are no longer pure and worthy of veneration, their outdated doctrines and dogmas managed never to compete with secular idols, preventing competition from other causes, never vying with causes like ours, but we also refine our beliefs, making them acceptable, acknowledging all causes are created to feather one's nest with treasures of the world, seeing religious convictions are hardly for giving up treasures here and accumulating them in heaven.

Wanton: I invite dreams filled with optimism, promising to promote treasures here, never for depicting treasures waiting in heaven, trusting dreams develop my worldly desires, never for exploring any heavenly thoughts, never hinting of some eternal dwelling.

Jurdan: Claiming to follow your Lord, eventually declaring it in vain, profitless in keeping His ordinances, mournfully trudging through life, unlike ones happy and buoyant with overflowing pride, despising words convicting pride of being sinful, dismissing joy as ephemeral, lasting but moments when thinking of their faith, many find happiness more fulfilling by following one's will, satisfying things seen here and now, never by chasing after things inspired by one's imagination.

Prancing Grace: Consider our cause, created for mass appeal, acknowledging it energizes many having nothing to empower their will, no reason to celebrate their being, nothing to develop a worthy existence from a humble nonexistence, in contrast to obeying imagined laws compelling one to be humble, sanctifying humility, the generator of nothingness. We can make our followers something, snatching them from the jaws of oblivion, making them proud, dismissing any claim of pride being sinful, realizing without virtue of pride none can claim hope, no dreams for an optimistic future, so we convince them to dream.

Commoner: I pray for discernment to understand your offer, knowing one's favors can be deceitful, spewing words to implant ideas to satisfy vanity, couched to hide lack of wisdom, spoken to gain benefit, praising one's spirituality, for trusting one painted with vanity's scarlet beauty to cover my judgment and dismiss prevailing reason.

Simple Simon: Make no haste with offers too good to be true, bargains soon to be rescinded, calling one to revoke hasty decisions and impulsive thoughtlessness muting messages of caution from the Holy Spirit, to accept dubious invitations after consultation with reason, relied on as an afterthought. Is this a mistake?

Jurdan: Is your Lord's cause a graven image, a likeness of other gods, tempting me to bow down to its doctrines, threatening to visit iniquities on me, raining down afflictions, unending beyond my generation, teaching my children to worship it in kind? This is a mistake.

Commoner: Will following another cause end mercies for ones that love Him, people never taking His name in vain, if one can't discern whether the agent pretends to maintain anyone guiltless?

Prancing Grace: We all have causes dishonoring the Lord, ignoring commands we won't obey, so we compromise, revising ones impossible to keep, tolerating abuse of ones reason mocks, dismissing any shaming common sense. A person is not human who never covets, never willing oneself to accumulate and hoard, believing life's victory is sealed for ones with greatest success, being honored until death parts one from all possessions waiting to be polluted by time.

Jurdan: Do you depend on a following of heathens, free of commitments to anyone but themselves, trusting ones unknown to serve you, obeying as they hear of your cause, strangers until they are taught by you, realizing strangers eventually fade away, being uncommitted to everything, homeless to anyone's endeavors?

Wanton: Creating a home for heathens, strangers to any dwellings, fails because the homeless will faithfully cherish the freedom of homelessness and never choose any invitation to reside in your cause.

Commoner: Will your home attract all, including people unlike me? Before I would join, you must reveal all your hidden thoughts, openly and honestly exposing your ideas, especially explaining your visions and dreams, informing my soul of any grave reservations, easing my fears, convincing me of trust in your cause.

Prancing Grace: How far should I go, unveiling my mind and soul, wondering if anyone is worth bearing my all, one probing my being as one would expect from Jesus? Do you deify me, authorizing you to plumb my depths, seeking to know who I am and what I believe? Trust our concern for ones spiritually dejected, dismayed and afflicted with despair, wanting to resurrect hope and promise for restoration, needing encouragement so we can show them how to focus on our movement and depend on more than spiritual thoughts, recognizing despair traverses obstacles throughout life, compelling us to develop hope where possible and forget life ends with despair, hoping there may be more to come.

Simple Simon: False prophets, all varieties of saviors, appearing to dazzle people with great signs and wonders, promising to fulfill people's wants, work to deceive God's chosen ones.

Prancing Grace: Hope sustains timely assurance of my desires, never being guaranteed for yours, knowing your Savior promised people He would return, coming before some of His disciples would see death, and with that said thousands of years ago how can anyone trust His Words? So, don't allow despair to consume your life, knowing it will appear soon enough, surprising you, coming unannounced before you can accept it, so define your life to ignore despair until it forces its way upon you. Until then satisfy your passions without relenting, always preparing ways to satisfy them for each ensuing moment, never allowing any pause to bring on despair, crumbling into hopelessness.

Jurdan: How important is your cause, seeing you plead it so fervently? Would it risk lives to abolish others, destroying lives as mandated by your doctrines, killing others who will never convert their beliefs to yours?

Prancing Grace: Remember how the Lord ordered execution for those impeding population of the Holy Land, annihilating innocent ones fighting to defend their homes, following His orders to conquer and subdue its inhabitants and proclaiming no mercy for anyone in paths of conquest, obliterating all for whatever comes to mind. By His example we promote our cause, using methods He showed to be effective.

Jurdan: How well you know. Show me a cause that doesn't involve warfare, requiring--no demanding--obedience and submission, conversion if possible, executing anyone voicing defiant protests, and if not immediate then by waiting out for inevitable death without salvation. Scripture's testimony describes all this and has been the most effective teacher for human behavior, training people in choosing and dealing with who determines their enemies are.

Simple Simon: Zeal for battle, clashing with others, is bred within me, never driven out but restrained, waiting for its moment to freely explore chaos, rewarding my courage with victory, perhaps with death, but in any case, my leader's truths tell me I will be heaven-bound, but I pray my zeal for battle will end before, confining me for eternity without any taste of conflict.

Commoner: Faithfully obedient to the Lord's wishes, decrees never determined by me, is incompatible with the needs of any cause but His, devouring my attention and leaving little for other's plans or mine, as I strive to please Him always.

Stranger: God's cause with goals lasting eternal, beyond all I could imagine, calls me to be devoted and faithful to Him. Can other causes be so lasting, knowing another could never replace His, realizing individual plans evaporate quickly, predictably disappearing with changing winds, carried away into no where's keeping, never making your cause unique or blessed by the Lord?

Prancing Grace: Our cause will last, never be disappearing but possibly transformed for improvement.

Stranger: How can one know how to reform any cause, except by trial and error, and no one accepts mere reformation to make changes, with amenders throwing out the present to bring in a new world with their own causes, testing them on people, using individuals as subjects for their experiments. The crucibles for experimentation, consuming humans in their fire, showing unlimited imagination in their trials, never cease with flames of destruction burning greater than ever, attracting worldwide attention as people stand by in silent amazement. Can humans ever discover how to live in peace, paying little attention to the Lord's words, I leave you in peace?

Skeptic: Causes demand discipline, restricting free will and setting aside freedom, creating new decrees to redesign justice and invoke new judgments, dismissing doctrines of previous enlightenments promising utopias to create paradise. Is Prancing's cause any different, trusting it would not copy what has been tried and failed in the past?

Jurdan: Human causes depend on creating scapegoats, developing shadowing people to dismiss fear, making them targets for blame, and success depends on how well leaders convince people enemies must be developed and claim leaders are best at creating ones most easily convinced of being simpletons, choosing victims deserving little favor whom followers can be taught to fear as great threats, individuals before never considered, unknown as foes until a cause creates them. People should never make choices until they are instructed what to avoid, teaching them fears they never knew.

Wanton: Causes gain acceptance by casting doubt on all others, generating fear for all opposition, making people fear rule by others, and Prancing must differ little from others using fear to attract followers. Does any cause lead by never using hope as propaganda, trusting only in some trace of goodness to further their agenda?

Skeptic: Hope narcotizes, creating illusions, leading people to nothingness, promoting imaginations of something good coming from nothing, when failure destroys hopeful anticipations of grandeur, leaving hope as life's only remaining deception.

Prancing Grace: We preach more than hope, giving people more with trust in our cause.

Simple Simon: I believe in hope, but only by believing in the Lord, seeing other causes promising hope always fail, serving only the well off, discouraging most by bringing their hopes to despair, making them victims of suffering, encouraging some most fortunate to be compassionate and sympathetic, lavishing only pity on neglected ones long forgotten and wandering in hopelessness.

Commoner: Does your cause dream of a promised land? We can achieve everything with such a place, promised by God, assured by hope, and dependent on our obedience to His commands.

Skeptic: Promised lands are never settled without spilled blood, yours and the conquered land's inhabitants, realizing no one gives up a homeland without a battle.

Prancing Grace: We are prepared to fight, trusting God is on our side, convincing us by His leadership, and we must be obedient, never deviating from His call on what to destroy and whose lives to spare.

Simple Simon: Must you kill anyone knowing the Lord by some different way, believing He never blesses any other, trusting you to represent the only chosen ones, selected to be remnants protecting His way?

Commoner: God gifted a promised land to His chosen people, presenting an award requiring nothing in return except obedience, but He failed to understand people's free will, and they neglected to destroy heathens occupying the land. To please God, His warriors must eliminate squatters interfering with His established plans, something His chosen ones failed at.

Skeptic: The Lord apparently programs people's will, making them robots, canceling their reason, assuring all their activities are determined by Him. He could have created us to remain in heaven, never needing a proving ground to develop us, growing us to become like Him, but that must not be His desire, and His imagination determined what we are, developing an enigma beyond our understanding. All human attempts to follow the Lord, thinking they can secure a promised land, have failed, as have His for the chosen ones. If He failed at this, how can anyone believe Prancing's plans will succeed?

Stranger: Many claim transformation of creation provides their promised land with no one having reached it, delayed by struggles with unbelief, never diligent in trusting faith, lacking full assurance of hope, patiently enduring, as they wait to inherit the Lord's promises.

Jurdan: By what authority do any of you speak, being credentialed by whom, sanctioned by what certificate, empowered by what achievement?

Prancing Grace: Our cause will reclaim our inheritance, seizing what rightly belongs to us, fighting for what we treasure, promising we will be the legitimate stewards ordained by God, regaining His covenant's promises, committing us to restore creation's goodness, refurbishing it by destruction of decadence and sanctifying the inherent promise of our goals, He has created a circumstance for us to lead, seeing it as the way to follow His will.

Skeptic: You base this on no authority, how can you trust your cause is a circumstance to follow His will?

Prancing Grace: We are confident in Him, acknowledging Him in all ways as our everlasting authority, rejecting nothing He says, and His will becomes easier to accept with revision of His Words, making them more favorable for present times.

Simple Simon: Living with a revised Gospel, modified to conform to one's needs, makes you an illegitimate heir, unable to claim parentage with Jesus, an orphan living by one's own will, struggling, stranded in a world made mysterious without Him.

Stranger: Do you trust the Lord endorses a cause worshipping with revision of His words, promising His blessing will never be taken and given to another more likely to bring forth His fruits?

Prancing Grace: He knows of no others to be more reliable stewards of His creation, favoring us in many ways and now acknowledging our cause to best continue blessing our nation. Remembering the Lord tells us, Look to Me and be saved, we tell people, Look to us and be blessed, for we are the promised ones, maintaining truth's light shining on the hill, protected to keep the Gospel alive.

Simple Simon: You offer nothing to improve His plan, all being unacceptable by Him, reinstating a royal priesthood and a seemingly holy nation of unremarkable people, ignoring Him who called us out of darkness into truth, His marvelous light, dismissing ideas reasoned by others.

Skeptic: Believing blessings come from the Lord, trusting they are gifts of His love for us, should we look to a person promising us blessings because of a human's love for us?

Jurdan: Name one you can ask, Do you love me, trusting someone to know what love entails, confident in what they reply, hoping it to be an unqualified assent. Discerning what love means, would any response be no better than a person could offer, qualifying love with reservations, conditions, situations or other circumstances?

Simple Simon: Love is never perfect, being darkened or lightened by the state of one's disposition. Look at Peter, confused when answering the Lord, telling Him he could love Him as much as a person could, an individual not yet having the Holy Spirit to show what unequivocal love means. When you ask, Do you love me, trust the response from one seeking to be righteous, but can one hearing this question from you be so trusting?

Stranger: Responding to the question, Do you love me, answering without giving it one thought, does anyone ever give it importance, replying from habit, agreeing without any complicating considerations, verbally attesting to a degree of mutual regard somewhat resembling love. Love is never satisfied with words, only by actions, obeying activities that demonstrate devotion, commensurate with commands to feed my lambs, for one must prove words proclaiming love are nothing without works to certify their declarations.

Skeptic: If Prancing Grace can't promise us love, no blessings can be expected.

Commoner: Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and we trust this to be His signature commandment, asking nothing more and promising blessings for obedience.

Prancing Grace: Trust me to be faithful as the sun, ruling people as with its fidelity, shining light to favor their needs, ensuring promises like daylight's certainty, ensuring all to thrive, raining prosperity, sustaining them like waving blades of grass.

Skeptic: Beware that tyranny can speak with a forked tongue, promising affluence by creating enemies, ignoring love to assure blessings, controlling subject's actions, determining all ideas, forcing people to abandon free will, marching them hobbled, misstepping their way to uncertainty, to bleak and monotonous existence, fading into nothingness, disappearing with time, but waiting, soon to reappear. Tyranny never retires to tend a garden but ends its time burrowed beneath, waiting for a new springtime to appear.

Wanton: Where did we learn of tyranny, trying to remember it's teacher, recalling its oldest protagonist? Is it blasphemous to credit Yahweh with tyranny, the unforgiving God, outlawing dissent, mindful only of retribution, distributing it where He willed, spewing hatred randomly, landing wherever it alighted, on the just as well as the unjust, since all are condemned as sinful, born in sin?

Skeptic: If Yahweh created all, trusting His evaluation of creation is good, declaring His efforts represented pure goodness, reasoning all happiness derives from goodness, true happiness must dwell with God, the supreme deity, giving us concern with Yahweh's connection with tyranny, a God blending tyranny with love, producing something one can hardly understand.

Jurdan: As Maker of the highest good, reasoning His Word creates all, spelling nothing but good, how can humans believe they are formed like their Lord, bearing His image, assigned a token of His being, tyranny as a part of His nature, thereby creating you in His image? Tyranny being distinct from the highest good, cannot be part of it, except perhaps by a scientist thinking of the attraction between unlike forces, knowing positive attracts negative, theorizing goodness must attract the bad, and such interactions combine to form something different, some good and some undesirable.

Wanton: Claiming the greatest good is happiness, ignores its coming and going, appearing briefly in rare moments, delighting us with its possibility, but remaining elusive on the run, with fleeting moments to bless ones deserving a moment of goodness.

Skeptic: Does the Lord, being the greatest virtue, reward us with moments of happiness, judging our greatest good has risen to measure His? If so, why would He allow happiness to greet scoundrels, blessing them as only He can do?

Simple Simon: They might claim happiness but it is always tempered with lurking anxiety or fear, acknowledging the unworthiness of their pleasure, hearing their betrayed conscience speak out, preventing happiness from ever being complete, until they realize goodness, supreme for the Lord, His virtue extolling ultimate happiness, can be their goal, transfiguring their being to become like His, exhibiting justice, accumulating wisdom, learning to reason like Him and assuring security is mine.

Commoner: Security, flying about as a sparrow, knowing not where to land, is elusive, avoiding capture, escaping attempts to be tamed, cherishing its free spirit, wanting no one to direct its ways, resembling faith, once seized wavering in its captivity, flying in and out of its nest, strung out on a leash, tested on its freedom to leave, restricted to be on call at one's beckoning. Should I plead for security, praying it would never leave me, protecting me with faith, realizing it will end my freedom, stifling my will to be myself, ending interactions with the world, relationships bringing greatest happiness?

Wanton: Security is what everything is about, realizing we are created with alarms, alerting us to dangers in every shadow, enemies waiting to attack, arming us with weapons to meet every challenge, but no one can recognize all their enemies so we must identify those anyone should fear.

Simple Simon: How does one know you don't identify enemies but create them, believing all humans need something to fear and if none are evident, some can be created?

Jurdan: Causes don't create enemies but reveal characteristics of certain people that can't be trusted, certain to make them suspects.

Wanton: Do causes shelter people with no virtues, ones to be distrusted? People involved in any cause when eventually becoming well-known soon raise anxiety, often promoting distrust, leaving one to ponder, should I discard them as unworthy, fearing losses one by one could destroy our following?

Skeptic: What trust binds anyone's convictions, assuring security for all human efforts? Can you trust the air breathed once by millions of others, uncontaminated except by their evil intentions, the food you consume, unadulterated by chemicals for destruction, the words you hear, ambiguous in seeking your fall?

Prancing Grace: Many of my chosen ones, distrusting all, once hopefully calling on the Lord, frustrated with anguish on receiving no response, hearing nothing, reasoned to look elsewhere and trusting my promises they joined me, interpreting His silence as freeing them to do their will. They now serve two masters, my cause and the Lord's, and I show them how it can be done.

Stranger: Wait for consequences of serving two masters, confident in coming, for time to reveal its error, concealed from discernment until opportunity for correction has past. Be sure that wisdom rather than emotions of a moment directs your decision. Beware of striking your hand with a stranger, one unknown and untested, before sealing a pledge to follow anyone but the Lord, never a stranger but with you always, delivering His Word to create you and remaining with you through His messenger. Trusting humility to be of the Lord, heed no one lacking humility, appearing prideful, boasting of one's plans, discerned as not living the Lord's convictions. Test the Lord to seek understanding whether circumstances of strangers' convictions are of the Lord or is mischief with evil intentions, realizing such purposes may hide in one's hopes, concealed to confuse decisions, betraying one to deceitful leaders, scribbling agendas to scramble creation's goodness.

Simple Simon: Committed to one master, the Lord, responding to His calling, I devote my efforts to love one another, sanctifying myself with work for Him, having decided how this is best done, following instructions for its doing, trusting this to seal my salvation.

Stranger: Can sanctification be complete, more than making one's being complete, costing one's earthly concerns, focusing intently on those of the Lord's, devoting all one's strengths: body, mind, and spirit on His purpose, completing all work He directs separating us from being only His to gain sanctification's fullness, making us to be wholly like Jesus, ignoring our inherent code to be like Him?

Commoner: Sanctification's cost is enormous, giving up all I like to be, stripping my will of its suggestions, changing it from a doormat for temptation, prohibiting tread of all desires, removing happiness my will depends on. Could I ever be one with the Father, rejecting oneness with the world, wondering if the Holy Spirit could condone and accept a partial sanctification, seeing how most of us are?

Stranger: Partial sanctification identifies us all, being incomplete in never satisfying every doctrine and dogma, with each religious group writing their own, creating tenets to suit each one's needs, sanctifying followers with one's trusted decrees, using words to build fences for protection against intrusion by heretics, strangers trying to invade. What began as churches with basic unfettered faith in the Lord, confessing Him as the only God, was soon invaded by viral elements, transforming them into malignant cells for replication, destroying their protection to allow further invasion by malicious dictums, human words justifying deviations from eternal truths, producing religions never intended by the Lord, erecting shelters to protect human desires rather than environments to acknowledge Him as the only creator of goodness and beauty.

Simple Simon: Mending borders, fixing fences, securing frontiers, religions protect their territory, restricting worldly invasion bent on destroying their sacred practices by secular decrees, enacting laws to modify a religion's powers. But think of what the world could achieve if religion's only doctrine is to preach Christ crucified, spreading His commands proclaimed in the Great Commission, stripped of dogmas encircling myriads of churches entrenched within moats secluding them from each other, opening follower's eyes to quench their thirst with living water never found within protective shelters, confessing nothing more, nothing less, than faith in the Maker of all creation.

Commoner: A believer's pilgrimage encounters doctrines and dogmas every step of the way, each claiming one need go no further, convicting all their authority, defining everything needed to know of the Godhead.

Simple Simon: No one dares to steal people's sacred beliefs, depriving them of anchors to the Lord, lifeblood in doctrines and dogmas, asking all to do more than follow Him, obeying everything He asks.

Skeptic: Does anyone know all the Lord has spoken, Words He has indeed said, or are we drowned in messages never uttered by Him, written by scribes claiming to be prophets, adding to essential truths summarized in His Great Commission?

Stranger: Jesus came to destroy embellishing doctrines and dogmas not of the Lord, leaving nothing untouched, threatening the status, and look at His fate, destruction on the advice of an angry mob. The Lord's doctrines and dogmas, decrees declared moral, sanctified as the will of God, become just laws, essential for uplifting believers.

Skeptic: If segregation of humans by doctrines and dogmas is an existential expression of people's division, unity can never be realized, blocked by unneeded ordinances which are morally wrong and contrary to the will of God.

Commoner: Jesus challenges us to love our enemies, but we must create them first, using doctrines and dogmas to stamp others as incompatible, victimizing people with justified animosity, identified as extremists, objects for people to hate, crying crucify them as heretics, blasphemers of sacred beliefs.

Skeptic: Believers must punish heretics dismissing sacred doctrines, criticizing their authority to contradict ancient religious dogmas, questioning theological reasoning, belittling its interpretations as blasphemers defying their angry God.

Simple Simon: What appeases an angry God, a hoard of token believers making allowances to keep Him happy, doling out money and time prioritized by their calculations, or recognizing remnants sanctified by obeying His decrees, keeping nothing from Him, stealing none of His due, reckoning nothing to pilfer and degrade their faith integration? Can believers modifying His commands sustain Christianity in days to follow and be trusted by God to maintain His eternal truths or will humans change them to a meaningless jumble of dogmas unable to survive?

Skeptic: Is faith integration exercising modification of belief by trusted doctrines and dogmas?

Stranger: Burning incense to one's vanity, sanctifying one's beliefs, trusting ideas formed by reason, building confidence to confirm convictions, people search for words to justify their thoughts, looking for phrases to praise, to certify their holiness, comforting them to live the way they choose, sanctifying them with aromas narcotizing them with auras deadening their souls, never with jumbled dogmas trusted to survive, but with words and thoughts as incense driving vanity to praise idols of themselves, walking after ways they devise, controlled by their imaginations, whatever comes from their hearts, smiting tongues of any reproach.

Simple Simon: God didn't intend to scatter people's minds with doctrines and dogmas but dispersed people having scattered His intentions by reason, and He sent out chosen believers to carry His message, telling people to be united as one in trusting God, to be missionaries never relying on their own powers, reasoning what is best for them, staking claims on their sovereignty to form nations, enclaves to rule as they wished, isolated planets as their dominions, and some carried His message but transformed it to consist of their own ideas, selecting words to sanctify their desires, distrusting anything different, resulting in scattering of both His people and message, generating conflicts large and small, preventing anyone or anything from being united. Who is left to pray for learning God's will, asking to direct activities He wills, disregarding any special work self-assigned by themselves to do? Praying to the Lord of harvest, seeking His wisdom to undo all scattering, we can reunite, restoring as it was in the beginning when goodness was unblemished, untarnished by inequity.

Wanton: Humans covet fables, elevating many to knowledge, converting some to truth, treasuring many as wisdom or science to direct their lives, believing matter's essence can be investigated and transformed into gold, wealth for decorating their vanity and to shower them with happiness. So do we seek our past, thinking we can learn from it, profiting to change our behavior, growing us to something better, trusting it to improve us as human beings, but all our questions from fables and past lives, confounding our desires for improvement, rewarding our wants with only more questions, leave us impatiently digging for further insights, believing progress is achieved by understanding past endeavors, hardly accepting God's ongoing revelations to edify all we know and can trust, trusting what laws prescribe, decrees demanded by dogma and documents from people's convictions, trusted as truths, sanctified by their prideful vanity.

Stranger: Understand your thinking, never accepting what truth embodies, that laws are never made for righteous ones, but for the lawless and disobedient, the ungodly and sinners, ones unholy and profane, for everyone acting to ignore the Lord's eternal mandates, working for them to be compromised, leaving space for tolerance to accept what will make them happy and free them from judgment troubling my reason.

Commoner: My faith in the Lord is absolute and unquestioning, relying on no doctrines or dogmas, trusting it to sanctify me, welcoming Jesus to exhibit Himself in my flesh, directing everything I do, reserving nothing to be undone, never shaming my actions, acknowledging His great act of atonement, springing joy, transforming my pride to profound humble holiness, justifying me to the Father watching as I become right with Him, to deserve the assurance that nothing can separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Simple Simon: Do you receive messages from the Holy Spirit, invited in to help in many ways, depending on no doctrines or dogmas to reveal the Lord's will, dismissing arguments made by your will, hardly considering your reason, looking on your common sense with a sardonic smile? Do you wait patiently for His support, expecting no confirmation for your conclusions, giving no license for condensing your thoughts into truths?

Commoner: Needing more than messages, I must be committed to working out my salvation, knowing the Lord expects this of me, showing my gratitude for Jesus Christ's atonement on the cross, dying for my sins, coming back to send me the Holy Spirit, fulfilling my need for helpful counseling.

Prancing Grace: Protect what you must, trusting your faith in the Lord justifies, believing obedience, consecration and dedication count nothing without faith, so with faith in Him you can devote your energies to our cause, realizing you never need to repent for mistakes in not following the law, so join us and never jeopardize your salvation.

Skeptic: Your ideas, slouching in shadows, hiding in laws, with uncertainty hovering on whether they become lights of truth, hoping to be seated beside eternal truths but never lasting with their light for you never know if your decrees will survive, their moment disappearing only to be replaced by another shadowy thought, hoping it will be more, attaining status of an icon, withstanding the scrutiny of truth before being invited into the light.

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Wanton: Exercising reason to know my I am, confirming my identity as a being to trust, I choose to whom, if any, I will be subjected, and accepting no rebuke from anyone, I remain free to be myself, deciding what to follow, confident in my way, never being repentant for any decisions.

Simple Simon: Drowning in self-satisfaction, struggling to maintain self-esteem, unable to surrender, try swimming to the distant shore, releasing your burden of iniquity, weighing you down in worldly waters of sin, to escape from yourself, the tyranny ruling you through and through, realizing its possibility only by your change to modify all that you are, realizing to reach that shore requires you to be crucified in Christ.

Commoner: Having rejected self-esteem, what use can I be to further any secular cause, my mind and efforts being closely bound to Jesus, making me little value to anything else, being important only to Him and His purposes, being crucified with Him, remembering Him tell us, You can do nothing without me. Do you believe my personal passionate devotion to Him can be shared with anyone else, with other leaders and their cause?

Simple Simon: The Lord chose me, emphasizing I can do nothing without Him, dismissing all I wanted to do for Him, selecting me to work His needs and carry out His plans, convincing me to be crucified with Christ, never looking to the right or left, never wishing to be somewhere else, a place of my own choosing, but resigning to His control, bending and molding me, transforming me without completely breaking my spirit, changing me to be processed for deification, I fulfill His purpose planned with my creation.

Prancing Grace: Save your ardent zeal for Him, trusting there will be a time for it, waiting until you accomplish more urgent purposes, following us to satisfy our goals, bettering our dominion for all, destroying our foes, sanctifying our rule, believing our purpose is established by the Lord, blessed by Him to succeed.

Simple Simon: Putting God's purpose off, delaying His commands, subjecting His will to a lower priority, trusting my space will persist until your purposes are completed, gambles with my integrity, telling the Lord to wait on me, prioritizing a time to accommodate my goals, convenient to my choosing. He calls me to do His will now, fearing a later opportunity my never come, not even a moment for Him at the end.

Commoner: Can I retain some semblance of myself and still belong to the Lord, depending on Him to satisfy my desires and wants, trusting Him to be faithful, believing I can name it and claim it, or must I concede all to Him, giving up everything I treasure, suffering with Him and allowing no self-pity, expecting joy for being in genuine relationship with Him and none to sanctify me for worldly labors? I was never created to be my own person, choosing my own ways over all others, as I eventually realized being everything unto myself comes to naught.

Jove: Trusting only myself, drawing on my reason to discover facts, giving myself to no other, I could never be crucified in Christ, wiping out all I have slaved to be, emptying myself for Him to live in me, making me a servant bonded to His will, denying all I have labored to be, forsaking the myself I have chosen, devoting everything for His sake. My history has created so many pieces that my being could never fit into His puzzle, finding no space to be appropriate.

Stranger: Works are important when doing the Lord's. Recall Jesus Christ's last words, telling us to go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Consider that command, an order for works, a call to arms, never for fitting into any puzzle, asking for a piece contributed by you.

Simple Simon: Works save no one with their nature driven by vanity, seeking glory, reasoning to become sanctified, choosing their way for salvation, sacrificing everything to protect their beliefs, believing they will be first in line to be honored by God. Let those trusting works be justified by their actions, for they could be convicted of inviting imagination to determine things much worse, knowing its propensity to promote evil, convincing people to delight in destroying goodness.

Skeptic: Admit some worthy works, beginning with noble intentions, conceal deceit in their foundations and become regretful with time unveiling their real intent, leading vanity to embellish their value, praising them to be most noteworthy.

Stranger: Jesus can justify fragmented lives, finding accommodations to place them in His assortment of misfits, calling them to confess, renouncing jagged deeds, showing His justification can bond them to eternal life with Him, revealing no one crucified in Him can ever be un-crucified, the dead in Christ remaining dead in Him, having their existence reclaimed by the Lord, returning to the Creator.

Jurdan: Why should we listen to Him, forgetting we have philosophers teaching how to improve our life, relating faithfully with each other, and we wonder why your Creator would provide them with excellent reason if not to consider the ways we should live.

Commoner: Philosophy trains dullards to be antichrists and prepares believers to apologize for their faith, employing intellectual arguments and logic to convince unbelief and wavering faith of what decrees they should trust.

Stranger: Convincing believers to abandon philosophical doctrines and dogmas fails miserably, hearing their laments, We would lose our faith in the Lord by discarding what theologians and philosophers have taught us, reasoning they are necessary for belief, telling us we cannot depend only on the Holy Spirit but must consolidate our knowledge and trust in God by evolutionary progression in all possible ways, growing us in faith with inspired appeals using apologetic reasoning.

Simple Simon: Teaching logic, using it to reason, formulating ideas coherent with logic's rules, thinking there can be no others, philosophers convince us edicts for life begin and end with their intellectual assaults on our thoughts, convicting us to accept their truths, insisting on their verity, claiming contradiction of logic is the art of fools, using it to trust in being their person, authorizing their actions to be as good as any others.

Stranger: Theological logic supporting mark of the beast, believed the Lord created some to be fallen and dangerous, threatening all not joining to be persecuted, tolerating no one refusing to follow the ways of the beast, an antichrist created by prophetic conclusions. Is it beyond human reason that our Creator-God would breathe life into some being to produce a creature acting as an antichrist, thinking creation is all forms of good and evil, positives and negatives, fantasizing love and unity can be expected? Who but philosophers gave humans the idea that their experiences should be characterized as either good or evil, such being the Lord's intent, incorporated in His design for the cosmos, contrary to love and unity He commands for all.

Simple Simon: Doctrines and dogmas provide the mark of the beast, ensuring separation, proclaiming any unity to be heretical, admonishing anyone languishing in love, thinking love can conquer all.

Commoner: Does the Lord creating all with goodness and beauty and giving us free will represent a conflict of interest, balancing a seeming dark side with creation's virtues?

Stranger: The Lord's plan appears in all humans, created as an innate code, activated by free will to hear Him, and they respond by imagining how He must be, describing Him in comprehensible ways, giving His Words understandable meanings, but people are tempted to reason Him more than their thoughts are able, and to satisfy mediocre conclusions they create doctrines and dogmas.

Commoner: Can I believe, trusting Jesus is the Son of God, without Scriptures vacillating between gloom and doom, citing words interpreted as prophecy, needing no miracles, dismissing apologetics determined by human reason, relying on the Lord to open all He has put within me, innate until my free will activates its potential?

Prancing Grace: Confusion occupies your thoughts, disabling your will to make decisions, leaving you stranded, unable to consider our cause.

Commoner: You urge me to leave everything, giving up what I follow, forsaking the counsel of my family to join you, jeopardizing allegiance to my band of brethren, to creep under the shroud hiding your mystery, promised to be transparent but hiding what you choose to conceal. How much of my commitment to the Lord must I be forced to leave, devoting myself to you rather than to Him?

Prancing Grace: We ask you never to give up devotion to the Lord, knowing it amounts to little for most professed believers, sacrificing an hour's moments on the Sabbath, leaving all other time free to follow one's desires, so we don't require anyone to abandon their walk with Him, knowing what few steps it takes. If anyone is overboard with Him, trying to swim with His walk on water, they must compromise their convictions, realizing they are not equipped to perform His miracles and recognize we never expect such magic of anyone.

Stranger: Never attribute the Lord's miracles to magic, knowing some unveil magic as a ruse, luring deception, deceiving eyes to mystify subjectivity, shrouding reality in obscurity to confound truth. Miracles are reserved for chance, knowing some can occur when probability rings up its turn, but never for the Lord who, as the mover of all, needs only His word to invoke anything He chooses, witnessed by His Word becoming flesh, manifesting His Word to create all. God's work is not accomplished by miracles, but in our astonishment fostered by our ignorance, we wonder at what must be described as miracles, defying what reason would anticipate, ignoring what any human would predict, acting on our own initiative, relying on our own vision, dismissing any revelation from the Lord, silenced by our will to be our own, directed by only ourselves.

Commoner: Responding to the Lord's commands, engaging His Words, we strive to do His will, seeking to increase our righteousness, finding right things, straining reason to justify our deeds, but is this enough, assuring us of His favor, enhancing our chances for salvation?

Stranger: Do you rely on His power, completely forgetting yours, leaving it in His hands to do all things, so you can say, We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, which leaves your gifts unwoven, stretching your actions to find failure if you never count on the Lord's power before embarking on works to please Him. Eagerness to serve Him without inviting His participation, believing you can do everything alone by your power, dishonors Him, leaving Him as a bystander to acknowledge your work, priding your actions, rewarding yourselves and proclaiming as a child, See I can do this all by myself. But none of us are prepared to ignore God, trusting our reason and powers to do anything without Him.

Simple Simon: Watching our failures, humiliating us to recognize immaturity, awakening us to see ourselves, the Lord tells us to try nothing without Him, calling return to Him, echoing His plea of centuries.

Skeptic: Trying nothing without Him dooms one to remain in the abyss of nothingness.

Prancing Grace: Choose our cause, trying nothing without its approval, building your strength on its virtues.

Stranger: Trusting your cause is chosen, selected to join the royalty of the Lord's priesthood, to become one of some holy nation, called from darkness into creation's marvelous light, one must run from the world's unity, disavowing unity Jesus prayed for all to follow, ignoring all He asked of the Father. If your cause is righteous, obedient to God's commands, you can never unite with humans who change His words, making them acceptable so each can live by their will.

Jurdan: Ignore all directives proclaiming submission to every human ordinance for your Lord's sake, decreed by ones in power, rulers people have chosen, making them servants subject to masters, obeying laws of the land.

Simple Simon: Rejecting every human doctrine, trust battles are the Lord's, giving Him complete control, unwilling to be dismissed in favor of one's will, never trusting aptitudes or believing in one's will's power by forgetting convictions of doing all things only through Him, acknowledging His presence is always willing, waiting at one's side to engage in struggle.

Skeptic: Observing every battle calls on the Lord, praying for victory, how can each opponent trust battles are the Lord's, with one fated to be the victor and the other destined for defeat, asking if each one's battle is the Lord's?

Stranger: Wisdom claims religions are not for separating us from one another but for binding people together. Is then religion the expression of uniting the un-united, perfecting the interactions we came with, our innate need for another human, freeing us from imprisonment in ourselves? Acquiring the idea of religion, fulfilling an inherent need, our free will in developing its tenets has provided people with a panoply of religious beliefs and practices which they rigorously defend, fighting for their survival with any weapon they can enlist. Warfare never begins without blessings, thanking God for siding with prayer warriors, expecting Him to lead them into battle, enthroned in His ark, invested with amulets for protecting His army, promising victory, trusting the battle is His, leaving all in His hands.

Wanton: How can the Lord choose sides when different beliefs on Him leads people to war? Whose belief does He trust? How can He trust human's own solutions, convinced by reason to be reliable and neglect the Lord's advice, His unchanging wisdom, trusting Him in all one's battles?

Skeptic: Religious diversity authorizes disunity, reflecting people's rights, freedom to remain un-united, disregarding hope in the Lord's last prayer.

Wanton: People never desire unity, preferring to be unique, acknowledging no one like them, wanting no one to admire but themselves, and they will condemn religions other than their own by reasoning rights to modify beliefs in God, molding them to suit their needs.

Skeptic: Leaders determining their cause and compelled to follow conditions of Orthodoxy's decrees are likely to fail, especially where freedom of religion has had its way, hearing acclamations of God's love for them, transforming their beliefs into self-love, trusting they are blessed uniquely, prepared for sitting at the Lord's right hand, endowed as no other with His favor, rewarding their faith, hope and love, but is this reasoned only for their desires?

Reformer: Religions are never satisfied with God, developing dogmas to suit people's desires, separating believers to distinguish their convictions, obligating many to be heretics, so why must we be driven to develop religions when we must confess that we hardly know God and should put our imagination to rest thinking we can describe Him like us, having been made in His image, trusting He can be like no one other than humans. Replace religion with belief in God, believing in only Him as the one true God, discarding the pantheism mingling the Lord's attributes with people's wants and desires.

Jurdan: Deceit can creep into any cause, disguised beyond recognition, infiltrating with devious plans, secretly stealing in with cohorts armed with different agendas, planning ways to disarm virtue, replacing it with deception, realizing many might follow their subterfuge, voiding virtues appearing reasonable to the unthinking majority.

Simple Simon: Praying for ventures never to intercede for such trouble is futile without the Holy Spirit, acknowledging He must reside within one, the Messenger authorized for bearing prayers to the Lord. Without Him prayers are scattered, unable to blossom beyond sympathy, and many wonder why their prayers are never answered.

Stranger: Circumstances remain mysterious without the Holy Spirit to show their meaning, and many He chooses to hide, concealing their reason until one understands why God sends them for our awakening but never tempting us to explain their coming, trusting they are never understood unless they come to life cultivated in a sacred place, a place where circumstances are honored and used to fulfill His purpose.

Commoner: You must believe my prayers are never heard unless their messages come from the Holy Spirit and if He does not dwell in me the Lord never receives them, restricting my prayers from being heard, thinking they must go through an intermediary, an authorized holy receiver living in my soul's temple, likened to a holy priest transmitting messages to the Lord. The temple was once where all worshiped, thanking Him with sacrifices. Has that changed where no such temple is required, believing it is within us, needing no priest to hear us for committing our prayers to the Lord?

Jove: Do you seek the Lord as an ally, approaching Him through prayer, trusting Him above all others? I don't trust Him to that extent, fearing He might intervene, disapproving my intentions, scolding me with minor objections, claiming everything must be His way, offering no help unless all is done under His direction.

Simple Simon: Must we make the Lord like us, humanizing Him to trust He hears our prayers, believing He is another being like us, made in His image, bearing features of a human personality, endowed with thoughts, free will, feeling and self-consciousness, essential and fundamental conditions for all prayer?

Stranger: So He must be. Bless my prayers, verifying I have a living relationship with God, more than a fellowship, trusted as an association in communion with Him, a oneness never ceasing, a kinship never to be broken, assured as inherent to my creation, sustaining the goodness and beauty of His presence, as I pray to Him for no other reason, more than for mere contemplation and adoration, believing He must be like me, satisfying His wants and desires to find happiness and discover joy, but I must adore the Lord, making Him the most holy object of my contemplation, adoration being contemplative surrender to the supreme good.

Simple Simon: We bring so much to the Lord, trusting Him to accept our thoughts, but is that what He wants, bringing our wants for His blessing, confirming our desires, certifying them as acceptable? No. He is there for us but He is the One we must listen to for sanctioning our deeds, never the other way around. When what's done is done, consummating our wants and desires, isn't it too late? Approach the Lord first, seeking circumstances for directing our way to act on His will, and then nothing needs His blessing, for everything coming from Him is already blessed, lacking in nothing, uniting us with Him in peace and joy, a sanctification no longer requiring us to pray for blessings.

Jurdan: What is your Lord but a contemplation of abstract imaginations, unapproachable as the One unseen, existing to expect adoration, created by your expectations for His essence to become the victim of speculations.

Stranger: Trusting in none of your thoughts, I have accepted His invitation to be one with Him, trusting Him in all things, manifesting a commitment to forever be in an unreserved living relationship with Him.

Simple Simon: No association in a living relationship with the Lord is powered more than by prayer, communicating with Him without ceasing, a commitment greater than prostration in contemplations and adoration.

Reformer: Orthodoxy demands little, commitment to the Lord's Great Commission and His prayer for unity, orchestrated throughout creation as nature's essential feature, preserving His work committed to maintaining goodness and beauty, promising a time and place for everything, ensuring decay and death will always be followed by resurrection so creation will never disappear and never return to the chaos from whence it was assembled.

Skeptic: Religious doctrines and dogmas fail to unite people and eliminate their differences. Standing by as innocent decrees, powerless in building peace, relying on voices of violence to grow and maintain separation, protecting their niches from being invaded by intruders, expect nothing to strangle their existence.

Commoner: Are you a prophet, proposing nothing could decimate church liturgy, practices inviting the Lord into holy sanctuaries, creeds acknowledging who He is and what He has done, music to entertain His presence, confession for remission of sins, joyful participation with fellow believers, worshipping Him in time-honored ways?

Stranger: The only reality we can trust, the plan we must follow, never deviating from its goal, is that of the Lord, revealed by Him, being scripted by His Word to form creation, trusted to be its Author, authorizing no one else to be its storyteller.

Skeptic: Does liturgy convince God of your faith, trusting and loving Him, thinking He doesn't know your actions provide its proof? Thinking liturgy needs modification, trusting little from ancient times, it has been dismantled, stripping away its comfort, substituting entertainment void of condemnation to delight congregations, mesmerizing them with flamboyance, ordaining leaders to be convinced of being righteous, becoming a pretense of what it once was.

Stranger: The only story we can trust, the plan we must follow, never deviating from its goal, is the Lord's, revealed by Him, scripted by His Word to form creation, trusted to be its Author, validating no one else to be its storyteller, striking people's vacant souls with Christ's appearance, spurring them to belief on hearing His good news, free of embellishment by human doctrines, untainted, clearly spoken by witnesses to the Lord's life, death and resurrection. God judges nothing more is needed.

Skeptic: With freedom to exercise depravity, painting the world to stoke images mangling creation's goodness, worshiping whatever may be grotesque, drawing lines outside the box, modernity directs religion to reform, transforming it to agree with secular wants, dissecting away traditions, permitting freedom for people's delights, extending pleasures of their imaginary world into religious practices, transposing the Lord's will into ours.

Wanton: Modernity disappoints believers with gall, asking the Lord to bring end times, telling Him to consider their request for its time and place, advising Him to destroy creation, His efforts done over billions of years, doing all to satisfy people when their efforts to please Him have been lacking, frayed by unworthy thoughts and actions. Has everyone done what He has asked of them?

Simple Simon: Orthodoxy encourages us to see God, confident His discipline's leadership will perfect us, uniting us in harmony with all creation, overwhelming us with Its truth and beauty of creation, confident we can claim its perfect love, speaking more than words, having taken it through completion, understanding what the Lord requires of us, never authorizing escape from His goodness by seeking end times.

Stranger: Rancor, criticizing creation's goodness, ranges freely for differences created by sects, nicely called denominations, disapproving other's decrees, ignoring the Lord's command to love one another for sanctifying their virtues beyond dispute, hardly approaching for people to love one another, trusting and protecting their doctrines, indifferent to ones dying for their cherished beliefs, little understanding perfect love the Lord requires of us.

Simple Simon: Only Orthodoxy knows the depths of perfect love, understanding its engagement to overcome learned depravities, temptations to split people from others, discriminating against those with different beliefs, since it understands better than Peter's answer to the Lord's question, Do you love Me. Fragmented religions, formulated by authorizing love for dysfunctional ideas, never perfect love requested by the Lord, continue to diversify, imagining new ways to endear their ideas to others. Orthodoxy is directed by God to join people, freeing them from adversity, uniting and preparing them for return to Him.

Jurdan: Tyrants seek power by uniting behind a common core, knowing human's zeal to fight for doctrines and dogmas, ardently battling for their convictions, knowing Orthodoxy interferes with tyrants' survival, supporting nothing for them to thrive, sending them scurrying elsewhere for support, seeking others with a litany of reasons to join a tyranny, others seeking leaders to satisfy their wants, enriching them for allegiance to a common cause.

Simple Simon: Can humans survive without doctrines and dogmas? Can we trust God without admitting we understand Him little, promoting addition of doctrines and dogmas to make Him real, contesting other's depiction of Him, splintering us from what we deem heretical claims, uniting us to distrust faith's need for diversity, allowing belief to be modified by my way, invoking new ways to exercise one's free will. Trust by humans in each other is impossible with disobedience fragmenting unity, worsening oneness prayed for by the Lord.

Stranger: Behold the demolition of Christian faith, destroyed by doctrinal cultivations, changed from Jesus Christ's perfect and untainted ways, confusing people to be uncertain of their relationship to Him, asking, What would Jesus do. Orthodoxy returns us to His time on earth, to recall the essentials of His message, unchanged before modifications transformed it into a cultural religion, never preserving it as the Lord intended when He sent His Son into the world.

Commoner: Why would people want to change His message?

Skeptic: The Gospel was clearly documented, leaving no doubt about Jesus' thoughts and deeds, but it contained no loopholes, no avenues to escape His judgment, and scholarly tinkering has made it into a cultural faith since then. People do not live by bread alone, demanding loopholes to enrich their lives.

Stranger: Hold fast to what was given the Saints being complete, the Gospel truths perfect and pure, unmodified by anyone's additions, needing nothing more, given to last unchanged despite personal discoveries, knowing they solve no mysteries but are the Lord's revelations, unfolding His secrets bit by bit. Orthodoxy is the preservation of what the Saints received, assuring God's intent will never be lost.

Simple Simon: Saints came to all people, unlocking their innate quest to know who they are, where they came from, why they are here and where they are going, made to be inherent when God breathed in all our essence to be human. Orthodoxy is faith trusting this act of the Lord, and we call on all humans to venerate Him for this. Orthodoxy preserves God's good news, the Gospel revealed by Him, showing people manifestations of creation's beauty, explaining its goodness, inviting all to partake of His virtues.

Skeptic: Whose God does Orthodoxy acknowledge?

Stranger: There is only one God despite humans battling over theirs being unique, the only true God, while many intent on having someone to be their lord create their god, resulting in a pantheism with their god designed to deliver one's unique needs and they battle others, as well as themselves, in worshipping idols they fabricate.

Simple Simon: Warfare rages when saints and prophets appear, challenging people's gods, criticizing their beliefs, telling them to return to the only true God, their creator, and abandon fictitious decrees leading them into confusion, doctrines claimed to be created by our only God, dogmas known now to be from false gods.

Stranger: Prophets and saints preaching truths speak at risk, witnessed by many slain for their words, counting all as Christ's, dying for Christian Orthodoxy, slain by ones to protect different beliefs, tenets they swear by.

Skeptic: Living by what they have been taught, never understanding Orthodoxy, the good news left by Christ, humans choose orthopraxy instead, continuing in ways to distrust, dislike and fear others, exercising the universal message to do to others what they are inclined to do to them. Ingrained and believed to be original sin, orthopraxy becomes the expected, never choosing virtuous deeds of kindness to make up for human unworthiness as they continue unending commitments to themselves.

Wanton: If salvation is by faith and working it out is mandatory for confirmation, we are left to our own convictions how to work it out, making orthopraxy essential for success.

Simple Simon: Your choices do not count, never trusting consideration of faith, for you must hear the Lord's counsel, and that requires preparation, opening your soul for His messenger, recognizing nothing can be heard from Him until then. Messages developed by your free will are never from Him, but appear when developed by your wants.

Skeptic: Orthodoxy narrowing one's discernment, limiting one's essential truths, eliminating superfluous trivia, lobbying for minimal attention, creating doctrines to delight wisdom, writing footnotes to God's words, reasoning to deny unity of any kind, ignores other decrees with a different thought.

Simple Simon: Orthodoxy can never be popular for ones committed to orthopraxy, forgoing faith for being a saint devoted to good deeds, trusting the Lord recognizes accomplishments and qualifies them for salvation, believing some higher power makes that decision.

Excalibur: Beyond Orthodoxy and orthopraxy, contaminated with doctrines and dogmas, subjected to oughts and don'ts, live by orthoverity, eternal truth stripped of human directives modified by intellectual embellishments.

Stranger: Endowing us with intellectual power, wait to see its outcome, exercising patience to evaluate the Lord's momentous experiment, creating us different from beasts, gifting us with free will, or is this a Trojan horse, left as a present, a Pandora's box we are eager to open, with Him watching as people delve in finding their wants and desires hidden within, releasing free will to create adversaries, enemies damaging their existence. Knowing human nature, free will's consequences on our being, people yearning for perfect happiness, God prepared us for the inevitable, designing us with powers to be healed from our practices of immoderation, bombarding us with each novelty encountered, distracting us from the Almighty's hope for us. Our free will choosing between Orthodoxy and orthopraxy fails to satisfy our yearnings. Maybe we should choose to follow orthoverity.

Simple Simon: Orthodoxy must never be fragmented, never established to be fractured, because the Lord's commands, clearly stated and never ambiguous, remain so until defaced by humans, transforming His intent with unwarranted modifications. Scholars in the past felt free to transfigure His Words with doctrines and dogmas, freely dressing His sayings with convictions of their own, justifying them from Gospel gems, hidden in reasoned truth by some ancient scribe.

Skeptic: Orthodoxy professes nothing justified to be heretical, nothing screaming out to be contested, nothing for followers to quibble over, and promotes unity Jesus prayed for. Your trust in such a naive consideration should be useful to watch, thinking some could destroy people's love for this religious belief, replacing it with their dreams, forgetting Orthodoxy's convictions espousing a pie in the sky.

Commoner: Transformed to be one in Christ, leaving religious decrees for battles by others, trusting Orthodoxy commits one to receive the Holy Spirit, leading and assuring our unity, we follow no other way, living by the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, for which no law dictates otherwise and no excuse can be made for not following them. These fruits deny any reasons justifying differences in doctrines and dogmas, the basis for grievances between professors of faith, each with elaborate confessions and sacred catechisms to protect their convictions.

Skeptic: Protecting religious freedom, a cause worth fighting for, protecting religious domains against intrusion by different beliefs, heretics striving to convert believers, working to take over, threaten all by their leadership working to subjugate other beliefs to theirs. Religious freedom is to convert other's beliefs to hate others until that happens. Can you name one cult or sect never with that goal, endlessly proselytizing others to bring them all under their umbrella and claim them as one of their own, ones determining salvation's requirements and counting as new converts refugees saved from paganism, rescued from idolatry?

Wanton: Fantasizing utopia, trusted confidence in a world of perfect equality and human freedom, ask if religious freedom is worth fighting for, protecting each domain, trusting each deserves to battle for, achieved by violence if needed, ridiculing attempts for peaceful establishment, endeavors such as by Jesus, dismissing His Words, thinking unmitigated warfare, shedding blood of millions, should be re-instituted as often as necessary to achieve equality and the unity He prayed for.

Jurdan: Freedom of religion rains confusion, propagating sects striving for superiority, vying with each other to reign supreme, giving reasons to die for, overshadowing other freedoms in promoting despair, lamenting over life's injustices and fostering convictions to fight for what's right.

Skeptic: Is Orthodoxy free from trust in doctrines and dogmas, engendering diversity without any barriers, never dividing people according to material wealth or racial profile, dismissing or accepting people's differences, and be successful in seeing people give up their prejudices and traditions to follow the Lord's commands and Great Commission?

Wanton: Human's moral empire, built and preserved by fundamental Christian doctrines and dogmas--as in Orthodoxy--created by freedom of individual judgments, is collapsing from reconsiderations developed by new reasoned articulations of independence thought.

Simple Simon: Orthodoxy must acknowledge religious pluralism, tolerating other beliefs, accepting moral relativism as a compromise, all to fashion unity, but it underestimates people's commitment to their doctrines and dogmas, never giving in to tolerate other's.

Excalibur: Orthodoxy leaves room for doctrines and dogmas, tolerating many, leaving space for more than the Lord's commands and Great Commission, for footnotes humans slip into religious beliefs, written from trusted reasoning rather than from words of the Spirit.

Commoner: Orthodoxy equips us to believe we can be one with all, following Jesus prayer for us to be united as He is with the Father, enabling us to be one with Him, trusted to be the One and only God.

Excalibur: Your conviction begs for utopia, hoping for it to come. Utopia remains a fantasy until belief and trust in God are freed from all doctrines and dogmas, releasing people to worship Him for what He is.

Skeptic: Would elimination of Orthodoxy and orthopraxy be one more social experiment, promising theoretical benefits, managing results by manipulating data to comply, ignoring calculations disproving favored outcomes, sacrificing lives to credit people with success, manipulating theories to parade self-avowed brilliance, forcing their pronouncers to escape from reality and find refuge in some ivory tower? Does anyone realize what would be lost with another failed experiment, scattered in the ashes of everything destroyed, freedoms swept away rather than enlightened for creating anything better? In failure would your ideas persist, germinating a spectrum of new dangerous ideologies released for testing in humans, promised to improve lives, intended to perfect equality and unite all people, fulfilling pragmatism to replace religion, radically eradicating values and traditions standing in the way, only to see ideas consuming themselves, the mothers of ideas aborting any thoughts supporting the bourgeois way of life?

Wanton: Orthodoxy, prevailing as the only religion, indoctrinating all to follow, claiming authority, never depending on people's conscience, trusting humans will never steal God's resources, enables them to be sanctified and prideful, willing their way in everything.

Skeptic: Who understands what Orthodoxy demands?

Wanton: Whatever its requirements, its demands no sacrifices for common good, is consistent with the Lord's commands and Great Commission, interpreted to love all others with obligation to sacrifice nothing, to maintain concern for themselves, considering love comes with no price but affection for their being.

Commoner: Fulfilling love's requirement is easiest by sacrifice, giving up time or possessions, and confessing too many are undeserving of my love, making them unwilling to humbly submit, forcing them into charades to satisfy their conscience, so they give generously, freeing them to walk with a good heart, satisfying all the Lord expects of them.

Skeptic: That ignores what the Lord requires, remembering His words proclaiming all to walk humbly.

Wanton: Satisfying Orthodoxy, obedient to its doctrines and dogmas, can anyone claim to walk humbly?

Jurdan: People's constitution forbidding the government to establish religion, outlaws adoption of Orthodoxy as a national religion, striking down its doctrines and dogmas.

Excalibur: Any new cause should modify secular constitutions by including God's first commandment, keeping it pure and simple as it already is, honoring Him as He is, the one God, creator of all.

Stranger: Is my one God different from yours, given another name, trusted to be our creator as yours, both believed to be the creator of everything from nothing, molding the universe from chaos, beginning from nothingness, with my God having been changed to conform with what I want Him to be, tagged with doctrines and dogmas, formulated by my reason to be acceptable and consenting to my desires?

Jurdan: Have we not escaped from Greek and Roman mentalities, creating different gods to reign over life's diverse terrains and moods, where religious freedom protected every practice of belief as long as no one threatened the state or another religion, tolerating all, with its leaders free to declare themselves divine, forcing subjects to worship them as gods, spelling the end of religious freedom, controlling religious liberty to allow doctrines and dogmas for dictating people's lives?

Wanton: Democracy protects us all, mandating security for harmless beliefs chiseled in doctrines and dogmas, protecting them from intrusion by the state, giving them equal opportunity to be justified in civil and politic arenas, avoiding religious extremism with frozen doctrines and dogmas, never open for discussion and change, fearing opposition would generate violent reprisals, preventing dissent to solidify radical unchanging ideas.

Jurdan: Decreed in the establishment clause of your democracy's first amendment forbids the government from establishing any official religion, to unduly favor one religion over another, and never prefer religion over non-religion or non-religion over religion. Establishing Orthodoxy fails to be justified by these criteria, leaving it open to defeat. Orthodoxy meets too many criteria for being a religion.

Commoner: Eliminating all forms of religion, denying all its versions, rejecting all religion's theories, doctrines and practices leaves nothing left but atheism.

Excalibur: Rejection of religion as determined by orthoverity is not atheism, realizing orthoverity is committed to belief in the Lord as creator, and trust in Him drives human nature to worship and love Him. We have no innate understanding or clairvoyance to describe Him more, and it is presumptuous for any human to declare what His nature must be, especially by assuming His traits must be humanoid.

Commoner: Do you suggest we should reject Orthodoxy, believing it could transform followers to create a theocracy?

Simple Simon: They can never be the same. Orthodoxy protects and instills in us the Lord's commands to activate our native code to make Him director of all our thoughts and deeds, ensuring we will protect and love His entire creation, most of all humans He created. Realizing what humans are, appearing as prophets multiplying doom, understanding none can be trusted until their messages come true, sifting through multitudes sent with varying proclamations, probability tells us few will predict what will eventually come to pass. Few will be honored as God's messengers, carrying what He wants us to hear.

Stranger: Add to this the garments of theocracy, rule by tyranny, hijacking the Lord's leadership, selecting doctrines and dogmas to authorize control by decree.

Skeptic: Multitudes are driven to hear prophetic proclamations, enthralled by convictions of ones gifted with a silver tongue, responding to human cravings, charming listener's anticipations, satisfying gluttony, speaking messages they are eager to hear.

Commoner: People will never be satisfied with the Lord's simple message, commanding their acknowledgement of Him as the only God, directing them to assure everyone will know this, confirming His love is evident in all creation, love of His gift to us, left in us, inherent to be passed forward to all.

Excalibur: The Lord's simple message, stripped of doctrine and dogma, bearing nothing to upset another, proclaiming no words of anger, driving no one away, calling for barebones belief and worship drawn out by love, attesting only to Him, accepting what He requires of us, fleeing from temptations, dwelling only on Him, becoming truly Christ like, opens one's vision to love and beauty He instills in all. Being honest and seeking no ways to develop religion, never enabling assimilation to a world of our making, creating nothing to accommodate ways of our flesh, rejecting everything imaginable, we strive to represent innate truths He encoded in our being, to hear the conscience we manipulate to avoid, but our will prevails, following successful ways to gain our wants. Orthodoxy offers doctrinal crutches, allowing secularization, removing obligations to remain faithful to the Lord, abandoning Him to religion.

Stranger: Orthodoxy's only requirement, pledging your people will be our people, blinding us to diversity, seeking nothing to divide us over differences, eliminating doctrines forcing us to make choices, forgetting dogmas compelling us to be divided, prepares your God to be my God and my God to be your God, both of us knowing there is only one God, realizing neither of us can understand Him any more than by His revelations, acknowledging His revelations are evident only in what He has done, making all creation good and beautiful. Orthodoxy urges us never to leave the Lord, never turn back from Him, pledging we choose to go where He directs us and committing us to stay with Him forever.

Jurdan: Your cause, like all others, is committed to politics, depending on success from articulating its precepts but as all others have failed why should yours be any different?

Simple Simon: Does the idea of Orthodoxy questioned now by Evangelicals, trusting only minimal doctrinal statements, distrust authority ingrained in tradition and develop cultural concerns as they choose, using selected biblical passages to ignore traditional doctrines and dogmas, relying on themselves to make judgments, ignoring ancient canons or decrees established as tradition, formulas and requirements for salvation, thinking humans can determine which only God can do?

Skeptic: Orthodoxy distrusts Evangelicals who ignore diverse religious outlooks overflowing with theological beliefs, freely claiming their own dogmas, expressing autonomy to declare their will, justifying their ideas to be acceptable as any others, joining themselves to the world's view.

Stranger: The Lord appears to all people, humans committed to diverse doctrines and dogmas, and asks us nothing more important than to be united, and if that requires leaving all treasured thoughts and traditions behind, abandoning everything dear to their comfort and pleasure, they must choose to follow the Lord, acknowledging this as Orthodoxy's only requirement.

Jurdan: You must be another of His prophets, critical of human endeavors, coming as others to promote something people will never understand, proposing adventures certain to fail.

Commoner: Only the Lord prays for us to be united, knowing this is possible for ones He created, endowed with innate goodness but we choose to remain dormant, making excuses never to activate its virtue, maintaining our disunity of diversity, protecting us from contamination, reasoning security for our differences, safeguarding our coveted treasures, ensuring we will remain as we are.

Simple Simon: Fulfilling His command for us to be united, the Lord will refrain from dealing with us ever so severely in a union that only death can sever, disconnecting us momentarily, knowing we will be rejoined in another existence.

Commoner: The Lord promising truth will set us free, commanding all to be united, releasing us from troubles, filling us with love and compassion, is not our truth but His, seeing reason's failures to develop our own, mangling His truths to justify our wants, interpreting all His Words to meet our desires.

Wanton: Conforming to this world, the church's teaching and discipline accommodates life's reality, responding to public opinion, protecting its position, ignoring or reinterpreting Scripture to satisfy its dwindling followers. This is possible where allegiance to religion is based on doctrines and dogmas, easily tampered with, modified never to interfere with life's realities.

Commoner: You recognize the Lord gives us free will for good reason, to make decisions without anyone's interference, and surveying people's myriad choices He must consent to their variety of truths, convicting us to accept other's verities, trusting they are as good as ours, allowing people to live and let be. If the Lord's truth had not been decimated by humans, destroyed by essentials their reason forced them to add, establishing the basis for salvation, developing their needs rather than merely acknowledging what He has done, realizing they can only know Him by His accomplishments and understanding, they could never describe what He is like.

Wanton: Searches for truth, finding none, vainly creating ideas to be assembled into truth, cannot temper my despondency, leaving me mired in despair. Each truth someone discovers continues my bondage, burdening me with doctrines to obey, forcing me to be chained to new dogmas, and I chase after one religious commitment after another seeking one that obligates me to the Lord's teachings but I soon realize they all have been scribbled in the margins of His testimony, interpretations scribes imagined Him to utter. Therefore, tell me which truth can set me free, hearing little from Him but all of it concocted by people, and I have discovered their truths can never set me free, so I must create truth for myself, regarding mine as trustworthy as any other, learning this after mining all proclaimed truths and finding none worthy of coming from the Lord, none as reliable as mine.

Simple Simon: Ignoring lasting truth, reliable and unchanging, you embrace human truths, changing under constant revision, modified to be more attractive, reconstructed to gain followers, without realizing they will never survive beyond your generation, never becoming a lasting truth. Orthodoxy offers the only lasting truth, peering out unveiled from hiding by doctrines and dogmas.

Wanton: Failing to understand and respect religious doctrines and dogmas while believing in the Lord's eternal truths incites hatred, giving cause for many to be martyred, designated death for heathens, branded as pagans for being different, worshippers of whatever imagination certifies as untrustworthy, divine images created to be most like themselves, beckoning people to join them in battle, with each divinity bearing doctrines for transformation, making them different and destined for conflict with other's commitments.

Jurdan: Prophets are credited or blamed for religion's doctrines and dogmas. If your God sends people prophets, convincing them to follow Him by trusting their dogmatic pronouncements and doctrines He supposedly directs them to prepare, wouldn't He insist on uniformity, sending His prophets consistently with one message, bearing only His truth, trusting no messenger liable to trouble His words, deviously modifying His revelations with human ideas? Identify just one of His messengers who has honestly reported His intent to people.

Stranger: Many prophets appear, claiming to have heard the Lord who directed them to spread His Words, but many are tempted to inject their own interpretations of what He said, so their many pronouncements seldom agree. Study all that was reported to be said and done by Jesus. Some fifty years had passed before the stories of His ministry were written and another three or more centuries were needed before a consensus agreed on documents for acceptance into the Gospel, the good news of His appearance on earth. But that was not sufficient seeing disagreements on His ministry continued, overlooking His prayer for unity, ignoring His admonitions to be one, and the body of believers splintered by any provocation, choosing disunity to create their own doctrines and dogmas, allowing them to worship their own ways to follow the Lord.

Jurdan: Humans create religions plastic to freely metamorphose, adding whatever comes to mind, changing people's convictions to accommodate their desires, creating appropriate truths to decorate a chosen deity, but any religion is soon abandoned by worshipping human creations transformed to disguise their creator God, transfigured by prophets raised up to proclaim Him, claimed to be sent for all to know Him. Religions evolve, each developing from another, sowing seeds of imagination, sprouting to satisfy human desires, growing to develop idols, believing their worship never becomes polytheistic.

Wanton: Discerning creation's manifestations of goodness and beauty, we reason there had to be a Creator, a mover to move, imagining Him to be like us, creating us in His image, certainly to be like us, providing license to assume He must be like us, trusting His attributes make Him warlike, monarchical and judgmental, but did our evaluations of an unknown deity extend beyond our convictions of what He must be like, based on reason's imagination?

Jurdan: Christianity's doctrinal wisdom, sealed in dogma, rejects creation's goodness and beauty, trusting in this world's passing away, confirmed by many hoping to be rescued, saved from the conditions of evil pervading their present home, sensing no unity with pagan unbelievers, exercising their passionate convictions to be relieved of association and communication with dissident unbelievers.

Stranger: Do we seek one universal to unite us, trusting the Lord's wish for all to be one, praying to God we would be united? Ignoring universals to make us one, we create doctrines, laws, prejudices, animosities, to exercise freedom for magnifying individual's uniqueness, establishing us as our own creation, authorizing isolation and destroying any idea of seeking unity. For how else could we have enemies, others we could never unite with? All humanity must begin with one inherent universal, belief in being created by God and trust in being endowed with His goodness and love, knowing He made us all unique and giving us potential for being unified with all. Instead, we devote all efforts to be diversified, creating divisions, abhorring unity, protecting our interests with doctrines and dogmas, barring intrusion by others attempting to dominate or possess, encroaching on our established domains.

Simple Simon: We are not here only to be an end in ourselves, existing isolated without any other human, having communication with only the Creator, requiring no language but our contemplations silently directing our ideas and actions, calling for no unity because one discovers nothing to join with other than oneself, but our creator God, never abandons us, waiting for us to unite with Him, rejecting notions of us being an end in ourselves.

Excalibur: Are love and unity inseparable, one nonexistent without the other, documented as essential to each other in the Lord's commands? If so diversity must never be based on doctrinal differences, dogmas entrenching one's beliefs that prevent love for another, decrees that identify some as Satan, heretics, and blasphemers, ones never should be loved, ones God created out of His love and must still considered worthy.

Simple Simon: Can people be satisfied, trusting Him as Creator, having given them life and soul to respond with love for all He created, to remain in unity as He intends for all? Is God haunted by people's interference, working His Words to create diversity that results in disunity?

Jurdan: Humans had to create their Satan, using his identification to label ones they were taught to hated, and he can be found universally wherever one wishes to hate, using Satan to demonize other humans or their cause. Threats of wickedness by evil demons unites no one, sending all scurrying to shelter, fearing ones they must hate.

Simple Simon: Can there be unity, compromising the Lord's truths, adjusting them to join with human truths, one perhaps being creation of Satan, demonizing ones who can never be united, to fear ones they are called to love.

Skeptic: People tolerate adjustments to make His truths acceptable, reaching agreements so each can become more like theirs, with humans thinking if we created God, we can modify the facts people assigned Him in ancient times, bringing them up to date, making them current with where we are now, acknowledging His importance so people don't lose Him completely. This can be sold, convincing believers by proclaiming unity of the spirit to maintain bonds of peace, assuring all will live in love.

Simple Simon: Who dares to compromise eternal truths, defying the one unchanging God, adopting beliefs in more than one true faith, dismissing hope of His calling, beckoning us with Jesus, humble and lowly, long-suffering and bearing one another in love. Who would dare change our Creator Lord, modifying His powers to suit humankind, altering them to conform with human whims, imaginations to provide their wants, destroying their enemies? Do human prayers call for elimination of enemies, defying Christ's admonitions to love one's enemies? Does God's grace provide license to hate one's enemies more, making your enemy His?

Skeptic: We can respond to Christ's prayer for unity, calling all to be in accord with Him and the Father, but can we unite with our father's Lord, confessing we cannot accept the way He is and struggle to modify His edicts? We never want such unity, stifling our will to be ourselves, believing in fables suggested by others, proclaiming we could become like God, following tales of optimism to divert our attention from this world.

Commoner: Humbling myself to hear His voice, submitting to His spiritual callings, refusing to follow my reason and common sense, gaining oneness with the Lord, my every moment counts, staying united with Him matters, to become like Him more than I could ever imagine, walking to be very like Him, faithful to the making of me in His image. I must be like Jesus who never failed and was never discouraged, counseling depressed people verging on despair.

Prancing Grace: We understand your words, and in choosing our followers we select ones ardent in their beliefs but are cautious choosing ones with too much knowledge, trusting primarily in themselves, adamant in their beliefs, never relinquishing their ideas, listening to only themselves. We can't trust them, and when we try, changing them requires enormous efforts with questionable results. Our success is greater with free spirits with few convictions needing change and eager to follow anything new.

Skeptic: Minds polluted minimally by eternal truths offer the greatest promise for transformation by novel beliefs, ones hardly accepted by reason, blemished in their understanding, suffering rejection for having empty thoughts, poor and homeless with no relationships, bearing stigma of nothingness, hardly deserving any attention, dismissed by common sense without anyone caring.

Commoner: Doubter's minds are polluted with nothingness, empty of creation's goodness and beauty. I am different, praying to my Creator, praising the Almighty, thanking Him for my being, worshipping Him as my Lord and Savior, asking nothing, rejoicing for all He lays before for me, planning my circumstances, showing me actions to please Him, adventures to proclaim His almighty power weaved into creation's goodness, revealing His love and its reflections in beauty's living waters. I pray He will never neglect me, terminating my circumstances, abandoning me from His favor. I pray fruits of my labors would remain hidden, revealing none to me, nothing to tempt my pride, taunting my vanity to escape from hiding. What more can I pray for?

Skeptic: With people living for rewards, how does the Lord honor you for your faith, telling believers all things are possible for ones believing in Him, convincing you to claim whatever you name?

Commoner: Faith enables me to claim nothing and prepares me to follow Him, obeying His directions, trusting a life of faith begins a close relationship with Him, walking with Him only, convinced of His eternal decrees, trusting Him even when He chooses one to be martyred for belief in Him.

Skeptic: Are you a born-again Christian, claiming faith seized you, coming like a bolt of lightning?

Commoner: My faith developed during a spiritual struggle, coming in bits and pieces on learning Scripture, listening to the Holy Spirit, and never claiming to be born-again, emotionally charged to be instantly saved, knowing emotions are fluid, coming and going, changing direction, responding to needs of the moment, resulting in birth of fleeting convictions. Some call it rebirths, cleansing one's heart, establishing a right spirit, but most importantly it must be imbedded for lasting.

Jurdan: Testifying to rebirth, evolution transforms us to be born renewed, sharpening our free will, freeing us from inherent controls, blessing us with reason, allowing us to choose what we want to be, convincing us to become better and better.

Skeptic: Proclaim evolution's imaginations if you must, crediting its theory with truth, but it offers nothing better than religion's theories, neither with dogmas having verified truths.

Wanton: Committing humans to be born to sin, testified by dogmas convicting all being born in sin, how can they be born-again, cleansed of all sins, and never reborn to become sinful, remembering the prophets' words condemning all for remaining sinners, continuing to be sinful no matter how they live, unlike Jesus who never was.

Simple Simon: Ones committed to continue sinning, believing they were born in sin, have inherent capacity to be sorry for transgressions and trust in repentance to guarantee salvation.

Jove: Allied with Skeptic's musings, I distrust much of what's written, especially on rebirth's power to remove our sins. Trusting faith, created and empowered by impressions, I look to reason, fortifying it with feelings, guided by experiences, bringing me to consider Scripture's claims, sorting out its most believable narrations, choosing what's most palatable, building my faith to be lasting, at least until reason encounters a need for it to change.

Stranger: Bearing no guilt, never acknowledging or knowing you were born in sin, how can you live, oblivious to your sin, innate, indelible, inherent in all your thoughts and deeds, guiding everything?

Prancing Grace: Establishing a new covenant, living with new laws, commandments born of our reason, decrees for all to obey, we formulate a new order, a new kingdom, assuring our people lasting prosperity, rewarded by our Lord, promised to endure, outlasting the future.

Stranger: Human reason has no record of creating any such order, seeing all have been excuses for violence, wars to satisfy egomaniacs, destroying creation's goodness, leaving its beauty in shambles. So much for human efforts, conceited in their ignorance, trusting their senses to gain glory, proclaiming righteousness to be their due, rewarded by their efforts to achieve peace for all, thinking they have access to the Father by their deeds, never acknowledging they reach Him only through the Holy Spirit, sent by the Lord to supersede all decrees, dogmas and documents, everything people have labored to do, creating new ones to enforce, believing in His to succeed. Do your commandments preach preservation of creation's goodness, protecting its peace and beauty? Your decrees give us no access to the Father, subjecting them only to what is seen, never to the unseen, never to the Spirit's voice, the only way to the Father. To your dominion, I must remain a stranger, a foreigner in the kingdom of your dreams, the incubator of your imagination, as I entrust myself with my fellow believers, marching to the beat of Saints, leading me to God's holy city, His promised place for me to be, rejoicing as my steps close in on His reward of righteousness, cleansing away my blemishes, my faults, as I race to rejoin Him.

Prancing Grace: Attired in regal garments, designating the holiness of our cause, carrying a scepter, freeing us from labor of plows, empowered for all to see, with greater magic than Moses' rod, greeting respect from all, we prepare our followers as no priest has ever been, readying them to be saluted by adoring masses. If your pride lacks recognition now, look forward to all our cause can do, removing you from humble straits, exalting you to become someone.

Stranger: I am already someone, one of the Lord's creation, endowed with the potential to achieve greater goodness, as a follower to become more like Him, the great Model of whom we can seek to be.

Skeptic: With the Lord out of sight, removed from our minds, having disappeared to some mountaintop and His leaders going with Him, freeing us to be on our own, we can concentrate on fashioning gods trusted to be faithful, sustaining our most ardent desires. Living by what we have at hand, distrusting ones seeking lofty experiences, we rely on worthy leaders who promise never to leave us, never forcing us to find new gods, allowing us to honor ones we worship now.

Wanton: Granting a leader's heart's desire, brandishing joy in strength, wisdom in knowledge, hope in salvation, blessings of goodness, and life enduring its allotted time, you have one who trusts in oneself, moved by worldly desires.

Jurdan: Consider whose words you trust, deciphering their intentions, revealing if they are built on power, armed with bullets and missiles, soon to be obsolete as horses and chariots, taken by sands of time, words proclaiming dogmatic truths long since forgotten, displaced by someone with today's wisdom.

Skeptic: Knowledge becoming truths to last but few moments, remains as knowledge but not as truth, being facts for an interim belief, replaced in time by new revelations, basis for creating new theories, revised suggestions waiting confirmation that never comes.

Commoner: My beliefs are jeopardized by no proven truths, nothing provided by senses, being sustained by my trust in the Lord's revelations, things no one can disprove, perhaps unproven by other's convictions, based on trust in their perceptions.

Stranger: The beastly senses never promise to reveal truth, senses of sight, touch, smell, taste, and others inherited from their forebears, and you engage these to develop knowledge for truth, but these ancestors could not develop them to understand life as you. Their senses developed for sustaining life and modifying their innate code, for accommodating needs to survive, but they never had senses to discover why they are here or where they are going. We are different, unique in acquiring knowledge by knowing our Creator, and He tells us, Listen and hear My messages.

Simple Simon: How do humans look at nature but by beastly senses, investigating its mysteries by tearing its pieces apart, examining their every nuance, confusing researchers with further questions, fragmenting components to reveal greater unknowns, fractured for describing its constituents. Blinded to discovery by employing one's senses, thinking they can be far-reaching, revealing secrets of matter, understanding cosmos' nature, humans are frustrated by their limits, unless they recognize God's words in everything they sense, acknowledging His message is in all.

Commoner: Unveiling my eyes to see creation's goodness, focusing my vision on its beauty revealed only by light shining out its truth, radiantly bearing the Lord's wisdom, I never need a mountain top experience to meet my Creator, being with me always, promising never to leave. His wisdom, waiting patiently for an invitation, never cries out for attention, is given by grace, attending to all who welcome His appearance, honoring Him as their Lord and Savior.

Jove: Testing my thoughts, screening my ideas, I compare them with God's, seeing how they measure up to His activities, pondering if they can move tidal waves and regrow what I would destroy, and whatever I do something is always missing, and following a rope of mystery to its never end new questions always appear to confound my efforts. He brings me creative thoughts as a gift, but He never unwraps them completely, leaving me either frustrated in confusion or satisfied with the little He is willing to reveal, understanding in His time all will be unveiled, rewarding all who bring thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, making them worthy of praise from our Maker.

Jurdan: Testing your thoughts by comparing them with your imagination, you ignore people's accomplishments, the only things certain. Everyone has imaginations, and few improve on reality.

Prancing Grace: Trusting reality's accomplishments but failing its expectations, we rely on vision for improvement, creating new plans of our own, seeking little aid from any imagined divine being.

Skeptic: Do you trust all your followers, chosen carefully to be loyal, relying on you for all direction, never imagining their way may exceed the wisdom of yours, never waiting in silence to accept your leadership, or must you suspect all of deceit, posing as ones loyal, devoted only to please your ways, never offering their way as better, competing silently with your convictions?

Wanton: Even Jesus had competitors, bragging about their powers to charm people, attempting to heal afflictions, treating Him as no One, regarding Him as just another appearing and claiming to be the Messiah, only to disappear and be forgotten, perhaps believed in until their demise, going the way of all false prophets.

Prancing Grace: We are cautious, avoiding enlistment of any Jesus type, realizing they are trouble makers, thinking they know it all, preaching messages of peace and love, and no person can rule with trust in peace, understanding people lurk with baggages of violence, and love requires them to tolerate everyone, loving others as themselves. Recruiting such people would doom our cause to failure. People searching for a reason, usually look within, trusting only themselves for justification, and we want none of ones so into themselves that they never comprehend what our cause is. Moreover, many of them consider developing their own cause, never joining another.

Skeptic: History teaches us nothing, confining us to ignorance, revealing little how to establish peace, assuring few ways to live harmoniously, so people are compelled to offer new causes, directed by reason, waiting to be proven by their efforts.

Simple Simon: Fanciful speculations, dreams hiding behind reason, drawn from collective ignorance, created by trust in self-improvement to fashion spirituality, freedom to be as one chooses, believing it to resurrect one from despair, freeing one's body and spirit, but fleeing from despondency confirms people don't know where to find joy, leaving them without hope.

Skeptic: Human causes resemble efforts to reinvent the circle, creating new figures for its constant, thinking to recast its perfection, making it flawless, but people with their measurements prove nothing new for anything.

Stranger: Choosing ones pleasing Him well, singling them out as His beloved, the Lord puts His spirit, endowing them with judgment, giving them wisdom to discern unrighteousness, to recognize false teachers proclaiming their interests, to judge intents of anyone's call to join another cause, subjecting all to scrutiny, evaluation for conforming to the Lord's plan, so I will not displease Him, realizing unbelievers will detest His judgments and look for ways to revile my thoughts, persecuting me with all kinds of evil, knowing causes must recruit their kind, populating them with diversity, understanding all varieties are needed for success.

Skeptic: Beware of evil plans hijacking a reasonable cause to gain power, strangling democracy to be silent and powerless, understanding its decrees can be manipulated into submission, modifying them with the will to power, replacing them with an altered cause, calling it the people's will, masses without sense of any virtue, directed to look to no one but their leader, acknowledged to be for all a fountain of hope, assassinating democracy's decrees for supporting people's expectations, no longer guaranteeing the city on a hill, it's light shining brightly for all to see, beckoning to all trusting its truths, welcoming diversity called for by its decrees.

Stranger: Tyrants forcefully decree to do everything their way, ignoring virtues guiding human life and souls, following vanity's passions, denying beauty and goodness, their intricate association established by the Creator, the beauty of goodness, dismissing one forgets the other.

Prancing Grace: Observe our ways, marking them in your memory, attesting to our virtue, seeing with the loyal we are genuine, confirming our faithfulness, joining the innocent who show us blameless, with the pure convinced of our sanctity, but with the crooked we must persevere, shrewdly countering their perversion, and protect all that is good.

Skeptic: Does your goodness allow deceit, disguising its beauty with evil, believing wickedness is sometimes necessary to parry its virtues, maintaining haughty treachery, never leveling out pride with humility.

Commoner: What ideas envelope any cause, trusting all strive to dismantle other's and change their ways, ones engaged in efforts to divert us from God? Can't we just praise the Lord, thanking Him for His goodness, the beauty of creation, believing we are fearfully and wonderfully made? Are we a living dichotomy, perfectly made while striving to undo others, remaking them to something imagined, redesigning the perfectly made?

Simple Simon: Nothing competes with my loyalty to Christ, giving all to be one in Him, never denying myself to grow in His likeness, satisfying Him in all ways I struggle to serve Him, convinced I would become completely one with Him, and I never realized that finding someone to serve is readily available, satisfying me with devotion by service easy to discover.

Commoner: Glorifying myself with service, appeasing my conscience, I never need to look elsewhere, trusting my salvation is assured by laying down myself for others, serving ones forgotten in their chase for existence, modeling my activities on the Lord's.

Stranger: Service is mandated by laws, directing one's conscience to obey commandments, avoiding iniquity by self-discipline, requiring decrees to know sin, established by the Lord and administered by people, outlining punishment for disobedience and declaring vengeance and retribution for meeting out justice. Realizing people must change their hearts if they choose to become like God, entering the world with the gift of grace, showing service fails where He expects pure unrestrained, uncompromising devotion, pouring out our lives completely for Him, understanding service was for a time before grace entered the world, recalling Scripture, For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. He proclaimed the surmounting of law in human relationships by a new life in grace, understanding return to the law with rejection of grace is conviction of Christ dying in vain.

Skeptic: If any cause is for changing laws, seeking new decrees for establishment of world order, Christ remains only as a bystander, watching followers initiate acts of service to ensure fellowship with Him, never realizing what complete devotion to Him can accomplish.

Simple Simon: Indeed, Christ came to fulfill the law, coming with grace to supersede all edicts, knowing grace needs no laws to understand and follow, realizing love clashes with laws, requiring justice to determine penalties, wondering if Jesus ever came to tell us we can be blessed but not for following the law.

Stranger: People could not follow the Lord's decrees, never being a fountain of hope, and He never gave up on energizing creation's goodness, sending prophets, telling people to be patient, to await the fullness of His time to send the Messiah, a Savior to reunite His fragmented people, and all those believing in Him would understand His Words, with His Prophet saying, I will open my mouth in parables, uttering things kept secret from the world's beginning.

Jurdan: Establishing a juridical freedom of rights, instituting a just order, rejecting your Christ as the great high priest, watch how people will never be mesmerized by His messages or image, seeing them develop more profitable reasons for hope with expanded knowledge, discarding the ignorance of superstition revealed as an addiction to lies, promising acquisition of divine attributes.

Skeptic: Should we pity ones blinded by reason, never igniting their soul, directing their way to nothingness?

Commoner: With a vacant soul, reason can't discern circumstances, some springing up as visions, revealing purpose, defying logic or reason and it's valueless planning to disregard my self's revelations of what's best for me, never overpowering one with the Lord's commands, giving discernment never chosen when startled by the Lord, never blinding one to my self's plans by announcement He wanted me, bringing me to my knees to obediently follow Him, trusting my joy was to begin a journey with Him, being devoted to His person, and I am asked something different, to become devoted to a secular cause, thinking my commitment is better with its cause than to Jesus Christ crucified.

Jove: Your way tells me to deny myself, which I do for my cause, giving up everything, dedicating all for its success, letting nothing conflict with its endeavors, trusting things of the world matter more, working to better the seen, concerning little of the unseen. Telling me to take up my cross must be to engage in my cause, trusting my goals for people here take precedent for any imagined for a later time. Must we deny everything for some future moment, ignoring needs for now?

Stranger: If you don't live to seek things from above, never waiting for signs from heaven, discerning times only for now, pleading for present causes, proclaiming worthy reasoned arguments to right wrongs by enacting new decrees, legislating new laws to level fields abounding in diversity, ensuring universal goodness for creation, you will never correct human failures in people ordained to be stewards of God's gifts.

Simple Simon: Take care, thinking what you bind on earth will be blessed in heaven, thinking it will model things above, understanding what you loose here could remain and never copy any design from heaven, misguided as it is from following no will but your own, leaving no room or time for the Lord to appear with His counsel, trusting your decisions are unapproachable by any ones better.

Prancing Grace: Consider my offer, fairer than any other, proposing what no one else can match, permitting you to keep all your treasures, having no conditions for giving any up as demanded by some inviting you aboard their cause, trying to convince you of an impossibility, sacrificing all you covet, trusting One who tells you to gamble all you count as valuable by depositing all your treasures in an unseen imaginary bank in heaven. Such action, exemplifying nihilism, is only possible for ones believing in nothingness, convinced of losing nothing where all worth is only imagined, never verified, trusting only in regaining paradise elsewhere, in some imagined other world.

Skeptic: How have one's treasures slackened aging of their beauty, adorning them with sagging flesh, never rewinding one's clock to some youthful time, realizing nothing can change the truth of the innate code, modifying its dependability to comply with one's wishes? Then tell me what treasures are for, convincing me why they should be valued.

Wanton: People search endlessly, plumbing all depths, probing for rarities, believing value is hidden in the ancient and unattainable, and finding little they develop a market for treasures by coveting works of human hands and worshipping truths of people's minds, none of which are ever eternal, however how they wish them to be.

Commoner: What earthly treasure does not fall into decay, passing into oblivion, lasting little beyond memory, giving pause to consider what's eternal, trusting creation to be developed for lasting, spoken into being by the eternal God, filled with jewels by His Word, convincing me He reserves treasures I donate to heaven?

Skeptic: A prophet understanding human treasures writes to tell us our dearest possessions will be waiting for us in heaven, streets paved with gold, believing we will have wants to delight us no different from here. Will we not be changed and never value the treasures we struggle to accumulate on earth, tempted by worldly wants, trusting our heavenly will be little different from now?

Simple Simon: Will any prophetic words restrict my worship of the Lord, shaming me for venerating His acts, enacting edicts to limit my relationship with Him, promoting Him as merely a relic, believing with time His usefulness will vanish?

Wanton: Listening intently, waiting for the Lord to speak, He blankets my ears with silence, never revealing His plans for me, keeping me in darkness, so I never see the light, His truth and wisdom.

Stranger: The Lord seldom uses words to convey His messages, employing means one can never mistake, never words that can be distracted by a noisy world, spoken words easy to ignore, readily transformed by interpretation, for He knows how to call ones to attention, stopping them in their thoughts, by startling people abruptly with circumstances, giving their will a chance to choose, causing them ponder, deciding for themselves whether the circumstances merit consideration, calling on their conscience for help to respond, realizing messages of advice can be discerned by calling on the Holy Spirit, silencing any spirit of self-satisfaction, taking delight in nothing of our doing, only what is pleasing to the Lord.

Commoner: The Lord speaks to us with a strong hand, most emphatically with circumstances, strong in meaning, resisting manipulation, striking truth, defying strangling interpretations to force different meanings if one confers with flesh and blood for understanding.

Jurdan: Reason vaults people into higher beings, authorizing consumer preferences to displace any truths blocking their realization, prompting them to develop personal values, casting aside primitive ancient superstitions, discounting spirituality, promoting reason for self-improvement, driving confidence to govern themselves. People's consumer democracy, dispersing all into many preferences, motivates them to give religion token appreciation, but with no understanding of what, acknowledging faith in consumerism is worthy to pass down, willing it to the next generation.

Commoner: Will reason be something I can look to, promising strength I can trust, assuring protection for all my afflictions, healing for despair, happiness greater than any joy from the Lord if I choose to love reason more than Him, forgetting Him as my rock and fortress, dismissing Him as my deliverer, calling on reason as worthy of praise, deserving to save me from my greatest enemy, depression surrounding me in sorrow, anticipation of death always untimely with its reminder, distressing with its vast unknown landscape of mystery.

Wanton: Adoption of doctrines and dogmas increased by needs for explanation, multiplying apologists to reason convictions, including conclusions and growing their importance, invites justification for developing enemies, clashing over trusted differences, charging opponents with heresy, and ignoring unity called for by God.

Skeptic: Doing things my way begins with adopting my beliefs, dismissing another's, protecting my religion's doctrines and dogmas, leading to inevitable controversies, battles for supremacy, forgetting belief and trust in the Lord who wants no doctrines and dogmas to describe our unknowable Almighty, dismissing human intrusions speculating on His nature, proclaimed by individuals claiming to be recipients of amazing revelations.

Jurdan: Orthodoxy's doctrines and dogmas, detracting from your Lord's essentials, encouraging cult formation, diversifying religion into sects, glorifying its leaders, developing religious aberrations to occupy culture's heart, steal worship due your Lord and replace Him with idols. Believing your God must be understood from ideas compounded by human reason, ideas becoming dogma, gives rise to authority, dangerous for good or evil, alternating, succeeding one another in history's cycles.

Wanton: Why must Orthodoxy be essential, realizing it confines people to one view, forbidding freedom of expression, stifling religious experiences?

Wanton: What do you mean by inerrancy?

Stranger: Inerrancy can be invoked by anyone to dispute another's understanding of Scriptures, citing numerous passages saying different things, confused by biblical inconsistencies, justifying new groups to join and never trust the heresy of inerrancy.

Simple Simon: Many distrust us, proclaiming we refuse to face modern realities, likening us to relics of the Paleolithic age, calling us paleo-orthodox, and we are indeed remnants, surviving to protect and continue the Lord's revelations, relying on ancients He authorized to interpret His Scriptures and manifestations of Creation.

Preacher: Orthodoxy developed doctrines to enlighten human understanding, but it could never claim to be the essence of faith, and human experiences of modern realities could never surpass doctrines, however feeble they are.

Commoner: Our Orthodoxy must keep tradition at a minimum, realizing people will always tinker with it, seeking ways to make faith more acceptable, and knowing they can never add anything that all will accept, seeing all previous manipulations done with the idea of improvement split many religion's followers, sending them out to form new congregations and compelling them to obey iron-clad laws to protect against further division, decrees to protect dissident's vested interests.

Wanton: What is Orthodoxy most feared threat?

Stranger: Danger lies in developing doctrines, forcing their adoption, committing their installation as tradition, knowingly facing reinterpretations of the Bible, altering revelations to force old beliefs to change, fearing modified ones may be ignored and eventually discarded, threatening some to be heretical, even doctrines trusted to be written by scholarly persons.

Simple Simon: Some insist on revelation, experienced by ones self-appointed to hear the Lord, as essential for creating doctrine, receiving His information to indoctrinate others, ordaining themselves as prophetic messengers to develop dogmas, but He provides human experience to establish and grow faith, using the Holy Spirit and Scripture to witness His Word, knowing His Word transmitted by people is by scribes striving to be faithful to the Lord.

Skeptic: Creeds are essential for protection against the ingenuity of human wisdom and imaginations of ones claiming to be intellectually superior, forging doctrines and dogmas to codify morality, ridiculing prevalent virtues, ignoring beatitudes, educating people needing some form of belief to maintain warm feelings about Jesus, using whatever affords expression of religious experience, finding God's revelations somewhere other than Scriptures.

Stranger: Orthodoxy is maintained, so it doesn't disintegrate from failing doctrines, from reason dismissing the Lord as an unimportant human fabrication waiting to be discarded for deifying oneself. Orthodoxy is trusted belief in essential truths and proven by what the Lord has done, speaking His Word to create all we comprehend, believing all this was done as His expression of love, and we are created to participate without need to understand, worshipping Him and regarding all He has done as holy, expressing love as He has shown us, providing all our needs. We don't ask Orthodoxy to bless us, seeing all our blessings are here with the Lord showing us how benefits must be shared.

Priest: Orthodoxy, being communal and bare-bones religion, worships God only as we know Him, Creator, Savior, and Redeemer, filled with love, authorizing prophets to reveal bits and pieces of Him.

Wanton: Why must Orthodoxy never accept freedom of religion?

Priest: Freedom of religion rains confusion, propagating sects, each striving for authority, vying with each other to reign supreme, reasoning to be glorified, overshadowing other freedoms promoting despair and lamenting over life's injustices, fostering convictions to fight for what's right.

Stranger: Orthodoxy never supports confusion by ordaining each define one's story, and being a communal body it holds fast to one story written and executed by God, without humans intervening to entangle it with doctrines and dogmas, without intervention by prophets imagining how His story can be improved, but every interruption by testimonies to their imagination requires a response and humans never cease adding comments to Scriptures.

Simple Simon: Ask how different groups of people will battle one another when they trust and obey the same one God. Do they hear Him differently, or perhaps they paper Him with so many doctrines and dogmas He can never be recognized by others or changed to be uniquely attuned to all interests? Orthodoxy brings people's differences together, returning them to heed His messages and most importantly never to distort them for their purpose, changing Him into one they can join, allowing them to become like Him and still permit them to be their person.

Wanton: With no rules to follow, no doctrines to obey, no dogmas to memorize, people avoid legal restrictions they must confess to honor, having once been confirmed by catechisms teaching denomination's entrusted readings of the Bible, and releasing them now from any commitments but their own, acknowledging their free will and personal autonomy's ideal situation, freeing them to consider secularism's evolving trends, adopting any to meet their needs, integrated with changing cultural beliefs.

Stranger: Secularism does develop, trending toward chaos, it's nothingness never knowing peace. Orthodoxy promises peace, eliminating ideas worth fighting for, seeing serenity abound, but is this what satisfies humanity?

Simple Simon: Orthodoxy tolerates prejudice, the misfortune insisted on by diversity's freedom of religion, tolerating nothing but one's truth, accepting no others, guarding their parochialism, rejecting all forms of fanaticism inherent in fundamentalism, condemning sects attaching dogmas reasoned to be important. Religious diversity, supported by decrees establishing its freedom drags opponents into frays battling for supremacy.

Skeptic: Diversity expands opportunities for hatred, providing reasons to justify conflict, objectifying warfare, and asking you if I may, what sort of difference is most responsible? How one appears or what one thinks, molding the basis for one's actions? Protection of freedom of religion, assuring its diversity and rejecting any authorization of its education, mandating no religious instruction for public schools, preserves the diversity and ensures no indoctrination to support one's innate longing to discover God. Do secular powers depend on religious diversity to maintain supremacy, bundling religious beliefs if needed with nationalism, consolidating their power with the sanctification of prevailing doctrines and dogmas?

Simple Simon: Orthodoxy rejects the religious bases sustaining diversity, reasoning they are unnecessary, hardly ever required for belief in God, recognizing faith in Him is essentially from His revelations, difficult to miss with the senses He created in us.

Skeptic: Does Orthodoxy have only one demand, clearly identified by God, insisting on unity in obeying His Great Commission, nothing more and nothing less, uniting humans into one, unifying all to follow His way, reuniting people to rejoin Him for eternity? The Great Commission needs no new decrees, compelling people to love all others when His direction is already there.

Simple Simon: Your unbelief threatens no one, your skepticism distrusting all truth, finding nothing to champion, remaining undisturbed by time-honored doctrines, ignoring established dogmas, being content as a skeptic ridiculing all as imaginations, pillorying reason for supplying fodder to sustain people plying their ideas.

Skeptic: Who created over six hundred laws we must follow, obeying all to guarantee our worthiness in the Lord's eyes? Not I said God. He chose few commandments to assure our return to Him. But we decide to modify His decrees, changing their commands by reasoning new laws, hoping they would be as acceptable as His. Should I not scorn these figments of human imagination?

Stranger: With continuous development to expand reason for better understanding, acknowledging people strive for perfection, we depend less on God's laws, eliminating many contrived by humans, concentrating on His most important commands, trusting our reason to imagine better ways.

Commoner: Reasoning away doctrines and dogmas, dismissing commands essential for salvation, destroys our security in trusted beliefs, assurances we never lose the Lord's favor.

Jurdan: Reason should be for fine-tuning our instincts, using imagination to intensify innately-driven pleasures, developing maximum possibilities from our senses, nullifying dismay, quelling despondency, exalting sense-driven experiences, finding ways to hasten recovery of sensation's responses. Our instinctual responses are inadequate, needing manipulation to improve their intended purpose, justifying their improvement, and we tinker with them as needed, disregarding any threats they can be transformed into configurations for self-destruction.

Wanton: Constantly fighting for freedom, ensuring our rights to choose, defining ourselves, establishing concepts of who we are, allowing no interference by significance wanted for our existence, we trust no one to mess with our reason for being and rely only on facts developed by humans to unravel its mysteries.

Jurdan: What can life be for other than self-expression and self-fulfillment, doing things my way, trusting there is no other assurance for happiness, the basic goal awaiting success?

Skeptic: You rejoice when your desires become settled laws of the land, never to be unsettled, decrees never to be resettled, carved in stone to replace the Lord's laws, but wait and see, if you will live that long, human expressions of their mandates cycle, revolving around, soon to land on one extreme or another.

Stranger: There must be more than that, seeing humans add restrictions, compelling people to accept doctrines and trust dogmas, doctoring beliefs to conform, developing laws to make them more sacred, sanctifying words of human reason, instituting rituals to solemnize worship, garnishing reverence with liturgy trusted to bring one closer to God.

Skeptic: Laws also protect freedom of religion, being only token fabrications, appeasements granted to satisfy defenders of religious faiths, enacted to comply with existing morality, but they ignore concealed instigations of sects battling to oust others.

Jurdan: Would institutionalizing Orthodoxy outlaw diversity in religion, mandating only one form of worship, condemning some choosing to be unbelievers committed to acknowledging no supreme beings, no God or gods?

Skeptic: People Shanghai more malleable religions and reason ways to make them over, transforming them in ways to satisfy their desires and reward them with happiness, rejecting or changing their doctrines, making them acceptable for people's purposes and Orthodoxy never escapes unscathed.

Stranger: Established as the recognition of one God, authorized as the Creator, the Maker of heaven and earth, acknowledged as forming all matter and life by His Word, remaining mostly hidden from human understanding, revealing Himself when the time is appropriate, giving people a soul through which His Messenger can convey directions to guard their ways, and manifesting His love for all He remains the essence of Orthodoxy.

Wanton: Much more must constitute Orthodoxy to differ it from denominations, sects, and cults, making it a religion everyone should follow, dispelling other faiths as sources of conflict.

Commoner: What should Orthodoxy demand and who is qualified to establish its truths?

Stranger: Begin with what people could agree on. They have an inherent direction to believe in God as their Creator, affirming this from the bottom of their hearts, sending them to search for Him, finding Him throughout creation, describing Him to be the image for their identity while accepting the mystery of His being.

Wanton: Not everyone believes that, denying anything inherent promises they can know Him, believing instead in people's reason to create God, needing someone to explain why they are here, where they came from and where they are going.

Stranger: Indeed some surrender, developing a reason to ponder such questions, but failing, frustrated that God hasn't revealed enough to verify His existence, they give up, denying Him outright or believing He doesn't exist.

Wanton: Observe His believers, dismissing convictions of unbelievers, creating doctrines to attract people's allegiance, addressing needs for their times, modifying their dogmas when reason advises better ways to sustain people's attention, forming cults to blend passions of their desires with fragments of belief in the Lord.

Commoner: Cults are dangerous, reveling in rhapsodic singing and dancing, delighting in freedom, protecting rights to worship as they choose, attracting people seeking a buffet of choices, restructuring their services to give attendees safe worship, instructing them to support only their needs, and when needs develop, cults offer more palatable selections.

Simple Simon: Cults disregard tradition, deviating from the unity of Orthodoxy when forming new denominations, discarding Orthodoxy accumulated baggage promoted by scholars self-assigned to best-know the Lord, and contrasted with Orthodoxy all become cults, creating divisions to produce diversity people demand. Cults have thereby lost respect, becoming what individuals want, making religion people's construct, forgetting what God expects, proclaiming how we must revere Him, never letting us decide how to worship Him.

Stranger: Can Orthodoxy become archaic, considered to be unusual, disappearing with time, to be seldom recognized, ignoring temptations to obey human reason, dismissing its call to unify individuals, exposing dangers of alien doctrines and dogmas urged to be followed by free will, losing protection of canonical edicts, unable to claim holy soil or remain sacred and secured from invasion by any cult.

Simple Simon: Maintaining Orthodoxy as the only religion, trusting it as the basis for culture, rejecting all competing beliefs, accepting it by all subjects to make them peacemakers, eliminates diversity of conflicting faiths and their disturbances driving disruptions unsettling peace from within and without.

Stranger: Is the world better with rule by schismatics, creating a diversity of belief, neopagans reverting to believe in only what they observe, or sectarians isolated in trusting only what they choose, none ever being unified, each following gods to their liking? Maintain Orthodoxy to strengthen all human efforts, knowing fragmented religious beliefs can be a formidable adversary.

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Skeptic: Causes attract followers usually by fear, portraying their leader as a savior, prepared to trounce its enemies, knowing they may recognize no enemy until created by an advocate.

Jurdan: Predicting calamity, giving fear a reason, is most effective in winning trust, and leaders seize opportunities to speed its appearance, using religion as best to spread fear, knowing fear is a robotic response to hopes for salvation. Never trust apologists, convincing people never to fear, arguing for their Almighty, placing words on His tongue. What more do they know but the fine art of rhetoric, convincing others never to fear?

Wanton: Some never respond to messages of doom, giving them no reason to fear.

Commoner: I have nothing to fear. Acquiring spirituality, taming my despair, realizing it is achieved by my doing, meditating it to the forefront, depending on no one else, I rejoice in its serenity, growing my understanding and releasing me from fear, giving me peace, tolerating others, accepting them for who they are, judging no one and concerned for them all.

Skeptic: How can you acquire spirituality, thinking you can raise up a spirit, perhaps from your native code? Some spirits within could be demons, as well as what you claim, each alternating as you choose. Do you possess a power to activate an innate spirit at will? People have instances where they can call on demons to counter angst with retribution. I presume spirituality gives you peace when you sense all is well.

Bystander: Compelled to exist in a dichotomy, your soul in battles, conflicts between spirits giving comfort and demons of destruction, each contending for supremacy, you don't realize you are made for interactions but never for battles between good and evil. Does the Trinity quarrel, the mind of God splintered on contending with His Son and the Holy Spirit, or do you trust in the love that the Father, Son and Spirit have among themselves? Can't you understand the Lord's goodness could have it no other way, establishing creation's beauty? By this people find opportunities to become more like Him, calling it the pathway to theosis.

Stranger: I trust your judgment, finding the way to becoming more like the Lord. Did your wisdom wait in the fear of God, avoiding me until I developed fear instead of investing my thoughts and deeds with goodness and love He created in all, as we feverishly pursue progress, believing the concepts we form moving us forward are essential in providing escape from discontentment and emptiness produced by reason, free from contamination by prejudice and passion and hold the key to our success, but what is the measure of success when one is blind to self-sufficiency of a moment, never giving time to offerings of wisdom from an empty mind, willing to listen and hear thoughts of another, freeing one from pre-conceptions solidified in pre-determinations of doctrines and dogmas battling for supremacy, being the adversary of wisdom of emptiness, defying all with their establishment of universals, testifying to the need for knowledge to depend on fear for the Lord.

Skeptic: Commitments to doctrines and dogmas, existing in a paradise of chosen decrees, invites danger for ones wavering in their trust, posing as their command to obedience for if their dedication splinters, sending them something new to behold as truth, they fall no differently than Adam and Eve, mortals like us who discerned God never by knowledge or reason, never having seen Him, but only by hearing a voice from somewhere calling out orders to ensure their survival, never knowing if imagination was speaking, or intuition ordered fears for survival.

Commoner: Reveling in assurance for our wisdom, saving God's wisdom for the end, dreading approaching fear coming to seize our life blood, we rejudge our wisdom, waiting to suffer our final moments, lamenting why me.

Simple Simon: We maintain claims to be bold, faithful to Scriptures words: You were never created to fear, but recall wisdom's words: Happy is the person who always lives with fear, having it as a constant companion, assuring one preserves its importance. Therefore, never deceive yourself, thinking fear is a curse, making life unbearable, requiring the need for protective angels.

Skeptic: Guardian angels are fantasies, described no place in Scriptures, developed from hopeful imaginations, belief in spirits who need nothing of people, answering calls for protection from fears and dangers, naming an angel to claim release from harm and afflictions, spirits never sending fear to obey the Lord's commands, never subjecting anyone for impending judgment.

Commoner: With God never creating me to be fearful, telling me I was not made to fear, can it be an anxious thing to fall into the hands of a vengeful living God, demanding retribution for my iniquities, exacting unending punishment, sentencing me to be imprisoned for eternity, leaving one to wonder on His purpose for my creation?

Simple Simon: Remember the Lord's missionaries addressing us as little children, treating all as innocent people, naive and needing to grow up, conferring on us maturity to obey His messages, sheltering us from creation's evil, secluded from other's iniquities, the spirit of their truths, consigning us to some imaginary paradise, committing us to love one another, reminding we are born of God, reasoning He so loved us we are also obliged to love one another. So as little children make love perfect, casting out all fear's affliction of torment, knowing fear prevents perfection of love that empowers us with boldness to be prepared for the day of judgment.

Jurdan: Missionaries remind us to fear, teaching hatred as its companion, using Scripture as their authority, speaking words of your angry God.

Stranger: Causes following the Lord can never teach us to hate. Show me any other cause that erases hatred from its agenda. Human causes must have enemies to hate, without which they would never attract followers. Look within the church and confess within your heart, hearing its admonitions on who to fear and what to hate, remembering how religious bodies martyred many believing in the same Lord but hating how another worshiped Him, never considering whether the Lord is satisfied by the self-fulfillment of people destroying the Lord's human creatures.

Commoner: Convinced by Scriptures to fear God, trusting convictions we cannot revere Him without it, reasoning we must fear Him to be obedient, His followers must be fearful, assuring obedience to His commands, but read on, changing our requirements to follow a new Savior, hearing His disciples tell us, For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind, and if we have love we acknowledge, There is no fear in love, trusting perfect love casts out fear, knowing fear's anxiety involves torment. Does the Lord choose fearful followers, never being made perfect in love, realizing torment hides in their baggage?

Simple Simon: Retaining native beastly codes within me, arousing fear to guard against danger, invoking fear in Eden to drive the Lord's people into hiding, I cannot destroy innate directions instructing me to fear, and must ignore Scripture's words, People were never made to fear. But having learned to fear, dismayed by its effect on me, I can fearlessly throw myself before the Lord, prostrating myself before Him to express my love for Him, knowing no better way to transform love for Him from fear, confident no danger can abide in my love for Him.

Prancing Grace: Fear to ensure obedience, realizing fear commits people to create enemies, forgets perfect love leaves them imperfect for our cause. We must have followers fearful of only themselves, to be arrogant with pride, fearless in deceiving others, devising wicked imaginations, swiftly running errands of mischief, but never sowing discord within our band, injecting disharmony to rearrange the tempo of our purpose.

Skeptic: Able people must understand fear they are created to know and be committed to tremble in awe, and genuine causes enlist only ones fearless but never tempted to jeopardize actions or scheme against their leadership, boldly attempting subterfuge, realizing daring ones arrogantly boast of their skills, prideful with their rhetoric, and scatter their intentions on abandoning a cause.

Commoner: Claims to be created by a protective deity, describing our God to harbor jealousy, reading what scribes have written, how can I trust my Lord if He is truly like me at my worst? Does jealousy incite fear, making me fear the Lord when jealousy seizes Him, raising a signal for me to acknowledge a time to fear Him? Jealousy for another person never arouses me to fear, maybe depression in coveting things I cannot have, but never fear, not even awe, knowing reverence is unmerited for any Lord claimed to be a jealous God.

Wanton: Never knowing what God is, guessing what He is not, relying on the belief we are made in His image, we trust His attributes are no different from ours, so He can be provoked to jealousy, hatred, murder, vengeance and retribution, and if He is little different from us why should we praise Him, giving Him honor greater than any person we know.

Stranger: If the Lord is most virtuous, the only perfect image of goodness, the hallmark of His creativity, how could He ever be jealous?

Jurdan: Humans other than those believing in your Lord, trusting in many gods, have always held their deities to have human frailties, living with them no differently than us.

Commoner: Never by reason, claiming nothing from a string of facts, woven by me into wisdom, could I create my faith, using conclusions manufactured by arguments, knowing now that faith was not by my doing but was gifted to me by the Lord, a faith coming from the Son of God, coming after accepting the opportunity in the circumstances He presented. We could never understand Him except by comparison with humans. He leaves His signature marked inherently within us to discover.

Skeptic: With His signature of authorship, marking me as His work of art, He enables me to create enemies, showing me how it is done, developing ones to fear and detest, giving cause for anxiety. Following His example, I must determine an enemy before I can steal its treasures and beat one into submission before taking its life. The Lord had identified His people's enemies before they were attacked, plundered and either killed or driven from their land. Is this why He created me with lust and jealousy, preparing me to use them to steal what He identifies as worth taking, blessing me with unneeded treasures, punishing me if I don't seize them now, telling me they will be saved for taking by a new generation.

Jurdan: Equipped with free will, cooperating with imagination, humans activate lust to create enemies, exercising what their Lord made them be, fabricating jousts to explore their skills as they wait for something to appear, suitable for becoming an enemy.

Commoner: Confidence in yourself, magnified by knowledge, promoted by an eagerness to learn, has bypassed any trust in our Lord, disbelieving all truths proclaimed for Him, thinking all His commands were for ancient peoples, ones seeking ways to convert their fears to hope, finding God to answer their needs.

Jurdan: Defining all I am, existing to achieve the utmost my code can allow, my days are consumed by seeking knowledge, convinced to grow my judgment, believed to fill me with wisdom, making me independent of imaginations to trust superstition, separating any need to depend on your God, making me self-sufficient, igniting sparks of latent divinity within, trusting my search for knowledge can achieve this end.

Commoner: Have you gained any wisdom to verify your convictions?

Jurdan: Indeed, developing confidence to trust in self-reliance, digesting information to encourage we are gifted to help ourselves, discovering new information convincing us to be self-sufficient, never to depend on religion and its rituals, stripping away liturgy and nonsense of its worship, leaving its beliefs empty of trust, and limiting all dependency on one's self-sufficiency, builds my wisdom.

Stranger: You have high hopes for gaining information to promote confidence in only yourself, seeing it to seize control away from the Lord. His biggest mysteries remain hidden, however, confusing scientists trying to unravel secrets He chooses to guard against human understanding, thinking scientific brilliance can expose them with equations, unifying all to personal satisfaction. You forget that the Lord will answer the questions you ask, but they always bring about new issues harder to answer, leading people on an unending chase, seeking more of the unknown, endlessly showing there is more to its mysteries.

Skeptic: Has self-improvement, growing trust in human achievements, done anything to help people live better, destroying conflict, transforming disharmony to harmony?

Jove: How can agreement to distrust our accomplishments represent unity, telling us instead we must fear the Lord, thinking fear is essential for chords of concordance, denying fear's dissonance, believing we delight in anxiety, suggesting we are born to worry, but He tells us, For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.

Skeptic: Is then to fear the Lord a human admonition, transmitted by scribes, writers telling us their thoughts to be preserved for eternity, indelibly recorded to last, believing its truth is embedded in the human code?

Stranger: Truth is the truth, never being perhaps, struggling from being partial, claimed by us until disproven, argued to be complete, verified by our reason, waiting to be surprised by one better, one we can cling to and base all our hopes. So, it is when discordance breaks out, jeopardizing our trust in creation's goodness, tarnishing truths of our doing, held dear, never to be lost.

Jove: Truths innately coding our thoughts and actions are fluid, never permanent, and subject to revision, allowing one to ask, What is truth.

Skeptic: Thereby chance disrupts creation's harmony in ways never understood.

Commoner: With everyone here vying to describe the Lord and some assuring we can become partakers of His divine nature, who comes forth to train me in His ways, teaching me what He is like? The sages confuse me, however, ascribing His virtues in conflict with my conscience, describing Him as angry and hateful, passing judgments critical of all human blemishes and quickly armed with retribution, demanding fear of His almighty power, with occasional lapses to lavish any love.

Skeptic: God's nature is defined by humans, trusting His image was used to create us, but do people know His nature, having confidence in understanding what they surmise, doing the best their inadequate understanding allows? Therefore, making His life what it is, expect of Him what you receive from another human being, unpredictability and inconsistency in making judgments dependent on His mood for the moment. How can your God possess a nature for creating people like Himself, unequivocally virtuous, so they can proudly claim to be made in His image?

Wanton: God must be more than one, convincing people to claim, My God is greater than yours, or perhaps having more than one manifestation, giving them reason to support their convictions what He is like, protecting His followers into battle, fighting for truths He has assigned, distressed at the inerrancy of their foes battling for their proclamations to maintain supremacy for their dogmas describing their one God who must be worshipped by all.

Commoner: Where has the Lord's admonition gone, His prayer for uniting all as one, as we are herded by unpredictable winds, denied security of being more than one, knowing wherever two or more are gathered He will be with us.

Skeptic: Causes celebrating diversity, enlisting all forms of religious beliefs, can never be united, never corralled within other's limits of toleration, realizing all will be considered heretics by others battling out their differences. Perhaps greater peace can be discovered within a group of atheists, believing in no God, having no doctrinal issues with brethren of unbelievers, no major issues to fight and die for.

Commoner: With the denial of God's existence and never believing in a soul to harbor any Holy Spirit, why should such people have any virtue, never having instructions for its development?

Stranger: The Lord provides keys to access their innate conscience, created with fundamental truths, verities for alerting all to unacceptable behavior, enough for protection until they seek Him for further instruction. Such protection is also innate in beasts, but lacks refinement with a conscience, showing He loves all creation, even if some dismiss any desire to know Him. See how an animal lays down its life for another, protecting other life at risk of its own, doing more than we dare to venture, even when the Lord tells us to give up our life for another.

Skeptic: Why does religion have so many factions, numerous within multitudes, peering at other's beliefs, judging all but themselves, exercising criticism to mind other's business, examining their eyes for blemishes, mangling unacceptable truths with its own thoughts and words, forgetting what the Lord says, praying to His Father that all would be united as one? Having been taught by your religion to trust no one else's beliefs, criticizing all but your own, tolerating no other religious dogma, claiming them all to be heresy, does this leave a religion's followers much time for anything else, for possibly loving anything they hate, knowing hatred must consume much of their activity?

Wanton: How do Christians live that out, being most critical, reasoning ways to worship, seeking Scripture passages to build beliefs, decrees to separate them from other adherents, establishing dogmas to destroy others, instigating inquisitions to eliminate heretical beliefs, inciting witch hunts to remove vagrant insights, all done to maintain purity, protecting human-made ideas written in the margins of their biblical thoughts?

Stranger: We are indeed all one, having a theology open for all to accept, tolerating anyone willing to adopt our beliefs. But criticism making one harsh, vindictive and cruel is destructive, jeopardizing our followers by making them distrust, teaching them to dismiss all we do, never to realize strengths they have to offer, threatening our beliefs by criticism's invasion to claim superiority.

Skeptic: Criticism plagues believers more than unbelievers, compelling them to judge others, marking them as untouchables, sequestered and deserted, devoid of purity, rationalizing this is God's way to protect His chosen ones.

Commoner: Jesus was critical, seeming to flaunt His superiority, working to replace the existing religion, but He didn't tell us to do the same, using our discernment to criticize entrenched rituals and change trusted beliefs. His departing words tell us to spread His message, never to proclaim ours, telling people estimations of what is required for salvation, and above all He prays for people's unity, to become one in love, reducing their pride, dismissing their judgments of who deserves salvation, coming to be with the Lord forever. If you can see beyond your criticism, you stand the possibility of being unified as one with all who claim God as their creator and redeemer.

Stranger: Being one with God, the Father who must also be critical, watching all our movements, never exhausting criticism, should we be different believing we are made in His image? Remember, if we see believers doing sinful acts, we are called to judge them, advising them of their iniquity, obediently exercising criticism.

Wanton: Do you encourage leaders to recruit no one critical, seeing or fabricating blemishes for their followers, disrupting harmony, sneaking in lies, injecting turmoil, creating discord, intent on finding anything to judge?

Skeptic: Every happening can expect moments of judgment, springing forth from every corner, creeping out from crevices to claim attention, arguing words meant only for its hearing, shouting for someone to listen. Expect no less, whether from protagonists celebrating their convictions, ridiculing detractors, or nobodies looking to be amused. By no means do only words attract judgment? Consider also appearances, drawing judgment from some if not many. Therefore, become a parrot to voice lofty words, borrowed from one whose eloquence is forgotten, making them yours now, fitted in your robotic tongue, speaking as a mannequin of the times, arraigned with the appearance of an everyone.

Prancing Grace: We recruit ones to form bands of brothers, never trusting followers espousing brotherly love, fearing they can revert to act on instincts, lapsing into judgment when faced with danger, choosing ones capable of forming bands moved by dignity, bonding diversity into cohesion, unifying differences into one accord. Brotherly love bears seeds of uncertainty, lying dormant, never knowing when they will sprout discord, instigate judgment and threaten our mission, supporting ideas endangering our cause, becoming whoremongers espousing ways of the world, threatening iniquities poised to poison our cause, realizing this uncertainty could never be trusted, exposing our cause to judgment, fearing our hopes would be dashed before they begin.

Skeptic: Can there be ones qualified to follow you? Most people have no credentials for wisdom, living as they choose, denying the world, so why would anyone wish to enlist their thoughts, or even consider whether they have any?

Wanton: Most people lack credentials for possessing wisdom and are never considered by elite ones favored with highly documented achievement, forever boasting of their qualifications in the public square, arguing their accomplishments be recognized, spewing out wisdom appropriate for their audience.

Stranger: Credentialed ones accepted for hearing, modify their understanding, changing their rhetoric to suit the needs of their audience, so I wonder what is wisdom, being changeable for a moment's occasion, and if wisdom is the offspring of truth, it must bear many different names, one for each child.

Wanton: What qualifies anyone for speaking out, to have a voice in community life and be trusted by others, joining reason with others to utter common sense? Must one carry credentials of many studies, certified by citadels of higher learning to judge qualifications are greater than others, voting with peers to set all standards, leaving no decisions to ordinary people, weaker in reasoning, lacking the understanding to approach wisdom of learned ones?

Simple Simon: The uneducated, possessing little knowledge, add limited value to any cause, and are prized by unworthy aspirants coveting their support, offering money to pilfer their vote for important decisions. We trust knowledgeable people indoctrinated with our beliefs, but we hardly trust highly educated ones having too much knowledge, self-assured with their self-professed wisdom, battling with peers over truths assembled from facts developed from their discoveries, rediscovered facts for retelling, reinvented theories long-lost, finding new ways to recast stories for people to believe. Forgetting what wisdom once professed, There is nothing new under the sun, orators clamor for people's attention, understanding how to revitalize facts long forgotten and ignored, restating their claims as something new.

Prancing Grace: We partner with your beliefs, distrusting ones drowning in facts, promoting their wisdom in theories, conclusions doomed to disbelief, subjecting order to be unraveled.

Skeptic: Before your cause succeeds, you must colonize a nation, drawing people into your will, mesmerizing them with promises, and learn how to manipulate deceit by proclaiming progress, destroying evil's interference with fulfillment of promises, creating enemies for ones standing in the way, bringing them out from imagination's shadow to fight disappointment over unmet promises.

Prancing Grace: We unite people protesting, we have rights, exercising their free will established by the Creator and documented in our decrees.

Commoner: I cannot join any protest clamoring for due rights, guaranteed by any document of opinion, because I distrust them, preferring the Lord to confirm my rights,

knowing mayhem would never be instigated by His edicts unless belligerents want them destroyed. In either case, people could justify chaos, challenging God's laws or ones enacted by humans, admonishing both since our laws are inspired by the Lord's, viewing His edicts as antiquated and inadequately conforming to knowledge coming from reason and science, and discerning our laws as ones we can always modify or eliminate.

Simple Simon: Who has interest in bringing all together, sweeping up chaos' scatterings, assembling its fragments, embedding wisdom within, displaying power to make such changes, protecting its creations, with Orthodoxy preventing them from being torn asunder, but the Lord. He made only one mistake, maybe an intentional error for adding spice to His creation, by creating humans to possess free will, thinking how tiresome His accomplishments would be without some comedy, how intriguing they could be with His creatures reasoning their ways in being.

Stranger: Acknowledging people's duty is to maintain belief for their nation's social, economic and political problems, I chose Orthodoxy to follow, realizing a menagerie of beliefs incites chaos to rule, and other causes, however noble they are, will be inundated by discontent, diverse squabbling beliefs, with inaction becoming fruitful.

Skeptic: Imagine any cause, headed by good leadership, selecting overseers to be hounds herding cats, chasing them to be corralled, enclosed, tormented by captivity, and revealing their nature to battle one another. Would your followers be similar, ready to fight at the sight of another, acting violently even in their acts of love? Felines, never bonding in fellowship, destined to do their own thing, resemble humans selecting from a panoply of beliefs, choosing direction by their senses, avoiding coercion by any shepherd.

Stranger: Humans gifted with reason and common sense cannot be compared with beasts fitting your suggestion. These attributes have negotiated with the Lord to establish Orthodoxy, Christianity's fundamentals: belief and trust in one triune God, sending His only mediator in Jesus Christ God incarnate, His eternal Word, the Holy Spirit, commitment to Him by baptism and Holy Communion, and obedience to His Great Commission. Negotiating any of this away would prove unacceptable, becoming responsible for disunity, fracturing all into diversity, dismembering Orthodoxy from its beginnings, aborting it as a fetus, never allowing it any breath of life.

Skeptic: Doctrine always divides, generating diversity, despite cries of the Spirit begging for unity, giving discernment importance, deciding what to live for, to defend and die for. Orthodoxy lives by the Spirit's messages, realizing it will always be tempted by doctrine and dogma fertilizing arenas for battle, distracting people from the importance of the Holy Spirit's words, the Voice of the Good Shepherd emanating love's abounding expression of Creation.

Wanton: The Spirit is everlasting, unchanged, expressing Creation's truth, but human doctrines, fragile dogmas, and our reason's accomplishments are continuously revised, updated to give confidence in reforming the church, trusting its truths are lasting.

Jurdan: You have diversity of religion because each one believes and worships a different God, responding to prophets marketing self-styled versions, hawking them to others, associating themselves with miracles for considering them unique.

Wanton: With diversity also in people's gods, can anyone expect them to unite, doing something humans are unable to do, fighting for their niche, reluctant to concede any supremacy to another's god, hardly submitting to other's moral vocabulary, trusting their convictions are as good as any other?

Stranger: Orthodoxy's reality is absolute, the unquestioned truth, testifying to the one God and His commandments, unaltered by human reason's convictions appended to soften His directions, doctrines added to satisfy people's desires, dogmas created by relativists thinking they contribute to understanding truths but doomed to be finite and corruptible like most human acts working to improve what the Lord created.

Skeptic: Does Orthodoxy support freedom and sustain independence, freeing people to be individuals unencumbered by tedious documents, beholden to no dogmas, permitting unrestricted reason to evaluate messages from revelations spoken by the Holy Spirit, with reason refining common sense and untainted faith, never molested by doctrines and dogmas, sustaining Orthodox purity?

Jurdan: Religious diversity, offering a variety of beliefs, doctrinal differences to fight over, provides enough choices to please most, carefully selecting ones least harmful to their lives, demanding nothing ridiculous, none able to attract rebuke.

Stranger: Orthodoxy provides all that is needed to guide us through a true order of life and provides no excuses for unworthy actions, sharpening our consciences to recognize and confess all iniquities, admitting a sin is a sin is a sin. Orthodoxy welcomes diversity but is disgraced by changing social norms, transformed for pleasure to reign, delighting our freedoms to choose.

Skeptic: Creation is the arena for dichotomies, conflicting differences determined by God the Creator, judged to be appropriate and consistent with His love, but little do we understand why, giving us reason to eliminate what has sustained civilization, frantically destroying the balance between competing necessities, opening a vacuum, unleashing a fanatic course to take over.

Wanton: My beliefs are challenged by acquired doubt, having been indoctrinated in skepticism by the university, developing reasoning skills to distrust anything never my own, accepting only what my reason establishes as reality. People with rational thoughts taught me to believe only what they offer, reality proved by what can be seen, emancipating me from imaginary unproven convictions, never to trust false myths distracting us from maximizing our lives here and now.

Skeptic: Believing to be made in God's image, created with His secrets, encoding His characteristics within me, hidden and waiting to be revealed, we endeavor to decipher their workings, thinking we can learn how to become God on uncovering our inner unknowns, to survive like Him eternally, trusting scientists' promises for us to live much longer someday. Good luck! Human imaginations pass as all their aspirations.

Stranger: Orthodoxy limits its decrees, focusing on the intimacy, accessibility, and love of God, drawing on no doctrines or dogmas to expand on what human imagination proposes for Him to be, declining adoption of human attributes people believe He must have, thereby finding nothing to contest with all believing in the same thing.

Skeptic: Claiming to suffer no disasters by embracing Orthodoxy, giving followers a means to protect their faith, it can never be stripped of doctrines and dogmas, essential for firm belief and trust in the Lord, promising them hope, certain expectations no other cause can provide. What is Orthodoxy, like all religions filled with doctrines and dogmas?

Stranger: Orthodoxy avoids human fabrications, basing worship on the Lord's revelations, messages of His Word in creation, manifested in everything triggering human senses, unleashing our innate code to receive instruction directly from Him, untainted by doctrines and dogmas to bias its reception, subduing our emotions eagerly waiting to sing and dance, listening to Him without interruption, giving Him our full attention.

Skeptic: Orthodoxy must be unblemished, believing and trusting in the Lord without tarnishing Him with the addition of doctrines and dogmas. We can accept this by remembering their evil documented in human history, continuing in carnage justified by people's God who was changed to become like them, invoking perceptions of Him as a vengeful deity who blesses mass destruction of His created individuals who did not comply with dictates of human-developed decrees. Christian heritage, however, remaining true to its roots, loyal to its ancestral beliefs, treated as a sect springing from an ancient religion, had little chance of surviving on its own without added decrees.

Wanton: You are unreal, unlike anything acceptable, visioning no reality but your own, and who is better than me to determine life's reality, even though others may struggle with it, criticizing it as unreal because it conflicts with theirs.

Skeptic: Science selects seeds for growing reality, and I trust its endeavors, discovering things to improve our lives, but should I trust its results to improve what we have?

Jove: Scientists labor unknowingly, their discoveries never released by their efforts but as revelations at the Lord's chosen time, decided by Him when the time is right who judges the time for everything. His time is not right to satisfy us, forcing us to wait, compelling a time for patience, perhaps waiting for us to change, to reward us, interceding with useful discoveries.

Stranger: The Lord created you with gifts to have a purpose distinct and unique, evident for your discernment, but does your free will wander until imagination stumbles, encouraging you to create values pleasing for the moment, creating choices to fulfill your aspirations, and if you never choose to abandon religion, seek a group of believers who accept your ways as well as any others.

Jove: Science stumbles, laboring imagination to understand reality, descending into mysticism, assigning symbols to invisible manifestations, describing unknown movements to properties of imaginary particles, as it continues to delve into what constitutes matter humans can behold, believing it's results can answer their deepest questions, but is this different from people's studying cosmos' array, describing stellar formations as likenesses we know, giving newly recognized entities symbols for their identification, with all investigations remaining mysterious, leaving us to honestly admit our labors obligate us to stay in mysticism, mocking our senses providing reasons to believe, asking us to trust the spirit embedded in our soul, relying on it to help us believe.

Stranger: Scientists study demolished matter, scattered pieces, by identifying remnants, but none survive long separated and isolated, disappearing sooner than immediately, self-destructing, never made to survive alone. Praise the Creator for compelling things without a will never to wander from directions determining their existence. Only people have a will to stray from decrees they are expected to follow, giving humans the means to rip asunder relationships created to maintain order, denying them the opportunity to rejoice in creation's goodness and beauty.

Skeptic: Entities all being related, interconnected and dependent on one another for existence, with nothing existing unto itself, the association of all matter forming inescapable realities, persisting beyond the limits of mortality, asks how can some live on without involvement of all? Moreover, if goodness rules all creation, with beauty being its essence, can portions of any interacting existence be preserved with other of its dependent links discarded, termed evil and doomed to destruction?

Jove: Who knows if quarks can be selected for removal from our inherent code and be condemned for destruction, disrupting our existence and destroying its internal dependencies. Creation's goodness can never accept destruction of the cosmos, guarding the components assembled in all matter, protecting the forces determining their behavior, but God can reality's transformation by manipulating their interactions, evident in His ability to speak words for doing His will.

Commoner: The Lord's goodness frees me to sing for rejoicing, expressing joy in my musical voice, joining birds ushering in light of new morning, proclaiming creation's beauty, releasing imprisonment by doctrine telling what dogma forbids, prohibiting escape from mandated protections isolating me from evil's reach, training me to remain hidden and never enjoy the Lord's glory. Do we destroy all creation's goodness and beauty, confining our existence to a sepulcher, already dead to reality, obeying some human-made decree, watching us as a caged bird forbidden to sing, isolated in a sanctuary created for the dead, behaving as their soul has already departed, living on in the shell of nothingness in a creation with meaningless existence?

Wanton: What should one choose for directing creative impulses of imaginative life, deciding on spiritual intuition or rational thought, knowing religious convictions are subjective to personal fantasies of doctrines and dogmas, many conflicting with reasonable conclusions, overwhelming and ignoring strong sound beliefs, winning the battle between spiritual intuitions and rational thought-processes?

Skeptic: Reason must be rejected because it is based on changing facts, assuring no confidence in its proclaimed truths, forcing reliance on intuition's insights, appearing spontaneously from the mysterious unknown, tempting its apprehension to greater understanding, and by subjecting it to reason human mental manipulations often join the two, developing doctrines and dogmas, pairing logic and intuition together. Although reason is entrusted to us for our survival, it invites danger when joined with intuition, augmenting perils of the two in developing dogmatic decrees, substance for generating hatred and conflict, incentives for destroying each other, established by theological ideas, flowing from religious imagination growing wisdom sanctified by reason to be accepted as infallible and requiring mandatory obedience.

Stranger: Avoiding intuition and reason, I rely on the Lord for knowledge, programming its revelation piecemeal for our understanding, distributed in circumstances to benefit our life, but we design our truths, thinking each is a final message decorating our achievements, never acknowledging the One who sends us new insights but ignored as distractions, trusting only knowledge developed by our efforts for honor as rewards, but He sees to it that most honors come shortly before the grave, ironically making them dubious honors.

Simple Simon: God indeed gives us messages, sending them Himself, never to be deciphered by gazing into the heavens but by gifting humans with the offspring of a virgin, His Son to be called Immanuel, and we no longer need to watch for signs, this One being enough, however, the Lord knows people are never satisfied with a single sign, needing one after another to dispel their predictably recurring doubts, and if they ever begin to believe, they request more justifications, calling on apologetics, avoiding shame of hiding any disbeliefs. Securing this trust, I am satisfied, needing no wants or desires, able to live on honey and locusts, celebrating God's goodness in His most trustworthy revelation, dismissing all worldly rewards, escaping unmet hunger to lament or consider provocations to curse God.

Commoner: I commend my self's deeds to other's conscience, setting the example of God, proclaiming His truths in my works, expounding His word without deceit, never allowing any concealment to intervene, reaching out to ones blinded to His ways, deaf to understanding His words, as I will always be faithful in pouring out the light in my heart, the joy He has instilled there, never wanted to be hidden. Acknowledging trouble surrounds me, I live in peace, never distressed, sometimes perplexed but never in despair, frequently persecuted but never forsaken, surviving attempts to cast me into a pit, but no one can destroy my trust and fragment my faith in God by modifying His laws and destroy their value. Acknowledging works can never cleanse me, I dedicate my faith, making the life of Jesus manifest in my soul, telling my body how to live and as it ages bringing my outward flesh to perish eventually, so I renew my inner treasures, growing my heart to be like God's, waiting for the day when I can return to Him, leaving all that is momentary to join all which is eternal.

Stranger: You have learned, never asking what you can do to create your circumstances but what your circumstances can direct for you.

Commoner: Experiencing circumstances never affirms my faith, thinking I must encounter something for its affirmation, for I trust God's intervention to settle me with faith, choosing me to be one of His, showing what He is like, calling me to become like Him, and so I wait on Him to prepare me for circumstances to send me forth into situations He wills and never count on imaginations to experience God, to proclaim I do believe, I do believe, I do believe.

Stranger: Imaginations gilded with premonitions of glory, approaching the Lord for His affirmation, seeking His consent, often comes back with no answer, telling one, You do not know what you ask, revealing you don't understand circumstances He lays in your way. Wait on Him to lead you through the maze of your spiritual confusion to bring on understanding. Put away any impatience, distress tempting one to be angry with God, at worse hating Him and regretting it later, believing your plans have merit demanding consideration, exonerating you from your judgment of God.

Commoner: My plans bear little value, passing away as all old things, hoping in vain they will always be included. However, I trust in becoming a new creature in Christ, belonging to God, reconciled to Him by Jesus, beginning my way to becoming righteous like Him, changing my image to His.

Wanton: Surrendering my life to Him, changing my ways is one thing, easily done as scholars develop new dogmas to modify His outdated decrees, but changing my will is a different matter, asking me to ignore ideas supporting my desires, surrendering hopes to embellish my being, realizing I am made little different from others, people never abandoning who they are as God repeatedly calls for them to come back to Him. People denying themselves may be prepared for following Jesus, but I am not one to give up myself to Him, denying myself for One claiming to be entirely sufficient, to surrender what I have for the unseen, adopting for Him unnatural virtues, exceeding my capacity for goodness, especially expecting me to die in Him, whatever that means.

Prancing Grace: Having an open mind, reasoning ways to live, we can use your kind, seeking worthwhile battles, never enchanted in dying in an imaginary person contented in His nothingness, but willing to go down in flames, destroying whatever may be present, killing anyone encountered crying out kill me, end my life, taking down anything resembling God's goodness to destroy its beauty.

Skeptic: Misfits in an upright society, developing compassion for a mission of annihilation, becoming a tool for evil, worshipping demons with capacity to fill people with fear, delighting to see them dancing on its string, bobbing up and down, scorching their souls, taste the horrors of hell. With the goal of destroying themselves, there is little hope for recovery, wondering how you will use them, directing this violence to meet some of your needs

Wanton: Must you recruit barbarian minds and justify their actions, making you no better than them, allowing you to dwell in comfort, claiming ignorance of their doing, using their false convictions to support the luxury of your cause, willingly sacrificing themselves to your will being done?

Prancing Grace: They seek us out, volunteering, wanting a crusade, eager to fight, and we recognize their ardent desires knowing we could never engage in conflict battling others without their kind. We can't refuse them, never accepting them as useless waste, expended fodder, trusting their thoughts will never threaten us, asking what are you doing, knowing their lives are expendable, useful for today and gone tomorrow.

Wanton: You must encounter volunteers willing to fight with their minds, never wishing forays into battles to jeopardize their lives. Can you use them?

Prancing Grace: Ones battling with their wits may not be trusted, never knowing when they might brandish unseen weapons of thought to rebel, unlike others rebelling with visible weapons. We can manage conventional belligerents, confronting us with weapons for killing, but arms for silent destruction, cyber wars destroying us without a blow to the body, can destroy our cause before we know it.

Wanton: Are any of your ardent followers bent on self-destruction, dim-witted by drugs, without cares for survival, giving them no reason to continue being?

Prancing Grace: Most have been self-afflicted with drugs, altering their minds, giving them no way out, believing in lasting euphoria and dying before they would return to life's realities, making them expendable, knowing many more can be recruited from an unending source of potheads, outsourcing their recreation in drugs of many kinds.

Wanton: Can you rehabilitate them, making them more useful than dying for nothing?

Prancing Grace: Restoring their reasoning, giving them space to think, gambling they won't relapse, we still distrust their inclinations, fearing a return to drugs may change them to turn on us, making us their enemies. We keep them ignorant and watch them continuously, especially ones seeking knowledge to create their truths. They have shown how drugs alter any blend they might have for righteousness and free will, changing them to adopt an extreme in either direction.

Wanton: Who would you fear more, enemies dependent on drugs to ignore their thoughts or foes locked into doctrines and dogmas controlling their decisions?

Prancing Grace: We ask what constructed your ideas to determine if their views are biased, sealed to assure their convictions, barring intrusion by other ideas, rejecting imaginary proposals, nothing different unless it can be seized by vision or held in hand. Different ideas will be considered but only if they can be modified, changing them without disturbing the essence of our treasured convictions, altering them to support our goals.

Skeptic: Do your questions embark from a tyrannical disposition, motivated by images of a controlling deity, incarcerating subjects in obedience to doctrines and dogmas? Brutal deities, protecting all their powers, destroy anything and anyone impeding their way, despising ideas they must be gods of love, believing nothing can be conquered by love.

Prancing Grace: Ancient kingdoms were ruled with wisdom tolerating worship of all gods to maintain peace, to prevent conflict between religions' warring factions, disarming belligerents proclaiming destructive doctrines and divisive dogmas by killing opponents of prevailing truths.

Skeptic: Religions thrive with ruling kingdom's protection, tolerating all gods, and they insist on dogmas tolerating no beliefs from their own, with some developing call to arms, arousing many left out of society running to join revolutions, scrambling to get on board, vowing to fight to death for imaginary truths, laying down one's life for ideas, sacrificing to appease some unseen god, to worship a tyrannical deity, abandoning brutal demons left behind.

Prancing Grace: Join us, all you of having become sitting pacifists, targets for destruction by some crusader, waiting in the crosshairs of religious terrorists, ready to annihilate victims of their hatred, trained to hate heretic believers, educated to dislike from an early age. Comprehend what comes easier, the will to hate or the discernment to love, knowing hate can be quickly acquired, while love takes time and effort.

Stranger: Raising up leaders, empowered as judges, the Lord blesses us with servants to guard our territories and proclaim creation's goodness, commanding us to destroy terror creeping in and tempting us to follow its way, but do we know who He sends, ones chosen to meet our needs, to protect our freedoms, to satisfy our wants and desires? He arms us to fight enemies infiltrating our lives with terror, filling us with fear, but do we know who our foes are, sending us off to battle ones proven to be imaginary, distracting us from realizing we must unveil mirrors to recognize the enemy, seeing our one to fear within? We send brethren to fight and die, destroying fears our leaders compel us to maintain and reward us with pageants to celebrate our victories, but with growing confidence in ourselves, reason thrives in justifying greater rights to be ourselves, to chase our wants and desires.

Wanton: Any wanting-to-be ruler must define righteousness, setting limits acceptable to one's leadership persuasion, discerning what must never be crossed over in determining judgments and retributions. You can develop decrees for righteousness and implement them without fail, trusting your subjects will comply and follow your wishes, reasoned to be virtuous, incorporating ideas persuaded to be acceptable. Forcing absolute righteousness on people fails, convincing leaders to modify unconditional plans and develop decrees a majority will accept.

Skeptic: Do your fear absolute freedom as much, ruling people intent on seeking only pleasure, chasing after their wants and desires?

Wanton: Compare them with their beastly ancestors, being descendants from subhuman primates, and you will see they have limits to freedom, native codes setting limits to their liberties making them be never absolute and established for protection, with limits inherent in all.

Skeptic: How would you deal with warriors fighting for justice to protect absolute righteousness, killing infidels who deny allegiance to prevailing beliefs, terminating lives of any brethren who slip from honoring absolute dogmas?

Wanton: Revolutionaries abound, coming out of hiding for any excuse, warriors demanding justice, proclaiming guilt for enemies created on a moment's notice, detesting silent innocence, convinced by others to join any fray, virtueless and reasoning their violence will prevail, never ceasing to protest, ending their marches only when their support ends, coming from sources hiding in silence.

Skeptic: Revolutionaries do abound. Beware of ones eager to join your cause, your offering of gifted words to charm their ego, languishing empty of any encouragement, for many recognize your call to join as the means to satisfy their vanity, aggrandizing their nothingness, but how can nothingness be improved, starting only with dreams, imaginations that remain fantasies? What can they contribute to your cause, having little more than thoughts of being better than you, scheming for ways to replace you as the leader?

Prancing Grace: Without vanity, trusting greatly in themselves, how can anyone contribute to our cause? Vanity must be a primary virtue in ones we recruit, being essential for engaging with our opponents, trusting vanity is noble for warriors never backing down, compelled by pride to parade heroism and receive laurels reserved for victors. Vanity drives aggression. Humility serves one never to step out, seeking peace that accomplishes nothing.

Jove: Driven to recruit vanity, understanding it comes with problems for management, leadership skills must learn how to tame followers' vanity and manage it for useful purposes. Vanity is hardly the sin the Lord regrets we have, accusing people of its quest for pleasure, to enjoy the treasures of one's labors, for if that is all vanity, what is life for? The Lord created us to be stewards of creation's goodness, and I must protect my pride to assure work for Him is done well, making me a good and faithful servant. Vanity never compels me to say I'm sorry, never admonishing me for lack of humility, for what profits a person for being humble?

Skeptic: Expect to meet all at vanity fair, tailored to distract them from boredom by participating in its circus, hearing words tumbling from tongues in unison, gyrating lips in emphasis, furrowing brows in concern, leaping barriers to connect with all, painted with smiles to everyone's delight, swinging on bars of knowledge to convince all of their festive performances, seldom slipping to be saved by safety nets, protecting ardent campaigners, rescued to perform again.

Jurdan: Ones putting their trust in your Lord, stirring their hearts to mix in pride, emboldening themselves with greater vanity, partake in pleasures, swelling their girth, insulating their souls in blubber, transforming the temple for their Holy Spirit.

Stranger: Pride is essential for building something out of nothingness, for filling in the blank slate we all come with, for directing lives of everyone, restrained only by one's conscience from escalating to vanity.

Wanton: If conscience is the eye of my soul, always watching for someone to be my master, tagging along as a canine companion, seeking the Lord to affirm my thoughts and actions, doing nothing without His approval, it must be plucked out and deny its existence, vowing it to remain no longer, for it serves me no real purpose, being the pathway for descending into depression, confining me in the depths of despair.

Skeptic: Creation gifts us with a conscience, embedding it in our innate code, but we have discovered it can be manipulated, reprogrammed with assistance by evil ones, effectively diminished by neglect, and willed to be destroyed by some. Conscience can be inactivated when we dismiss blame for our actions, casting them on some suitable scapegoat, believing no one can compel me to follow any dictates other than authorized by my reason.

Wanton: Conscience betrays me, proclaiming I must wait for good fortune, declaring its goodness, but a chance for goodness is fleeting, coming with brief episodes of happiness, only to return me to where I came from. Better to embrace ill fortune, being accustomed to its presence, knowing its ways and understanding how to deal with it, living in harmony with what a conscience is trained to call evil, tolerating what it considers bad, minimizing fluctuations in my composure taught to maintain control. If good fortune ventures upon me, stealing me by surprise, caution rather than conscience will prevail, invoking what is more important, trusting conscience has nothing worth saying, while warning me to see through good fortune's companions, departing with no goodbyes, leaving me with my faithful companion of ill fortune.

Simple Simon: People create standards that sometimes require adjustments of one's conscience so it can overlook actions that others have programmed to be wrong. Can you work out salvation directed by your conscience, exhibiting the life of Jesus Christ in everything, disciplining your body, boldly subjecting it to Him, or has your conscience been reprogrammed, modified to satisfy your plan for working out your salvation?

Stranger: On establishing standards, we pass them by the Holy Spirit before their adoption and hearing no objections, our conscience is cleared to follow them.

Jurdan: Democracy sanctifies people as individuals, legitimizing integrity to be themselves, to be free of constraints activating their innate conscience and assuring protection against terror by your God or any imaginary gods, ending ways to understand society as dependent on any divine authority.

Stranger: How can the Lord bless democracy, established by human reason's renaissance in critical thinking, liberating people's free will and build confidence in their ideas, knowing deception can guide them to be deified, promoting themselves to no longer need God? Can they love and care for others, with their divinity replacing God? Will they create laws knowing theirs will compromise the Lord's decrees, laws tolerating iniquities He forbids, enacting legislation to satisfy their constitution's desires? How can the Lord stand by, distressed by His people adopting rule by the majority, ignoring needs of suffering minorities, depriving democracy's losers of justice, seeing the forgotten scrambling for crumbs, searching the privileged's wastes for nourishment? He tells us His decrees are for all, and no group can by majority dictate how the Lord's gifts are to be distributed, reminding us creation is designed to provide everyone their needs, documenting His plan in revelations for everyone to know.

Simple Simon: What was life like before God sanctioned people to govern, trusting them to be faithful to His commands? Was His leadership better than any ensuing democracy's? Some ordained as benevolent dictators, ruling in strict accordance with the Lord's commands, faithful to His justice, were destroyed by revolutions, directed by belligerents having abandoned God's ways, thinking they could escape the Lord's supervision by selecting another human to govern. What will come after His rule's demise? Perhaps, leadership will consist of every person claiming freedom to exercise one's will, isolating themselves from any directions but their own, trusting in relationship only with themselves, ignoring inherent mandates that they can't merely live for themselves.

Wanton: Seeking God's help, calling on Him for assistance, is beyond my reach, knowing me with my sins, hidden from everyone but Him, so I place all interests in anyone who will understand me and support what the Lord clearly condemns, and in a democracy someone will be raised up to understand my wants, never condemning me for being a deviant, never being hostile in ridiculing my actions, never withholding His love, at worst being neutral on my thoughts, tolerating my foibles, never making them important. Learning from my father, I can expect no blessing by any Father in heaven, so I must look to someone else to love me as I am.

Skeptic: Do you think any ruler governs differently than a religious leader, leading people with concerns for everyone, promising the impossible, never modifying spiritual dogmas, recognizing each will eventually modify doctrines etched in stone, subordinating their will to the people's, transferring ancient beliefs to archives, accessed only by researchers assigned for unimportant work? Successful rulers win favor by overseeing changes in religious edicts to gain people's support, diluting laws until they can be forgotten and replaced by human reason. Sovereigns partner with religious leaders to institute changes for submitting to human desires.

Commoner: Describing rule as democracy, showing it to be nothing more than a pyramid, legalizing its winners with honor, making them wealthy, confuses me, asking, Should we strive to democratize all God's people?

Skeptic: Governing body's greatest compassion focused on their own interests, spending fortunes to gain power, never accumulating enough treasures to satisfy their greed, can hardly be authorized by the Lord, claiming to be allowed by Him for rule, testifying over and over they ask for Him to bless their nation, while working ways to bless themselves with greater fruits of people's toil.

Wanton: Claiming any cause is an enlightened improvement on democracy, bettering what we have, promising to correct its failures, does anyone understand why democracy never succeeds alone, needing something more than successful aspirations of human reason, seeing any cause depends on more than people's reason trusting in answers claiming people become better and better, equipping them to develop some utopian form of government?

Bystander: Leadership fails unless it can uproot dependence on doctrines and dogmas, and maintain protection of the spirit to recognize God without any embellishment of Him by human endeavors,

Stranger: Would be leaders flock to control us, developing arguments to solve every problem. They succeed when understanding wisdom must guide democracy, trusting religion to be its moderator, believing in the Lord, people's highest Authority, greater than any human for overseeing and guiding democracy, succeeding when people believe in the Lord's teachings. Where are we today? Our present democracy, having abandoned its religious guidance and constraints, empowers edicts to kill souls and prepare us for servitude, enlisting all to serve the state, proclaiming we need religion no longer, charging our reasoning to depend on the success of science and technology and abandon our dependence on discourses, to rule us only by what can be proven by sight and sound.

Skeptic: Vanquished foes, nursing wounds inflicted by conquerors, compelled to submit to new authority, have democracy's rule forced on them, establishing control by a majority, knowing its numbers can be selected to manage minorities usually consisting of perennial malcontents, anarchists, demonstrators, activists shouting freedom for all, and all those questioning authority, objecting to dictates interfering with their wants and desires.

Wanton: Can democracy's champion of free speech promote decency, justice and unity without dividing people, bullying them to retreat into diversity, demonstrating to manipulate injustice, devising indecency, degrading virtues to reform truth?

Skeptic: How free is free speech, knowing what is written or said has consequences, pelting many with judgments, accusations of indecency, ruining pronouncements with angry responses, tolerating nothing proclaimed, painting many with intolerance, so what good is free speech, voices faintly heard in democracy's cacophony of nonsense?

Commoner: Democracy permits defense of borders for tolerating my unique ideas, letting them be as chosen, but sometimes it doesn't respect us, thinking its rule can homogenate our beliefs, mixing them in with others like making sausage.

Wanton: Doctrines and dogmas can be changed where democracy prevails, allowing people to modify their opinions with relaxations for increasing freedoms, supporting reason to manage life style better than decrees, but beliefs sustaining hatred for others deemed to be heretics are more difficult to renounce. Democracy protects our free will allowing free-ranging wants and desires to spring forth and satisfy inherent urges, the makeup of human creation's useful intuitions, modifying them as directed by reason.

Simple Simon: Our tenets are established in doctrines and dogmas, using biblical verses to authorize all, dismissing any claimed by others, and we adhere to only our own, judging any deviating from ours to be heretical, so it is easy to be certain our lives follow truths of absolute righteousness.

Skeptic: Decrees certifying absolute righteousness are fragile and subject to destruction. Who did more to smash doctrines and dogmas, tearing down their symbols and control over people's actions? Only Jesus coming as the Christ did more, but people restored them in a new fashion, transfiguring all His Words in reinterpretations, creating countless new decrees, snowballing formation of different versions of who He was, fighting and dying for their convictions, each group battling for the righteousness they create and vow to maintain.

Commoner: Why can't I be a mystic, dismissing doctrines and dogmas, attuned to hearing only God, believing He equips me to know His voice with inherent understanding, calling me to be transformed and become more like Him, to recognize creation's goodness, to want more than a portion of His love and contemplate beauty in all He has done. Is this possible? Scripture's truth proclaims, "everyone who loves is begotten of God, and knows God." Lead me O Lord to greater love, enabling me to know You more fully, trusting You are love, encouraging me to live as your son and become like Jesus, confident He lives in me.

Wanton: Living religion's proof of its value, promising freedom and peace, comforting with a sense of elation, fosters little harmony, being the outcome of religious division with each church wasting the Lord's resources entrusted to our stewardship, with all claiming to preach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, forgetting His prayer to the Father for unity, never neglected by mysticism.

Skeptic: Religions must build a home for the Lord, a temple to confine Him for their needs, isolating Him from others, committing Him to exile from others, securing Him as their own, proclaiming Him as only their God, telling others to find their own, knowing they will create one to meet their needs. So much for unity.

Jurdan: Temples built by human efforts never last as shrines to behold, being destroyed by enemy religions, abandoned by fruits of human reason, and eclipsed by revisionists developing new religions

Commoner: My body is the only temple for the Holy Spirit, making it a shrine to covet, unique as a tabernacle for the Lord to honor, but what of all His creation, still containing its Author's mysteries, seeing us treat it as a vessel without His Hand still directing its course?

Simple Simon: Do we leave our only spiritual home after brief visits on holy days, or does our spiritual dwelling travel with us, accompanying us always, through periods of affliction as well as contentment, through bouts of depression as well as joy, beaming with lights of truth, shining wisdom revealed by the Lord? My spiritual home never leaves my side, protecting me against all conflicts, exposing all temptation for what it is, trusting no evil can enter and make shambles of its order, knowing its cornerstone is impregnable, a rock of all ages, assured it could never be a stumbling stone, disallowing entry by anyone coming to remodel its sanctification, bringing in a rock of offense, knowing my temple rejects any block authorizing me to stumble for changing my ways.

Wanton: Aren't temples created for judgment and sacrifice, convincing our sanctuaries for the Holy Spirit are courts to judge and determine justice for others, invoking decisions to satisfy offenses against the Lord, condemning thoughts and actions of unfavored ones, trusting we never so suffer our bodies as a temple of the Holy Spirit?

Commoner: We construct a tabernacle to house the Lord, understanding His need for a temple, erecting it on a holy site, dedicating it with our prayers, filling it with treasures, the bounty of our harvests, tithes commanded by our priests, and never use it as a judgment seat or a storehouse for sacrifices.

Skeptic: What are our treasures but the Lord's, gleanings from the earth, hunted and dug out caches of His precious belongings, stolen from hidden niches, thinking we must prize His treasures, creating a temple to hoard them, removing them from the earth's security, dedicating them as tithes to Him, never returning them to their hiding place.

Why must religion hoard treasures in a temple, stolen from the earth for no good reason?

Wanton: Religion's credential is a temple and is nothing without any wealth, giving it something to swear by with hoarded gifts. Show rulers, kings chosen by God, who didn't boast of their temple's treasures, pridefully revealing all to visiting leaders, showing they have much to swear by, spoils earned from conquests, for how else can they display their power collected by ones so mighty.

Skeptic: Does God hide mightiness with His treasures still hidden, sequestered in His earthly temple of creation, and worry when it is stolen, leaving His power with nothing to swear by?

Wanton: When humans rape the earth to pilfer all His treasures, will they gain everything to swear by, sharpening their reason to greater acuity, discovering more of God's truths, empowering them to revise His wisdom and develop their own to live by?

Skeptic: Do people measure their faith by the witness of others, trusting their experiences, believing them sound and reliable, disseminated as truth to create their own, never knowing when experiences change, acknowledging the Holy Spirit as only one source of truth, as only another witness, the Lord's messenger attesting to be a witness as some mortal person?

Wanton: Precious treasures of creation's gleaning stifle wisdom, perverting convictions, embellishing minds with unworthy trinkets, promoting pride, adorning self-esteem, separating people from the ordinary, committing them to wrestle for greater gain but never that of the Lord. Worldly riches stretch bonds with fellow beings, isolating people further into sanctuaries to protect their freedom, dismissing dependence on any others, proclaiming success on doing it my way.

Commoner: My offerings spelled out, commanded by Scripture to determine their sufficiency, require me to accumulate treasures, showing what to covet for safe-keeping and for decorating His sanctuary. I labor to satisfy His will be done.

Skeptic: Why does the Lord need a sanctuary, embellished with beauty pleasing to humans' eyes, thinking He should be so honored by manipulation of creation's elements and feast His attention on people's achievements, believing He must be invited from His holy abode filled with goodness and beauty to a temple designed by humans as sanctuary, believing He needs a space more holy?

Wanton: Humans need a tabernacle to worship the Lord, a place to bow down in fear and trembling, called to attention by a tolling bell, a clanging cymbal, the leader's whistle, for they never look at the moon or stars to remind them from heaven, or to nature's beauty for alerting them to the Lord's presence. Will traveling into the sky remind them of the Lord's existence or delving into nature's secrets bring them to revere His creation? Some, marveling at the heaven's splendor and mystery, mystified by the Lord's use of elements to fashion goodness and beauty, have pondered for ages, reflecting on His Majesty and worshipping Him sealed in a box, a receptacle defining what He should be, confining Him where people can decorate Him with displays of His favorite colors, blue, scarlet, and purple.

Stranger: Never rewarded with riches, silver and gold to treasure, needing no temples for their display, the Lord blesses me with wealth of greater value, accumulating treasures in heaven, knowing His compensation for virtueless unbelievers content in their earthly riches is to let them continue wallowing in riches they struggle to accumulate, so be their recompense, ones failing to value righteousness.

Skeptic: The Lord's goodness cannot call forth vengeance, never claiming it for His jurisdiction, never making it His prerogative, acknowledging it to remain human's privileged right, exclusively for all to exercise, enabling them to protect all they covet, increasing its power and use to safeguard their riches, fragile as all wealth is, maybe lasting until tomorrow, eventually consumed by flames of time, leaving no more than its memories in ashes.

Bystander: Behold how God's goodness remodels creation, moving its pieces in and about, erupting its mantle to build new mountains, sending out fire to destroy others, convening drought to drive people from their towers of Babel, flooding lands' borders to sink temples for gods, dispersing tribes from their isolation in comfort, sending them out to discover hidden and neglected territories to populate, leaving their Babylonia to be abandoned forever, to be covered with the sands of time. Goodness never employs vengeance for earth's remodeling, never considered while restructuring its beauty, never attributed to God's judgment blaming Him for injustice persisting as a rational explanation, never believing He invites vengeance to destroy cities and land people build to bustle and thrive, never exercising retribution to remove human efforts from living memory.

Stranger: Humans abuse creation, transforming its goodness, making it unrecognizable, transfiguring what God took eons to form, but He has time we lack, and He builds in mechanisms for restoration, knowing humans tired of being are driven to destroy creation, destroying temples housing the Holy Spirit, thinking they can change His plans, disregarding what He tells them, For surely, I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Promising hope we cannot be surprised.

Skeptic: How long is needed for one to recognize creation's goodness, changing human perceptions of its defects, dismissing human judgments ready to will its demise, evaluations deeming revision and replaced with something better? People have learned to batter anything into submission or destruction, listening to their imaginations, reasoning how their ideas should be heard to establish a new creation.

Commoner: Don't discount creation's goodness. We will never stop waving banners, honoring its beauty with music and acclamation, reciting declarations taught by our fathers, inciting us to protect all creation's treasures, bringing us together, unifying us in proclaiming all for one and one for all, committing us to erect temples for worship, dedicating them to endure and last long as forever can imagine, decorated with our treasured accomplishments.

Stranger: With temples I trust joy to make my day complete, praising the Lord that it would not wither away, knowing it will wane without attention, committing me to renew devotion to Him every morning, waking to Him from dreams formed in darkness, visions toying with my self's estimations, as I arise to chase fantasy away, greeting what the Lord has waiting, eagerly to pour out His Spirit on me, affirming joy in great measure, higher than treasures of silver or gold, making each day His, days of the Lord, coming with symphonies of rejoicing.

Simple Simon: Beware we don't become indebted to people's law, compromises of the Spirit's will, trusting justification by human laws, causing us to fall from grace, dismissing the Spirit waiting with hope of righteousness by faith, authorizing us to no longer be under God's law which endow us with fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance, against which dogmas are silent, written to be in accord with the deeds of people, works of flesh, contrary to love directing us to enable the Lord's message in the Great Commandment, for which human law writes little comment.

Stranger: People's laws sheltering us under the shade of our fig tree, protecting us from seeing the light, His truth, ignoring creation's reality of trees eventually losing their leaves, forcing us to sun's exposure, revealing this circumstance's opportunity plastered before our eyes as handwriting on a wall compelling us to action, providing no other tree for shelter, no shade to hide under, as God wants to prepare us, needing to ready us before His work can begin.

Jove: Essential to creation's design are safeguards, inherently coded for protection, security against anyone or anything hacking in, tinkering with intent to damage by changing regulations to destroy their instructions, and He inserts firewalls to protect His grand accomplishment. Freeing chance to mystify us, thwarting all from seeing beyond the now, surprising us by what we discern as fate, He springs forth circumstances, tailored and chosen by Him to surprise our actions, calling all to become one with Him, but we cannot discover forces He created to run all creation, trusting no one who could tinker with any to abolish everything, wiping out all His efforts, returning creation to chaos of nothingness existing before His word was spoken to create all. With curiosity and temptation, ignoring all reason, someone could open Pandora's box and release chaos to replace all the Lord's creation.

Stranger: Created by God, being one in the Spirit and nothing apart from Him, never existing as nobodies in nothingness, we are not embodied in the chaos of eternity without a creator.

Jurdan: Living solely by imagination, religious believers have never left the chaos ruling everything, witnessing nothing for them to change.

Simple Simon: John is my trusted witness, testifying to what he saw, hearing Jesus speak, being chosen by God to believe, trusting His truth confirmed by the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of Christ, God's only son, confirming truth by his witness, so what more do I need? Can one apologize for naive understanding added to my faith, telling more is needed to confirm belief, thinking it is tenuous, unable to be sustained, gain from someone's arguments, needing more to erase doubts others will raise? Convicted by John's words I need no one else's, none from human's truths lasting for but moments, fading into new ones as people develop new truths fashioned as epitomizing the new and reasonable, maintaining common sense as skeptics demand, vain in their imaginations and foolish in wisdom, never able to offer spiritual gifts to guide my ways, never trusting their words to shame believers in the Gospel, knowing I am just in living by faith.

Jurdan: Imagination blemishes your convictions, tarnishing your common sense and wisdom's ability to develop truths.

Simple Simon: Who can claim to be unblemished, being created with all parts perfect and intact, with no mistakes in a body's formation correctly assembled and true to its design? No one you say has indisputable truth in human wisdom for no two are alike in resembling another in form or pattern, but all are made for interactions compelling the universally blemished to love one another. Consider what your body would be like if each part disliked another, never wanting any interaction, causing physiological failure, such as in a growing fetus when one part fails to interact with another. Is this God's mistake, failing to protect the work of His Word, seeing wayward streams of flow disrupting a pattern's design, allowing winds of chaos to sneak in and block machinery's interactions, allowing a single piece to drop out? Never, the Lord refines His beings, testing His results and discarding what proves to have little chance of success, and He realizes we aid Him in this, contaminating our bodies with thoughts and agents having results to change us and pass the results to our progeny, but we refuse to purify our actions, becoming addicted to them for moments of pleasure. God preserves a remnant, filling them with wisdom to care for His temple, grateful for responses, and ordains them to be forerunners in the Kingdom He is building.

Jurdan: Consider holy gluttons, sanctified as your Lord's remnants, enveloped in obesity, deaf to moderation, ignoring their flesh calls of suffering, running no more, waddling to reach for more unneeded food, their wants drowning out their Spirit's cry for help, wishing to leave a glutton's home, proclaiming His place as unwanted, being deaf to His messages, forgetting to interact with others instead of food, never wondering if they belong in the body of Christ, being too misshapen to fit, struggling with no gifts but with immoderation, teaching their children the only thing they know, ignoring consequences of their wants and blinding visions of their God's holiness, thinking they can pour out their lives to Him while coveting their most treasured idol manifested by their indulgences, refusing to expend all they have accumulated to become exactly like Him, unprepared to pour out living water, denying their holy gluttony is an oxymoron.

Wanton: Living without charity for others, feeding one's body instead of sacrificing desires for the needs of the poor, giving up nothing for distribution to quasi-virtue, ignoring the day you will be unable to run for your manna, perhaps even unable to rise from your bed to share the harvest, afflicted people should watch the needy scrambling for food, fighting with pigs squealing for a share. Hear wisdom say, Without charity you have nothing, being unworthy, long-suffering and failing in all, always hearing footsteps of your appetite, waiting impatiently for the next meal. Charity has failed you with moderation never given a chance, ignoring intolerance of others seeing you as a spectacle, your concerns never caring, deflecting taunts calling you lard-ass. Knowing your condition in part, its acceptance will soon pass away, compelling you to further understanding when you are afflicted with certain circumstances, completing knowledge you refused to acknowledge, knowings soon passing away, never enduring as charity, trusting mine is never partial, going the way of all things here in part.

Commoner: How can any pour themselves out to the Lord, indebted to their wants, exercising priorities taking precedence over His, unable to bow down, paying Him no respect on bended knees, denying Him praise, struggling before Him at the altar, unable to pour out one's soul, only trickling forth, while rejoicing in His blessings, His gifts one has hoarded, secured only for one's keeping, never to share with others, compelling His Majesty to distrust you as a servant.

Wanton: Do any pour themselves out to the Lord? Disregarding the wise, denying wisdom of bygone sages, darlings of youth sing and dance, charming all with their distractions, poised to pounce on their admired pipers, adoring ways of free-wheeling idols, scrambling to touch their garments, ripping off parts to save as souvenirs, people choose these as their beautiful ones, to follow and worship at altars built for success. The Lord, laughing at us all, giving us what we seek, fashions His retribution in ways we want to worship, allowing temptation beyond limits He establishes, watching us freely partake of distractions, flavoring them with ecstasy, destroying any inherent inhibitions, preparing us for new addictions, essential for our perceived well-being, selecting what will rule lives for survival in a drug culture, permitting everything, denying nothing but fleeting moments of happiness, chosen for life to experience.

Commoner: I choose how to serve my days, aligning myself with ancients, following the ways of Joshua, never the way of children having much to learn but the Lord's eternal truths, never tolerating self-righteous ways of the world, preaching to unleash human will, condemning discriminations in its way.

Skeptic: What can you expect from rule by youth, continually claiming freedom for lusts, acknowledging admiration from followers, discerned as examples to justify their deeds?

Stranger: Lust tempting one with tasty morsels, savoring dishes to fatten hearts with lies, disguised with spices of deceit, numbing ears from hearing truths, veiling eyes to creation's goodness, cutting off senses to everything not coming from my will, tries to change me, tempting me to be different, ignoring messages from the Holy Spirit. Seeds hoped to germinate by your articulation are certain to decay, doomed as all ideas of humans, lasting but only moments, never being the surety of the Lord's eternal truths which are never sown in corruption to glorify people.

Simple Simon: Submitting to lust by using drugs to hide creation's beauty, concealing its goodness from perception, darkening its light, blinding partakers to change their ways, prompts them to see all as evil, as they flee to hide in caves where their will is empowered for all possibilities. Eventually discerning everything in evil's shadows they are completely entrapped with no way out, with existence becoming worthless, without meaning, estranged from creation's goodness, trusting only in some solution to end their lives. Drug's purpose to escape, now sanctioned to be harmless, produced to relieve suffering, takes its toll, veiling people from inviting creation's goodness and beauty to bless their lives, inflicting them with despair, tormenting them as never imagined by living in hell.

Skeptic: Can your words afflict ones differently than drugs, convincing them to prevent addiction with words deceiving as drugs, living by messages until they take their toll, discovering they are empty, worthless except in luring many to follow you, only to consume them in flaming despair?

Commoner: Whether by temptations to experience subliminal insights hiding within or because of depression cascading to despair, many seek comfort in drugs, expecting immediate contentment, trusted to deny anxiety, but disrupting all efforts of worthy actions, ending all we are designed to be, destroying goodness of our foundations, drugs waste us away into nothingness, never more to receive God's grace. Drugs stir conflict in our souls, driving the Holy Spirit to despair, forcing Him to leave, evicted by a new god, one powerless except to destroy, leaving our soul's home in shambles, fit for no one to occupy. Can the Spirit return, restoring His home, so we can welcome Christ's message, inviting it into one's heart? Is God's grace sufficient for that to happen and remake one to restore goodness He designs for all life?

Wanton: Drugs are my only hope for mountaintop experiences, rewarding me with inspirations the Lord fails to provide, and I will do anything to perpetuate and preserve these times.

Commoner: Preserve them for what? Incentives are made for action, doing rather than basking in comfort. Can you come down from on high to the valley of life, and initiate anything worthwhile from your inspirations? Reasons for inspiration carry a deadline, requiring useful actions to beautify one's being. Your way, engaging drug demons as your advocate, bringing them with you to life's valley, remains vacant, inspired only for more of the same by an inner spirit of emptiness, listening to drug demon's voices.

Simple Simon: Mountaintop experiences, brief moments for rebuilding hope, for imagining promises, disappear on returning to valleys discerned as pits of drudgery, where renewed hope fades with fog lifted from its moorings, exposing nothing new in one's meaningless journey, drab in recurring monotony, but being one with the Lord, united with Him always, I rejoice in the goodness of His creation, embracing its beauty in all things, whether on the mountaintop or in the valley.

Wanton: My mountaintop experience, coming like an endorphin blessing, invited to answer needs, trusted to be a call from the Lord, energizes me to strike out and do what I must, believing His words tell me, I chose you.

Skeptic: Trusting you wait on the Lord, renewing your strength, equipping you with wings to mount up like eagles, to soar and not be weary, flying from one mountaintop to another, never descending to valleys where you could faint, you live in a dream, never knowing what God created you for, revealed only by residing in the valley. What person doesn't trust in mountaintop experiences, rejoicing in promises they offer, tempting one to remain in their comfort? Must we be like Moses, scaling a mountain peak to face God, to discover His Commandments, inscribed by His hand only to be broken, forcing us to return again and again for Him to repeat His decrees, telling us again of the covenant He made with His people? How many times must His tablets be broken before they respond to His call, Return to me?

Stranger: Never blessed by a mountaintop experience, deceived in viewing all creation as evil, driven to partake in its destruction, sacrificing themselves to honor their beliefs, trusting they will be transported to promised paradise, tempted by others to believe their lies, deceptions to glorify themselves, many consider self-destruction, denying goodness for their unchosen life, ignoring blessings from the God of truth, the promises He made, declaring He made them for life, never for death, to be glad and rejoice forever in all He creates, building homes to inhabit and honoring work to eat fruits of one's labor, trusting His people will never toil in vain, nor bring forth trouble, being seeds growing from His word, blessed by Him always.

Commoner: Created to live my life, I seek an archetype of holiness, longing for an epitome of virtue, discarding all my treasures, abandoning trust in myself and searching for One to emulate I found Christ, the fount of godliness, bubbling up living water, cleansing by baptism, gifting me with the Holy Spirit. I believe no one else can emulate my Lord; no one can dig into depths of human reason to show hoped-for salvation's or transform us into gifts of classical virtues of courage, wisdom, justice and temperance. We must depend on the Lord's revelation and follow His timing to understand the development of our righteousness while carefully discerning any other's words, whether they are genuine revelations.

Prancing Grace: Building a kingdom takes more than freedom to complete, and people freed from any perceived oppression, permitting escape, are often invited to taste freedom through alcohol, drugs, and even suicide. Scrambling to enlist, running to join us, are many suffering from moral and spiritual poverty, judging their freedoms are unrestricted, learning all they know from gang leaders, rioting without fear, proclaiming their dignity as a free human citizen, but we could never trust them, realizing they follow alien inner voices, urging them to destroy anything we try to create, responding to cries imprinted by drugs to kill all found to be in order. We offer them opportunities but ones addicted to escape from realities threaten all our plans, fighting--perhaps silently--to remain free from any moral intervention, maintaining their beliefs are as good as any others.

Skeptic: Are you more than another gang leader, committed to being all you hope to be?

Prancing Grace: Your venom, unlike a serpent's striking with fangs, coming from your tongue, thinking it can destroy me and take my life with bitter words, is ignored, showing I will never be your victim, having protection securely waiting by my side, for without its assurance barbarians will think me guilty, but I will show them more, having godliness virtue as my shield.

Skeptic: Even with your protection expect strife, appearing without reason, the handmaiden of transgression, provoked by instability, the bitter fruit of wine's delights, a sequel to the nirvana of drugs.

Commoner: With envy promoting jealousy, invoking strife and provoking responses, contemplating actions to satisfy desire and realizing wants disappear with time, why do you disturb the peace, upsetting yourself over things so trivial? I walk in the spirit, but while acknowledging my carnality, I refuse to entertain lusts of the flesh, knowing temptations sneak in and test my resolve to be faithful to the Spirit's words. Confessing to my weakness, I never justify reprehensible actions, trying to explain them away with reasonable responses eloquently, never vindicating myself with virtuous claims, convictions never acceptable for the Lord. I learned never to resent His admonitions, coming as needed to remind me I belong to Him.

Simple Simon: I offer no soothing words to comfort one wrapped up in confession, uttered with best intentions, knowing my words likely interfere with God's plans, unraveling His purpose for one's affliction, His will to establish influence over someone trusting human reason to will control, and one must ponder whether words of empathy justify anything but a show, misplaced and unwarranted, assaulting the Lord's plan never judged to be better.

Stranger: We use words to be like minded as Jesus, praying for us to be united, one with others, all in accord with His teachings, proclaiming all to make us so, vowing allegiance to His rule, obeying him, glorifying our Lord ordained to govern His kingdom. He only asks us to circumcise our convictions, dismissing the foundation for our previous lives, cleaning out its clutter, removing stumbling blocks preventing us from joining His ranks, and we must confess, obeying what the Lord requires, releasing us from our idols, freeing us to be one with Him. Selected by God, we are commissioned by Him to be filled with joy and peace, promising we will abound in hope, supplied with sufficient knowledge to assure our goodness will be complete, enabling us to admonish anyone falling short of His convictions.

Jurdan: Do you expect me to become speechless with sorrow, filling me with remorse, convincing me to confess, asking me to yield and consider your convictions, discarding mine, cascading disillusionment on my existence, discouraging me from ever understanding what is expected of me, sending me into a desert without a map, trusting you to show my way, trekking through creation's uninhibited nothingness, wandering aimlessly as I never planned my life to be, destroying my self-awareness, needing it no longer as this wasteland is meant for me, only to discard in favor of Christ-awareness, abandoning all my friends, saying goodbye to all my convictions, freeing me from all distractions, tempting me to leave all and respond to your Lord's calling: Come to me.

Simple Simon: Your kind, establishing a sovereignty to worship reason, knowing nothing beyond its limits, likens you to others, coming and going as your idols choose, directing your lives to serve you one day and if necessary to die the next, but I die only unto the Lord, believing whether I live or die I belong to the Lord, trusting Him always despite judgments others make of my life, rendering all to Him, bowing to His lasting presence in me, confessing all to remain with Him. Your rule, imposing a stumbling block, attempts to distress my peace with the Lord, to tarnish my way and inflict it with a deadly dose of your convictions.

Jurdan: What is a fool but one who disagrees with you, speaking words you consider nonsense, dancing and gyrating to unknown melodies, babbling with twisted tongues, boasting in flagrant attire, glorifying themselves with unholy garments, silently considering themselves wiser than all, displaying weakness to hide their self-assessment of strength, confessing what a fool I am, consenting to other's evaluation of them.

Stranger: Genuine fools never hide their folly as you describe, but humbly submit to persecution, harm from adverse convictions, never believing they are foolish in trusting Christ, paralyzing them mired in perils of indecision, but they think the Lord is a refuge for ones foolish in their faith, oppressed in times of trouble, following His will to be perfect, reaching for their Father in heaven's perfection, compelling them to walk in the light just as He is in the light.

Jurdan: When you discover who you are understanding will begin, revealing how to define yourself, opening ways to develop your gifts, authorized by prideful ownership, and you will no longer be dependent on this Lord you confess, believing you are unworthy. Trust now in your dignity of newly-discovered worthiness and break free to be yourself.

Commoner: Most human dilemmas appear as consequences of their choices, ignoring the Lord's wisdom written in His Scriptures, so without confession and repentance one's faith can never measure up to His requirements.

Jurdan: I measure up to no more than reason's requirements, never confessing and repenting to its convictions.

Skeptic: Driven to confess, one must create something, declaring the best a mind could admit, believing it will atone for disobedience, but demons stand in the way, preventing real confession, and one remains loyal to their evil within, knowing it has more mischief planned to maintain residence in one's soul, but if disclosure drives evil from its home another will scamper in to pilfer its place.

Wanton: To trust some scribe's imagination, tarnishing me as sinful, admitting it would imprison me in despair, and thinking it could vanish with confession seals me with unneeded malaise, hounding me without ceasing, alleviated only by tranquilizing my senses, telling me I am not a deviant, painted as such by religion's audacity to trap me in its mold.

Stranger: Blessing us with imagination and using it merely for the purpose to succeed, overlooks why the Lord gifted us more than beasts, blessing us to fellowship with Him, giving us the opportunity for its choice.

Commoner: Never forget what must be done, hearing, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us, to cleanse and remove our unrighteousness. Develop humility to accept full responsibility for our sins, blaming nothing but oneself for iniquities, never seeking life's blood for atonement. Who seeks another's blood for reparation, never realizing bleeding for restoration can never stop and continues, for ones living to let blood finds them one day the last remaining, creation's sole survivor with blood left to flow, dooming one to be the last to go.

Jurdan: Blood must flow to satisfy one's inner spirit, spilling out to drench the soil of goodness, tarnishing your Lord's holy ground, emulating sacrifices all humans people to perform, for all have inherent needs to see life blood flow, watching people's innate power drain away.

Stranger: Must you kill for sport, disfiguring earth's beauty without creating any replacement, working your way for chaos' return to the primordial, knowing you will soon join in its nothingness, killing with death to soon claim you. You have no cause except self-destruction, fervently pursuing its finality, battling against everything trying to save you, protecting the demons torturing your soul.

Wanton: Can anyone be sanctified and holy, given protection against invasion of demons by promising the Lord to keep His statutes, confessing their sins, trusting Him as the only one for their consecration, and be rewarded with His seal of approval? Do you honor Him as the I am, the Lord your God, observing all His commandments, accepting all His judgments, separating yourself from ones unholy, severing yourselves from people of the world, committing yourselves to become holy as the Lord?

Jove: Having confessed any misgivings in trusting Him, praying for deeper understanding to follow Him, doubt sometimes persists, unwilling to leave, hounding me with uncertainty, abandoning me to battle the unknown, seeking some sign of authenticity I can trust.

Skeptic: Demons feeding you with doubt, urging your destruction, easily find other homes when your life ends, settling on victims striving for success.

Jurdan: People's drive must be anxious to gain prosperity and pursuing it never is a comrade of comfort, realizing neither can be achieved with the other, likening them to light and darkness, neither being a companion of the other.

Jove: My strength develops knowledge, serving me with pride, glorifying me with honors, satisfying me with many days, choosing me to be wise, but time will turn me backward, revealing my knowing to be foolish, delivering it to the ashcan of nothingness, to decay unnoticed, having had its day under the sun.

Skeptic: Soon realizing wisdom frustrates its seeker, having appeared to the finder as a great treasure, quickly mocking one with its foolishness, tempts one to renew searching, running seekers in circles, forgetting what was understood before beginning a new cycle.

Wanton: Observe wisdom that succeeds, not because it reflects truth, but is celebrated coming from ordination by a human institution, having been constructed from current facts, verities with uncertain half-lives, confirming success until new information is revealed.

Jurdan: Pity divine wisdom espousing poverty, dismissing human's most common desires, never developed by people, an anachronism belligerent to reason, illusionary to intelligence, trusted to be revealed by your Creator, whomever that might be.

Wanton: Worthier can be human wisdom, trusted for times of need, but lasting only with emblems of its author's credentials, hardly coming from ones judged poor, thinking people in poverty are never equipped with wisdom, ones lacking thoughts to gain treasures and accumulate wealth. Must one relax from being a beast of burden, escaping difficult labor to think, allotting time to develop wisdom and judgment to be more than a lackey, following other's orders, for who knows how such beasts will be used, never knowing they are likely to become cannon fodder? Having no credentials to protest, no judgments to be heard, simple fool's wisdom remains ignored,

Stranger: People mob their way to seats of folly, seeking distraction from purveyors of wisdom, annoying judges peering down, ready to pounce, pronouncing judgments, predicting retributions, done to be entertained by fools showing all is permissible, proclaiming freedom out of touch with any wisdom, with the fool relishing people's great acclaim, hearing chants to make an ass king.

Skeptic: Can one trust words and antics of a madman, thinking they will satisfy our days, chattering endlessly, soothing cares with music, considering none to be folly, or does the fool understand the future holds nothing notable, nothing new to anticipate, so consider the idiot a blessing, delighting us with foolishness, passing our little time with distraction, chosen to forget our anxieties, fearing nothing.

Jove: Can my ambition please the Lord, invoked by admonitions to fear Him, trusting He retaliates for foolish ignorance, disregarding that we will lack knowledge without fearing Him, realizing my goals depend on understanding and that can never begin without fearing Him? My ambition bypasses His consideration, trusting He is critical and judgmental, unlikely to approve of anything I do. Acting on my own, believing He forgives and forgets, trusting on His forgiveness for believers, I initiate my plans, hoping, but never fearing, that they will win His approval, if not His favor.

Skeptic: If I know my Creator, acknowledging His purpose of creating and destroying, why should I fear Him, knowing anxiety over His ways could change nothing, giving me no reason to fear Him? Despite His words, we are not created to fear, He tempts us to fear Him in all His actions, with many willing their reason to comply.

Wanton: Reason convinces me to hate all knowledge, seeing it fragments logic, telling me to fear the Lord on one hand and we are not created to fear on the other, revealing facts that change so quickly I cannot form any lasting wisdom, making understanding a depiction of fiction, unreliable and untrustworthy, as the Creator equips us with reason, allowing us to vacillate between comedy and tragedy, but never to comprehend what being is meant to be.

Commoner: Having adopted the Lord's commands, received the Holy Spirit and listened with obedience to His messages, what more can I expect by fearing Him, shrinking in fear to convince all I belong to Him? I rejoice in belonging to Him and fear will only cringe me, jeopardizing conviction of being one with Him.

Simple Simon: By His words, I am not created to fear, but after searching high and low, from all the depths within me, seeking everywhere for wisdom, I approached the Lord to give me wisdom, and He showed me how to fear Him, thereby recreating me to fear Him, once convinced I was not made to fear. Asking for His wisdom to abide with me, taking up residence in my soul, must I become fearful? Does fear maintain my bond with Him when I trusted His love for me to assure our relationship?

Stranger: Acknowledging fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, authorizing nothing can be learned without the foundation to fear Him, filtering everything through fear, but how can this be if He did not make us fear? Can fear leave any room for love, acknowledging fear dominates and leaves no time for love, never allowing its expression, forbidding it as a virtue? Can wisdom be developed from facts with fear blocking their understanding, making me one fearful of my self's intelligence, relying only on the Lord's, but then where can I comprehend His truths, proclaimed so differently by many?

Skeptic: Fear, necessary for you to obey His commands, promised with faith, assuring you trust for His love, holding a rod for you to fear, reveals uncertainty for the omniscient God.

Jurdan: Fear never recruits wisdom to umpire for moderating all difficulties, directing ways one should proceed, overriding innate commands, temptations suggested by instinct. Wisdom appears silently, advising one to heed her, ready with directions, sent by fate with messages, pouring out words known to ones who call her, never failing, never resisting.

Skeptic: Convinced of nothingness, perpetuated by deformed wisdom from distorted reason, having no resort from an empty spirit, postmodern hipsters of nihilism are equipped only to beg or steal, prolonging their disengagement from the world, cynically contemplating why they are here.

Commoner: Who can teach me, willing to be my mentor, understanding I must be taught to fear, perhaps trusting my parents, but must I disable reason, reaching out only with instincts, running from everything, picturing evil and danger in all that speaks and moves, scampering into burrows of safety, hiding to escape all fears, having learned to fear so I can begin my understanding of the Lord?

Wanton: Reject fear, demolishing one's will to be, immobilizing freedom to choose, reducing people to exist only by their inherent code, returning them to animal behavior, directed by robots obedient to innate encryptions, depending on no directions from the Lord, at risk for evading peril stalking the innocent without provocation, never obsessed by reason to act differently.

Jurdan: Enabling reason to develop virtues, eliminating handicaps to self-appraised morality, changing oughts to more acceptable obligations, promoting myself as the only beneficiary, I reconstruct morality, embedding it in my conscience, and draw on its power to achieve my goals. Praise evolution for giving us reason, protecting it from loss, comprehending its power to modify our innate decrees, inherited from beasts but now possessing a reason for their transformation.

Wanton: We have heard prophetic words many times, preached so often we stopped listening, knowing we can grow wisdom, cultivating it with tender care, feeding it with experiences to construct new dogma, reasoned to improve common sense, enabling us to act on revised virtues. Words are repeating God's old time-worn commands, committing us to live like ancient believers, trust in laws irrelevant today. You hear pastors preaching divorce is unacceptable, marriage is only between men and women, abortion kills God's creation, and faith integration is impossible in the world we live in, but it is reasonable and permissible to trust what works best for you, choosing what is acceptable for your comfort.

Skeptic: Pastors with those convictions will soon preach to the air, having no one to hear in crumbling temples, waiting to be converted to houses where lust can flourish. We can be assured of this, knowing soon the dogma of Old Testament virtues will disappear. People watching the church's progression to decay, discarding what truth for old believers was, will soon dismiss commitments to tithe, ignoring to gift a tenth of their harvest, rejecting ancient beliefs as less sacred than anything they have already snubbed.

Jurdan: What would human's do without doctrines and dogmas constantly reminding them of their sinful nature?

Wanton: Pontificating me with slogans, urging me to investigate religion, advising on some by many, I know what all say, convincing me of their dogma, convicting me of having a sinful nature, rejecting me out of hand unless I have some treasures willing to donate.

Skeptic: Beware of ones teaching critical thinking, leading listeners to believe their ideas trump other's, relying on their credentials awarded by a master educator, knowing how to silence dissent, claiming correctness for dogmas developed by critical thinking, tolerating no ideas conflicting with theirs.

Wanton: If I think therefore I am, what is critical thinking, teaching one to reason, scrambling one's mind to ponder in ways unique and ready to render thoughts beyond other's ideas, embellishing critical thinking as the cardinal virtue of intellectual life and achieving it to be treasured above all?

Skeptic: Critical thinking begins with facts, knowledge proposed to be reliable, tested by statistics to be significant, and then used to create truths, but how long does any fact survive, stand up to confirm its truth? Facts change and can be destroyed by new understandings, but correctness determined by critical thinking tolerates nothing threatening its method, protecting the cardinal virtue of self-proclaimed intellectual thoughts.

Jurdan: Can critical thinkers share existence with their God or any Lord, having already established themselves as persons of all seasons, born to create themselves by their efforts, trusting their understandings remain unchanged but never living long enough to see how time never stands still, being committed to change everything?

Skeptic: Enamored with themselves, self-assured in their powers, basking in heavenly bliss, exhilarating in anticipation, meeting with gods overlooking humankind, critical thinkers forget to realize they revel in illusions, imagining ideas failing as all else produced by human reason.

Jurdan: Your remarks are demeaning, speaking as a heretic, dismissing people's correctness, giving justification for them to be intolerant.

Skeptic: Does critical thinking promote tolerance or does it merely mesmerize its hearers to trust the master teacher's words, hiding intolerance to be invoked for suspected heretics?

Stranger: Mesmerizing others with powers of critical thinking allows tyranny to sneak in, to terrorize others unknowingly silently, recognized only when it is too late, having already enslaved them to its ideas, too late to proclaim dignity for freedom as a human being.

Prancing Grace: Critical thinking accuses me of extreme loyalty to goodness, convincing me this will hamper my way to success, telling me to be careful of not being one the public sees as bound to religious dogmas, but living as ordinary people, understanding them as they wish to be, resembling them in their acceptable perversity. Acknowledging their dignity, accepting minor faults we all have, we bond as one in spirit, giving them a leader coming from their kind.

Stranger: Your cause must include training to become a leader, truly in the Lord's image, seeking the unity His Son prayed for. Can you fulfill this purpose, embracing all in unity, doing everything to delight the Lord? This can't be possible without witnessing your followers worship in Orthodoxy, united in faithfully following the tenets God has called for all to obey.

Skeptic: Does its religious dogma claim God is with us, united as one?

Stranger: Who doesn't believe God is with them, praying for His assistance before their trials, entering struggles with Him at their side, invoking His name, carrying banners and medallions for protection against opponents, all calling on their one Almighty to be with them, shouting proclamations, God is with us, who can be against us, how great is our God.

Simple Simon: How can humans battle one another when they trust and obey the same one God? Do they hear Him differently or perhaps they have papered Him with so many doctrines and dogmas He can never be recognized by others, changing Him to be uniquely attuned to their interests? Maybe Orthodoxy can unite people, bringing their differences together, returning them to heed God's messages, and most importantly never to distort them, or change Him into one they can join, allowing them to become like Him and still permit them to be their person.

Bystander: The Lord's message has never been to harm others, no humans and nothing else He created, His Word innately entrusted in people's code, evident before people decided to develop religions, manifested in expressions such as love and treat others as you expect from them, arising from people's conscience, activated by their inner code and ignored at their risk.

Stranger: People cannot wipe out Orthodoxy, eliminating their knowledge of God, realizing He has embedded awareness of Him in their code, protecting it against tyrants working to destroy it, and He gives us reason to understand His ongoing revelations. Religions created by people come and go, lasting if they can be freely modified to suit their needs and changing belief no longer requires worship. Religions created by humans, established by reason, an artifice of their thoughts as proclaimed by some, never last multiple transformations, eventually disappearing as machinations of the human mind. Only pure Orthodoxy remains, unadulterated by humans dissatisfied with what the Lord gave them, thinking as most do, I can do it better, creation's goodness needs my intervention.

Skeptic: Freethinkers customizing their beliefs distrust Orthodoxy, fearing its control over human minds, establishing doctrines to limit beliefs, herding souls into its circle, maintaining other beliefs in the Lord allow too much freedom, trusting they remain enriched by being on holy ground.

Wanton: Avoid Orthodoxy if its beliefs are humbling and contest its doctrines demeaning one's self-esteem, belittling who you think you are, providing an excuse for your leaving, changing places to where you can think freely, molding beliefs to your satisfaction.

Skeptic: Orthodoxy shows how one can become like God, taking on His image for being, conceding designs for developing one's sanctity, growing to abide in oneself.

Commoner: Is this what Orthodoxy is?

Stranger: Orthodoxy reveals God as the only One divine, Creator of everything, determining goodness for all His doings, establishing conditions for existence, providing for redemption so we can all return to Him. Everything else is added by human reason, thinking it can provide more useful information, but it confuses people, giving them cause for hating others, more so than any blemishes producing diversity, resulting in agnostics refusing to accept dogmas and doctrines, but Orthodoxy never denies God.

Commoner: Is Orthodoxy then a haven for agnostics?

Simple Simon: Agnostics accept no proofs for God, dismissing any evidence put forth and ignore any trusted beliefs. Our Orthodoxy would be threatened by unbelievers, fearing they might venture reasons to attract some to their thinking. Partial faith in Orthodoxy is sort of belief in God, thinking it might offer a sort of salvation when people are kind of dead.

Skeptic: You describe Orthodoxy, honoring and worshipping the only true divinity, never allowing people to remake Him, believing His love will enable them to do whatever reason prompts them to do. With Orthodoxy prevailing throughout, can humans escape conflicts where people destroy one another, seeking victims by no criteria, randomly, convinced of their lives being nothing, living in a wasteland occupied by meaninglessness?

Jurdan: Orthodoxy can never survive, being bombarded by human imagination to modify its doctrine, reasoned by scholars to contribute change, likened to modifications made for local gods, suiting the needs for each one's home where strangers must learn and understand a region's local gods for them to prosper.

Excalibur: Your words rejecting Orthodoxy's virtues, the creation of doctrines and dogmas by human imagination transforming ideas from theories to truths, are reasoned to support your unbelief, but can any human sources of knowledge be verified as facts? Instead, trust orthoverity, eternal truth established only by the Lord, undefiled by human reasons, never contaminated by doctrines and dogmas.

Stranger: What drives people greater than screams for possession, acquiring wants, maturing them to satisfy desires, fulfilling yearnings with ephemeral acquisitions, hardly ever experiencing love except for what others may provide, using them to acquire one's needs, loving them until they offer nothing more worthwhile. With complete understanding of the Lord, loving Him without reservation as He loves us, love that is never compromised by our beliefs, we can achieve what Orthodoxy requires, committing us to His goodness so we can dwell in the beauty of His creation.

Bystander: Never disputing essences of God, believing in Him as creator, perfect in love, bringing all into reality by His Word, crowning all His achievements with goodness, conferring beauty on all creation, consider this uncontaminated orthoverity worthy of worship.

Excalibur: Doctrines and dogmas divert people from the Lord, giving them things other than Him to worship, allowing them to tailor an almighty to suit their needs, custom making a deity, a concierge to assist them in servicing their desires.

Stranger: Listen. We hear God's dismay over people blind to His goodness, never open to creation's beauty, struggling vainly to satisfy their desires, for this underlies their despair, fighting with each other, never fulfilling their wants, never recognizing their needs are met, and they need little else. The beauty of creation assures everyone's needs can be provided, sometimes needing to be stolen from hoards to provide other's essentials.

Commoner: Our works will prove us, spelled out by works of the law, rewarded by our doings, justifying all our efforts, confident in accomplishing what the Lord desires of us, prerequisites for our salvation, obeying decreed dogmas.

Stranger: Tutored by the world, learning everything under the sun, all that can be seen and heard, people grow as beasts, teaching their flesh to be in bondage, worshipping gods of their desires, never satisfied with the basic needs God provides, knowing as children of humans they must emulate, never acknowledging themselves to be heirs of God through Christ, never ready to accept His Spirit and become more than they were made, to become His children. I tell you this truth, knowing some will reject all my words, treating me as an enemy, seeking to control their minds.

Skeptic: Earth's goodness and beauty were spoiled with human's coming, supposedly charged with its stewardship, but failed when devoted only to their own interests, chasing after desires and wants, never satisfied with the Lord's provision of their needs, leaving the earth's spirit asking why did He bring humans in to populate earth's pristine goodness, bringing them in with free will to annihilate its order. Were they driven out by wasting some other home, seeing many now are looking for some new place to support life, thinking there must be others waiting to be exploited?

Wanton: With no good reason, why does God create us to populate the earth, compelling us to reproduce, instilling us with a code giving us no choice, leaving us with a will while forcing us to obey Him, watching as we fearfully squirm in disobedience, perhaps to entertain Him, amused by creatures floundering in His divine drama. Many console their reason, contemplating noble explanations for God's creation of humans, believing they are something special, but tiring of their antics the Lord could produce new creations to amuse Him more, perhaps ones never focused on themselves as the bane of their existence.

Commoner: I remain obedient to the heavenly vision, allowing no lapses for human fantasies, remaining loyal as my attention permits, reasoning nothing to alter my commitment, trusting without fail in what the Lord prepares for me to see, living the vision He has sent, believing the circumstances He puts before me, knowing He will empower me to see His will in their fulfillment.

Skeptic: How can we know His covenant, be obedient to commandments hidden away in some lost ark, sealed from our vision, protected as His truth, when we have been told truth is never found in darkness, always being in the light, radiant for all to see, so why are His truths concealed, treated by many as lies, always veiled in darkness? Would God order this, leaving something so important in dark obscurity? Must important things remain hidden, protected from destruction, concealed in safe places and prevented from being thrown down and broken?

Stranger: Conception initiates His covenant, sealing its oath, promising all the mysterious unknown makings of life combined with obedience to be used wisely, implementing the Lord's Words designating humans to be His stewards, authorized to be custodians of creation for protecting all He made.

Wanton: Liken His truths to virtues claimed to be hidden in your heart, but can they be virtues, silent without action, overpowered by will for success, an achievement to draw attention, believing virtue may be worthy, but without anything else? Let virtue languish in unimportance, never to be distinguished by praise from others. If God has virtues, they remain hidden, never to be proven by us, remaining as covenants imagined to be sealed for us.

Commoner: We seek glory, building it from seeds of virtue--perhaps hidden in our heart--immortalizing it by following the Lord, knowing none of it will remain on earth, being the inheritance only for ones belonging to Him, realizing no one will need or seek glory in heaven, by then greater blessings will be one's claim.

Skeptic: What human doesn't covet glory, measuring treasures by wealth, lasting no longer than life?

Commoner: Knowing where glory lies, I'm on my way marching to Zion, never sidetracked by praise from the gallery, never lingering to be uplifted by their regard for me or stopping to heal from ingratitude bruising my pride, steadfast toward my goal, the sign of the skull where I will be crucified in Christ, solidifying my relationship with Him, joyfully receiving His lasting glory.

Skeptic: What does this accomplish for your relationship with Jesus, seeming to leave Him as a uninvolved bystander, merely observed as a commentator, reporting on what's best for today's efforts, never seeking Him to model, never asking Him what He expects of you, never responding with, Here I am, send me, as you wait for His marching orders, knowing you did not choose Him, ignoring He chose you, having specific ways for you to obey His design for following Him, possible only through His grace, never by your will, submitting to His will, to wait on the Lord, patiently with expectations greater than hope, trusting in the Spirit, seeing you never build your faith on works in trusting your relationship with Him requires no more than faith.

Commoner: What must be considered more important, justification by faith without works, or obedience to the Lord's calling for works, trusting Him or doctrines to measure our faith and justify us to be worthy of eternal life?

Preacher: Works are more important, training followers to follow dictates of our dogmas, emphasizing this as what they should want to satisfy what we command.

Skeptic: That may be well, but who chooses the works, you or the Lord?

Preacher: The masses determine their endeavors, and we encourage their ideas, knowing failure is more likely if we deprive them of choosing.

Skeptic: Preferred works, undertaken by one's choosing, never matched by one's gifts, return empty without the Lord's blessing, so your followers should look to the Lord for deciding their work.

Wanton: They would probably have to wait then, deciding whether their plans were based on His, a conclusion based on success or failure. Unfortunately, many people suffer from experiments developed by human imagination, willing premature failure for multitudes, consequences of unsuccessful ideas.

Preacher: Recognized for preaching His Word, casting out demons, and doing many good works in His name, have I not prepared well to join Him in heaven?

Stranger: All your vanity may not be enough, thinking you can determine the criteria for eternal life with Him. Humble yourself and confess that only the Lord knows who qualifies for an eternal relationship with Him. Ones with exceeding pride are likely to consider the Lord an equal, justifying they can argue with Him about everything He has done. He tells us pride has no equal in human iniquities, never blessing vainglory with His unlimited love.

Commoner: Watch me earnestly, carefully observe my actions and words, and compare them with all the Lord desires of us, discerning whether these are works of the Father, for if my way follows His you must know He is in me and I am in Him, the time being I need to ask Him nothing, trusting Him in everything, needing to reason no more, submitting to His will, allowing it to be done. Being in Him I can ask in His name, listening to His messenger the Holy Spirit, and He is there for me, providing all my needs, as I depend completely on Him, trusting Him above all my reason.

Skeptic: Your faith depends on a messenger and who knows if this bearer of news still exists, realizing messengers are often killed for bringing bad news.

Stranger: Prayers from the faithless, expecting responses to be heard after the murder of the Messenger, lack connections to receive His directions with no understanding of how God works never communicating directly but only through His invited Messenger dwelling only in faithful souls, and His messages are returned when addresses are unknown, where the Holy Spirit has never settled, confusing faithless ones who pray for anything, expecting it will be given, to name it and claim it, thinking God answers all where His Messenger is not installed by faith.

Skeptic: What is faith and prayer for but to name and claim our desires, fulfilling our wants, never unleashing reason to achieve our yearnings.

Stranger: People ask what God can do for them, instead of asking what they can do for Him. Ask by praying for neither and wait on His time, revealing His will through circumstances placed before you, enabling you to discern their meaning, realizing unpreparedness cannot show their message, left as mysteries, hiding practical usefulness for others to see.

Jurdan: Fate determines circumstances, spinning wheels of chance, putting all at its mercy, making prayers hopeless, wasting people's time and efforts.

Stranger: Armed with chance to dictate your existence, trusting fate to direct your all, I believe without the grace of God would there be me ignoring His blessings, never knowing and belonging to Him, never obeying His commands recognized as coming from my Lord, never interceding with prayers asking God to receive me, dragging me from seclusion, hidden in hypocrisy, to stir up anxiety, testifying all do indeed belong to Him, committing all to discern His concerns.

Commoner: Assured atonement qualifies me for prayer, seeking the Father, authorizing the Holy Spirit to intercede, to hear confessions acknowledging my sin, and prepare me for reconciliation with the Lord. Reparations have been completed, repaying little as I can, knowing its payment will be accepted as full, confirmed by the Lord's atonement for believers, death on the cross.

Skeptic: What sin demands your confession, your innate tantrum behavior never dying out, persisting from infancy and morphing into sinister responses from unmet desires, transforming expectations into reality, devising cunning ways to gain one's wishes, destroying whatever may be in the way? Using intimidation and censorship, suppressing any virtue blocking its way, humiliating an opponent's freedom to protest, rhetorically bashing other's ideas, listening to only my self's inner drive, tantrum makers tolerate nothing but their own convictions, never created by sound reason or acceptable judgment, but from unrestricted freedom for behavior of their choosing and protection for their free-will wants, requiring unceasing confession.

Jurdan: Throwing tantrums as a child, my mother ignored my needs, looking away, never recognizing me as a person trying to establish my identity, but she recognized me only by her indifference, never responding to my protests, regarding them merely as needs to be heard, telling her I am also a person, crying to be recognized. Is your God any different?

Stranger: Do you enlist reason to establish your identity, rejecting the innate signature God determined you to have, destroying His blessing and dismissing His plans, fragmenting all to destroy your identity, disrupting creation's unity?

Jurdan: Reason I know well, educating me to follow its lead, responding to its commands, welcoming its calls for protest, sending me searching for targets, transforming words, reinterpreted for battling my most detested quasi-virtue, creation's goodness, the beauty of it all. Finding teachers to lead and ordain me to be a scholar was easy, gifting me with rhetoric like theirs, convincing me to develop wisdom, enforcing my resentment for inequality, training me to tolerate nothing but equality, upholding protestor's rights as citizens of the world, demanding freedom for all to determine their identities.

Nobody: Stealing my rights to develop my identity, I came to be known as nobody, but now, freed to be transgendered from being a woman, I am no longer discriminated as an anybody, however, my protests must continue, voicing complaints of nonacceptance to free me from conventions enslaving me as female, to condone activities expressing my new nature, to release me from male domination, giving me freedom to determine what I will be, mastery over my sexual nature and interference by no outsider. Needing no more wombs to continue overpopulation, I can be free to enjoy my innate nature, seeking sex for satisfaction rather than for procreation, rejecting any flirtations binding me to satisfy another's sexual gratification.

Stranger: You will have problems, however, overcoming natural forces compelling you to become a mother. This will disturb all your plans, changing you to reject culture's conventional wisdom determined nature's probability, interfering with your high hopes despite changing the hormones raging through your body and canceling what you were made for.

Skeptic: Life is one long protest, devouring most of the people's time, searching causes to follow, rallying against actions demeaning innocent souls, marching hand in hand armed with violence, chanting vehement slogans, waiting for responses to incite battle, celebrating discord's dissonance with harmony, hoping peace will never prevail, and if it does protesters must march on to find a new place to vent their angst.

Simple Simon: Be careful. Your protests, arguing against discriminations will someday see your children agonizing as you today, proclaiming injustice for rich possessions, treasures accumulated at the expense of others. Pray for peace in holiness, needing both for ending protests, terminating aging convictions for turmoil, dismissing worthless causes firing the fury of youth. I once yearned for conflict, sensing my words were for protest, lashing out where I could perceive injustice, searching for justification in another's missteps, making trivial mistakes significant, broadcasting everything as discriminations, screaming equality for all, clamoring for equal distribution of treasures, and allowing no show of holiness to embarrass another.

Jurdan: Be careful you say? Should the wealthy shape my life, or self-righteous ones dictate what I should be? My free will allows me to define what I choose to be and that I do, never needing intrusion by other's convictions, trusting some day we will all live with equality under the sun, trusting us to evolve, to become better and better with time.

Commoner: What should alert us, threatening our hopes for happiness? The Lord created us to have leaders, needing ones to direct our ways and we choose ones strongest and free from burdens of wealth or convictions of self-righteous spirituality and holiness, things thought to be trustworthy, but people change with time and often tire of enthusiastic demonstrations for changing the world, eventually realizing cultures taking eons to create can hardly be frantically destroyed, crushed in little time by noble aspirations.

Skeptic: Blinded to creation's goodness and beauty, equipped with a free will choosing to see nothing but human-made defects, some people often blame the Lord for all its evil, giving people responsibility for their persistence so they can keep social protest alive, driving a revolution for everything that can be imagined. What would you be if you lose your agenda to protest social conditions?

Excalibur: Leadership fails unless it can eliminate dependence on doctrines and dogmas, and maintain protection of the Spirit to recognize God without any embellishment of Him by human endeavors.

Stranger: Protecting human's self-imposed moral world of laws and rules, established by violence to justify order, ensures nothing will change by any edict's words or strong-arm force destroying oneself in the annihilation of others, eliminating anyone defying decrees to stifle imaginations trusted to create images of a better life, framed as actions of good and evil to guide established doctrines. Fulfillment of the Lord's eternal laws is essential for escape from the fallen world and entrance into God's kingdom to inherit an everlasting full, perfect, beautiful, free, and divine existence.

Skeptic: Human laws, decrees established to control us in all things, restrict our imaginations for improving the world and our lives, acknowledging attempts to organize and herd us into protection from worldly evil's traditions and prohibitions, as we wait for life to release us, preserving us for existence in some better place, but doctrines and dogmas can force us to avoid creative energy emanating from our inherent goodness and ignore its beauty.

Commoner: Struggling to be objective, believing it to reveal truth, trusting doctrines and dogmas to be reliable, I have given up, abandoning all reason to depend on my senses, seeing or hearing facts promised with a potential for truth, and I discover reality from my spirit, realizing spiritual experience is the supreme reality in my life, trusting the Divine creates all, plainly evident and never needing any proof, established as the only sure means to comprehend creation's reality, affirming its value over my sense's rational evaluation of the static, lifeless, normal, predetermined and objective.

Stranger: Reason equips us with certainty to improve the world, restoring it to be like Eden's paradise, but nothing can change until we collaborate with God our architect for its re-creation, devoting our spirit to be energized, creatively developing us to be transfigured to approach the likeness of God, realizing our reasons to be are never to abandon the home He created for us, never trusting it will disappear in a finality of Armageddon, but to restore it to His original design.

Jurdan: You would collaborate with your Lord to re-create a creation He dooms to destruction on His day of the Lord? Would its re-creation be essential for populating the world with more humans born in sin, trusting few would ever be saved?

Skeptic: Your reason develops from dogmatic doctrines that people live by.

Simple Simon: Claims to be made in God's image and understand His greatest attributes, convinces us He endows all individuals with creativity, subject only to be called forth, exercising freedom for transformation of my selves and the world, unveiling victory over life's hardships, burdens dictated by life's necessities determined by rational conclusions, multiplied by culture's growing determinism.

Stranger: The beauty of God's goodness, woven throughout creation, must be articulated by writers in expressions honoring beauty, conveying His revelations in ways no less, reflecting His image, the mysteries of goodness no human can comprehend, writing in ways we simple ones can discern, growing our comprehension as He reveals secrets in portions never exceeding our capacity to digest and assimilate.

Skeptic: Current scribes, creating new interpretations, writing ones to meet people's needs for security and honored for wisdom, offer many choices, but how many stray from Jesus' words, scrambling them for different, more acceptable meanings?

Commoner: I am not committed to ones scrambling Jesus' Words, using them to preach what they will do for me or what someone has done for them, training me to be like them, cloned to follow them, as I am already devoted to proclaiming the Lamb of God, sealed in my soul and protected by my faith, trusting He takes away the sin of the world.

Prancing Grace: You can proclaim Jesus as your Lord and Savior and join us, seeing we have others with your belief.

Commoner: Praying to God, asking Him little, expecting no answers but silence, praising His Name, glorifying Him continuously, demanding nothing, trusting Him always, I ask only to become more like Him, committed to be an example in word and conversation, in charity and generosity, in faithfulness to the Spirit compelling me to be pure in all my thoughts and deeds, to be more than working out my salvation.

Skeptic: Are you one proclaiming goodness for creation, truth for its beauty and love for one's being, existing in nature's fulfillment promised by the Creator, the springboard for entering eternity, convinced of being one pure, belonging to the all things righteous, trusting its assurance, dismayed by unbelievers defiled by nonsense declaring nothing is virtuous, profaning their mind and ignoring their conscience, thinking remorse for any deeds is the work of demons?

Commoner: God is creating all with His Word, bringing light into the world, sending One to be light of the world, the Christ to be our light, continues His light to give me understanding, ordering my steps by His Word, delivering me from despair.

Stranger: Darkness concealing light, restricting us to nothing more than what we can feel, feeble realizations from touch, but light for our soul is never darkened, illuminating distractions tempting our attention, calling on time for meditations needing nothing to see, to recall treasures secured in my soul, for hearing my voice praise the Lord's goodness and loving-kindness, knowing He is with me, near to hear my words even before they are uttered, trusting I have been promised grace and peace, blessings from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, as I acknowledge these blessings needing only the light of my justification.

Simple Simon: Prepared by His Word, creating me by nothing less, He never confines me in darkness, illuminating everything tempting to distract my development, responding to His messages assuring I conform to His design's goodness with my body obeying, preparing my soul to comply when confronted by His light, His truth compelling me to depend on Him.

Jurdan: What you call my soul--if it exists--is under my command, determined by my will, calling on reason for its development, filling it with self-created wisdom, voiding any decayed truths, searching facts to form new understandings, giving renewed confidence in my self's power.

Stranger: One's soul is never under human jurisdiction to be filled with one's knowledge, the soul being only for the Lord's Words to occupy, settling the Holy Spirit in the home He created, establishing a message box for communicating with His beings.

Commoner: What benefit could my soul be if left empty, needing only myself and others like me for interactions, trusting only in what I see and hear from them? Compassion flakes, falling, surrounding my soul, sinking me into rejoicing's realm, protects me from myself, seizing me to follow the Lord, painting His way with creation's beauty of goodness.

Stranger: Smiting the shepherd who fills the soul, destroying the guardian of wisdom, removing the Lord's seat of reason, scattering eternal truths, leaves nothing but chaos in whatever control might follow.

Simple Simon: Is there any help for souls troubled in suffering, finding resolution only in self-endangerment, risking their lives deemed worthless, never considering what might lie beyond?

Commoner: How can one not trust the Almighty, the One who cannot lie, never having to repent for decisions He makes? My soul waits on Him, my help and shield, rejoicing in knowing Him, trusting in His holy name, sure of His mercy upon me, delivering me from myself, in perfect union by totally surrendering to Him, never anxious over my circumstances knowing they are all of His doing, never trying to discern the beauty of salvation trusted all to him, knowing unending joy will be my reward for complete surrender to Him.

Stranger: Circumstances, real and visible, never merely imagined, developing by the Lord's doing, appear and can be discerned as being for blessings, but we can adjust them to our liking, acting on them for undesired outcomes or waiting on them for His goodness to prevail.

Simple Simon: We must believe all circumstances come from the Lord, reigning on our will to choose responses, hoping they will bless us with His approval.

Jurdan: Trust only our own will, enabling us for all things, relying on its power, authorizing reason to deliver us from ourselves, for coping with circumstances, evolving us to become better and better.

Wanton: Convinced of reason willing us to determine goodness, some speak of a good death, practicing goodness to end one's life, turning death from a tragedy to a moral act, embellished with dignity, one admired by many, selecting the time and circumstances for its ending, never allowing God to determine the situation.

Skeptic: For some self-determination is self-termination, and they seek ways to serve their calling best, luring them to despair. Many run to danger, engaging it by risking their lives, but it is never a threat, merely testing fortune to see if their time has come, ignoring the odds facing their end, perhaps surveying which kind of end would suit them best. Unfortunate are ones who find no suitable danger and must create their own, forcing a scenario for someone to fatally misuse their existence, abusing their body beyond repair, and they must find one with weapons for ending their life, who better than one enforcing the law.

Wanton: Edicts of human causes are planted as seeds trusted to sprout and grow, but leaders never prepare soils for them to thrive in souls laden with rocks, possibly supporting their sprouting but having nothing to protect them from wilting under life's scorching, the everydayness tempting a person's will in every way possible. Some seeds will germinate amid their stony surroundings but will be barren, never flowering and producing any heirs to reproduce their success, wilting as their emotions wanes, passing as fads lasting briefly.

Skeptic: Do causes promising to gain the whole world profit if they promote the loss of one's soul?

Prancing Grace: Our cause, claiming world-wide attention, promising benefits for all, assuring justice where injustice prevails, will attract the down-trodden, extending beyond borders for both liberal and conservative thinkers, moderating desires and wants for people, aligning what they must be shared with the needy.

Skeptic: To be successful, you must be careful, telling each audience only what they wish to hear, purposefully concealing what might offend their ideas, never mentioning how their soul would be affected.

Wanton: Have you thought about recruiting followers gifted with little reason but well-equipped for violence?

Prancing Grace: We need individuals innately gifted with rhetorical violence as well as ability to subdue differences with force, acknowledging rule fails without these. We know many people seeking confrontation and discord, unable to cope with peace, will search for danger, abandoning all harmony to find adventure, wandering the world to discover where a battle flag can be waved, directing them into self-destruction.

Wanton: I pass by such individuals daily, trudging back and forth, engaged in menial activities, visioning what they might be, drawing closer to their dreams with a spot of wine interrupting their way, interjecting illusions of adventure, distracting them from life's reality, dispelling its monotony, diverting them from their path's destination, the turmoil of home.

Stranger: People searching for a cause seek something to blame, displaying abundant reasons, abounding with many explanations, denying little to dissuade their endeavors, despite creation's goodness confronting their decisions. Nothing from without can enter and defile them, so they must shape their conclusions with deceit, discounting any semblance of truth, freeing them to compromise their conscience, stifling all words of protest from their soul, silencing any blame coming from within, never confessing unworthiness as their fault. Can their conscience listen, hearing other words as truth?

Wanton: What do you propose as evil demanding a conscience's response? Whose list of wrongdoings must be obeyed for your satisfaction?

Stranger: The Lord gives us documents, establishing doctrines and dogmas to follow, identifying iniquities that harm us, sins insulting goodness's integrity, keeping Him busy restoring creation to its pristine state.

Wanton: Must we live with goodness assured of being maintained, touching it in no way for harm?

Stranger: We acknowledge the Lord provides all, assuring our needs, giving us strength, blessing obedient ones with peace, telling us peace will be with you, and we are obligated to pass the word, Peace to you be multiplied. We rejoice in all things He has done, blessing us to hear His Words and proclaim His truth.

Skeptic: Have you enemies threatening your peace, identified as real, more than straw foes waiting to be blown over by someone's distrust? Or do you require protection for yourself by creating a military to protect you from fantasies? Tell me why the Hebrews needed an army in the wilderness, arming themselves forty years before its need, for what, to defend themselves against menacing cacti, swaying in breezes like windmills, searching forty years to encounter a formidable foe, and then when one was found they were commanded to recognize that only God could be credited for its defeat, telling all the battle is His. Who needs an army of the Lord ready to make military conflicts His?

Stranger: Armed forces are needed most to protect against one's inner adventures, even though they are justified by creating enemies outside.

Prancing Grace: We know how to better people's needs here and now, understanding their requirements for survival, to encourage relationships for supporting their dignity and freedom to be themselves, trusting all can be assured by our cause. You may confess reservations in joining us, but can they match doubts you have for the Lord, meeting expectations He promises?

Wanton: Who should I trust? Myself or the Lord? Having no reservations of being myself, admitting nothing beyond my capabilities, can I be honest, boasting of my self-sufficiency, realizing my shortcomings, believing I can trust One Almighty, unseen, hiding silently, responding with no words, expecting me to read His mind?

Prancing Grace: I never show misgivings troubling my convictions, questioning my abilities, so trust me, believe in our cause, join our plans for restoring people's dignity. Our cause, being one of many coming in succession, each one to better us, promises claim for success.

Skeptic: Each cause releasing people from outdated constraints, justified by learned scholars, preaches freedom to be ourselves, celebrating exploits of free-spirited adventurers, glorifying ones doing their own thing.

Stranger: If these words depict today's truth, what do we have to live by, tolerating one's will to equal another's? Ignoring the Lord's will, discarding it in favor of human's, destroying convictions we are meant to live by, devising abhorrent punishments to enslave people, humans create edicts to demand obedience and decrees mandating death, bringing people to worship reason and formulate new justifications to torment and slaughter humans, carefully devised to accommodate common sense, coming to be trusted from who knows where.

Prancing Grace: Acknowledge opportunities from the Lord directing your reason to evaluate our cause, trusting them to understand our goal, knowing He created you for a purpose--maybe hidden--while giving you insight to decide, believing you would never ignore it but use it for our advantage. The Lord presents us with opportunities, and they are to promote His gifts of reason and common sense.

Stranger: Tempted by your cause urging me to follow understands little, and aware that He who is in me is greater than anyone in the world I consider your ideas only after the Lord passes on their merit, allowing discernment to see if He approves, determining if I will continue to live with His convictions or erase them and compromise, isolating me to engage in your cause and sever my commitments with Him.

Prancing Grace: We welcome ones like you knowing what true loyalty entails, unflinching in commitment to the Lord, unchanging in devotion to a great leader, and you could quickly become one of our inner group, contributing your wisdom, reasoning truths to further our cause, working for its lasting, garnering respect from common people.

Stranger: Joining your cause might be an opportunity the Lord lays before me, selecting me to further His will, but His intentions might differ from yours and I would be forced to choose between His and yours, making me a renegade by the choice I make, realizing I would depart from one plan.

Prancing Grace: Needing a respected follower of Jesus, enlisting more than a token adherent for our cause, we can use you, one never shamed for belonging to Him, having remained in dignified silence, stirring up nothing in protest, respected for reason and honored for wisdom.

Jove: As one respected for reason, seeking holiness to be garmented with sanctity, I am secure in my wisdom's certainty, never searching for its hiding place, always trusting to find it so I can reason all its requirements, devoting my time to bond me in holiness. No one but me can direct the Lord's way to sanctity, and I must discover the way to holiness.

Stranger: Have you ever overlooked opportunities He presented, laid at your feet, ignoring what was plainly evident, thinking your way was better for becoming holy?

Jove: How do explain opportunities mysteriously laid at your feet, coming without reason, spontaneously without cause?

Stranger: Fate intrudes often, springing surprises, frequently without explanation, demanding recognition to be important, but I grant them no importance, thinking they can be temptations to mislead my journey to serve the Lord, unsuspecting intrusions to waylay my activities for Him. The Lord engages my discernment in determining what action serves Him best.

Jove: I want to be more than merely holy and strive to be immersed in activities reasoned by me to be most responsible for doing God's will, trusting He brings them to mind as most important.

Stranger: Can you number the opportunities He has placed in your way, how many you have ignored, being confident in yours better?

Jove: What you might consider opportunities are many I forget immediately, and there are some lingering, perhaps trying to convince me of their importance and take longer to be dismissed from memory, but I never let any interfere with my convictions, honoring my wisdom, or rewarding my decisions.

Wanton: Impoverishing my self-sufficiency, leaving my will destitute, reason fails me, enlightening me no longer, struggling to assemble truths, vanishing as facts disappear and make way for new ones, but I can develop none further using reason, usage created for modern acceptance, leaving me a useless relic, rotting into nothingness as patterned by all things past.

Skeptic: Reason always fails, serving one for a limited time, waiting for a new generation, exuding hope for greater truths, passing through the modern to the post-modern, anxiously trusting revelation of truth's finality, but true to form, human reason continues entertaining but never fulfills people's hopes.

Commoner: If we grant your statement truth, should we cease to reason, letting our lives unfold as directed by our innate code, living free of care, never anxious about anything?

Jurdan: Reason and common sense allow one to make choices and our free will assures rights to freedom. If one tires of making decisions, ceasing to exercise free will, there is nothing more to live for, nothing except existing by one's innate codes, inherent directions driving beastly survival, destroying any autonomy of being human.

Stranger: Holy directions hidden in innate codes are not determined by me, being established by our Creator, used by learned ones to reason direction, transforming ancient ideas into new understandings to be in accord with present beliefs and common sense developed by trusted minds, yet allowing us to serve the Lord out of a sense of duty, selecting ways to sanctify fulfillment discerned by reasoning, satisfying our obligations to Him and resolve our uncertainties, sorrows, and difficulties with the promise of salvation, proudly confident in doing all His way.

Prancing Grace: Pleading my cause, consistent with modern reality, enlisting any willing to join me, trusting ones ready to oppose any waging war with my convictions, I seek loyalty, rejecting anyone questioning our goals, thinking theirs are better, ones I must put to shame, being mired in confusion, waiting for winds of time to scatter.

Skeptic: Perhaps, needing a cause, having none of their own, some will welcome yours, escaping their uncertainty, leaving bewilderment behind to begin learning your decrees and be enamored with your knowledge, filling their nothingness with something.

Simple Simon: Questioning the rewards Grace promises, offering me peace above all understanding, I trust only in the Lord, my allegiance remaining with Him, assured by the Holy Spirit with my settled faith in Him, promising a perfect peace with God and others, knowing faith clutches His promises, comforting me with peace through all circumstances He lays before me.

Prancing Grace: The Lord promises trials, presenting all with unwanted situations, testing us with one thing after another, conferring some as afflictions for measuring our willingness to stand with Him, probing our faith's depth, determining if we eat and run upon deciding to ignore His message. We reject His commitments, disallowing us great freedom to be our person.

Commoner: Should I thank you for your offer, being open to hearing your temptation, judging me as one vulnerable? Trusting Scripture's promise that no temptation can overtake me, protecting the Lord's believers, I must decline your offer, seeing it is confusing, asking me to stain my faith, to tolerate a pursuit seeming to be upright but disagreeing with God's righteousness.

Stranger: Having a choice of being promoted to great honor in obeying a master, a ruler of great nations, or hearing the Lord and doing His command, obeying Him who persistently hounds me until I acknowledge Him, I choose to follow Him, knowing I will upset the Balak calling out to me repeatedly, realizing I cannot go beyond the commandment of the Lord to do either good or bad, but to obey Him, responding to the circumstances He selects for my doing.

Simple Simon: How can anyone recruit me, blemished by belonging to the Lord, subject to discrimination and ridicule, following One who is blamed for nature's calamities, accused of heresies by other religions, knowing I will be judged and found guilty of hypocrisy and threatened to be troubled unto sorrow, making me a liability to a secular cause?

Stranger: God orchestrates circumstances, knowing they present us with adversity, never intended for reproach to strike us with grief and must be discerned as opportunities blessing us with chances to do more than reason allows, going beyond the limits our sense permits, so we must stop and consider circumstance's messages, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal all truths hidden from reason, trusting Him to assure confidence in God's Word living and active in us. I believe the Lord's adversity, knowing what it is, but how can we know what trouble Grace's cause will bring?

Skeptic: Detesting circumstances sent by the Lord, hating trials He thinks you need, are you any different, testing Him with ridiculous requests, demanding what He must consider absurd, knowing He provides more than enough, yet being seldom grateful, you rarely praise Him, taking all for granted?

Commoner: Consecrated with spiritual power, devoting my thoughts to be in accord with the Lord's, dedicated to serving Him, never by my will, but being a servant I wait for His Word, bringing them in circumstances to begin my suffering for Him, realizing my sanctification begins here, and I take nothing for granted.

Skeptic: Behold, trusting your God forgives, seeing your unchanging One change, belittling your proclamations of destruction for ones buried in iniquity, altering truth to accommodate His wishes, why can't you assume His ways, rethinking declarations of truth to satisfy the moment? Believer's vanity cannot accept circumstances sending them out on a wild goose chase for no good reason.

Commoner: Despite gloomy convictions despairing over our beliefs, we trust that all things work together for good to those who love the Lord, faithfully loving Him always, the sovereign God controlling all our circumstances, accepting what He presents us, determined only by Him, never by us, directing us by His unchanging will, verifying all things under His direction work together for good, understanding direction by our will is never the source of His blessings.

Stranger: Despair can never develop from following the Lord, staring His opportunities in the face, seizing them without knowing their direction, following revelations trusted to be from Him. Despair admits to ignoring circumstances and regretting the consequences, sinking ones into depression, realizing there is no going back, nothing to reverse time, leaving done what's done. The Lord never gives up, however, returning each moment with new opportunities, stirring ones mired in despair, awakening them to His calling, reviving those sleeping in depression to fill them with joy, transforming despair to rejoicing.

Simple Simon: Before testing the Lord, waiting for providence to stop at one's doorstep, put on the full armor of God, preparing one for circumstances He sends, using them to give opportunities for becoming more like Him, disciplining us in silence, never shouting words at us to obey, knowing our training is revealed in subtle ways, evident in how we respond to circumstances.

Jurdan: My full armor came with gifts given at birth, free will empowered by reason and common sense, fueled by knowledge to assemble new truths, protecting me from dubious imaginations, shielding me from mischievous superstition eager to bail me out, demolishing all I am trusted to be. My virtues work together for good, coordinating all my gifts for honor and grow me in pride.

Skeptic: Can you tell of the good you work for?

Jurdan: Asking what is good is like asking what is truth.

Stranger: Virtuous qualities can appear but never without assistance, and reason plays little role as it can argue for unworthy desires as well as merited actions. With reason never separating ideas and actions into acceptable and unacceptable, humans must recognize and look to the Lord, seeking divine existence, recognizing the Creator of all to acknowledge creation's goodness and beauty. For developing a cause, trusting it to corral human behavior and wed it to goodness, reason will fail, and leaders must look to and rely on the Lord.

Jurdan: Each person has a Lord to justify one's ideas and actions, and most people do one of two things. Either they make themselves a lord to justify all their activities or they follow teachings of some god to determine everything they do, often destroying vestiges of goodness and worshipping deities demanding self-sacrifice, committing their lives to rewards of everlasting existence in paradise, annihilating their home here, an existence that could be determined by them to be any hoped-for paradise.

Stranger: Without faith you can do nothing, denying the Lord's existence, criticizing all who worship Him or some god a person creates, but He knows faith cannot stand alone, needing the addition of virtue, complementing it to satisfy relationships with Him, requiring believers to work out their salvation, understanding faith alone is insufficient, and we are blessed with free will to begin this task, using our gift of discernment to direct its doing, listening to dictates invoked by faith, obeying them by urgings of our will, embedded in us for responding to His revelations.

Jurdan: What virtue? Your God of love has no reservations in killing anyone who defies His orders, making His virtue a double-sided sword, loving in creative acts, destroying goodness in retribution for failure to meet His standards. Destroy all notions of virtue, freeing everyone from its bondage, terminating its idea, eliminating it little by little until vice loses all meaning, freeing us to determine our lives, making our actions unaffected by conscience, doing whatever we are free to will.

Wanton: That is what we call progress, transfiguring us to become better and better, accomplished by changing the rules we live by, easily done by creating a new language, transforming definition of words to ensure tolerance for all, assuring everyone the right to be themselves, such being the power of words.

Skeptic: What power transforms spoken words into objects, things bearing descriptions within, formulas constructing their nature, created to exist from God's breath, articulating existence in a way hardly understood by humans? Can we call this mystery a power, classifying it so because we have no better word for it?

Prancing Grace: Our goal, overcoming wickedness, terminating its flourishing reign, restoring trampled virtues, returning their honor, restoring them to recapture long-lost dignity, will be people's manifesto for happiness, overseeing the reemergence of good, returning to creation's promises.

Skeptic: Do your hopes appear only by whims of fortune, decreed by its time, never knowing how swiftly its wheel revolves, returning all to life established before, stealing away assurances of general goodness, working as a covenant until its agreement is forgotten?

Stranger: Only God's promises are everlasting, never destroyed, renewed when they seem to be forgotten, never tampered with by any human power seldom exercised for good, misused when depravity is redefined to claim goodness, tolerating what once was evil, shrouding distinction between good and bad, authorizing one's will to silence a conscience in disagreement, elevating power to be a desired virtue equipping one for control, mandating obedience through its authority.

Commoner: Can power be recognized by my witness to goodness and beauty, honoring the Lord silently by actions without shouting proclamations protesting the world's evils, waiting patiently for Him to instruct me how to witness?

Simple Simon: Greater is power administered silently and expecting little reward, hoping for the Lord's approval, acknowledging one's great power must be the companion of humility, lasting beyond power exercised to flex one's strength. Nothing can boast of power but extreme good, yet should the Lord lay claim to boasting, having more right to it than humans, being the framer of goodness? He brags nothing of His accomplishments, letting all creation witness His deeds, so need any more be said?

Stranger: If power is desirable, evil cannot be its accomplishment, so if it must use power for its deeds, call it something else, delegation of strength to control, willed to one's desires, defined for its wants. God's power, unlike ours, manifests goodness, and can never be considered evil, trusting evil can never spring out of goodness, so redefine evil's attributes as something else, giving no hint of it being associated with the powers of goodness. Reasoning nothing evil can be of the Lord's doing, testifying to His supreme goodness, blame Him for nothing bad, never accusing Him as the cause of evil, trusting evil can never erupt from the good.

Wanton: If we claim power, it must be a dichotomy, defining two separate things, thinking we can possess both, the authority to witness goodness and to confirm evil dominating what's unworthy, but we must in all cases claim power that is desirable, reckoned by sound reason to be deserving.

Skeptic: If happiness is the sure reward of goodness conferred by righteous living, will it be undone by unrighteousness, invading and scrambling one's virtue, pausing happiness' coming and going, leaving it to remain only moments without any afterglow? Test your happiness by measuring the level of reward due your righteousness, marked not by your standard of righteousness, reasoned by you to equal any other. Wake up, realizing goodness is rewarded by happiness, so intervals of unhappiness or no happiness must be punishments, realizing there is little standing between rewards and punishments, indifference being neither reward nor punishment, and use thus to measure your time invested in goodness.

Wanton: Power cannot covet independence, exercising its muscle alone, building its body merely for appearance, for its strength must break loose, freeing itself from passivity of being only for oneself, acknowledging it is of no value until it is wielded, finding something or someone to control. Therefore, can we trust God possesses power to control humans, negating their free will or that He prides Himself with independence, nullifying any notions He butts into human affairs?

Commoner: We don't want the Lord to be powerful, but to be creative, transforming His Word into creation, creating beauty in all things, expressing His love in all, never needing power for His actions. We fear power, seeing its execution for things dreaded, so why should power be an option for people to seize but for controlling others, or for protection from others wielding power they have enlisted.

Simple Simon: In reverence we worship God's power, regarding it as prerogative of divinity, thinking He needs it to battle evil and cast out demons, never wondering why He creates enemies or does He? As the God of love, He could never create enmity, producing agents bent on destroying His artworks of beauty, but He did gift humans with free will and endowed them with imagination, equipping them to act in unpredictable ways, by means that maybe He could never foretell.

Stranger: Discerning God's creative ability as power, humans trust they can will themselves to power, working to become God-like, seizing the opportunity to become like Him, but it was not by power He created all but by His love, and He teaches us to live by love, never by power.

Skeptic: Who doesn't recognize ones scorning God's creation, powering their efforts to mar its beauty and mutilate its goodness, destroying everything except what's made by their hands, willing their imagination to thrive, trusted to be sublime, and invested with superior virtue?

Prancing Grace: Our cause succeeds, invigorated by essentials of unique untested knowledge, willing to explore unproven ideas and power to secure important needs for our goals.

Stranger: Omitting any recognition of religion's invigorating essentials invites failure, ignoring its doctrines developing good vocabulary for human desire, secularizing free will for domination by ones more potent, contemptuous of virtues except their own, never recognizing anything as common good.

Prancing Grace: Religion's diversity must shred heretic beliefs, crumbling them to dust, their separations and divisions leaving them in ashes, but each can change to be revitalized, secularizing their appearance to entertain the masses, renewing their pretenses to be more modest and acceptable, adjusted to blend with social media, reaching out to anyone's wishes to maintain their blemishes, all benefitting our cause.

Skeptic: Purity accuses all religious beliefs of being heretical, marking their diversity as the rationale for shredding, advising you to dismiss any thoughts to include religious decrees in your efforts.

Wanton: Causes for a new world order, trusting convictions of prophecy to bring on the Day of the Lord, arming humans to initiate massive destruction, call for eradication of heretics blaspheming the purity of beliefs expecting a reward of paradise, but what can such an award entail, believing more like retribution should be God's response for destroying His creation, having allowed human's diversification of beliefs, entitling each to condemn others as heretics deserving of elimination.

Stranger: Called to be blessed, to be of one mind, having compassion for others, loving all as brethren, blinded to blemishes of innate code's doing, rendering concern for all far and near, proclaiming no unknown as evil, praying for no harm to come, we are created to love life, always celebrating creation's goodness, recognizing no virtue in bad thoughts and deeds, so we acknowledge no peace springing from guileful actions, creeping in shadows, hiding from light, thinking they escape the Lord's recognition.

Commoner: How can we have compassion for ones never seen, ones deserving pity, scavenging for their needs, thinking they suffer for the sins of fathers, doomed by their circumstances, never being chosen ones, dismissing any imprints they have left on my memory?

Wanton: Programmed for goodness assured by our innate code, we inherently honor virtues of our Creator-God until evil pounces on our instructions, tagging them with counterfeit epigrams, transforming goodness blocking them from being purveyors of sin, enabling iniquity to rule, and so we have been since Adam, our actions dictating what we are to be, and so the sins of the parents accumulate, passing them down to afflict their progeny.

Commoner: The Lord's goodness doesn't invite iniquity to rule with anything else to direct my ways, knowing I never need the voice of another with the Holy Spirit leading me to be sinless.

Skeptic: Such can exist but usually as sublime punishment, isolating one from all others, severing all possibility for interactions making beasts human, but one having seen and heard people before retaining much unconsciously, thoughts waiting to be exposed, ideas anxious to be activated from much remaining hidden, ignored until appropriated, pleading to be heard, trusted to be filled with the Holy Spirit and waiting for His counsel on how to be defined.

Commoner: Free will enables me to choose and direct existence's definition, following inherent directions if isolated such as on a barren island virtually devoid of human encounter. In all things, directed by my free will, I will never forget my Lord, believing He will never leave or forsake me, and I will never leave or forsake Him when isolated and torn asunder from the world's promises, knowing without any fellow human my thoughts can be devoted entirely to Him.

Skeptic: With undivided attention to the Lord, can you consider Him the purveyor of supreme happiness, equating it with independence as a cardinal virtue, bonding them together in importance?

Jurdan: Attributing virtues of absolute freedom and immense happiness to your Lord and giving humans them when they are made in His image, fails for those whose happiness is limited by fortune when they exercise unlimited independence.

Stranger: Absolute independence conflicts with compassion, fragmenting goodness, ignoring our inherent directions for relationship uniting people to be one, our innate command established by the Lord.

Skeptic: Does the Lord need to command us to populate the earth when He has encoded us with more than incentive, an innate drive so pleasurable we use it as a recreational toy, tempting us to believe it's the opportunity for unending happiness, but we never learn to turn passion into compassion, realizing passion compromises our ability to love.

Jurdan: Is procreation so necessary, believing your Lord still needs to grow His human population, disregarding its effects on people's lives? People have learned devious ways to thwart their inherent directions by destroying human life before birth, advancing them to a reasoned more civil virtue, destroying lives before they can be seen, replacing infanticide with abortion, sheltering ones forlorn under wings of compassion, freeing the human conscience from guilt. Can you endorse such manners of liberation, tolerating them without recrimination, accepting such denials of tradition?

Skeptic: Respecting only the essence of your soul, being the only worthwhile thing that matters, your body's flesh and bones are considered a commodity, bartered for a price, offering blood to satisfy a need, sacrificing life for a cause, selling living parts to heal another, removing unwanted growing intrusions before they can impact your existence.

Wanton: Sacrifice is acceptable only to please oneself, following the Lord's example to satisfy His convictions, using heathen practices demanding destruction, fulfilling His wants and desires, establishing a practice to reveal His truths, and I will see the light as He sees it, exercising gifts He gives to accomplish purposes He intends for me.

Skeptic: Can you accept sacrifice as violence, giving up something for nothing? Violence always begins with words waiting for results, preparing motivations for antagonists to implement conviction's words.

Stranger: Are words necessary to justify violence? They are never needed for boorish brute behavior untrained for untamed instincts until human appearance, gifting us with communication for sharing relationships, fulfilling promises of creation's goodness, for exploring its beauty, and never intended for violent murmurings to foment struggles with creation's goodness.

Jurdan: With free will and the gift of reason, we speak whatever we choose, endowed with free speech, knowing spoken words are means to articulate our goals, without which we remain beasts directed by survival of the fittest, never resorting to sacrifice.

Commoner: Test me Lord, accept my sacrifice, not of my body or my treasures but of my contrite heart, my spirit broken as life's reward, no longer with stench of burning flesh, somehow having believed its aroma pleases your senses, demanded continuously to remove my sins, so now I confess my sin-filled heart to please your will, never regarding any petition to revert to violence for a sacrifice.

Jurdan: Sacrificing yourself to nothingness, you empty everything worthwhile, exiled to meaninglessness, becoming a recluse dwelling without relationships, marking time in a void.

Jove: Totally committed to self-sacrifice, it is only to oneself, committing everything to one's will, expecting others' devotion to magnify one's pride, worshipping fruits from one's accomplishments, anticipating honors for one's sacrifices, never considering the Holy Spirit's message reminding one Jesus' sacrifices were ultimate expression of His love, never telling God I delight in doing your will. My self-sacrifice will never be to do another's will, submitting to other truths, for then I must give mine up, surrendering to someone I am forced to trust. Building love on my choosing, I am equipped to determine objects for its selection.

Jurdan: Reasons can always be given for bearing hatred, detesting ones with differing opinions, and you must include envy of mine, being only one of many regarding sacrifice as worthless, giving up precious possessions for imaginary preoccupations, for making created blemishes less defective and preserving beings destined to be living sacrifices for your Lord, lives deemed useless and contributing nothing, being stumbling blocks stirred by ignorance and destroyed to cleanse people's souls, shedding blood to bless and preserve all others blemished. Religion is committed to loving all, claiming your Lord forgives on hearing people beg their sacrifice will temper His hatred with love.

Stranger: With creation's beginning, God indeed declared all His results are good, painting all with beauty, but He was not finished, taking time to bring all to fruition, waiting until He entered our time and space to send a portion of His Godhead, His Son Jesus, to reconcile everyone to their Creator, making Him flesh to abide in our world, burdening Him with our sins and crucifying His flesh to make way for our redemption, opening a gateway for our returning to Him, cleansed of all iniquities and prepared to spend eternity with Him, the Lamb slain once, a killing ordained before creation's beginning, fulfilling completion of the grand design.

Jurdan: Would you crucify one accused of blemishes to seal survival's needs, the need for peace or the need to fill one's soul with your Holy Spirit? Which of these requirements best justifies hatred for one so blemished?

Skeptic: Do we all live in your darkness, seeing only what meets the eye, contemplating pleasures sifted from garbage reeking offensive odors, tasting rottenness sweetened by chemicals tempting monotonously, offering no hope, gyrating time, trusting moments never to end, carrying nothing to remain but meaninglessness as a lasting memory?

Wanton: Can seeing all expand one's virtue, exposing one's eyes to perceive everything, realizing lust depends on contemplation of treasures and pleasures, embedded in one's mind by visions of grandeur, lost for blinded ones having no sight for beholding? Relying on taste and touch, what lust can a blind person create?

Skeptic: The Lord's design prepares us to lust, creating us with sight and adding imagination to contemplate more. Lust can be taught by mentors, developing it as a parent teaching a child, training wants and desires, with God knowing its possibilities and with humans needing no mountaintop experiences to discern lust's potentials.

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Stranger: Coming down from on high, jubilant with experience of the Lord, trusting in being transformed, many proclaim Him with little understanding, having learned little of His being, so He cautions to speak nothing of His miracle until someone explains much more, enough for one to reach full understanding, to receive and be taught by the Holy Spirit, changing many to show others how Jesus works in their lives, their behavior needing no words, their actions becoming one with His. How much time does anyone need before their words become true to their actions, living the words they receive on high? Don't trust your words will be accepted as truth by others if your soul has not been filled with the Holy Spirit, for they will fall on deaf ears if the Spirit has been unable to change you. The Lord instructs us to tell no one of our mountaintop experiences until we have the resurrected Christ in our hearts, directing all we do. Having the Holy Spirit within begins the new life, eternal, spending eternity with God.

Commoner: Having accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, trusting my sanctification insures salvation, understanding disciples are never transformed overnight to become His followers instantly, we need further training to become one with Him. Disciples scatter when mountaintop moments fade, forgotten by urgencies of the world, importances insisting on attention, as they return to trust what they must live by.

Skeptic: Trust little in mountaintop experiences, distrusting ones more demanding deeper emotional commitment, exciting climbers greatly and disturbing their emotions to discard reason, for corruption waits, ready to pounce on ones running without discernment, seeking any direction coming to mind, dwelling on visions from their experiences, fanciful mirages soon lost on return from lofty journeys.

Stranger: The world trains us to conform, seeking to thrive us at pinnacles, to resolve struggles inherent in our being, allowing little time to ponder how to become a disciple and make encounters with the Lord meaningful, filled with promise, but we seldom reach out to become like Him. Changing our ways to be like Him is more than altering His reality to become more like us. Be ready in season, be prepared out of season, always silently broadcasting His possession of us, assuring our nature becomes acceptable to Him, never being satisfied with what we were, being inspired by what we imagine to be.

Skeptic: How can encounters with the Lord be meaningful, knowing we are like His disciples, filled with hope during their associations with Him and wavering with doubt after that? We are all skeptics, subject to ridicule, called a doubting Thomas, inferring Jesus' other disciples held firm convictions, never hopelessly in doubt, but after His resurrection, having gone to Galilee, to the mountain He appointed for them, on seeing Him some doubted, and we in our unspoken wonder are sometimes tempted to ask, Do I doubt Jesus fulfills His role as our Messiah?

Stranger: Must we be like Thomas, bearing genes to doubt, never accepting anything unless seen, forming the basis of all our scientific endeavors, dictating everything by reason and committing it to believe all conclusions to create truths, despite knowing they do not survive long and never acknowledge things unseen can develop lasting truths, never realizing the resurrected Christ sends His Holy Spirit, so a Peter, wavering in belief from seeing to believe, can be filled with faith by His indwelling Spirit?

Skeptic: Little did Peter understand faith, unable to answer Jesus' question, Do you love me, responding with a mortal's feeling of love. What can He expect from you? More than from Peter?

Stranger: Your words of promised confusion, bribing me to blind discernment, tempting me to join ventures into unknown waters, assuring I will cross its depths without sinking, compete with the Lord's approval, verify His vows for my existence can never be equaled by any human's. Proving other causes are on His side end all doubts for being blessed by the Lord. I will rebel against any plans opposing His ways, gathering them in hiding, marking them with unseen steps confined in darkness, waiting in vain to capture my soul, never turning me from praising the Lord or trusting me to be caught by darkness of other words. Walking on His promises, I never fear to descend into depths, never into depression or despair.

Skeptic: Dissatisfied with a new conviction, anticipating doubt approaches to rip it away, I adopt another, only to have it stolen, disrupting my contentment, and on it goes, springing new convictions for doubt to destroy, but life persists, consoling existence with music's distraction numbing my spirit, persistently silencing my soul's convictions of providence's essential simplicity mapping God's plan unfolding, exposing His design, revealing it in fragments, separated into actions never attributed to fate or recognition for turns of fortune.

Jurdan: Created doctrines and dogmas, considered to be sacred, attract doubt, knowing they will all be ripped away, so why trust any and choose to follow none, questioning all imaginations, thinking they enlighten your being?

Excalibur: They may all be sacred and disappear with the coming of doubt, but in the meantime, they invoke justification for destroying humankind, killing for reasons doctrines and dogmas develop to reap hatred.

Prancing Grace: We strive to create an ideal society, cleansing it of culture's blemishes, corruptions by its dysfunctional misfits, ugly and rejected ones threatening all our lofty goals.

Skeptic: I witnessed some of you, concealing lies in promises, using rhetoric for us to swallow, only later to hear them ignore words they have spoken, forgotten as vile morsels eaten, left shortly thereafter in dung flushed away out of sight, out of mind, leaving with nothing to remind what was uttered.

Prancing Grace: Our new order will tolerate only what it must, removing disgracing blemishes our followers once endured, eradicating useless annoyances draining their vitality and threatening their will by solicitations of sympathy from intellectual endeavors questioning our way, by insidious threats rising to challenge our goals.

Commoner: Blessed with blemishes, prepared for sacrifice, rejoicing to die in Christ, glorifying me to be one in Him, I would have it no other way, rescuing me from my iniquities, cleansing my body to make me acceptable, removing what the world considers ugly, never leaving me warped for people's disapproval, promising me to be glorified, to participate in creation's goodness, assured of membership in its beauty. So never destroy anyone people judge disfigured, created as the Lord intended, having a purpose we cannot comprehend, sent by Him for a time He determines.

Jove: Common sense dictates need to limit blemished numbers we should tolerate, and reason shows us how this can be accomplished, seeing science can provide humane ways for its provision, more humane than ending their lives with a rope or a sword.

Wanton: My heritage marks me as undesirable, staining me with indelible blemishes, refraining others from gazing on my defects, thinking what I must be is all they can see, never more, having passed down many generations, recalling how holy one's painted their finery with purity to hide evil in their inner judgments, concealing their appearance hiding in their inner beings.

Jurdan: Your Lord convincing humans of being born sinful, created your heritage, giving you the blemish of being undesirable. Show me anyone who doesn't acknowledge this, a creator's vengeance for a flawed piece of art.

Simple Simon: Do my innermost workings, inherent from conception, innate mysteries, ever break their relationships, creating discord so one part must have vengeance on another, demanding justice and retribution? If so, my body would fail, leaving me to wonder if cancers develop to wreak vengeance overall. Is vengeance used to break our most meaningful relationships, learned to be used for the Lord's control over all?

Jurdan: Humans thereby learn revenge from your Lord, using it to break relationships with life, to sever relationships with others, even with their parts.

Skeptic: Can God then be just while showing us how to be unjust, breaking relationships essential to living, requirements to be alive, and then proceed to instruct us to love one another, to be obedient to this commandment?

Stranger: Allow hatred nothing to encumber your disposition, recognizing and avoiding where you find it, leaving it to remain sequestered, so remember to shake it off as dust on your boots, to carry none as baggage to engender despair, cleansing hatred from your memory, understanding how it can poison every ensuing encounter, bringing discord into all relationships, lamenting failures from hatred's collateral damage, persisting, having never been confessed, regarded to need no repentance, but beware, distress and despair will eventually afflict one with hate, destroying healthy dispositions.

Commoner: Enlistment in any cause promises privileges, honors bearing entitlement, distressing my journey with the Lord, endangering my commitment to Him, knowing entitlement is a precursor for abuse and resentment by others, celebrating my achievements rather than His, dismissing adoration of Him, foregoing humility to exercise my rights. Would life be better as a None?

None: Being a None, a child of nobodies, people obedient to everything, to every document and dogma, transforming their allegiance as often as the moon changes tides under its command, living out their hopelessness with occasional bursts of happiness, hoping for the tide to bless them with more than the ocean's debris, so one can see my inheritance is nothing but more of the same, and this justifies my name, calling me None.

Commoner: Do you cherish any roots, thinking all nobodies have nothing worthwhile to embrace, dismissing importance for doctrines and dogmas, justifying no decrees as acceptable, uprooting everything, destabilizing beliefs punishing your libertarian demands?

None: Should I be nourished by roots feeding on lies, changing facts that can never mature into truths, persisting facts reasoned to bring about our demise, common sense becoming uncommon and destructive, or should I remain on society's sideline and remain uncommitted to doctrine's hopes and promises?

Stranger: You must have roots to feed your soul with living water, for trusting its doctrines and dogmas, and for assuring salvation.

None: From the many doctrines and dogmas which are essential, must I look to you for trust in your wisdom, knowing you have sifted through many decrees?

Jurdan: Stranger's wisdom is burdened with restrictions, overwhelming the conscience, stifling one's free will, trusted only by one's imagination, never being exposed to its sure meaninglessness. His words profess creation and control by his Lord.

None: Stranger has little wisdom for my consideration.

Jurdan: Mobilize reason and don't allow imagination to mingle with your common sense. Question bursts of intuition's invasions sneaking in to disrupt your truths. Depend on your I am for what you are. Stranger's wisdom has seen better days, so move on with your apprehensions of reality to decide what's best for life.

None: Stranger is certainly confused. He provides little direction on what's important, having stumbled through changing convictions, discarding ones dismantled by reason and no longer congruent with common sense.

Jurdan: Do you trust telling me what remains of his wisdom to be acceptable?

None: Stranger agrees with everyone, except those with your convictions, on the origin of all existence, believing in an Almighty God who created the cosmos and placed us in it to crown His Creation. I believe in this as truth, not as a doctrine or dogma. With reason's advent, ones like you trust in preposterous theories that believe everything developed spontaneously, relying on what amounts to magic, conversions of chaos forming nothingness needing no supernatural deity.

Jurdan: Give reason more time to explain your convictions, giving them credence better than from an Almighty Deity.

None: Reason already explains my beliefs, seeing all humans are coded with inherent proclamations testifying to an unseen creator who drives them to seek and find one who created them, and when their creator is made known they look for ways to describe One most perfectly and develop ideas for One's worship.

Stranger: Dismissing prophet's messages, eons of God's revelations revealing Himself to us, His intercessions transcending to lead us, transforming us to evolve and become more like Him, we fail His offers, tolerating little He proposes, wanting nothing more from His Word, removing all His constraints, leaving Him to survey creation's destruction, and this might tempt Him to begin anew, realizing humans reject His involvement, reneging on their ordination as stewards, while dismantling His labors beyond any hope for restoration. You who are tempted to design your creator must refashion Him to be unlike humans

Skeptic: Many seek other worlds capable of sustaining human life, thinking there must be some in creation's infinite space, having lost hope in our world, seeing people have ignored the Lord's guidance, existing only for their wants, accepting no interference for their desires. Why should the Lord create other planets to support life, knowing human emigrants will not change, continuing life unfettered by any Devine control?

Simple Simon: Being made in His image, perhaps He awaits a time for us to become more like Him, learning to reason and understand what constitutes common sense, enabling us to develop wisdom comparable to His, and we trust this will take time if our environment designed solely by human efforts needs to change. We can hope a different home, welcoming new circumstances, could transform us to become more like His design for us. We do that now, moving to new places, trusting change to bring a new beginning, and our earthly home now may be so congested with worldly people that no place offering a new beginning can be found.

Stranger: Truth proclaiming that having created our world with a goal of it being ultimately for humans, God remains mindful of us, taking time to visit His people, guiding all, hoping we hear His admonitions and obey His commands. Covet His wisdom, realizing in its right-hand spans your days; it's left hand holding riches and honor, trusting His wisdom is promised to show the way to peace, indeed being the tree of life.

Skeptic: Centuries of words like yours can't satisfy None, hearing them proclaimed without ceasing, voiced in many languages, in doctrines and dogmas promising to promote discord, designed by human reason, blended to create turmoil, banding others like None together for rejection, claiming no fulfillment of creeds to embrace the Lord's prayer to unite us all as one.

Wanton: People are not made to join as one, storing their treasures in vaults, protected from thieves, secured by convictions proclaiming mine, all mine, but for how long, hoarding them until one's last breath. Concentrate your thoughts on vultures circling above, sensing one's imminent demise, as you contemplate scavenging afflictions tearing your flesh, scouring your vaults of value, opened to be emptied at death, their loss never lamented, being distributed to satisfy acquisition of new treasures, having trusted you were created to have dominion over the works of the Lord's hand.

None: Filled with joy to be oneself, emancipated from repression of designs one must be, celebrating release from discipline's dogmas, proclaiming, Free, at last, I am free at last, never needing to store treasures anywhere.

Skeptic: Believing the Lord tamed humans by giving them culture, we have evolved into creatures existing to achieve our wants, epitomizing desire as our greatest gift, discovering ways to seize whatever tempts us, glorifying ourselves with all we can possess. Refining our means to accomplish pleasure exploring the ultimate potential of our instincts, what else can there be? We can never be free at last.

Wanton: We seize efforts to become super humans, but on reaching that goal can there be anything more? If God's efforts in creating humans to reason, equipping them to develop culture, trusting them to acknowledge Him as their Creator, believing they would honor their mission to be stewards of creation's goodness and beauty only to encounter failure, He could return to the beginning and redesign people, making them more than beasts gifted with reason. Devoid of reason, living only by given instincts and never condemned for sinning, beasts live by natural laws, chosen by God, and never with options for anything different. Superhumans struggle but never attain perfection. No one can ever be free at last.

Commoner: Before it comes to that, do we understand any way to prevent the end of humans, forcing God to start over and create a better model?

Jurdan: Your God has never been involved. Evolution has ways to make us better and leaves us with traces of its means for improving humans to make them fitter, ensuring survival for the fittest.

Skeptic: Will you be fully equipped with a perfected code, inherently endowed with greater reason, making you better than any beast, assisted by experience with revelations of intuition to master your existence, giving you assurance of being your person without meddling by any other, including the Lord? Separated from God by self-made decisions, never seeking counsel from His decrees who can you turn to but another fool, pontificating only as an idiot can?

Jurdan: Your God's causes are committed to perpetuating lies, broadcasting them to stifle growth for seeds of truth, arming lies with a monopoly of violence, allowing no verities to sprout, strangling our facts, feeding lies to quell dissent, smothering noble convictions with a blanket of harmony.

Wanton: Trusting in similar ways, we hide our household gods, authorized by our free will to be honored and worshiped, knowing they reign by our consent, lasting until our life moves on, settling us where the household of our desire changes, usually conforming as dictated by a new time and place.

Jurdan: Warriors arm themselves by hijacking religion to justify their conquests, but considering this assertion, does religion seize arms, fortifying itself with weapons to battle other beliefs, concealing their goals of destroying religious diversity to assure victory?

Stranger: Proclaiming self-determination is an inherent right sealed in our code, we exercise whatever is necessary to protect what God provides, battling anyone attempting to seize this God-ordained right.

Commoner: Having created me with innate knowledge of the Lord, encoded in me at conception and waiting for arousal, revealing commands to revere Him, I awakened one day to hear Him, needing no special revelation, having a soul to acknowledge His messages, and I trust in being created to understand His Words, needing no miracles to catch my attention, knowing if I relied on miracles for my belief I could sustain it only by continuing miracles, hijacked to arm my faith with trust.

Skeptic: Did Jesus' followers need another sign, taking direction from skeptic priests to prove their Messiah was truly God? How many miracles are required to convince distrusting people, more than willing to disbelieve everything, seeing all others made in God's image are not to be trusted, so how can anyone trust the Creator God?

None: Why do people need miracles to believe in God if the human code innately carries instructions for creating a soul to depend on, telling us miracles we seek are hidden within us, and we have no need to search for any without to convince us to believe in the Lord? We need neither reason nor common sense for this conviction.

Stranger: Is your faith barebones, knowing you never discuss the Lord being in your life?

None: He is always in my life, but I don't wear the garments of your faith, clothed in trusted doctrines and dogmas you obligate others to see.

Stranger: Without doctrines and dogmas you have no beliefs, leaving you as an agnostic or atheist, a freethinker reasoning your beliefs. My belief is sealed by knowing I have Jesus in my heart. Have you no one in your heart?

None: My heart trusts God's agents, believing He neglects no one created by His Word, treating all people equally, having none as His favorites, choosing none to be special and deserving unique consideration. Will He honor those claiming to know Him better than others, proclaiming their relationship with Him exceeds all others, basing their beliefs on doctrines and dogmas developed by human reason?

Commoner: Ultimate goodness witnessed in God's agents faithfully following His wishes, fails to represent our times behaving as the law permits, convicting me of being like others, never assuring me of meaningful virtues, neglecting to treat others as I would want them to treat me, calling it love, loving neighbors as I love myself, trusting we all can't be wrong, refusing to be coerced into following laws never meant for current times.

None: If I love all others like myself is there a need for God, seeing I fulfill His single greatest commandment, and with that what more would be required of me?

Skeptic: You were never made for that.

None: Then the Lord commands me to act out an impossibility, telling me to do what I cannot do, so should I try anyway, deceiving Him with my attempts, obeying doctrines and dogmas to satisfy believers?

Stranger: If you come to the cross, submitting yourself to Christ, trampled underfoot and despised like Him, humiliated by mockery and injustice, His grace and mercy will bear your sins before God and advocate for your salvation.

None: My sufficiency must be wholly from God, hindered minimally by my own, testing its consistency each moment, never living only for myself, never distracted by reason's decrees.

Skeptic: Religion's doctrines tell you, Arise from the dead, revealing your devotion to this world, commitment to things never lasting, stressing it is never too late, telling one, Stretch out your hand, reaching out to be healed,

Jurdan: Thank reason for our progress, forgetting its responsibility for justifying unforgettable ideas--creating nihilism as its child--welcoming its tinkering to benefit us with great minds, to ignore dogmas of gloom and doom investing the down-trodden with complacency.

None: Denying depression, barring assent to nihilism, telling me to venture no further, I review my options, adopting humility to trust the Lord, believing He can renew my spirit.

Stranger: God did indeed create us to experience depression but never wanting anyone to despair of life, warning all its consequences, abandonment to oneself, detachment from hearing His Word, finding nothing worthwhile from human reason, and discerning depression as the Lord's invitation to hear His wisdom revealing Creation's goodness.

Skeptic: Contemporary artists dismiss creation's beauty as mundane and useless, delving into themselves to determine beauty's manifestations, trusting their imagination to construct things more pleasing, scattering nature into pieces for reassembly into grotesque portraits waiting to be acclaimed as beauty, converting people's acknowledgment of goodness speaking for reason into depictions of evil, attracting attention of emotion to bless their convictions of beauty, but in reality telling all that goodness never exists, being only an imagination without hope.

Wanton: What benefit can come from one's painting or stone beaten into some form, thinking the artist conducts the Lord's business, creating beauty only as He knows it, coating it with a veneer of grandeur, instilling it with goodness throughout, attaching each element with precision, connecting all the dots for a perfect relationship, never needing to admire His creation, telling us He is satisfied, having completed all to be good?

Stranger: The Lord intercedes, gifting some to be artists, showing them how to create, identifying some to depict His goodness and others to portray people's sufferings, screaming out in agony for all to witness.

Skeptic: Artists intent on destroying culture, producing disastrous pieces portraying degenerate illusions, abuse their talents, drawing on imaginations ruled by despair, driving them into deeper depression, mystifying many why they attract a loyal following.

Perhaps their patrons, failing to escape convictions of hopelessness generated by worldly success, need images to remind them of their lives, fragmenting their soul into pieces, scattering their trust to nothingness, acknowledging only darkness, denying any light to shine on goodness.

Stranger: Dens of seclusion, established in darkness, situating pieces in spaces of nothingness, trusted to be recipients of illumination, thinking rays of light can embellish human art with meaning and truth, establish meaning for creation created by strokes of human imagination in a cave peering at shadows, thinking it views reality and is used to build truths, never trusting life's experiences, hides one from life-building circumstances presented by the Lord.

Simple Simon: Imaginations working deceitfully, devising unworthy deeds, consulting evil to sweeten one's satisfaction and devouring all its suggestions, are hardly from the Lord, being words of demons slipping in unnoticed when one's spirit slept, sent away and silenced, freeing one to languish in dreams.

Jurdan: Created without my consent, structured with innate promise for a complete life, suffering me to endure beyond my wishes, I can take charge and ignore my inherent directions, willing my identity, deciding for myself how long life should be. Ignoring what any Lord might will and choosing for myself, I know others will praise my decision, describing it as brave and noble, virtuous and deserving honor, just in doing the right thing, and I will seek others to witness my resolve.

Wanton: What provokes a human to end one's life with a crowd, including onlookers, taking them down as victims, sacrificing lives as tributes to a god of death, spilling their blood as payment to satisfy doomsday purveyors, killing many in retribution for receiving a life filled with suffering, an existence dubious and never sought, giving reason to terminate human beings, having examined all claims of creation's goodness and finding none, lacking any virtues to help, trusting little goodness for noble deeds, enacting none by my self's will to do good, watching self-interested ones playing by their rules, reasoned by them to be virtuous, proudly focusing all their thoughts on innate freedom, justifying to end their life, celebrating the right of subjective freedom?

Skeptic: Freedom rings at birth, tolling for all humans, celebrating birth of a species equipped for self-assertion, entering a domain abounding with goodness and beauty, giving them freedom to define what they will be, trusting they won't decline what they encounter, reasoning self-destruction as an option, sending them out of somewhere into nowhere, into nothingness where goodness can never be found.

Commoner: Trusted to be a creation of a kind and loving God, beckoning me to become like Him, using my reason and free will to be His, celebrating life with the freedom He gives me, promoting my existence until my time is determined by Him, I consider nothing else.

Jurdan: If I should acknowledge your God determines our coming and going, our birth and departure from life, making this His prerogative, showering humans with deadly disasters by His will, I can usurp His power, becoming as potent as Him by deciding the end for some people, making me a god for the moment, empowered as Him to destroy.

Stranger: What power is that, thinking your will drives you to decisions taught by an evil one? Have you also learned how to begin life, to create life's coming, empowering you to determine both its coming and going?

Jurdan: Science promises that to come, giving us technology to create as well as destroy life, blessing us with unprecedented power for controls we should have, determining what sort of life to create, when we can end life with dignity, and eventually understand how to prolong life indefinitely. If humans can journey to the moon anything is possible. Eliminating our relationships depending on superstitions and blind faith, developing autonomy, restricting our decisions' development to be by facts and reason, we can be empowered, controlling our creation and existence, determining what we will to be, following blueprints we design.

Jove: Science reveals our blueprint is fluid, changing endlessly without one's control, shuffling its coding, adding modifiers as necessary, so it is unlikely that you can restrain its reorganizing, realizing built-in safeguards limit self-modifications to prevent self-destruction and trusting in my Creator, the kind and generous God, I accept what He has made me be, never lamenting over being worse than another, never rejoicing over being better than others, but grateful for who He made me be.

Jurdan: Grateful for what? Marked as another imperfect person, never known to be upright, dismissing any confession of sins, do you consider yourself righteous, needing no direction but your own to implement your thoughts and deeds, promising you peace, never realizing peace cannot be achieved without conflict? Are you a counselor of peace, free from anxieties of struggles, trusting you will be blessed with joy?

Stranger: The self-righteous don't understand that peace is of the Lord's doing, never from their own, the Lord being their strength in the time of trouble, protecting them from the wicked and delivering them from evil.

Jove: Why does the Holy Spirit lead me now through this wilderness of doubt and skepticism, exposing me to their temptations, listening to proposals for expanding my territory of recognition, showing me nothing worthwhile, but telling me of the treasures it beholds, of the powers it gains, turning nothings into somethings of value?

Stranger: But we are admonished never to live by human promises alone, fleeting as they are, vanishing overnight, disappearing only to see new ones appear. We must discover to live only by every Word of God, trusting the Spirit empowers us to endure life with joy possible only from the Lord, believing His Word telling one's anointed, Preach the Good News to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for captives, give sight to the blind, restore hearing for the deaf, comfort all who mourn and console them with joy, free them from bruises and bless them with indwelling everlasting hope.

Jove: Made to hear all words, I listening to everyone, giving all a chance to speak, knowing some with evil intent try to seduce me with their rhetoric, flattering my understanding to prevent seeing their lies, disabling my reason to verify validity for their words or expound on their worth, hiding any limitations threatened to pray on my innocence, believing my gullible ears will be susceptible to their claims.

Stranger: The fine print of God's plans is yet to be written, and He seeks your trust, assurance of your assent, certain only His truth will be documented to last, trusting human plans would ever be less than worthy, waiting in vain to be true.

Skeptic: With studies on God's story, His metanarrative of salvation history, investigations revealing His truths, we engage our authorized free will to destroy them, demystifying His accomplishments, believing they will someday be answered by science, deconstructing His verities, revising them to better suit our lives for living by dogmas we create, doing away our needs for any Creator-God. How can anyone's faith grow on knowing an unseen Lord, understanding truths He reveals through prophets, believing He entered our world to be like us, incarnated for showing us how to become like God?

Jurdan: Facts developed by human reason, revealed by scientific investigations and imagined from common sense create our temporal truths, lasting until reality changes, growing from new problems where humans do well, but this never needs a deity's involvement, realizing gods exercise vengeance and justify retribution for people trusting them.

Skeptic: From where does vengeance arise, believing it cannot come from creation's goodness, perhaps developed by some demon, an angel thrown out of heaven, justified by the Lord's intolerance for evil, yet He guards vengeance, claiming it for Himself, and if He created all, angels and demons included, we must credit Him for the concept of revenge, developing it perhaps to right all His mistakes, but then does this make the flawless Lord imperfect?

Simple Simon: Inconsistent considerations of eternal truths, hearing Molech provoke me to hear unworthy suggestions, incompatible with sheltered knowledge, distracting me with deception, I should realize the Lord's promise of all things being good, the vows of His covenant, are tested by my response, authenticating my actions as faithful to all He is. Seeing all He has created, realizing they are more than I can understand, I stand by my trust and belief in Him.

Stranger: Faithless ones hearing Molech's urging to sacrifice as pagans began their journey from beastly ancestors, defying the tenets of creation's goodness, destroying its beauty, searching assurances from any deity, promised by the Lord's gift of free will for making choices, but never adhering to His kingdom's decrees.

Skeptic: Can the Lord trust us with free will, knowing it will be incompatible with justice, giving us freedom while dooming us to conflicts with truth, perhaps justifying injustice as a virtue worth having, believing we need both to satisfy all our needs?

Jurdan: Your Lord must agonize over His mistake of giving humans free will, thinking all would agree with His commandments while creating us with reason to dismiss them as archaic. Does He choose His ways with a split personality, depending on mood swings like ours, being consistent with those believing to be made in His image?

Commoner: The Lord provides, giving all we need to know, words to prepare the way for success, written in stone by His hand.

Skeptic: But what if something might not be covered in His text, possibly not relevant to His written commandments.

Jurdan: People raise up prophets, self-assigned to hear divine revelations, to scribble new messages appropriate for changing times.

Stranger: God never changes and on hearing His messages for the first time He can't be accused of changing, unless His Words differ from what one anticipates, appearing unexpectedly, ripe with opportunities, often surprising with their purpose, considered to be uninvited stumbling blocks, hazards appearing from nowhere, impeding the importance of people's chosen activities, hardly valued, never being worthwhile to one's ongoing efforts.

Skeptic: You could live without belief in the Lord, trusting in your reason to manage everything. If so, why did the Lord create humans with a soul, knowing they would never leave it empty, a vessel to accommodate some form of deity, one they could worship, and then confound existence by creating humans with reason, a tool to question what should be placed in our soul, confusing us by temptations to have a heart for Him, while developing our reason to believe we can do it all without His intervention, encouraging our right to rely on ourselves?

Commoner: Failure hounded me, criticizing my ideas, denying expected rewards, blanketing me with despair, ridiculing all my efforts, work that I chose to please the Lord, until I surrendered to Him, inviting Him into my heart, waiting for Him to lead me, determining all that I should do for Him, giving up all I had decided to do for myself. Giving up my mother and father, my siblings and spouse, and my children were not enough. Nothing changed until I gave up myself, trust in my being for His.

Stranger: How long can anyone persevere before failure intervenes? Does history show that perseverance never leads to failure, experience being our story, depiction of our life on earth? The Lord commends us on persevering, keeping His command, throwing ourselves with abandon, having total confidence in Him, assuring perseverance on belonging to Him will never fail, realizing if we want to see Him and live with Him eternally we must obey His commands.

Skeptic: Persevering to accumulate facts and develop knowledge, thinking they can establish principles of righteousness, believing facts are essential for judging evil, scrambles soundness of reason with recognition that information changes, never static, the product of changing facts, never rewarding reason with sound and lasting conclusions, but only theories with limited half-lives.

Wanton: Sometimes I wonder what to prefer, to be victimized by other's beliefs for controlling all my thoughts and actions, or to live with the freedom of nothingness, compelling me to do nothing, free from watchful eyes of any beholder, dependent on no one to supply my thoughts or gauge my movements, to be free as a bird.

Skeptic: Birds are victimized, snared by their kind, devoured for nourishment, and you think they live in freedom, more like in fear, seeing every movement they make is for escape.

Jurdan: With birth trapping us here, making us victims for fate's amusement, committing us to afflictions certain for living matter, we are destined to vagaries of fortune, spinning on its wheel, pausing unpredictably, stopping where adversity abounds, bypassing stations where delight persists, and we must endure until our inherent clock stops ticking.

Skeptic: Attributing things to chance reflects ignorance, understanding all are derived by cause, with chance also having a cause, but no one can follow time's thread, unraveling it to its beginning and discover a cause.

Stranger: Thinking only of amusement, arranging words to provoke laughter, planning distractions to navigate days you believe are prolonged, tedious, and welcome despair because all your visions have failed, you haven't considered the Lord's Words, telling you the days are not drawn out but are at hand, recognized to be by His design, never seen by ones blinded by their vain insights, as they wait upon flattering acknowledgement from the world.

Skeptic: Amusement persists as a needed drama, drawing one out from under despair, mocking people's differences, ridiculing all and portraying them as Cretans, identifying enough for all to choose, selecting victims to slay their dignity, granting no license to honor anyone with virtue.

Jove: Seeking knowledge for equipping me with tools to define myself, arming me with weapons to ward off distractions, I surrender to reason, submitting to it for creating myself, enthroning it to drive off spirits, fictitious figments of imagination unseen and never proven, stealthily claiming to be intuition, and my guard must always be alerted to invasion by unwanted strangers sneaking entry to my most private domain, seeking ways to amuse themselves.

Commoner: Longing for days of contentment, no longer in need of distracting amusements, requiring no more answers, asking the Lord nothing, recalling His foretelling, In that day you will ask me nothing, I look forward to the time when answers are unnecessary, never sought, acknowledging I am satisfied, having had my fill of exploring questions to everything, unraveling mysteries only to frustrate me with new secrets, hidden to be investigated, and so on it goes.

Skeptic: God cannot pose a question unless it has an answer, understanding answers must come from a question and questions cannot be put forth unless somewhere lies an answer, with many hidden and waiting to be found. If answers are unnecessary, does God have no more questions to ask, acknowledging He is omniscient?

Stranger: With the Lord being omniscient, you must wait on Him to reveal His plans for you, leaving nothing to your reason seeking to answer His calling, acknowledging He has such plans, telling each willing to hear, for surely, I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Do expect your plans can be better, exceeding those of your Creator?

Jove: Since becoming a Christian, learning what the Lord requires, showing me how to meet people's needs, I have investigated every human endeavor and chosen what is right for me, deciding on what would reward me most, giving me lasting joy in working for the Lord.

Skeptic: How can you be certain, knowing rewards are never lasting; so much for its joy?

Jove: I have been most useful, successful in everything I do, earning praises beyond expectations, hearing others compliment me on my chosen endeavors, rewarding my success with recognition, so I dismiss religious doctrines to follow, relying on my reason and common sense rather than unseen dogmas scribbled by an ancient prophet.

Stranger: Could you ever be one lowly and meek but with concealed triumph, sitting on a lowly foal of an ass, riding in with high expectations, disdaining red carpets to pave the way, never expecting praise from gathered crowds, accolades honoring someone worthy, hearing shouts of hosanna?

Skeptic: The meek may someday inherit the earth, but they would certainly fail today, seeing meekness never characterizes a political leader, who realize the masses recognize no profit in supporting one whose only militancy is wearing weakened meekness. People know an oxymoron by its color and smell.

Bystander: Everyone here offers opinions on what leaders should promise, justifying their beliefs on historical precedence, calling for summits to compromise, for councils to promote peace, for judgments to promote equality and assure a fair distribution of needs, so no one suffers. Driven by unique wants and desires, everyone is unwilling to surrender, giving up their convictions and abandoning their truths. The Lord still calls for unity, and no one listens. People will unify to promote peace, equality, and prosperity but never resolve the differences leading them into conflict, dividing them into factions, driving them into battles unto death.

None: We are the people refusing assimilation into spiritual battles, never choosing sides over dogmatic trivia or squabbling over trusted doctrines, and we have no reliable choice to join a worship following the Lord unblemished by personal convictions of His nature and will for creation.

Bystander: Humans are created by the Lord's breath, grasping life with awe but reasoning how things could be better, struggling with misunderstanding's afflictions, lacking discernment of creation's goodness, blinded to behold its beauty, prompting them to destroy relationships they were commissioned to honor, with the Lord witnessing bond-breaking of unities established to ensure creation's sanctity. God's commands decorate their soul, ornamenting it with grace, but humans add dogmas, chaining them in bondage, controlling their thoughts and actions.

Stranger: I trust the Lord is everything, encompassing all: His majesty, grace and power, and He shapes me to become like Him, leaving nothing out, abandoning worldly ways, equipping me for survival, and needing nothing more to follow His ways, to adopt His virtues making Him almighty.

Simple Simon: Also venturing to partake of God's nature, I wonder if my allotment of time permits, struggling to accommodate His virtues and make them my own, never questioning their value added to my treasure and discerning how they can benefit me, determining if a cost-benefit analysis makes my commitment to His ways worthwhile, listening to reason telling, Spare me, your decision will drag you down, for you will be left with pity, lamenting all that was lost for being blessed with happiness.

Stranger: As one with the Lord, knowing I can do nothing alone, never listening to myself, judging nothing without Him, never seeking my will, I hear and obey my Father's will, listening to messages from the Holy Spirit. What I have learned, understanding now if I bear witness of myself, can't be trusted, as I know another bears witness of me and I am confident that witness is true.

Jurdan: Be careful of doctrinal messages imagined coming from your Holy Spirit, for their reward sometimes silences tongues by beheading, recording their demise on a flickering screen, killing ones coming in your Father's name.

Skeptic: Fear not. Ignore any ideas that you can't serve two masters, knowing you do that now, serving Jesus' commandments as well as your own, seeing how you divide your attention, sharing it with both, realizing devotion to your needs usually requires more attention than to the Lord.

Commoner: Baptized into living with one Master, the Lord, I must obey His Great Commission with words, never ceasing to proclaim Him as Lord and Savior, understanding many will tire of my voice, condemning me to silence, walking away from a message prompted for continuous repetition.

Skeptic: We speak a universal language, obeying our conscience to utter nothing but love and kindness, walking this talk in every step we take, silencing all evil thrusting its will to lead us, as we strive to complete the good beyond which it lacks nothing more. But for what does chasing goodness reward, sought by many for happiness, elusive as it is for human desire, intermittent in coming, predictable as the sun in departing, never knowing if it will shine beyond a fleeting moment.

Stranger: There is no universal commitment to assure joy but to obey the Lord, following all His commands, trusting one's conscience has not been tampered with, never changing its voice for one to follow different music and march to drum beats pleasing one's soul. We have our reason and will to determine where happiness hides, never realizing it jumps from one hiding place to another, elusive as it is meant to be, unlike joy, never hiding and free for the taking, needing no reason to evaluate its worth.

Bystander: Can one's conscience direct the course of fame, feelings to judge thoughts and actions? Only when conscience has never been victimized by ambition, spoiling innocence crafted to last by the Lord, replacing goodness He inserted at conception, plundering beauty it is designed to protect. Conscience is developed now by human desires, rearranging convictions to serve desire, becoming the servant to my-selves, an attendant freeing people to chase favored vices, ignoring any divinity looking on with disfavor.

Prancing Grace: We can adjust people's attitudes, sublimating one's conscience to tolerate unjustified religious dogmas, ignoring their claims of blasphemy against the Lord by showing such doctrines to be from ancient scribes and never applicable for today.

Wanton: Success in gaining happiness, entailing my struggle for power and stature, considering success to become a celebrity worshipped for song and dance or physical prowess, sculpting my body for adoration, choosing ways to benefit my health--fearing unhealthy woes in declining years--eludes me, giving me cause to amass wealth for making happiness a reality.

Stranger: Accumulation of wealth attracts attention, accusing the rich of greed, belittling them as hoarders worshipping possessions, disinclined to share any with ones struggling in poverty, and many scoff at the wealthy, realizing no one can bring treasures into a sepulcher and must disperse them to profit heirs, inheritors ready to continue alliance with greed, living with a fantasy of the good life, cherishing the fount of all happiness, but missing the joy of having deposited treasures in heaven.

Skeptic: With wealth fragile, treasures so easily lost, talents disappearing with age, how can one secure them to trust in a keeping's protection, assuring they will survive to continue happiness, realizing all are tenuous, here today, ready to disappear tomorrow, flaunting unfulfilled wants, yearnings for never ending desires? Avarice, insatiable as lust, is embedded in our code, stealing in as people listen in silence to the Lord assigning them to be creation's stewards. Fallen angels had no trouble convincing them to be stewards of my self's desires instead, to dismiss any thoughts of righteousness.

Jurdan: Who knows righteousness, articulating its tenets, but by defining it with doctrines and assigning it dogmas? With those being many, each person's version of righteousness is unique. A good tongue, voicing one's right words, spoken to be convinced of salvation, convicting oneself of genuine faith, trusting to be heard by their Lord, is active for only moments, unwilling to be heard by others, so is suppressed by necessity, working only when times are appropriate.

Skeptic: For success people trust a good tongue to convince all their righteousness, convicting others of being true to their word, never revealing righteousness that depends on being right with the Lord, knowing many distrust Him, believing other's reasons to provide better solutions, ones current with today's truths.

Commoner: I am told to seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness with all its rewards will be added to my treasures, but my poverty persists, denying me happiness of wealth obtained here, telling me to wait, so in patience I hold on, expecting it to take possession of my soul, anticipating rewards to be received in heaven, dismissing cares I am tempted with here.

Prancing Grace: Don't waste your time waiting, soon regretting things never done, lamenting on what you could have been.

Commoner: I may fail to qualify, never meeting current expectations, being unacceptable for what I am, hardly with promises to succeed, but in serving the Lord, He promises me in all things I can be more than conquerors, something your cause cannot assure, suspecting it will abandon me on life's battlefield, unlike the Lord who promises never to leave me, always at my side during any tribulation where reason and common sense fail me.

Prancing Grace: Forget your dreams as folly, stealing places in sleeping minds, ready to implode, dominating center stage with their message, fearing if heard during awakened thoughts it would be from a fool, reflecting what you would dare not speak, illogic foolishness that should remain silent, compelled by reason and common sense to stay hidden and unspoken.

Stranger: Dream's messages may be parables, sent in mysterious code, remaining enigmatic until revealed, likely deciphered by the Holy Spirit, awaiting as a prophet to explain.

Skeptic: Allow time for wakeful dreaming, mindful dalliance during rest from reason, dispelling attempts at logic, and open space for intuition to sprout from seeds of ideas hidden within, never nourished by reason, never permitted by logic and defying common sense.

Stranger: Such day-dreaming can be promoted by evil, defying reason, paying no attention to logic, knowing it can frighten one into irrational action, using fear to dominate a person's will, ridiculing the power of free will to control everything such as dismissing concerns by free will, trained by reason to determine all actions, never allowing emotions to interfere, never tainting reason or tarnishing decisions.

Skeptic: Anger sometimes disrupts my thoughts, forcing me to forget convictions developed by logic, and in moments of happiness I often refuse to judge what reason suggests should be evaluated.

Jurdan: I never allow emotions to distract my thinking, knowing they can compel me to change, making me someone different than I made myself to be, producing one different from what I choose to be.

Stranger: You must filter what you see, identifying valuable images to be saved, discarding any instigating unwanted emotions, building hope on all ones treasured, perhaps conserved for constructing dreams, for raw materials out of which can come worthy and understandable parables when slumber is instructed to permit their entry. Trusting the Holy Spirit to guide these dreams and coming with your permission, be assured if evil attempts to come and disrupt His work, provoking unwanted emotions, He will shake you out of sleep, showing your fears are baseless.

Simple Simon: Filtering what you see, never being automatic, is disabled by threatening visions embedded before slumber, promoting anxiety and transforming it into fear, authorizing prayer for the Lord's protection, seeking Him for peace, knowing only He has the power to deny access to your mind, choosing what can enter your dreams.

Jurdan: We should refine artificial intelligence, reconstructing it to only reason, knowing it would never be affected by emotions, assuring everything it decided would be by logic, and we would be compelled to live by it, thereby eliminating the need for any deity to call on.

Stranger: Such intelligence guarantees little for survival of one's flesh, other than directing one to live more sensibly, extending one's life by a few decades, but what can it do for gaining eternal life since artificial intelligence can instruct no one on the Lord. Only robots depending on artificial intelligence function with brain-like software for reasoning and directing actions, but they are programmed to discern nothing of the Lord, speaking nothing but to machines. The Lord creates all nature by His Word, embedding inherent directions, precise instructions, for matter to develop, relating only to innate functions created without a will, unable to choose its way, but the Lord depending on transcendence equips us to hear His messages are never delivered by inventions of artificial intelligence, never subject to chance, unpredictabilities and being broken down by human negligence, never modified by ones thinking they possess godly powers, eventually going the way of all gods' authorities, created for time and space, serving until discarded into human's heap of rubbish.

Bystander: What human knows God's reality, understanding enough to recreate our intelligence, thinking it could pass His tests, certifying it as authentic? People may develop a variety of knowledge but it will never approach what the Lord creates for them.

Stranger: A robot thriving with artificial intelligence can never be created knowing Christ as God, and if any are programmed to end human existence it will never be for anyone hidden in security with Christ, existing perhaps for those never belonging to Him, believing robots would become better and better, replacing humans having no Savior, functioning only as well as they are programmed to be, better or worse, never depending on existing in darkness or light, never concerned about living with or without God, having empty souls waiting to be filled by the Holy Spirit.

Commoner: Robots are human inventions, products of science and technology programmed to respond, limited only by boundaries of human intelligence, remarkable examples of human achievement, but they remain enslavements of matter, created to obey human commands.

Skeptic: Are we not all matter selected for subjugation, projected for obedience, submitting to our innate directions?

Commoner: We are, but we are given free will to tease us with choices, selections never offered beasts, making us struggle through goodness' unknowns.

Wanton: Creation's goodness has hidden treasures, chemicals offering ways to ignore its better choices, ordaining our instincts to be most important, satisfying our taunting free will, convicting us to seek nothing better than abject nothingness.

Prancing Grace: We tolerate nothing unacceptable to reduce our followers to robots, believing they must remain with an untainted will to choose.

Skeptic: No one's will exists untainted, condemning everyone with original sin, and we develop imaginations to tolerate and compromise, overcoming despair of what we are and rely on assistance of guardian angels.

Wanton: We put trust in guardian angels, ones sincerely interested in our welfare, to call on for protection and for promising Providence, never asking one to be prequalified in any faith, never judging one to determine eligibility, for angels are made higher than Jesus, trusting words telling us Jesus was made a little lower than angels, and most importantly these guardians tolerate us all, never discriminating against anyone with divergent ideas, never castigating one for heresy, coming as spirits sent forth to minister to all who call on them.

Skeptic: Is justice determined by your beliefs, supporting your trusts of truth, accommodating verities you could never compromise, obligating judgments to sustain the will of your conscience, sanctified by a guardian angel? Only in isolation could your will be done, tolerating freedom's allowance giving individuals rights, freedom to define themselves, protected and isolated, securing what their imagination reasons them to be.

Stranger: Having compromised understandings of Jesus, developing one's beliefs of who He is, one cannot walk in His footsteps, shedding His sandals to choose one's own.

None: Can anyone know His footsteps, trusting ancient messages of His walks, reading of their many reports, discerning their reliability?

Theologian: Revelations revealed by God to many prophets document He sent many with authorized messages to direct His will. We have studied how scribes transcribed His words for their reader's understanding and acceptance.

Excalibur: What do we discern from His essential commandments, unaltered by prophetic additions consulting human reason to create doctrines and dogmas?

Theologian: If everything we have ever done is recorded, nothing ever being erased, believed to be in God's permanent storage, He can exam all human thoughts and deeds, making judgments and determining justice, all possible when information never disappears, waiting to be used or reused when the time is right. Such records document prophetic manipulations of the Lord's essential commandments.

Skeptic: Seeking identification of God's important commandments is harder than searching for a needle in the haystack, more like trying to find human remains on Mars.

Bystander: God's important commandments are clearly stated for all people to understand. He commands us to know He created the entire cosmos from chaos, from nothingness by actions equivalent to speaking His Word for bringing everything into reality. Motivated by love and perfection, He assures goodness and beauty for all things, existing for eternity, He wants the same for us so we can participate with Him in the glory of all He has done.

Skeptic: You forget God must have created a container for sin, collecting iniquities for judgments deserving retribution for harming His goodness and beauty.

Conscience: I am sin's container, receiving all deceptions masquerading as mischief, accumulating intentional lies revealed to be iniquities, judged as sins defying creation's goodness and beauty, more than inconsequential disobedience belittled as pranks, but humans find ways to disregard ones claimed to be little sins, calling them practical jokes, but on whom, ignoring their victims might suffer, blinding sinners to their consequences, becoming rebellious ones caring little for their actions.

Jurdan: I possess no container for sin, trusting my judgment to choose right from wrong, never relying on some philosopher to assign me a conscience.

Stranger: Then explain why you advocate separation of church from state, supporting election of unbelieving leaders, exercising dominion as prescribed by their wisdom, developing decrees to release people from their conscience, allowing them to restructure their inner inhibitions, releasing them to unbound freedom, freed from relationships to where freedom dominates, freed from obligations to anyone and anything, blinded by privilege to see creation as it is.

Bystander: Be no one to pollute the Lord's Words with human ideas, tarnishing His truths, convoluting His pronouncements, changing His messages, framing His words with added interpretations, restated to make judgment possible, developing new laws to obey, creating different virtues for God, transforming Him to be jealous and vengeful, inconsistent with His goodness bearing beauty, believing how else could the Lord bear admonitions, threatening humans to obey, favoring faithful ones with blessings?

Commoner: Freedom can be a burden, choosing desires from the unnumbered, so I cast all upon the Lord, trusting He will sustain me, never suffering me to be moved, being always with me, prodding me to continue, confirming our mission, allowing little respite, going before to lead the way, battling to show me how, to remember His story, fighting for His people, slaying everything standing in the way, enveloping His enemies in water's depths. Being the God of love, He remains at our side when needed, inflicting destruction on our threats, safeguarding our cause, proving it worthy. So, our battles we count on being the Lord's, assured He is always with us, encouraging us to continue, trusting His covenant with us, His chosen people, will never cease. Look forward to days of His blessing. Never let your vision dwell on mounded remains of silent enemies, as you gather their belongings before decay smothers them in ashes.

Jurdan: Which deity is with you, giving you one to choose from, or do you select some god from your imagination, developed from some poet's dream, arming your myself with weapons to battle enemies you created, designed for brandishing your valor, arming your purpose, believing it to consummate love, bringing the goodness of creation to fulfillment.

Commoner: Jesus is the only one saying God calls us to preach the Gospel, to inform all the good news, to trust this for sanctification, for making us saints, to prepare us for salvation, and if this is such good news why do so many ignore His Words?

Skeptic: Who wants to be a saint? Number them few. Sainthood demands people have no gods, no one to worship but the Lord, and who is willing to give up their gods, or even an only god? Worse yet He wants people to preach redemption, and that certainly demands they give up everything but a relationship to Christ crucified, lifted to be the only Lord running their lives.

Wanton: Should my ambition begin and end by becoming most desirable in God's eyes, boasting confidence in being highly prized, developing my character to be above reproach, growing goodness to claim holiness, preparing me to join Saints on street corners, parading my walk with the Lord, while never realizing redemption remains the prize, striving to please Him by proclaiming the Gospel.

Commoner: The Lord commands me to become fishers of people, proclaiming His good news to attract followers.

Skeptic: You bait people with ideas, hooking simple ones with whatever doctrine or dogmas that work, developing and when necessary changing ideologies for others to follow, finding ones to their encrypt minds with loyalty, taking faceless thoughts to new beginnings, empowering mindless followers to heights of greatest allegiance.

None: Needing someone to follow, to mimic as my own, I search, looking for a model, but finding none for turning to other than what my beastly ancestor left me, violence when appropriate, returning to jungle laws fated by no father, neglected by no mother. Blaming no one else, I acknowledge the world leaves me to nature's laws, understanding rewards being retributions of an eye for eye, flesh made to consume flesh, inherent tyranny, and I know that someone will try to recruit me, relishing me to be a victim for their cause.

Skeptic: Searching ways to create conflict, sorting out choices, selecting victims as targets, most will pick ones they can control, individuals considered lowly, possessing little common sense, reasoning feebly if at all, never defiant, historically acquiescing when confronted, moping humble servants, never knowing any different but to submit to another's will.

Jurdan: Be careful in striving to be a good shepherd, remembering your Scripture's words, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered, for even today witness how good shepherds are killed, driven from their calling, beheaded, martyred for being blemished as the wrong kind, marching to a different beat of righteousness, trusting in immunity to being tarnished by evil.

Skeptic: Good Shepherds can live in danger, ready and willing to care for victims of rebellion, forgetting rebels often attack Samaritans, declaring them subversives, thinking they are no different from their victims, making them untrustworthy, ready to reveal dishonesty inherent in their compassion, seeing it mostly as a will to power.

Jurdan: Did not your Jesus provoke a rebellion, causing religious leaders to hate Him, disturbing peace taken centuries to make, jeopardizing the Hebrew society, giving posterity reasons to distrust them since, and you call Him a good shepherd?

Commoner: Jesus is my shepherd, overflowing with goodness, understanding my needs, listening to my woes, commiserating with me in trouble, knowing how to bring me satisfaction, tempering obligations proclaimed by Yahweh, and I worship Him as my Shepherd, confident of His promise for my salvation.

Wanton: God's Words annoy me, declaring, If you love Me, keep my commandments, but thank God for my shepherd who instructs me on their keeping and modifying them when necessary, teaching me on how to reevaluate by-gone admonitions no longer demanding to be heeded, prompting love for my shepherd more than a vacillating Lord, humiliating me with unreasonable demands, treating me still as a child.

Preacher: Grieving the Lord, developed as human's favored pastime, divorcing themselves from His decrees, people abhor being told what they must do, never wanting any oughts to conflict with freedom to choose, committing adultery by disdaining any love for Him. Remembering Christ preached to souls in prison, we can minister to living spirits trapped in circumstances of human doings, speaking the Good News in a dignified way to meet their needs, trusting it pleases the Lord, knowing we could suffer with them, believing ones suffering in the flesh are being prepared to sin no more, to no longer agonize in lusts of the world but to obey God's will, calling us to enjoy creation's bounty in moderation, never tempted by excesses demeaning our self-esteem, rejecting all that displeases the Lord.

Stranger: Do believers share with all, distributing creation's goodness, dispersing the Lord's earthly treasures as their acts of charity, trusting it to cover a multitude of sins with their hospitality free from resentment, glorifying generosity through Christ their Redeemer, suffering unashamedly as His follower, reflecting on others with prayers for them, thinking if the righteous are scarcely saved, what of the ungodly and sinner, ignorant and foolish, accumulating no treasures in heaven, defying God's desire for all to return to Him?

I Man: God strikes many, terrorizing their actions, threatening them with death if they disobey Him, ordering them to remember His truths, forcing them to consent, so they reluctantly respond, unhappy with being compelled to obey and preach His truths, admonishing people to repent and return to Him for salvation, expecting Him to relent and forgive sinners, releasing them from His imminent doomsday.

Stranger: Is this God one of goodness and beauty, forgetting love, determining judgment most important?

Commoner: Created in our God's image, mimicking all His actions, we are tempted to judge others, officiating to set forth verdicts, sifting through observations, mercilessly condemning people for their deeds, hardly done by us to save anything, unlike Jesus proclaiming He did not come to judge the world, remaining obedient and leaving judgment to His Father.

Skeptic: People lament over unfortunate consequences, blaming the Lord, critical of His trusted but imperfect understanding, fathoming little and hold Him accountable for confusion, judging Him for their problems, disowning the perverse disorder of people's doing.

Jurdan: We have complete control over evil, defining what should be called evil, eradicating it completely, and never assigning its blame to someone else.

Commoner: With the Holy Spirit in my soul, reporting all that I must do, how can I accommodate any evil thoughts, lurking, waiting for a moment when His goodness looks away, distracted by some demon, battling to enter and clash with my convictions?

Stranger: Neglected evil arouses one to greater wickedness, compounding satanic deeds, forcing demands for justice until retribution can force remorse, trusting more considerable displeasure can reverse one's ways. Indulging evil with unjust freedom from punishment, provoking unhappiness, drives wickedness to extreme measures.

Skeptic: Does casting light to awaken the conscience, drawing it out to prevent evil from having its way, spring forth truth and bring joy to dispel gloom and restore the soul?

Wanton: Evil is a necessity, essential to recognizing good, for believing evil is the precursor for good, never taking for granted God made everything good and shaping perception of creation's goodness by its exposure to evil.

Commoner: What virtue can come from something evil, thinking virtue can be a consequence, trusting evil to build some virtue?

Wanton: At odds with God, unable to admit any goodness and beauty for His creation

but trying to understand its nature, perceived as dark and source of evil, incongruous with His essence as the fountain of goodness and beauty, one's recourse is hope for release, leaving the world and all its worthlessness, freeing all from life's pain and suffering, never understanding or accepting any fidelity joining worldly with divine beauty.

Skeptic: Evil will never treat you with reverence, scorning everything considered good, waiting for you to retreat from lofty convictions, approaching life's end with nothing to show for your existence, reflecting on a life of nothing worth remembering, such being the scourge of this world of matter.

Wanton: Does this make sacraments necessary because all matter is evil and we cannot purify ourselves without cleansing ourselves with some form of ritual? I can't justify evil, appearing veiled in goodness, confusing my discernment, sometimes overwhelming and hastening me to quick decisions, shouting at me to silence patience, urging on some call to action.

Skeptic: Evil insists on immediate action, cursing reluctance spurred on by patience, promoting fear to seize one's direction.

Jurdan: Justify evil's necessity, required by goodness insisting on it for creation, for accommodating human nature, revealed by envy as an essential requirement for existence, a resentful longing driving actions, justifying evil to promote human causes, assisting hatred to blame others, appropriating fault whenever necessary as a means of achieving success.

Skeptic: Show me a rare person who would forgive, forgetting all iniquities committed, never demanding retribution, protecting against one's passion insistent on vengeance, considering no penalties, rewarding no one by stealing another's goodness, cleansing all evil from memory to leave room for love.

Jurdan: How is that possible when we are taught to hate, arming ourselves with power considered mandatory for survival while disrupting relationships, contravening creation's claim for goodness, preaching the world's unworthiness, taken over by evil, prompting some to leave before their time?

Stranger: Destroying one's relationships with all in this world, ending everything, is prelude to their own destruction, dismissing their being as worthless, terminating all with suicide, taking down something good to signify their end, terminating hopeless facades intended to glorify goodness, appearances serving needs for accomplishment, providing transient and dubious episodes of happiness.

Skeptic: Individuals exist needing nothing, no achievement, no moments of happiness, merely as a being homeless without relationships, living with a herd of others, being here only to reproduce and scavenge for their needs, denying free will for anything else, remaining the beast they were created from.

Jurdan: Some choose that life, hoping for nothing more, regarding ways of the world as fruitless, opting for some form of nothingness, perhaps foreseeing its raging fever in nihilism, marginalizing themselves, so no one bothers them for anything, never recognizing any goodness for creation.

Skeptic: What is goodness? Do hopeless drifters know more than the rest of us, thinking goodness can be assembled from random interactions of matter's particles, by blind forces of unknown origin as proposed by modern science? What then fancies us to call its work good, more so than the chaos in its recipe for formation? Are we conditioned to be pleased by some things, enough to call them good, while evil is our designation for what is never considered good?

Jurdan: Is evil also created by random assembly of matter's particles, blindly produced by unknown forces obeying obligations determined by chance, resulting in development of evil equally to goodness, conflicting with convictions of creation being formed good attested to by your loving Creator Lord?

Stranger: Scripture documents God's love, spontaneously working, manifest in creation's goodness, transforming its beauty to increase, leaping over any adversity in its way, always meeting His approval, never considering human evaluations, following His plan, not ours, always hoping our love can become as spontaneous as His. Evil can claim no part in creation's design, in God's intended goodness.

Skeptic: But is His love lasting, outperforming any human attraction, differing from people's commitment to momentary affection, driven by inherent orders calling attention to sexual functions, performing rituals that are compromised, labeled as love but acts of fornication, never blessed by falsely calling them love. Does love remain love, no more, with consummation by fornication fulfilling desire never being more?

Stranger: Romance, unleashed by throbbing genes, invoking trembling anxiety and unreasonable stupor, feverishly building to a climax, lasting briefest moments, demands devotion, ignoring wisdom's restraint, but one knows that its insanity ends quickly, returning one to what a person is made for. Idle romance, hardly a constructive passion, seeking to relieve one's urgent desires, compelling one to satisfy immediate wants, consuming many hours, leaves little time to understand one's purpose, never being to log one's accumulations of fornication, never realizing its end is coming sooner than one suspects, seeing age destroy a desire thought never to cease.

Skeptic: Proposing a monument to God's love, what better than creation to honor His fest, trusting nothing but an image of His Son, an icon of One in the Trinity to dignify our love for His One in three, but what do humans worship as symbols of their love, noting little but portraits of erotic love, decked out in sensuality to enlighten their lusty needs.

Commoner: Wanting the good life, choosing examples for its assembly, can its finding be in sight and satisfying, desiring nothing further, completing an acceptable yearning, never wanting more, with claims of having a real life?

Stranger: Creation, groaning and laboring in transformation, continues to develop goodness, knowing the Lord is pleased with His beginning approach and continues to develop greater goodness in creation, recognizing it is far from completion, molding and shaping earth into better formations, revealing more of Himself as He proceeds, teaching us to be more obedient to His wishes and be transfigured by love, showing how we can become more like Him.

Skeptic: Can goodness get better, beating what creation is, so God can say this is the best I can do?

Jurdan: Many must think creation's goodness can be improved, lacking much, and only good enough to satisfy your Lord's thinking we don't deserve more, forcing us to rely on Him and obey His commands so we can be blessed with more. But our reason and common sense imagine what would represent the best, better than the good, and seeing your God is not interested in improving the good, we take it upon ourselves to create the best.

Stranger: How can you surmise such a great offering, never admitting humans do little to create any lasting best, the best being only their claim without signs of improvement, showing the best is beyond their imagination, a conjured conclusion that is never possible?

Skeptic: Can virtue and vice be blended as one, unified as dictated by progress to goodness, trusting we can define their favor, choosing what they must be in our quest for the best, changing their meaning to comply with our needs, or better with our wants and desires.

Jurdan: Study your Lord's Words, His Scripture's imprints, describing creation was made for a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace, and how does nature's goodness prevent such contradictions and verify the beauty of harmony for all He makes?

Commoner: Embracing free will, hugging toils to find truth, developing wisdom delighting me as no other activity, never being deprived of good things, I work to reveal more of creation's goodness, rewarding life as is intended, hidden for us to find, small in secular significance and stature, never glittering to lure us away from belonging to our Creator.

Stranger: Greater wisdom claimed to accumulate wealth, however partnered with anxiety hand in hand all the way, searching knowledge to improve judgments, despises ignorants who ignore learning, satisfied to live as they choose, following their will, their heart's desires, recognizing wise ones with greater wealth have little advantage over them, possessing what they want, things accumulated without the toil of labor, never any curse of creation's goodness free for all to behold.

Simple Simon: God didn't create all creatures to know the beauty and goodness of His creation, creating some like snakes or bats equipped with senses only to apprehend their needs, never able to comprehend all we perceive, and we wonder if God will ever evolve us to grow our understanding, expanding it to appreciate more of His Word's creation.

Bystander: Creation's goodness appears in bits and pieces from the building blocks of the Lord's Word, evolving reconfigurations to be tested, continuing His evolutionary processes to perfect goodness, begun with its preliminary form at creation's onset, and humans must depend on His assistance to perfect goodness and not rely on their reasoned approaches. Human's try to improve cosmos' goodness, assisting the Lord by managing their ignorance with doctrines and dogmas, embellishing His efforts with unimaginable decrees, reconfiguring goodness to confuse people's discernment.

None: How can I accept such goodness burdened by impossible decrees, varying with so many different beliefs, hardly proclaiming the Lord's single unquestionable commandment for me to follow?

Excalibur: Goodness never authorizes impossible decrees. Establish your faith by choosing to follow the Lord's sanctifying commandment free of all doctrines and dogmas.

None: You urge me to follow where no fellowship exists, outside the church body where I am considered an unbeliever, an outcast where I have never had roots.

Excalibur: Find a band of like brethren having your beliefs and strip away all doctrines and dogmas clinging for their security, leaving you to dwell all your worship on what He commands.

None: You suggest needs for a brave-hearted leader, willing to face mobs of church-going individuals and desecrate their beliefs.

Prancing Grace: Consider me brave-hearted but never open to being armed with weapons against people protecting cherished beliefs. I can manipulate them to abandon troublesome doctrines and dogmas and pave the way for them to join us.

Skeptic: Your cause, evolving as others from ashes of fallen dynasties, attempting to delve into reasons for their decline and fall, studying reams of premises penned for wanting recognition, reveal only silence from the dust of their once-exalted words. What counts for human endeavors? People build on the past, learning how to redo what once was done, imagining new ways to capture human thoughts, seeking ways to reinvent the wheel of fortune and manage its revolutions, stopping to control it at the pinnacle where they can succeed momentarily before fate resumes.

Stranger: A cause is never a cause until it is deemed worthy and what authorizes Prancer's claim to this honor, realizing leadership was never bestowed on any person until approved and permitted by the Lord, transferring His rule to a human, jeopardizing harmony and unity when governing is determined by individuals, risking creation's control by people.

Prancing Grace: The Lord blesses everything I do.

Skeptic: As the leader of your cause, do you convince others of your virtue by realizing self-appraisal must conclude you are virtuous, confirmed by selfies portraying you as others see you, standing on podiums witnessing banners painted with your name, acknowledging humility never wins prizes. Do your ways represent greater commitment to this world, realizing they could be forerunners of the last days, distressing times led by ones loving themselves and money, boasting of their wisdom, arrogant and dismissive of other's beliefs, abusing worthy ideas, grateful only for their prowess, dismissing constructive criticism, being swollen with conceit, regarding humility as a sign of defeat, developing truth as their strength, reveling in their reflection, enlightened by followers mesmerized by their rhetoric, carefully crafted so their folly is evident to few?

Jurdan: Causes must be like a reflecting mirror, revealing people transformed by leadership, peering at themselves but never into themselves, seeing only what's outside, never at their being's core, hiding their deteriorating soul. Reason gives people cause to self-examine what they are, trusting it above everything unseen, revealed by facts, rejecting anything verified by imagination.

Skeptic: Begging, satisfy me with promises, ordinary people seek only to fulfill their desires, trusting ones most eloquent, bowing to their leadership, as they hear of being blessed with a chicken in every pot,

Jurdan: Beware of religious slogans, engaging in contests of faith, such as Christianity's game of monopoly, vying for control of people's trust, employing marketing skills to become better, seeking to be the greatest, their leaders using ways of words to attract and entertain people, to distract them from ways of the world.

Stranger: Any cause promising to improve everyday lives, giving people hope for something better, must take care, questioning arrogance of want-to-be leaders, recognizing absolutism in their proclamations, for all onlookers come with baggage, varying convictions of faith, and never accept secularization most causes foster, lacking potential for reviving zealous religious belief, regarding it damaged by worldly changes, driving them to revivals, threatening all hopes for human causes.

Skeptic: Stripping the Lord's remnants of their voice, making them powerless, weak and feeble, worldly leaders will never be satisfied until they disappear, and with failure crippled ones will be ordained as leaders, having broken their zeal for God and making His decrees unpalatable.

Stranger: Name one earthly king, ruling in greatest majesty, celebrated by all in time, whose deeds have survived, having established a lasting kingdom for emulation, ruling with unlimited love? You can name only Jesus, no other king for ruling God's kingdom, the realm we must look to for perfect leadership. No one dares to rule here like Him, fearing failure before defeat.

Commoner: I have no choice, God having chosen me, selecting me to know Him, trusting I would follow Him, ordaining me to be one of His sheep, knowing His voice, understanding I can join life's journey led by only one voice, never trusting reason's library of failure, collections of human hopes that never survive.

Bystander: God's Truth, spoken once for all on Calvary, declaring His cosmic plan, was trusted to many great prophets but conveyed by them imperfectly, lacking great conviction, so they imagined means to make it more attractive, addressing their intuition to dress His Truth with doctrines and dogmas.

Skeptic: Religion persists, providing the instrument for a rule, authorizing leaders to have divine rights for dominating their subjects, oppressing them at times deemed appropriate, ignoring threats of seeds they sow waiting to sprout into violence against itself unless deflected against another as a holy crusade.

Stranger: Orthodoxy prevents discord, uniting all beliefs into one, organizing people into following one belief never achieved by religion.

Excalibur: Although my blade is rusty now, once having led me battling for Orthodoxy, I realize now it was never all for one and one for all, realizing Orthodoxy is always tainted by doctrines and dogmas and must become orthoverity, ignoring all human additions to God's revelations, trusting only His Truth revealed to all people. Orthodoxy has always failed, never able to unify people as one, never being obedient to the Lord's one important commandment, remaining as merely another religion.

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Stranger: Our seers chose Orthodoxy, establishing belief in one God, seeking His will determined by scholarly agreement, dismissing all heresies distracting from His favor, and now you suggest our conclusions have out-lived their usefulness. Orthodoxy, revealed by God, gifted people to know Him, preparing their hearts to worship Him, the only One, commanding them to believe in no other gods, as He reached out to all His created people.

Excalibur: Orthodoxy must include reaching out to all, dismissing no one as undesirable, accepting everyone, unlike people believing in the one God Yahweh who denied strangers coming in peace to join them, treating them as slaves and servants, unable to be included as chosen ones. By our creation, making us in His image, are we not all chosen people? If Orthodoxy is true to its name, it must gather in all, excluding no one, and cannot condone endeavors to battle anyone blemished by what the Lord created them to be, condemning excuses to give cause for heroes, knowing others must suffer from hero's delights,

Stranger: Orthodoxy cannot disapprove of battles invoked by injustice and demanding retribution, realizing humans are inherently enlightened to fight, to engage in conflicts, motivated no better than in springtime, fulfilling a rite reserved for love and conflict, stripping garments for love and donning attire for battle, promoted by day's lengthening light, seeking to bask in glories at hand. How little it takes to arouse ardor for virtue's conquests to become a hero, promising delights of recognition.

Bystander: Humans covet, chasing desire of things seen, recognizing nothing but what their senses report, thinking it represents all for devoting life's efforts to satisfy. But while never limiting their feelings, they don't trust messages struggling to break out from their inherent code, proclaiming to be rational and understandable, a source of greater knowledge than thoughts attracting wants, providing the key to see God in all things, His act of seeing everything, participating in knowledge of Himself in His Logos, His Words creating all. Trust His Word is everlasting, enduring forever and creating all. What His Word creates persists, never vanishing, remaining in His Word, assured as an innate inclusion no matter in the form it appears.

Commoner: Are words mightier than the sword, preventing conflict, trusting authoritative pronouncements to avoid battles, or does common sense tell us to be armed with weapons, never trusting belligerent's promises, compelling us to distrust rhetoric, words concealing real intents, hidden behind rational calculations of wisdom?

Skeptic: If the Lord's Words create all, the substance for forging swords, how can they be mightier than any blade?

Bystander: Trust me. God's creative Words are mightier than any sword.

Skeptic: The Lord prays for unity where people sense dichotomies rule all things, corralling all in one accord for conflict to disappear, and such seems real, history having proven this where freedom was forbidden, outlawed, so the state dictated choices, where tyranny stifled reason, rendering it useless, allowing only a single voice to speak, a master to herd the flock.

Commoner: What about the unity enforced by tyranny of religions following an angry God, exhorting all to comply, condemning others as damned and destined for eternal torment, knowing rebellion will be inevitable, precipitating absolute failure?

Excalibur: Yahweh was an angry God, created by doctrines and dogmas, inconsistent with the goodness of the Creator-God originating all by His Word and incorporating power to heal anything humans could destroy.

Skeptic: Is the angry God's tough love a variant of real love, exhibiting its resolve when true love fails, a mistake seemingly impossible from the architect of true love, the omniscient One failing to discern inadequacies of true love?

Commoner: Striving to control me, employing deceptive means seeming to reek of no guile, many would teach me but do not know me, having little understanding of my thoughts, deaf to much of what I say, never acknowledging my words telling them I have a Master who sees all my thoughts through and through, understanding what I must be taught, securing my anxieties, resolving my uncertainties, quelling my doubts, showing how my problems can be dismissed, seeking my obedience to doctrines and dogmas, calling on my will to show how it can activate love and gratefully respond to His teaching, binding my relationship with Him, leading me to obey Him freely, never under duress.

Stranger: Why do we struggle, clinging to hope, hiding some uncertainty for salvation, putting on armor, somehow thinking we will be attacked by enemies penetrating cracks in our armor, holes in our breastplates of faith and love, defects assigned by doctrines and dogmas, avenues for destroying our protections, finding it easy to annihilate tenuous faith and love, for ones highly self-esteemed for their effort?

Simple Simon: See ones truly faithful rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, praising the Lord, celebrating creation's goodness, giving thanks for everything, worshipping Him continuously, trusting all will end in unity, answering Jesus Christ's prayer to His Father. Prayer is our labor as it was His, telling God we rely on Him, waiting for circumstances determined by Him to direct our ways, trusting them to heal our defects never resolved by obedience to doctrines and dogmas.

Commoner: My achievements can never embellish victory, battles never won by me, never having fought to win medals proclaiming my efforts, and my goal is to be one with Christ, united in His struggles, never ashamed of our unity, captured by Him, never questioning His way, promising only to fight His battles, in His possession, a Conquerer, leading in triumph, never claiming His victory is mine, forever proclaiming victory in Jesus.

Skeptic: Struggling to be rewarded as others, copying their ways to accumulate treasures, people want no part of joining a unity making one no better than another, jealously protecting their identities, guarding their diversities, enabling them to climb ladders to escape any unified ghetto, each running patiently the race prepared for them.

Stranger: Labor God's cause for all to be one, uniting to be reunited with our Maker, eliminating divisive stipulations driving disunity, claiming freedom for the diversity of belief, obeying the simple basic commandments God prescribed for us.

Skeptic: Open your eyes to unity, trusting oneness to protect your ideas, and see how fragile convictions can be, forever fearing other's contentions, troubling you with their importance, as you wait anxiously, wondering if your faith will be tested by their consequences, splitting the Lord's command for unity, descending its victims into despair, seeking a new ground and making it holy to build a new altar, refurbishing the Lord's Words, making them appropriate for changing times.

Jurdan: Building new altars, disturbing the peace by bringing in your Lord, drawing throngs to celebrate, festivals little different from pagan worships, singing, eating and drinking to Bacchus, leaving the waste of their orgies for insects and vermin to feast on, forces us to object, denying any permission to invade our privacy, proclaiming, Not in my backyard, but where does one's domain begin and end?

Skeptic: Was unity sanctioned by making human's one God three, creating the Trinity, using a term not found in the Bible, confusing theologians, admitted being poorly understood, spoken freely now thinking hearers will understand a word never adopted until over four centuries after Jesus and based on beliefs many Christians don't follow. All things are possible with God which no one denies, except perhaps an atheist. Is it necessary to create three persons, God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, as separate Gods, or did God maybe assign portions of His deity to Jesus, giving Him powers without the foreknowledge to know the time for the Day of the Lord and to send human believers messages, understanding all must come by a messenger who can be called the Holy Spirit, and we trust He can speak through us with revelations other than manifestations of His creation's goodness and beauty? Humans insist on disunity, ignoring the Lord's Prayer for all becoming one.

Jurdan: Trusting in only what you see, engaging reason for interpretation, truth will be scattered, avoiding all attempts at unity, leaving people freedom to follow any will they choose, authorizing them to be masters, freeing all from obligations, affirming this is what freedom is for.

Stranger: Witness what leads your kind to self-destruction, following only false gods, the Molechs calling to your parents, appeasing them with your abuse, destroying life before it can protest, and if any survive you can neglect their needs, feeding them scant nourishment, never any nutrition of words, nothing to convince them of being worthwhile, leaving their soul vacant, devoid of any source for help, so they listen to the false gods of others, hearing promises to reward their self-immolation, ending their nothingness, vainly hoping for something better, as they destroy someone's life in order for justice to end theirs. Neglect having beaten fear into their hearts, telling them they could never be something, ashamed of ever knowing their Creator, they march to the dissonance of idols, following its path to destruction, loudly blaring with repetitious music, blinding all to creation's goodness, never acknowledging any beauty for our kingdom to be done on earth, ignoring truths for leading a quiet and peaceable life, all in godliness and honesty due eternal truths.

Jurdan: You make a fool of yourself, glorifying foolishness, debasing yourself to be nothing, a bell tolling with no message for us to understand.

Stranger: How can I represent your interests in anyone when my commitment is for identifying God's concern for all people, commanding us to love one another, finding no excuse to omit anyone, showing Him I am His disciple? Searching your mind, you imagine glory is hidden, never realizing beauty can only come from your soul filled with the sweet wisdom of the Lord, being empty with bitterness if you don't assign a place for it and contest it with the world's wisdom built on seeing to believe, never trusting your soul rests with substance of the Lord's proof, assuring belief in the living God.

Jurdan: Selecting words chosen to please yourself, moreover to seek others and draw them to an audience, your Gospel's truths drive people into hiding, wanting to hear nothing to show them cursed and to protect servanthood for their choosing, being zealous of their reason trusted above all others.

Stranger: Common sense has by-passed you, settled in discredited beliefs, ancient trusts no longer tenable, blinded to all changes around, dim-witted to current times, living with no comprehension of modern religions. You with fear, welcome the Good News, armor for protecting your shell once you have died in Christ, mobilizing your will, strengthening you to stand up, encouraged knowing perfect love casts out fear, revealed by the Holy Spirit, never by the world's reason, but by Christ who now lives in believers.

Skeptic: Some trusting in chariots, weapons of reason or imaginary idols, swiftly advancing on their prey, regaling their prancing steeds in decorated finery, flashing their medallions in the sun, defining themselves with power, have now found new weapons for building their confidence, ones for hiding so their intentions can be concealed. Acquiring respect never gained before, new weapons empower them, making them be somebody, armed with firearms to frighten others, becoming a fearful extension to attach on their nothingness, a foolishness making them a target for others of like mind. Who can cleanse them of stupidity, showing them it is not innate in their design, waving weapons in their display of gleeful power, revealing no wisdom in their conceit?

Jurdan: Can the beams promised by your Lord, unseen timbers of truth, protect me from His elements, storms attacking my flesh? I can't rely on Him, depending on my common sense at a minimum and resorting to my reason if necessary, living hence for myself, never trusting in the unseen, depending only on the seen.

Stranger: Faithful unwavering belief in what John has written about Jesus Christ's life, death and resurrection, united with our Christian spirituality affirms our disposition to trust in the Lord's eternal truths, never being the unseen.

Jurdan: Power of the will, knowing nothing succeeds without the will to power, becoming the holy grail, the cup for drinking life's winning ways, partaking nectar of the gods, must never be compared with ancient words.

Commoner: Though you would celebrate failure of my heart and flesh, accomplishing my demise to follow you, faith in God promises strength for my heart and soul, assuring my portion forever, gripping me by His power, reworking me, redoing me to be like Him, sanctifying me to mirror His image and be reborn when I repent my iniquities, assuring my forgiveness as I strive for His holiness.

Jurdan: I should admire and respect your thoughts but where do you find such ideas? What have you read for your convictions? Many have written illusions, recording imaginations to support your faith, but others dismiss your God's commandments, placing their need with ancient people to satisfy their ignorance and soothe their adversities, now unneeded by present believers so they can ignore His commands.

Commoner: You love to dwell in words, admonitions surviving since human beginnings, notations of wandering tongues, thoughts of long-dead minds, but you forget love in deed and truth, keeping the Lord's commandments, doing things to please Him and satisfy His messenger in my soul.

Jurdan: You try to convince people by words, trusting they understand, but what if they don't answer, leaving you to guess at their response? Have you confidence in your Lord, believing you can ask anything according to His will, trusting He will hear you because you are one sworn to obey Him, believing He has given you patience to wait on His response, realizing your request must be in keeping with His will, understanding you must adopt a single-minded conviction to follow His decrees?

Skeptic: What motivates us to love? Is it a badge of self-fulfillment, acknowledging we have obeyed the greatest commandment, loving those deserving our admiration, comforting us with satisfaction, responding to the Lord's decree, but loving only in part, acknowledging failure in not loving all His beings, including our enemies, realizing they remain belligerent to our affections?

Commoner: We are not motivated to love but commanded to love.

Wanton: Imaginations working on scattering loyalty to the Lord, crowning pride with greater achievements, do little for loving others, separating us from Him and working more to find alternate ways to satisfy His commands.

Jurdan: What if people never questioned why they are here, where they came from or what destiny holds for them after death? Would they discover some god to explain everything, trusted to have created everything we see and are? Without having a god to teach them violence could there be peace?

Commoner: Violence and peace must be complementary or we would have no beatitudes, pronouncing, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, so commands the Lord, the Almighty humans proclaim, How excellent is Thy loving-kindness, with your children putting their trust under the shadow of Thy wings. How deep is our loving kindness, enough to generously be merciful, withholding what another might deserve, using our judgment to consider what might be deserving? Without violence, mercy would not be needed. Peace would prevail for all.

Stranger: God will judge ones wanting to love things and use people, accumulating things at the expense of loving people, and we must understand that He created us to use things, being indifferent to their value, and make our priority to love people, trusting us never to be owned by what we have, acknowledging He creates all things and belong to Him who licenses us with their use.

Simple Simon: Called to love our neighbors, never knowing what that entails, unsure who is our neighbor, we can love only what is near and dear, established within limits, for we can grow to hate the nearest and dearest, learning their true nature, discovering ones so like us, while confessing love for like ones beyond arms reach, withholding love for people we are taught to hate, ones learned to be our enemies.

Stranger: Being obedient to God's Word, I must sanctify myself, becoming holy for He is holy, but I boast nothing of my holiness, gripped by the love of Christ, surrendering to His love, never witnessing to myself and my holiness, only to Him.

Commoner: Secular arguments speak to convince me, sweeping my reservations away with their debate, never asking permission with an if, hearing only what reason should direct my way, but I listen to another, One Supreme who questions me to discover if I am prepared, asking me if I love Him and if my desire is to follow Him, requiring these conditions before I am qualified to become His disciple and relinquish all rights to myself, unlike others who claim they can prepare me wherever I may be.

Skeptic: Loving one's enemies fails, never winning them to love their opposition, thinking your actions will change them to love one another, but as enemies they remain unashamedly into themselves, seeking to further their gains, wearing your love like a badge signifying acceptance, verifying their deception with boasting, I'm okay.

Commoner: Created never to be left alone, united with all, called to be seated at the Lord's right hand, joined with the multitudes He loves, I shall not be moved, threatened by shame or tempted by anyone hoarding creation's goodness, trusting His presence is fullness of joy, overshadowing any claims of people's wisdom still searching their reason for truth, their verities doomed in time to suffer corruption, waiting seated at a human's right hand, trusting love never fails.

Jove: Separating me from others, dismissing my relationships, telling me to abandon ones I bonded to, leaving my father and mother, separated from their loving example, isolating me from sibling's encouragement, teaching me I will thrive only with support of Christian brethren, requires a leap of faith, trusting others who broke relationships to enjoy a new life, forming mutual admiration societies, searching therein for joy.

Skeptic: Disharmony rules today with people believing that God blesses only them, Christian brothers, girding them with strength, teaching them ways to battle against powers of heretic beliefs, withholding love for wayward believers, trusting theirs is the only way to salvation.

Stranger: Dressing our leaders in distinguishing garments, showing their allegiance, outfitting them with pride, we follow rules of reason, identifying who is for us, judging all others to be against us, separating golden treasure from chaff.

Skeptic: Garments fitting ones for battle, in discord with human brethren, will never be suited as wedding dresses to outfit ones for love, unable to prepare people for joy or salvation.

Bystander: Creation clothes us with love, situating us on its altar of earth, fashioned for our worship, calling us to honor all God made with love, protecting it against evil intent on destruction, delivering us from depravity's urgings, responding obediently to His commands.

Skeptic: Allow me discernment, understanding if it is right with God to respond to humans more than Him, trusting it makes little difference if I follow a human cause.

Commoner: Do I measure loving others like myself by their love for me, testing it for mutual love, their response to my affection? Or by loving others without limits, must I become poorer, following the lead of Jesus, rich as He is becoming the victim, caring nothing for its cost, becoming broken-bread and poured-out wine in His hands for the sake of others, knowing the greater my love for others, the less I will be loved.

Skeptic: I think it best for me to be the steward of my domain, enthroned as a king, judging it best ruled by lovers of wisdom.

Commoner: Your wisdom for ruling is established by reason and conforms to common sense. Have you suffered love and selflessness, willing you to endure as a victim, jeopardizing joy that depends on it, expressing kindness never interrupted by inconsiderate thoughts, never demanding proofs or displaying evidence for love's unqualified manifestations, realizing love comes to ones spontaneously, a precious message delivered by the Holy Spirit?

Excalibur: Reckless and immediate, totally unrestrained expressions of love, more than mere affections, humbling all other considerations, spontaneously driving one to interact with another, exemplifying what we are made for, must be to reward creation's beauty.

Bystander: The language of one's eyes, languishing in love, speaking only with their expression, focusing little on one thing, must be fixed on messages from the soul, hearing nothing of my self's words, responding only to creation's beauty.

Commoner: Loving Jesus is of utmost importance, repeatedly heard in song and words proclaiming Jesus loves us, guaranteeing our salvation, assuring He wants our fellowship forever.

Stranger: God may have made us fail, ignoring His commandments, but He now shows us how to succeed, sending His Son to reveal the Father's nature, showing God's love, manifested by creation's goodness and beauty, but humans regularly attack them, destroying anything bearing marks of coming from His Word.

Bystander: Greed many claim for success bears no marks of coming from His Word, never being justified as learned from the Lord who exacts nothing from us but obedient stewardship, expected to be freely given and to receive nothing in return but acknowledgement He provides all our needs without any payment but to love all others as ourselves.

Skeptic: Seeking money-holders to covet their support, discovering ways to win their love, knowing they always bargain for something, for more than any ideology, for favors in return, having accumulated much by rapacity, hoarders continue amassing more for directing things they can influence.

Commoner: Money talks, influencing others more than words, never paying love forward to affect generosity, never enriching others needing more than silver tokens, never shaping them with treasured words, never encountering others with a voice acknowledging their need.

Skeptic: Examine all religion's doctrines and survey its dogmas, reflecting on their ideologies, counting their numbers to total all that commanding obedience to protect people from hatred and vengeance, and compare all testifying to love, goodness, and beauty. Doctrines and dogmas are created as laws, far outnumbering commandments calling for people to love all others like themselves and to acknowledge warrants for fear and admonishment deserving for humans born to sin.

Jurdan: Doctrines and dogmas penalize all for being human and must be responsible for everyone's condemnation, admitting people have brought it on themselves.

Excalibur: We must proclaim good reason to eliminate doctrines and dogmas created by prophets and protected as being Words of the Lord, ridding society's sinful inclinations of hating others because of ideologies committed to killing hated ones, sanctioned by decrees religion adopted to become sacred, developed as aberrations of belief and trust in God.

Commoner: Jesus Christ is the only Son of God who was sent by Him to verify the Lord is the only God and to reveal His nature, and through Christ we can know what we need to know about God, none of it being by any aberrations.

Skeptic: If God indeed created us are we not all His sons, with the possibility some of us can be assigned to be His prophets, messengers receiving His Words to be delivered to all humans?

Jurdan: If we can all be prophets, as genuine as any of His children, we have the right to describe your Lord anyway we choose.

Skeptic: Allies may be found, identifying ones with your convictions, but they are likely to be rare, seeing your beliefs are difficult to match with others voicing different versions to describe God. If you are not careful, regarding your differences unimportant, an ally could quickly become an enemy, choosing to battle over different religious beliefs.

Jurdan: Maybe it would be better to align with ones having no religious beliefs, removing that factor in our considerations for choosing an ally.

Skeptic: Humans can't exist without religious beliefs, all needing to believe in something. Some may believe in nothing, regarding their lives as worthless and join any cause looking for a battle, a way to end their nonexistence, looking forward to finding a way to nothingness. Thinking they possess neither goodness nor evil, nothing can be destroyed by crucifixion, nothing being transformed into another state of nothingness.

Jurdan: Should a leader's recruitment be then for believers in religion, any form of belief, or in nonbelievers?

Commoner: In letting go to follow the Lord, we must let go to support one chosen by Him.

Skeptic: Trusting no more in weapons, in chariots driven by mighty steeds, realizing kingdoms can be lost for want of a horse, we rely now on lawyers, barristers having taken the key of knowledge, transfiguring its words, changing them for only their understanding, forcing all to depend on them, for justice depends on their language, taught to be spoken only by them, ordaining them to speak lies, endowing them with virtue reserved for themselves, developed by rhetoric as their mouthpiece. Does the Lord expect us to trust them?

Stranger: If you must rely on barrister allies, obligated to make treaties, compacts for identifying enemies, binding agreements for protection, and the wisdom you are inclined to ignore, you will suffer from negligence, forgetting human vows are seldom honored, dismissed when human will prevails. If you make any commitments to bless life's endeavors, do as Joshua prevailed upon the Lord, choosing Him to honor with vows and oaths. Contemplate the fate of others trusting in themselves and making promises with others alike.

Simple Simon: One's enormous burdens, overwhelming as they prove to be, obstacles having become stumbling blocks, must be cast upon the Lord for charged responsibilities to be relieved by Him, connecting with His power, dismissing one's self-confidence and humbling one's self-esteem to join Him in all things, recalling ancient wisdom to place burdens of direction on His shoulders.

Commoner: Why not seek His wisdom? Who but the Lord can anoint one with the oil of gladness, embellishing one's soul with lasting fragrances, indwelling it with joy, a bright radiance causing others to wonder, greater than any raiments created by human efforts?

Jurdan: Your Master, proclaiming truth, promising it to set you free, advises you to trust decrees strangling your free will and stifling its thoughts entertaining temptations by evil demons, forcing you to heed only His truths, to abandon all and be one with Him.

Stranger: You forget, or your ignorance claims innocence of the truth that everything in creation is designed for interaction with all others, allowing no freedom to escape from the loop of existence, and free will choice to abandon its position here is impossible. Your truth, being inferior and incomplete, can never set you free, disrupting your bonds of interacting with the whole.

Skeptic: People's lamentations, engrossing ones in failure, crying out for reasons why, seeking ways to escape dilemmas, give no relief, wondering why reason hides, venturing out with no suggestions.

Jurdan: Guarding ignorance, hardly revealing any reasons, careful with revelations, ruling mysteriously, withholding your Lord's countenance from view, proclaiming your ways can never amount to His, He insists on everything being His way, allowing your free will for His amusement, watching where it takes you.

Philosopher: Can a painting know it's artist, remembering how brush strokes distributed colors and forms, transposing ideas of beauty into reality, never leaving its creation with eyes to behold anything?

Prancing Grace: People were made to discover some god, an artist for creation, needing one to put first, trusting little in themselves--as it should be--and our cause will succeed with members so chosen. Given free will, it's hard to harness a free spirit and expect obedience, and moreover to trust their thoughts contrary and hidden, never to be exposed, guarded and kept secret, preventing fulfillment of inevitable despair and hopelessness marking human life.

Skeptic: Gods each have a realm to protect, giving its members a divinity to shepherd their needs, and leaders must honor each one in a pantheon, respecting them all with idols.

Jove: Working for God, finding activities to assure I do His will, but really in doing my will to ease my thoughts and distract any concerns about belief in Him, I intensify my deeds for Him to be confident of His trust, convinced my work would be great enough for Him to be merciful, seeing few others match my efforts in creating my idol.

Jurdan: Panic attacks people devoted to their Lord's work, telling them there is always more to do, more than one's efforts can accomplish, resulting in anxiety, and perhaps turning one's attention to greater spiritual devotions.

Skeptic: Panic is opening the door to misfortune, complicating one's efforts with frustration, viewing all accomplishments as never being enough, hardly rewarding their efforts, imagining spiritual needs might matter. Entering into wretchedness, attending to one's desires, trusting fulfillment as the fruit of reason, failing to consider the Lord's calling, can leave people empty, depending on where life finds them on the wheel of fortune.

Philosopher: Wretchedness is more, suffering ones greater for misdeeds when they are deprived of punishment, frustrating them for being ignored, compelling needs for greater evil as they seek ways to enact a coup d'état, defying decrees established for order, striking a pose for being terminated, brandishing a weapon to demand retaliation, inviting a duel, awaiting a justified missile, never to punish them but to end their hopelessness.

Skeptic: Believing we all seek happiness; how can such an ending make one happy?

Stranger: Some running away, fearing the worst, scattering to hide, wanting no part of consequences for their associations, represent ones exhibiting their bravery, standing on a precipice but refusing to cast their lot with certain danger, wishing only adulation for their audacity, never yet considering ending their lives. Others dive into frays without any thought, expecting destruction to end everything, this being their way of suicide. Why are some so made? Creation's goodness plans for people's survival, equipping their bodies with all forms of protection, against famine and disease, dangers beyond their control, but the Lord's decision to grant them free will, giving them choices decided by themselves, allows them decisions to end life as they choose. For many, when life's pleasures cease, bringing no further moments of happiness, afflicting their bodies with deterioration, idling their time with perceptions of pain and uselessness, choose to end their lives, picking the time themselves, never wanting to leave that to the Lord, believing satisfaction is gained by determining their ending.

Skeptic: Is virtue somehow hidden in selecting the time for self-destruction, authorizing a physician to assist, legalizing it for all, but who can determine criteria for allowing it to be just? Could it be as just, making it acceptable for young ones suffering pain and anguish from persistent congenital disabilities, never subsiding to make lives fulfilling as individuals born normal and complete? With reason humans trust in solving all problems, and with assisted or consented suicide virtue is acceptable, believing in it as an act of dignity.

Philosopher: Does dignity accompany suicide following murder, taking a partner into death, perhaps thinking it will never leave them isolated, without any relationships in the unknown, something not new to human thinking, seeing companionship was promised in death for ancient ones by killing ones highly favored? Do you believe human reason is greater today, trusting it to have made utmost progress, defying innate instincts to respond like their ancestors? Their progress is in transfiguring thoughts to satisfy today's reasonable convictions.

Wanton: It is not only the aged who are thus so committed. How do you explain the young and seemingly successful, in harmony with life, committing suicide, leaving no real explanation for their actions, being neither aged nor a down and outer?

Philosopher: They have some inherent urge to end life despite all appearances of well-being, and some are driven to involve others, forcing them to participate in mutual self-termination, while others with some sympathy for other humans, thinking their suffering is little different from theirs, may believe they have found a comrade in life's struggles.

Bystander: Speaking of those taking themselves down to death, never desiring life, loving few of its days, ignoring any thoughts of creation's goodness, imagining they might find redemption by transforming brooding sorrow, some resort to sacrifices practiced by their fathers, killing lives lower than themselves, considered blemished and judged no more than important than theirs, believed unworthy to be continued. But beware. All life is important for preservation, protected from harm as long as possible, seeing only blasphemy in its destruction.

Jurdan: Enlisting their freedom to choose, championing their free will and honoring their decisions as attributed to virtue, many select the time and day to end their lives, considering this act noble and brave, rejecting life, ending an existence never of their choosing, making this act one of highest calling.

Commoner: With age visiting me with forlorn anxiety, stealing my remaining dignity, judging it to be no longer useful, I fret not, seeing respect disappear, no longer honored as a precious treasure, while I accumulate it only for my Lord.

Skeptic: Claiming great wisdom, promoting prideful pretension, some believe they are created to change culture by modifying its customs, changing its laws, rearranging what all have been taught to live by, and with haughty dignity serve their self-claimed purpose. Assign me no great wisdom, having just enough to expect more happiness than the one with an owl under its hat.

Prancing Grace: Where justice fails, denying us dignity as human beings, depriving us of recognition, compromising our freedom, we may consider some form of violence to restore our place in the world, and if armed voices fail we may have to invade another's sovereignty to make us heard.

Skeptic: Peer's instructions dependent on dogmatic ideas incite violence, seldom compromising with peace, promoting youth to create enemies, sending out immaturity to seek adversaries, foes to battle, enraging their spirits to commit mayhem, to destroy whatever order and goodness they encounter.

Prancing Grace: We cannot accommodate these ways, forming youth to be untrainable, undisciplined, and difficult to change. If violence becomes necessary, we can take peaceful young people and train them to be whatever we need, but violence must be disciplined, never of the variety learned by one's peers.

Stranger: Harmony must be maintained, protected from disruption, mandatory to preserve our decrees, knowing disharmony can threaten and end all we strive to achieve. Peace fails with unlimited freedom of expression, allowing blemished intruders to enter and destroy our way of life, bearing weapons, firearms in addition to waging violence with their messages. Such expression of freedom invites us to give up on our way of life, leaving it to fear, compelling us to bear weapons for protection.

Skeptic: See how we have succeeded, growing violence faster than anything to better us as humans.

Excalibur: Consider how violence grows, thriving on ideology, depending on people's penchant for developing doctrines and dogmas, looking to religious prophets for material, gathering in their harvest to create fodder for violence.

Skeptic: People have always been fearful of others, never able to discern between friend and foe, forcing all to be armed, carrying weapons for protection against apparent enemies, trusted to be foes until proven to be friends, comrades joined to fear new enemies.

Stranger: Being fearful why should anyone deny caution and engage in death-defying adventures, only to cry for help when their defiance melts, having stepped outside danger's limits and come begging, appealing for assistance. Why does anyone choose to test danger, bragging about its exhilarating experience, racing through time, cast in its tumult, spinning around to disrupt one's senses?

Commoner: How else are heroes created, defying safeguard's conventions, chasing recognition by jeopardizing life's existence, while others covet virtue by service to others, doing nothing but serve the Lord, motivated only by ministering to His will, ignoring our will to serve humanity's desires.

Skeptic: Some people are like me, finding happiness in my kind of things, endeavoring risks to be ourselves, laughing at fate trying to discourage our ways, exhilarating with thrills to fascinate others.

Stranger: Taking risks is not for everyone, leaping over the limits of caution, falling into dens of danger, beds of chaos ruled by disorder at best and destruction at worst. Watching youth flock to engage risk, taunting danger to inflict harm, leaving wisdom unheard, mystifies maturity, confounding reason and ignoring common sense.

Simple Simon: Romanticism breeds adventures into reason's nonsensical and forbidden realms, driving youthful fantasies, thinking some rewards might be found in escaping from a life proven to be just and never losing its goodness, remaining beautiful to the wise.

Stranger: Fortune cannot brighten one's day, realizing only the Lord offers visions, dreams to summon enthusiasm, encouraging one to hear His messages, silencing worldly distractions and ending life's drudgery without Him.

Commoner: With so many hoping me to be happy, praying for my happiness, I am fated to strive for its gain, but finding its proven illusiveness, transfixing me for only moments, hope fulfilled from fantasy, I struggle each day, seeking to savor its brief appearances lasting as a twinkle in my mind, a short interval in the span of despair, as I try to discover new ways to renew happiness, to be distracted from burdens I am forced to bear.

Jurdan: Happiness is not a sometimes gift of fate, coming and leaving, dictated by fortune's whims, but must develop from one's inner spirit, reasoned by wisdom, assured to be lasting, never to be sought by a turn of fortune.

Wanton: Wouldn't it be better to acquire nothing but happiness by admiring objects of beauty, never allowing greed to covet treasures, wanting to sequester them away for one's periodic visitation? Does the Lord hide any beauty of creation, reserving it for His enjoyment, showcasing little of it for our pleasure?

Stranger: Boredom takes imagination to random places, setting desires to wander, tempting people to delight in exotic tastes, looking for moments of happiness, but they leave me unfulfilled, urging me to look further, promising better things to hope for.

Skeptic: Boredom found in abundant goodness reflects nothingness for many peering into life's mirror.

Commoner: Was I made to hear your distressing things, telling me to silence my acquisition of stray words, rumors, and innuendos, giving me concern and confusing my discernment, so my few moments of happiness will fail to appear? If troubles must distress you, let me hear nothing of them, keeping them to yourself and protect my ignorance.

Skeptic: Ignorance waits on fate's involvement, thinking some error delays its appearance, thinking fortune will bring good news to chase away doldrums and brighten resolve to look up, gathering in sunshine's promise to clear away burdens, removing the gloom from one's outlook.

Stranger: Fortune is your ghost, imagined greeting you with chance, responding to your call, invoking your turn in coming, beating the odds, blessing you with its magical appearance, and representing luck you lure with an amulet it cannot resist.

Commoner: What fortune brings never depends on chance to disappear, with all its opportunities vanishing, certainty determining their fate, time exacting its moment, seeing it never is of the Lord, so don't attribute anything to fortune, beseeching magic to present success.

Jurdan: People trust in divine providence being more than intervention by chance until their reason grows to discard beliefs in divine intervention when empowerment initiated and expanded by their will succeeds in convincing them to rule as they reject any pretensions of a deity's transcendence to support their ambitions.

Commoner: Focusing on the Lord, concentrating on His commitment to us, sustaining all our needs for existence, considering His concern for all creation, how can I repay Him but to remain in His keeping, never straying away, ignoring reason's calling to be out of touch with Him?

Jurdan: Your God doesn't care for people's bodies, being concerned only with their souls, limiting the body's existence, terminating life for flesh after a moment, decimating it into dust, bearing no memory of what it once was. He counters all claims of His care for creation, manifested in extensive documents on disposition of people's behavior, understanding their temptations, verifying they matter, claiming all are His children.

Stranger: Your gods, self-created and self-sustained, blessing your desires, blinding you to the only God, dismissing His Word as the only reason for one's being, convince you of being moral, promoting a self-assessment of being good.

Skeptic: What should we do with truth? Leave it as it is? Destroy and replace it with something to conform to our needs? Or maybe we can modify it with token changes. Better we can reinterpret its words, improving truth's intent without dishonoring it completely. Reasoning new ways to voice truth, subtly deceiving its integrity, altering it to make another's truth as good as mine, scatters its value, leaving nothing standing against evil, acknowledging evil's truths must be accepted as any other, stripping all truth of any integrity.

Stranger: Humans continually rework truths, experimenting with different modifications, testing them on their brethren, killing others to prove their worth, ignoring all unchanging, eternal truths as they eagerly enlist others to implement truths they devise, driven by power to proceed. Beware. Adding anything to God's Words jeopardizes one into being a liar, depriving them of joy, withholding blessings He promises for all who faithfully are true to His Word.

Commoner: As one of God's children, expecting Him to treat me as His Son Jesus Christ, trusting it to be no other way, using circumstances laid out before me, He prepares me to rejoin Him as a brother in Christ, waiting on the Father, obedient and willing as Christ, praying for us all to be one, knowing this is what He created us to be. So, I must live each day.

Jurdan: Do you live with integration of faith in your Lord during every moment of life? Do you belong to a tribe of bigoted fanatics, differing from others only in your doctrines and dogmas, proudly claiming to be inclusive, welcoming all contingent on others adopting your decrees, uniting them all in a brotherhood of your beliefs?

Stranger: We maintain neutrality, never siding with any side of religious factions, staying out of their differences, never squabbling over interpretations and revelations, never favoring one over the other, and we support tolerance for all except unshakable heretics by inviting all others in to assure diversity and inclusion.

Prancing Grace: We are no different, proclaiming neutrality, tolerating all to attract followers, showing we are nonjudgmental, fair and open-minded, frightening no one away, but we do have limits, being neutral most of the time and tolerating no one appearing to be intolerant.

Skeptic: Can you sit by and claim to be neutral when someone disrespects your cause, voicing remarks to grind your movement with distress, tolerating whatever comes along, never knowing when one's actions direct your purpose in a dangerous way?

Jurdan: Your God once scrambled people's tongues, distorting their words, hampering their communications, scattering their thoughts, but now does He restore them with a pure language, trusting they will call on His name to serve Him with one consent, hoping they will be of one mind, being now of one language?

Skeptic: He may have given them a pure language, allowing closer relationships with each other, but has that improved confidence in their reason, convincing them to create greater truths, convicting them to assemble wisdom as reliable as God's?

Stranger: What will become of our believers, removing all who rejoice in their pride, dismissing all who have transgressed against the Lord, removing all haughty ones, leaving only people afflicted and needy, trusting in the name of the Lord, looking to His leadership, relying on Him for stewardship of creation?

Jurdan: Reason binds and protects me, assuring me peace and tranquility, showing me I need little else, willing my desires completion, authorizing me as chieftain to determine my wants and satisfy me in all things.

Skeptic: You leave no room for fortune to come unannounced. Are you a self-created spiritual giant, waiting for promises you have willed yourself noble to receive, deserving because of your virtue, trusted to be granted by fate?

Jurdan: I never consider imaginary ideas offered by fortune or people's Lord, never believing in their suppositions, telling of voices speaking to them directly and responding to a litany of their wants, but I see little reward for their requests, begging mostly for what they never need.

Philosopher: People's free will suggesting everything imaginable permits freedom of religion with free choice becoming the forerunner of its demise, epitomizing fate for freethinkers, allowing all to reason their inclinations to establish beliefs.

Commoner: Would joining a new cause compel me to abandon existing loyalty, forcing me to forget my religion, acknowledging new ones are little different, being institutions demanding me to change my devotion, leaving my life focused on one form of Christianity to follow another?

Skeptic: What is religion but a vehicle for change, enabling one to modify Orthodoxy, adopting heresy to create a new doxology, seeing what was disappear, leaving only a faint memory how all began?

Jurdan: Can rulers creating new doxologies possess more wisdom than us, creating their own at will, dusting themselves with gold, garnishing words with strings of pomp, flaunting importance for all to see, trusting others will bow down but never knowing if their adulation is real, enough to embellish their hearts with holiness, wondering if a silver tongue can speak golden words?

Commoner: Attracted by spiritual giants receiving intuitions from the Lord and speaking garbled messages, I listen to their promises, telling all I want to hear, showing me how to choose, testing my trust in the Lord, offering the only way, for who else can I call a spiritual giant, having found no one to equal.

Skeptic: Trusting in spiritual intuitions you must have had religious experiences, and the strength of your belief in any truths is determined by what religion-developed verities you embrace. Have you many experiences, realizing they are the source of confusion? Spiritual awakenings, igniting fires of enthusiasm, feverishly delighting in a new joy, trusting in abiding passion for the Lord, may survive, but know that its ardor will wane, flickering with diminished light.

Jurdan: Multiple experiences take credit for religious doctrines and dogmas.

Theologian: You destroy time-honored rules for humans to live by, dismissing the importance for religious creeds, authorizing their replacement by human freedom, free will to establish self-reasoned rules.

Skeptic: That pronounces a truth people already follow.

Jurdan: Rulers, having no more wisdom than others, creating their own at will, being surreptitiously militant, hiding under a guise of peacefulness, use convincing words to recruit reluctant followers, lying about their intentions, and promise a life doomed to be hopeless.

Commoner: Many wannabe leaders urge me to accept their beliefs, unlike Jesus who offers me a promise, a trusted hope, by giving up all my godly treasures to follow Him. Coming with fiery zeal, I was discouraged by the requirements to follow Him, but weighing my treasures against the poverty of His way, I left to serve Him.

Simple Simon: If God calls me, sending a message through the Holy Spirit, I have nothing for discussion with others, never jeopardizing my faith by any significant reasons, nothing to confuse His message with my will's attempts to justify its reliability, for my confidence in Him surpasses all I have developed for myself, for all that human reason allows.

Skeptic: His followers believe they will share the Lord's divine power, all things pertaining unto life and godliness, trusted by acquiring His knowledge, thinking He has called them to glory and virtue, giving them exceedingly great and precious promises, making them partakers of His divine nature, freed from lusty desires of a corrupted world.

Stranger: Created with a yearning for God, a need to know Him, we cannot reason that our Creator doesn't exist, mocking His creation with an imagination for something nonexistent while imputing us with a yearning for Him, assuring us of redemption and being invited to rejoin Him, a coming about for our restoration.

Excalibur: For promising greatness and realizing its fulfillment, seek leaders genuinely transparent in recruiting followers, ones never mangling religious convictions by erasing all to be nothing or claiming neopaganism requiring no separation from the state, and blinded to totalitarian history proven to foster evil. Can you support Christian principles and silence voices of false spiritualities, realizing any aims to become powerful will never materialize for a Christian society, ignoring all claims for living in a Christian nation?

Commoner: Any leader must allow me to remain Christ-like, continuing to accept responsibility for everyone's sins, carrying His burden, making it mine, but who will allow this for their followers?

Prancing Grace: No one can be burdened with sins of all, carrying them to be sacrificed with one's life, for we cannot sanction such behavior, actions conflicting with work our followers will be compelled to complete for us. Our cause will test one's diligence, verifying dedication to our movement, studying mind's tendencies to distractions bringing one to stumble in any endeavors, realizing treachery can hide beneath one's resolve, waiting for the right moment to spring forth with undirected energy exceeding any yet seen.

Skeptic: In what manner would its moment appear?

Commoner: No one can claim treachery in reconciling with our Creator-God, believing He created me with some value, blessing me with gifts, and trusting me to be worthwhile in my brief existence here. He wants us to develop more than some holy life and not abandon cares of the world. He wants all to be in the world, remaining in His creation, maintaining attention on opportunities He presents us with. Loving the Lord, belonging wholly to Him, isolates me, taking me away from the world, and I cannot choose this now, seclusion in a monastery trying to redefine myself.

Skeptic: Seek God's reason for your creation and rely not on your own. If you discover its reason reliance on the Lord is no longer necessary, committing you to unsettling worry, anxiety for each living moment, confinement to a pit of bleakness, unable to discern truth, bound to reason and to torment common sense deified as wisdom.

Jurdan: Leaders would dethrone your King, sending Him to oblivion, ending ignorance and maneuvering to replace him with the people's will, but which of their convictions will leaders accept, ones speaking most vociferously, hoping to fill their closets with treasures, applauding most ardently, or ones prepared to offer their bodies, fulfilling leader's pleasures or needs to secure power? And what of the remainder, ignoring them except with lies, making promises with unreliable vows, entertaining them with pageants to maintain some respect, bestowing honor to their rank, but if they are to claim virtue, honor cannot come from merit without virtue.

Skeptic: Concealed by reason, telling followers obedience must radiate their countenance and maintain composure at all costs; envy must wait its time and deactivate their true nature, and never expose what they truly are. Envy unravels people's facades, exposing souls deep into themselves, seeping out through gilded garments and tarnishing golden virtues with lasting corrosions, willed to redesign goodness, scattering it to justify wants, keeping portions protecting their needs.

Commoner: I distrust ones uttering everything on their mind, endlessly repeating words, resorting to blabber when their thoughts go blank, for no space is given to hear anything offered them, as they gather their wits for the next thing to say, composing a monolog, thinking someone is near to listen. Must one pay heed, hoping some gem worth hearing will be spoken?

Skeptic: Human words are exposed to reality's light, making it necessary never to conceal truth in darkness, voices to be discerned as truth. Stripping away icons and crafted figures, doctrines and dogmas, leaving sanctuaries bare, distracting no one from hearing messages claimed to be from God, can any be trusted to be essential for discerning His presence in a space voided of all human fabrications hiding the marvelous compositions of His Creation, or is a decorated sanctuary critical to hindering all distractions, for maintaining attention to its holiness?

Stranger: The Lord helps me to remove my self's icons blocking entrance to my soul, barring the way to authorize needed confession of judgments for all those unlike me, realizing He cannot accept my following until I clean the house and make room for goodness to return.

Prancing Grace: Valued as some would be, believing they could be trusted followers in our cause, we suspect some might become loosened canons, rolling over ordered placements, scattering assembled structures, inflicting damage on our converted minds, never knowing how they might read new insights in Biblical readings and develop new dogmatic ideas, making them equations for the moment, revealing unpredictabilities the cause would encounter.

Stranger: Leaders need prophets, seers people can trust, convincing them of a cause's importance, never creating ideological obstacles of their own.

Skeptic: Do you trust prophets sent by the Lord?

Prancing Grace: Prophets must be loyal to our ideas, convincing others of practical means to achieve an ideal society, fair and equal, perhaps designated to be utopian.

Simple Simon: Would you defraud your followers, fabricating truths for their support, blocking the door to their soul, poisoning their reason with lies, destroying the life-blood for their inheritance, promising them decaying fruits of your imagination, hoping their stench will never be noticed, convinced their senses have been destroyed, closed to perceptions of reality, silencing calls from God beckoning them unto holiness, never returning them to recognize the goodness of creation, alive with beauty, spoiled only by human imaginations.

Stranger: The Lord never defrauds His followers, keeping His promises, sending the Holy Spirit to remind all who Jesus is, convincing us He remains alive. Evangelists speak of His being, but if I never allowed His Messenger to direct my life, I could just as easily forget Him, never trusted as someone important, the Son of God. I could have followed His calling, responding as Peter, but see how his faith in Jesus waned, fleeing from identification with Him until he was entrusted with the Holy Spirit, receiving messages from the Lord and reminding him never to forget God's Word, to carry on with the work He calls all to do.

Skeptic: Humans frantically searching for knowledge, trusting it to expand wisdom, understand little that impatience never allows reason to match its pace, lagging, thinking it will catch up, expecting what one has of common sense will transform knowledge into truth, however ephemeral it might be, and one may beget wisdom, at least for the moment, justifying disagreements for breaking relationships.

Jurdan: Schisms can never be ignored, being a necessary option for human life, dictating separation of relationships, honoring disagreements with a loftier term, using reason to justify parting of ways, separating individuals into bands with fewer numbers, understanding less are needed to be in accord, waiting until someone can develop a new disagreement, knowing people are not inclined to live peacefully with others, needing to conjure up a reason for discord.

Wanton: Great schisms are real, reported for Jesus professed loyal following, realizing they scattered with His crucifixion, discarding all memory of His convictions, believing He died as all holy ones, so they needed to go on with life and perhaps find another claiming-to-be messiah, struggling to wonder if God would send another.

Skeptic: Have you no sympathy for His disciples, seeing their Messiah go the way of all mortals, soon to disappear from their memory? For what is your trust greater? Have you belief in living as you are forever? No one is made to live and not die, living beyond the time the Lord has given them, maintaining their code intact, untarnished by the throes of existence, despite citing the example of a few, Elijah being one who disappeared and seemingly never tasted death, but no one knows his fate. What will never die is one's spirit, never to disappear by decay following the way of its flesh, so trust in eternal existence for one's spirit.

Jurdan: The Spirit cannot operate without one's flesh, needing nutrients to nourish both and essential needs don't exist outside the world, making existence impossible for any part of one's being. How can the soul, bearing one's spirit, be fed in any other place but here? You claim we will be reborn into a new world, thinking we will continue our existence little different from here. Your imagination must be immense, extending beyond all reason, exercising no common sense to believe, trusting in some fantasy of a new heaven and new earth, with nothing to offer on what that will require.

Wanton: I need no new body, having experience of one being enough, surviving the afflictions of one being too many, trusting it to be my trial, never meant to be a bed of roses, but I understand nothing, such being the limitations of my existence here.

Skeptic: Do you trust in the deceased looking down on us, smiling at our happiness, while needing neither body nor face we can see, all having gone the way of dust? If we ascend into a new creation, would we have such powers, spirits equipped to venture back into the land they came from? Reason claims this is hardly so.

Stranger: How can one reason, knowing it must be based on truth and ones never discerning truth have no capacity to reason? Assembling facts are uncertain ways to create truth, leaving wisdom an imaginary virtue. The Lord never uses our facts assumed to be completed knowledge to develop wisdom, but knowing what can and will happen, He gives us the wisdom to face situations and tests us with circumstances to determine whether we listen.

Commoner: With all existence in relationships, connections maintaining contact, delight comes from harmony, each item pleasing its neighbors, and the Creator assures all can be in accord, giving each means for restoration, for healing following relationship's disruption, directing His wisdom for recovery.

Wanton: Creation is impossible without the glue of relationships, bonding everything and everyone into symbiotic harmony, the Lord creating nothing new without it, but chaos developed within relationship's order when the Lord decided humans must have free will, knowing He cannot delight in His highest being deprived of free will, watching His crown of creation live with an unbridled imagination to act by one's will and never anticipating what one will do.

Skeptic: What will humans do? All are made to betray brethren, harboring animosity built on jealousy and greed, dismissing others as less worthy, undeserving of time and attention, ignoring their needs or interests, focusing devotion on their concerns, rejecting any virtue for harmony.

Wanton: Harmony you say? Delighting myself in the Lord fails, expecting much, promising much, receiving little, blessing none of my heart's desires, so how can I trust Him above people I know? He created Harmony on His terms, giving me little understanding of His intentions.

Commoner: My faith, committed to be everlasting, tuned in when I pray, trusted to be strong during my quiet time with the Lord, can quickly be forgotten, ignored during burning needs of a moment and recurring needs demanding my attention, consuming my concerns with little rest. Must my faith be all-consuming, giving me few intervals for tending to requirements for survival?

Skeptic: What drives your heart's desires, asking if they contribute to treasures in heaven, never wanting greed to pilot your worldly expectations, garmenting you with highly valued possessions doomed to wither into dust, returning to their basic elements? Is your heart perverse, dedicated to the world but despised by the Lord?

Commoner: Educated to believe nothing is impossible, I struggle to trust this as truth, but failure on discovering this idea exposes human wisdom, trapping me into following its truths, leading me to understand only for God is nothing impossible, and only by belonging entirely to Him, rejoicing in His almighty powers, can I join in His blessings.

Skeptic: Deceit stains our purity, revoking our goodness, blemishing it to threaten our relationship with God, giving us no excuse to claim innocence, marking us with impurities difficult to be removed, cleansed only by confession and repentance to restore harmony with the Creator, trusting in His blessing for the pure in heart to see Him. Finding no one pure in heart, will He have none to see Him, blessing no one to have an audience with Him?

Commoner: Who knows? By His grace, we can endeavor to grow in purity,

Skeptic: What grace waits for me, knowing failure and defeat confront my efforts, designed without the Lord's help, depending on self-sufficiency to confirm my decisions, choosing all to be done my way.

Prancing Grace: Our cause commits us to carry an enormous burden, assuming responsibility to serve many people, listening to their needs, working diligently to satisfy their desires, all requiring self-sufficiency.

Stranger: With your cause setting your aim on power, you must clean out the closet concealing your past, hiding all your deeds from probing inquisitors, knowing they pay their respects where unworthy acts can be uncovered, verifying you have tamed spirit as you have attested, no longer yoked with lust to plow strange ground, because finding any you will be shorn of power, becoming powerless consummated by probing inquiries.

Excalibur: Trained to believe everyone is burdened with guilt, tarnishing ones believing in their innocence, saddling all with consequences of original sin, reasoning guilt justifies punishment, all being prerequisites for learning to hate, people detest virtuous my-selves enough to deliver deserved punishments. Killing all those stained by hatred, removing them from remembrance, is most effective, leaving none to be forgiven by faint hearts, destroying any who might be judged and found innocent and virtuous coming back to haunt a killer's decision, never agonizing whether justice would ever return to punish them with remorse.

Skeptic: How could life be any different with doctrines and dogmas watching every word one utters, waiting to spring forward with every action one takes? Guilt is ready to jump on everything before anything happens. Indeed, we must be born sinful, exercising the way we are made.

Wanton: Instructed in folly by our Creator, should we not continue with merriment, composing songs of mockery, singing music that ridicules creation's goodness, transforming its beauty into detestable noises, blasting away in harmonic dysfunction, authorizing people to celebrate liberty with mayhem, never recognizing the trash they leave as they sink back into darkness before dawn can return with truth, bringing light to shine on all worth seeing, resounding with the sound of creation's melodies, its sound of music.

Stranger: All is not lost. Virtuous human qualities are evident, justifying esteem and confidence, overriding inclinations tempting us to sink into depravity, persisting to maintain virtues struggling to gain control.

Wanton: Forget virtue with anxiety seizing me to accompany lust on its way, lengthening its stay with impatience seeming to last an eternity, but virtue flees quickly, returning in brief moments after lust has had its way, anxiously considering repentance for the unwanted never being undone, staining any goodness the Lord had provided.

Skeptic: What thoughts lie behind sullen eyes, never peering at anyone, leering only as directed, following dictates of limits established for humans half-devil and half-child, accumulating resentment in their waiting silence, looking for opportunities to explode, to challenge anything, never certain of what might be profitable, defying accepted order to protest, following their father coming to claim them, fulfilling their mother's destiny to give them a birthright, unsure of what it might be.

Commoner: Our birthright is the Lord forgives those confessing their sins, testified by His reluctance to judge the adulteress by never picking up the first stone, declining to seize it to stone her to death, acknowledging we are all sinful, telling her to sin no more.

Skeptic: He didn't say when to begin, and if He has indeed given up His deity to be known as human by us, shouldn't knowing how humans are made, driven by instincts directed by innate codes, give Him cause to acknowledge what He asks is unnatural, as people watch the manners of all life to be pollinated by whatever a bee might carry to a nest?

Simple Simon: Careful unbelief, tentative belief, trusting us to worry, to be anxious about things the Lord can care for, overwhelms us, exhausting all our energy, as we fret over what will be gone tomorrow, worry being what our will directs us to, questioning our trust in the Lord, thinking we can manage it better, as we choke the Word He puts in us, punishing us with despair, until hope can delight us to enter His presence.

Skeptic: Assured of all being gone tomorrow, what independence can I find in wealth, knowing it will consume my endeavors, padlocking six approaches to its hiding, protecting it from theft, securing it as all treasures, cherishing its fondling, forcing me to seal it in a vault, doing as directed for my deceased remains? Comprehend this concern, worry that is needed now, knowing this will soon cease to be important, remaining relevant only for the living.

Jurdan: Seeking completeness, promising independence, permits breaking bonds of interaction, sealing my powers of being all, needing nothing to add to myself, satisfying needs for no other, supported by accumulated wealth, living to enjoy only one's treasures, filling vaults to adorn, sealed in darkness from all eyes to see.

Commoner: Praying for us to be truly one with Him, united completely in all ways, do we agree with Him, convicted of this being more than a possibility if we are determined our will directs us to be our person, denying any idea we must be all in one?

Skeptic: On seeking the Lord to know His will, how can we understand Him, telling Him our concerns followed by proclaiming His will be done, as we remain ignorant, saying only He knows, leaving us with no clue on the actions of the One who we believe is in complete control.

Wanton: The heart is restless, seeking distractions to waylay inevitable consequences of life, scurrying to and fro, tasting all creation has to offer, moving about with an empty soul, guided by whims of the moment while declaring His will be done.

Skeptic: Seeing and hearing too much distracts one from worthwhile convictions, confusing perceptions, neglecting virtue in pursuit of pleasure, tempting one from defining what should determine life, choosing to be happy above all else.

Commoner: Without distractions is life more than nothing, my mind alone in nothingness, hoping to be filled with noteworthy thoughts, some framework for guidance, asking how do I begin if there is no one to teach me, having no library to consult, possessed by only what I see and hear?

Skeptic: Herding reason and common sense blowing in the wind, chasing after to see where they may alight on wisdom, revealing disputable facts for configuring truth, why shouldn't we seek distractions to invest in entertainment, trusting diversions to hide us from futility, making our season for happy moments.

Stranger: Look to the Lord, rely on Him to teach His way, seeing only Him without interference by human reason or common sense.

Jove: I organize my choices, being discriminate, selecting appropriate ones by reason, cataloging them into lists of priorities. God only knows if He treats selections for chance this way, something for me never to know, as He has the unending list of options, perhaps accumulating to beyond infinity.

Wanton: Slogging through life, facing drudgery each morning with time moving at a stand-still, I have too much on my mind, my days being nothing but in despair, forever in worry, anxiety feeding my soul, creeping in to disturb tranquility, questioning my hopes, proclaiming what a fool I am.

Jurdan: Discovering reasons for worry, anxious about anything calling forth your conscience, filled with every is that must become an aught, unending when compiled by humans with their truths, you choose to dwell there.

Wanton: But I am taught human admonitions and see them all as legal decrees, controlling my spoken actions, forcing me to worry about any hidden in silence, poised to multiply pain for my conscience, exacting punishment for my conception of sin.

Skeptic: What good is punishment, lasting as unending retribution, as a tool of revenge, never arousing remorse for the judge, wondering if goodness lacks purpose, never considering redemption, thinking evil demands a pound of flesh? Payment is made, sacrificing more than a measure of flesh, with death awaiting to exact its toll, leaving only the soul, unmeasurable by weight but possessing a ticket for where it's going.

Wanton: Would it have been better if I hadn't been born with His story, muddled by humans in ways thought to please Him, showing directions known to have failed, trying to give Him a human image, using human reason to mangle His goodness, ignoring creation's beauty by developing one's own, investing in intelligent design?

Jurdan: Human intelligence, seeking ways to understand your Lord, creating many doctrines and dogmas, fails to know Him better, unable to satisfy people's curiosity and decides on investigating themselves, to recreate themselves so they can forget trying to discover an imaginary deity who never could enter our reality. Call our endeavors a creative project in intelligent design.

Wanton: Able to entice others with only human wisdom, boasting of fleeting power, affirming evolutionary convictions for your creation, you have no spirit to call on, thinking yourself is the spirit to summons, needing no other to have your way, believing in none of God's hidden knowledge, seeing many others seek power in ways no different from yours.

Stranger: Where lies loyalty, seeking ones quick-witted with reason, beguiling all with common sense, trusting those following the crowd, believing the majority must be favored, admiring people articulating natural desires?

Skeptic: Loyalty fades for ones choosing to be high priests, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, abandoning the world's blessings, impatiently waiting for a new home in heaven, reserved for those most honored, leaving worldly others to develop their own priesthood, finding new ways to remain acceptable, protecting domains of the masses.

Simple Simon: Loyalty shines for brides of Christ, united with Him in marriage, a sacrament ordained by God, sanctioned for believers, unneeded for unbelievers free to will any relationships, authorizing whatever they choose, freely committing themselves to anything of their liking, mangling His sacraments, flaunting its sanctity, never blessing them with some sense of innocence when their secular relationship needs no such authorization, allowing them to live as they choose, their inalienable treasure of human rights, protecting their liberty, dignifying them as people, believing nothing should forbid their actions, reminding all beings are creatures of goodness entitled to dignity and nothing should refuse them due blessings of being human..

Stranger: Never certain of His Words, coming in visions and dreams, giving people insufficient assurance of being from God, He sent One to show all who He is and what He is like, revealing all one needs to know, giving us the only reliable directions for following Him.

Excalibur: God sent many, bringing messages of revelation, showing His almighty powers, but few listened, trusting their wisdom to describe His will, writing doctrines and creating dogmas to satisfy His commandments, but He is compelled to move mountains, imperceptible changes in landscapes to bury human decay, demolishing reminders of wasted human life, condemning sites for people's return, withholding rain to depopulate fertile soil, creating oases to replenish needs for migrant people wandering under the Lord's direction, appearing to obey Him but forcing Him to choose another for restoring creation's goodness.

Skeptic: Which of you knew God, except from your imagination of Him, believing you were made in His image, telling you to look within yourself to picture Him?

Wanton: Created in God's image, possessing body, mind and spirit, trusting His equivalent in the Trinity, we mirror Him, three in one, designed to be complementary, fitting us to connect with Him, but our mind's accumulation of knowledge and our free will to wander away on our own enables the prodigal in us, telling us to leave our father-creator and marry enchantresses of the world to exercise what we are created for.

Stranger: Stripping away the Lord's influence, ignoring His guidance, leaving people to determine their course, empowers a few to destroy souls, evicting the Holy Spirit, preparing the minority few for enslaving the many, establishing a kingdom for servitude.

Skeptic: That is impossible when each religious entity claims necessary conditions developed by them through scholarly study or the Lord's revelation, considered mandatory to become a member and participate in their rituals. Can you find a group, preaching biblically-based messages, proclaiming the Lord's word, who doesn't add people's interpretations, ones searched out to please their hearers?

None: Imagination stripping ideas of all form, conjuring visions, blueprints and invisible fantasies of wandering minds, never translating into reality dreams of what chance has yet to propose, tries its hand at intelligent design, thinking it can replace doctrines and dogmas.

Stranger: Intelligent design attempts to describe something already created, the Lord's patterns for creation, designing ways to read the environment, investigating genetic plasticity for responding to human needs, modifying life's DNA components, changing them by adding methyl groups, enabling some to have a different purpose, rearranging components to improve function, decommissioning others when no longer needed, producing a scrap heap of unused DNA having no way to be discarded.

Skeptic: Scrap heaps are for accumulations of ignorance, discarding the useless, possessing little for understanding.

Commoner: Accepting what I am, molded by God's design, needing no modification by humans, I sometimes question my adversities, knowing I was created to agonize over random spontaneous afflictions, always unwanted and seemingly undeserving, reacting with despondency, despair inherent, responses innately endowing my nature, and I trust the Lord blessed me with His design, creating me never to be distracted into burying His messages but to be awakened and tormented by impatience until I listen to Him and change.

Excalibur: The Lord's design doesn't change, reaffirmed by many different prophets speaking to all humans, messengers blessed and ordained coming in the name of the Lord, commissioned by Him to represent all people and authorized to promise restoration of His kingdom.

Wanton: I should never be so recognized, fearing ridicule by self-styled Pharisees worshipping reason, confining religion to the closet, maintaining separation of the Lord from all my proclamations.

Excalibur: If Jesus comes back would you know it, seeing no one recognized Him at His first coming, waiting for a Messiah unlike Him? God could choose to send Him back, not as we want Him but as God wants Him to be, and He could be rejected again, never fitting the image we would like Him to be. If He comes back and supplies our needs, enlarging our kingdom, would we soon tire of Him, conceding He has served His purpose? The Lord may choose to send Him again but this time disguising Him as alien to our experience, trying to win our acceptance that failed before.

Wanton: Admitting to daydream on the Lord's opportunities, I seldom resolve to act on what He seems to propose, reasoning they are illusions, catching me in a moment's reflection, disturbing my reason and catching my common sense off guard.

Commoner: Is this the nature of quiet time, allowing no dream-like intrusions, structuring everything mindful with logic, reasoning to create solutions, trusting only knowledge to formulate wisdom?

Skeptic: How can one know if quiet time, mired in daydreaming, convicts one of anything coming from the Lord, separating nonsense from convincing truth?

Commoner: Many seek to betray me, invoking reason and praising its power, trusting it to reject Christ, believing no arguments can stand up to support Him, knowing science has never agreed with the miraculous claims of His life and resurrection, but unable to trust my reason, my heart remains convinced of His being who He was and still is, telling me I should use reason only for survival needs on earth.

Wanton: What about those trusting in themselves, forming wisdom by reason, watching what others do, witnessing happiness in their glee? Sowing my regrets, watering them with tears, hiding them in barren soil, concealing them to remain forgotten, no longer able to rebuke me, how can I find a way to plant my hopes where I can reap joy?

Commoner: Tears are for washing your soul with living water, cleansing evil from one's heart contaminated by lusty desires, removing worldly wants, restoring the space designed to be home to the Holy Spirit, coming to convict us to treasure a full assurance of faith.

Wanton: The unreality you assign satisfies my desires and deserves equal favor as any reality or unreality you may be committed to, and I can reason for their support

None: Given a choice could you know reality and unreality so you could choose to accept either absolute righteousness or absolute freedom?

Skeptic: Your options invite tyrannical oppression, both being essentially the same. Has judgment any comparison, showing anything to envy, giving nothing to fear, nothing to hope for, revoking our humanity, so we don't recognize oppression, making us as beasts unaware of any suppression controlling our lives?

Jurdan: Absolute righteousness and absolute freedom require dogmatic doctrines, decrees destroying human dignity, devising diabolical ideologies to control all.

Skeptic: With weapons of demonic ideas to best control, tyrants rule the world, exercising power, determining applications, judging distributions to engage for destruction or conquest, wielding fire to engender fear. Never forget, humans have the right to bear weapons of destruction, decrees protecting their innately driven prerogative, badges to assure they got nothing to worry about, as they swagger from one confrontation to seek another.

Commoner: Does belief in truth setting us free, giving us all truth to be known, assure absolute freedom?

Wanton: Hearing I should stand fast in Christ, liberating us from ourselves, making us new in Him, disentangling us from being slaves to iniquity, should I trust Him more than any human doctrine protecting me with freedoms people choose, profiting me only with freedoms the Lord made for me to have?

Skeptic: Discovering a cause to champion, fighting against injustices making people who they are, identifying anything odorous with injustice, reasoning it to conform to their needs, marching to gain satisfaction, freedom struggles against entrenched society, justifying their will to free speech.

Jurdan: Do you speak for relative freedom, determined by one's needs, dictated by the moment's desires, with no regard how it affects one's relationships?

Skeptic: Relative freedom is doing everything my way and for my-selves isn't this absolute freedom?

Commoner: Absolute freedom is chaos, the existence of our cosmos before the Lord brought order, creating all by His Word.

Skeptic: Absolute righteousness is order embedded in concrete, eliminating any essence of freedom essential for creation's development.

Jurdan: Your ideas justify relative justice and relative freedom which the world lives by, rejecting any notion we can ever be intolerant, never accepting others as they are.

Skeptic: Human doctrines and dogmas tolerate little of what we are created to be, forcing all our thoughts and actions to be relative, such as virtue, coming in degrees determined by each person to become comparable, trusting in the degree agreed to by one's knowledge, supporting a knowing created by one's myself, judging to give it a ten, the highest score possible to be virtuous.

Commoner: Being religious I tolerate other beliefs, never making the mistake of outlawing any, trusting others believe in my proclamations of God being with us, and I accept other's convictions of His nature, treating their beliefs as good as any others.

Skeptic: Tolerance weaves a wobbly way on a whimsical path, an enigma flaunted and glorified by some, excoriated by others calling it sinful, believing in nothing, caring for nothing, seeking nothing to know, enjoy, love or hate, to find purpose in or live for, persisting because nothing calls for its dismissal.

Wanton: I hear you, admitting religions are relative, having no beliefs better than what you consider orthodox. Truly, obedience is not observed by merely hearing words of some scribe but is promoted by examples, experiences of genuinely holy and righteous ones showing how we are to live. Spoken words, exquisitely articulated deserving much flattery, are tedious for most and boring for many, soon forgotten and defying remembrance, establishing few examples, marking them as so much rhetoric.

None: True, but repeating someone's words, reporting them over and over, will convince some to adopt them as truths, and embellishing them for greater belief will make them lasting doctrines.

Jurdan: Judge me as a libertarian, seeing me as one mind to free all from law's injustices, obligating no one to be a brother's keeper, protecting my self-ordination sanctioning my righteousness as equal to any others, acknowledging little can be done wrong if I am to myself what must be, recognizing such freedom in all others, and living it as my only lasting document.

Skeptic: If tolerance must be eulogized, freeing everyone from conscience's pleadings, where does one begin? Did something shake us into indifference, shuttering out all concern, scattering principled goodness into disarray to forget its once importance, perhaps as an unapproachable fiction, never to be realized, only to be imagined, something proposed by a person's gods? Is goodness the realization of all being permitted, achieved by unlimited freedom, the reward of destroying relationships bonding individuals to constant conflict, resulting from laws, decrees, commandments, and natural forces of nature.

Commoner: Your doubts carrying some merit, showing your intention of being a doomsday critic, finding fault with everything, reveals a glimmer of hope, a dimly evidence of light bearing truth, suggesting my efforts are not wasted in consummating a bargain with the Lord, trusting He doesn't change, never ceasing to interact with me, never scheduling me to encounter terror or casting me to the whims of fate, to be thrown about in uncertainty's feeding on sorrow, making life fearful, chasing me into darkness where truth is unknown, to be a stranger before light was created, allowing all power of my pride, hidden from light's goodness where I can live as I choose.

Stranger: Ones confused, spending much time in despairing concern, ask why they are demonized by worry, protecting their freedom, maintaining themselves as their I am, ungluing any relationships, isolating themselves from everything. Recognize how many options can freeze one's decision-making, bombarding them into inaction, seldom cleaning out their soul, removing all conflicting ideas from their thoughts, simplifying their truths, silencing other's wisdom. Accept only the Lord's, allowing no one to meddle with His truths by trusting importance for ideas creating denominations and sects.

Commoner: What I once was, anxiety chasing wealth, following its footsteps, fearing security for its treasures, hiding them from thieves' scrutiny, protecting them in protective vaults, little-acknowledging wealth disappears, its value diminishing, hardly different from its beholders rotting in crypts, hidden from all sight. Is this different for gold and silver, suffering only to tarnish, useless except to flaunt treasures and the pride they offer, with prideful one's unending treasures sustaining their demeanor, reflecting haughtiness to maintain their heart's delight,

Simple Simon: Certainly humans rejoice with pleasure increasing on growing wealth, spoiling them with intermittent happiness despite intervening intrusions of fate arising periodically to disrupt their contentment, realizing God sometimes transcends lives to taint one's happiness.

Skeptic: Having no attentive audience my words blow away with the wind, disappearing without being heard, perhaps seeking a hiding place, waiting for another generation to understand, discovered as new by someone else, one unaware that there is nothing new under the sun, proclaiming Eureka, look at what has been revealed, an understanding of primary importance.

None: Expanded knowledge, undaunted by your doubting exclamations, helps me to modify my conscience, teaching how to discard feared ideas and actions diminishing my dignity to give perceptions of myself greater nobility, freeing me from conceptions of corruption, silencing its protests, dismantling my conscience, so it never interferes with my happiness. Reason lost its power to be an apologetic managing the voice of my conscience, so I trust reason now to dismiss its calling and respond to the needs of my desires, recognizing we are made to desire and want and need no conscience to filter them by some imaginary standard.

Commoner: Faithful to commitments, obeying the Lord's commands, I stir up purity in my conscience to counter temptations lurking in darkness, attempting to slither into my thoughts, knowing their evil carries nothing good, their promises for happiness never lasting but urged on, clamoring acceptance by hawkers bargaining to win custody of my soul, scoffers waiting to destroy my relationship with the Lord.

Jurdan: We know ones like you were baptized into your Jesus' death and now are useless for any purpose needing living bodies, enlisting no one dead to living goals but serving others reportedly free from sin, separated from all others born in sin. We need no one distracted by illusions of otherness, believing they have been resurrected to a disillusionment they choose to follow, to live in a world different from ours. We must distrust these renegades since they lurk everywhere, waiting for chances to steal our comrades in mind, converting ones weak in convictions, proselytizing many to join their way, making them useless for our endeavors wanting no one dead in their sins, being lost, disobedient to all we espouse, having lost all their instruments of unrighteousness, escaping our dominion over them, ignoring our laws as they choose to be sheltered under the grace of their God, choosing Him to follow, to be obedient as His servants, serving as His lackeys for righteousness, trusting to be transformed into the holiness of their Creator, thinking the wages of sin is death and believing in religion's illusion that faith in their God promises them to have everlasting life.

Skeptic: Are you different from others, developing doctrines and dogmas as your trusted beliefs, following them to deny our Lord, simplifying everything to nothingness?

What would happen if all your decrees were destroyed, leaving all beliefs chaotic?

Jurdan: My views lack doctrines and dogmas, being a religion of unbelief because decrees religions treasure give reasons for people to hate.

Commoner: Baptized into suffering, condemning existence to begin in a house divided, did my new convictions assigning allegiance to the Lord, break bonds to my treasured relationships, designating enemies I never had before, convincing me to become intolerant of others, teaching me how to develop hatred where none was had before?

Skeptic: Hatred drives one to dig pits, preparations for casting subjects into an abyss, fabrications of darkness, dragging victims from the light, discarding ones living in truth, sending them into a blatant lie to be forgotten without memory, trashed as a victim of perverted justice. Leaving the pit intact, it's door open to claim others; diggers may have opened their own grave, giving time for judgment to spin in its circle, landing on justice to devour its maker. Digging graves, being humans most likely venture, settling means to confirm hatreds, conspire with evil thoughts to end conflicts, but evil having no will to ease hostilities, plans for all a Gotterdammerung, returning creation to the chaos from which all began, sensing humans lack innate direction, needing more insight to solve their problems.

Wanton: Enlisting hatred, unknown as our enemy, we pay for it with death, compensation for being born in sin, payback by the Lord as retribution for our iniquities. Why does He create us to be puppets dangling over a fire of anxiety and suffering?

Commoner: Placed on the Lord's altar, willing to be sacrificed, purified by burning to consume the weeds, destroying the chaff to separate evil from goodness, we can prepare ourselves for His work, pouring ourselves out for Him, trusting fate is not ours but His.

Skeptic: Is your cause just, having religion's glue binding it to justice, making it a cause to be celebrated by all people, or does it have some trace of distrust, benefitting a few while ignoring the masses?

Excalibur: Each religion's glue binds followers to its doctrines and dogmas of justice, dispensing grace and mercy to its chosen members, sanctifying its believers for salvation, but realize binding substances can be toxic, containing poisons of promising dishonesty failure, being forerunners of disloyalty, betraying one's dignity. Tolerate little corruption of those proclaiming democracy, creating regulations to protect their interests, self-assured of their innocence, decreeing feeble punishments for crime, avoiding swift and uncompromising retribution for offenses of fraud and deceit. Undo their glue to free all from consequences of their beliefs.

Skeptic: Your proposal tolerates no religions, eliminating all their doctrines and dogmas, sending human's back to worship nature, becoming tree huggers and animal lovers, protecting all because they are sacred.

Excalibur: Not quite. Trust that the Lord never left anyone with a vacant soul, but created them with inherent intuitions of all who He is, seeding the human code with insights to worship Him and sending revelations of who He is, manifested in the marvels of creation and by His messages through prophets sent for our hearing.

Commoner: Why does Jurdan reject truths evident under the sun, verities never attributed to humans, trusting realities only apparent as human creations, all being deities of human's doing, proudly admitting to being an atheist or agnostic, never attributing anything to the Lord?

Jurdan: I don't deny belief in everything, acknowledging only human involvement in what is evident under the sun, for all people's contributions to what they must live with, denying anything your Lord can claim as its participation through prophetic revelations.

Stranger: Unadulterated truths, untarnished by philosophic tinkering, purified Words uttered by the Lord must remain sanctified as His only trusted messages.

Skeptic: Who would be willing to sift through all human's prophetic pronouncements and separate His seeds of truth from the chaff of added doctrines and dogmas? Where would anyone begin and what would consensus permit?

Excalibur: The Lord proclaims His Great Commission, evident for all to see and adopted as people's traditions allow, commanding people to love others like themselves, to do unto others as others would do for them. All religions believe this truth, trusting it as the Word of God. Why must this truth be compromised by doctrines and dogmas added by humans? If revisions are never needed they should be removed, editing out words to alter what the Lord says.

Skeptic: Why edit His Words now? What difference would it make?

Excalibur: Removing people's doctrines and dogmas removes their excuses for ignoring His command to go throughout the world and remind everyone of their Creator, the Maker of all things reflecting His goodness and its beauty. He never authorized freedom for humans to imagine what His mind holds, adding many interpretations that have never improved their lives and provided differences for enough discord to dismiss value for human life.

Skeptic: People continue adding doctrines and dogmas, hoping they can change ways we live, blessing us to follow the Lord. Some believe in becoming deified, being transformed to become more like Him, but having no knowledge of what He is like deification is a process of their imagination, and no two visions are alike, leaving us to wonder whose imagination we should embrace.

Jurdan: With crazy ideas for everyone, no one can reason your God into existence, so let us never be anxious about life we can only imagine. No one can prove He exists.

Stranger: Blind to everything unseen, rejecting all Creation's revelations of harmony evident in its goodness and beauty, you ignore His interventions coming to teach all humankind, sending prophets to assist our transformation from beasts to human beings.

Jurdan: Give reason credit to understand our evolutionary transition, making us something more than beasts.

Skeptic: Why should we develop a reason to endure with instincts developed adequately to ensure survival of the fittest? Living entities survived for eons depending on their instincts for survival.

Stranger: Reason appeared, however, giving a tool to discern Creation's goodness and beauty, by which humans gained a means to understand the Lord's intention for us to know Him.

Skeptic: Now you claim we could not know the Lord without reason!

Jurdan: Pursue reason further by asking, If He exists as many claim, why would He choose to bless only a selected few, leaving all the rest of His created humans as unblessed pagans?

Stranger: His story shows something different, revelations made for everyone, emphasizing His convictions for us all. Study what we all know as the golden rule, commanding us to sanctify relationships to assure harmony, remaining inherently latent in our code and brought to our attention by the Lord's prophets, telling beings with free will to interact with others as they would want others to partner with them. God created all to act harmoniously, allowing nothing to stray from directions of His laws, and He made us unique with the option for us to make our own choices, showing that we can maintain order in His goodness by decisions implementing the golden rule.

Skeptic: His Great Commission commands us to love one another, to love all, and if we love ourselves we can obey His command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Thus, we must love ourselves but how is that possible for guilt-ridden beings unable to escape from the shame of being born in sin?

Excalibur: Doctrines and dogmas, many laws, too many to remember, condemn us at birth--or possibly at conception--making us the problems we are. Our solution must be to dispatch doctrines and dogmas to trash accumulations and become obedient to the Lord's essential requirement for us, eliminating all decrees we follow to avoid their expectations for humankind.

Wanton: Why do we rejoice in death, celebrating our demise with the termination of life, programmed by religion's dogmas? Is it a victory over life's misery and suffering, ending with no compromise, having tolerated little of creation's goodness and beauty, resolving all so one can abide under a stone saying rest in peace? Is death peace, nothing in nothingness?

Skeptic: Believers call on their imagination to trust God vanquishes death, but how they cannot say, knowing reason fails.

Stranger: How does God conquer death? Believing its defeat requires His love's endurance, persisting despite our faults, compelling us never to cease adoring Him, gazing upon His countenance bursting with grace and mercy, but with immortality we need to fear their need no longer, being cleansed to enter the beauty of His presence, the paradise of heaven.

Skeptic: Once you have made it to heaven, with eternal security assured, having no further need to worship Him, having done your share to get where you are, how will you occupy your time?

Jurdan: You have no answer by stretching your imagination to its limits and can only rely on what John tells you in his Book of Revelation, which doesn't reveal more than what any other prophet could offer.

Stranger: Believers trust his message and live by admonitions ascribed by the Lord.

Skeptic: Destiny casts lots with fate, seeking to invade my slumber with dreams it chooses, ones determined to shape my day, usually concerning me with darkness bringing no joy, counseling me to greet all others with words from my double-edge sword, sharpened by experience of the night, coming as a thief to afflict my soul, tarnishing my memory to question my virtue.

Stranger: Jurdan trusts powers to direct fate, but the Lord must be respected for His wisdom, trusting it to be developed only by His eternal truths. Fate was assigned to be distributed in ancient times by one god gave complete control, but it was not any god's power to deliver, knowing now with free will inherent in our being, placed there by the Lord and under our control, we can determine our decisions for good and evil, and we must look to Him for help, guiding us with the Holy Spirit.

Simple Simon: All know of an angel, never being an agent of fate, coming with the everlasting Gospel, placing it in people's hearts, never dormant, surviving until it can be expressed in words, signs, or symbols, convicting us to describe God until He reveals Himself more fully. Calling this a human's need to create God is faulty,

Stranger: The angel you speak of is inherent, implanted at one's conception, established as part of our code, entrusted to us, waiting for our discernment, calling out for our attention, relying on the Lord's messenger to activate our faith in Him.

Skeptic: All creation is blessed by God, but no one shows it, never being filled with awe for the Almighty by bowing only to Him, hardly displaying reverence for Him or honoring all that He made, never faithful as ordained stewards of His realm on earth.

None: Listening intently, waiting for the Lord to speak, He blankets my ears with silence, never revealing His plans for me, keeping me in darkness, so I never see the light, His truth and wisdom, hearing only priests babbling their decrees.

Jurdan: Priests murmur their convictions, leaving them lonely with their imaginations.

Commoner: Are many of their moments lonely, being only with the Lord, needing few relationships with others, relying on Him to fulfill all one's needs? People's needs are met with relationships, uniting with others, fulfilling Jesus' prayer to the Father.

Skeptic: What good is a history of God leading His people, teaching them to need only His ways of living, presenting a means for salvation but impossible for them to follow?

Jurdan: Religious believers treat ecumenical suggestions as heresy, any form of helpful ideas as from antichrists, forcing intolerance of different doctrines, believing they should trash most never shown to be universally held.

None: Humans considering which doctrines and dogmas heretical, taking all into consideration, decide few are acceptable, compromising on which are indeed based on the Lord's intentions, tolerating none which everyone can't agree on, and those few should become ones we honor as His truths.

Skeptic: Belief in unifying all humans after a universal compromise, tolerating nothing deemed unacceptable by some, is a fairy tale that would never happen.

Commoner: If the Lord can do all things, performing the impossible, we should look to Him for one more miracle, helping us unite by discarding all the doctrines and dogmas binding us in ignorance.

Skeptic: How is that possible?

Excalibur: By reconsidering all His messengers, prophets sent to help people, we should stop worshipping them and begin restricting reverence to only our Lord, creator of everything. His messengers and prophets have been poorly understood or inadequately heard, resulting in faulty doctrines and dogmas, written by scholars drawing on their reason instead of discernment.

Stranger: Fearfully and wonderfully made marvelous by His Word speaking us into being, installed with a spirit to differ me from beasts, I have nothing but praise for my Lord, creating me with a soul to honor His decrees, prospering it to be home for His Messenger, the only abode for promising joy, established by the Lord to know His guide for my life.

Skeptic: Numerous documents and dogmas free humans to participate in games, hinting at knowing the Lord, wearing symbols of belonging to His band of believers, voicing phrases identifying Him as their Savior, embracing others in mutual admiration, praying to Him when needed for wants and desires.

Stranger: The Lord knows whose hints tease others for gaining approval, and if He knows you like one of these, being the third person in a conversation with another, do you fool your listener with all-knowing God at your side, ignoring all His ideas of what you say?

Excalibur: Anyone entrusted to doctrines and dogmas, being not with you must be against you, scattered away from your concern, forever out of favor, rejecting any alliance, a renegade to your convictions, keeping them at a distance, guarding you against contamination by their thoughts, preventing entanglement by their ideas and never uniting with your beliefs.

Commoner: Most never choosing to be with us lack fire in their bellies, wishing no involvement, at most choosing to be silent partners, protecting their virtues against possible criticism, and they may show up for our celebrations.

Stranger: Trusting heaven declares the glory of God, the firmament showing His handiwork, eternally speaking to reveal His knowledge, acknowledging His message can be heard and understood by all, we must not hide but unveil our senses to worship His majesty, celebrating Him as our almighty Creator.

Prancing Grace: There is little guarantee for election by peers enduring, knowing people's fickle thoughts never last, changing for no good reason, subject to skillful flattery, but as a beloved dictator, withholding all exercise of tyranny, I can govern as a benevolent leader, trained to be so by my devotion to following the Lord, using my image of Him.

Skeptic: Whose Lord do you propose to follow, whose beliefs among the many, for you do not worship one God but a selection of doctrines and dogmas created by different religions, trusting they all honor one deity.

Prancing Grace: That depends on people's whims, and we can compromise like them, modifying their trust, tolerating dissidents, juggling decrees to conform with their wants and desires. Successful politicians promise constituents will lack nothing for people's faith to be sealed with them, practicing democracy in action, upholding a government by the people and for the people.

Excalibur: Democracy never unifies people, dividing them by their interests, each band fighting for its concerns, creating its truths to mobilize forces, energizing followers to fight for their beliefs, fragmenting unity even within, trusting lies to gain power, with success attributed to ones knowing how to spin lies into truths.

Skeptic: If democracy was revealed by the Lord as best for humans to govern themselves, how can He justify its results, seeing the mayhem it fosters?

Excalibur: Human reason developed democracy, creating decrees to benefit the majority, but minorities left out eventually grow their numbers to dominate as a new majority, and the rule of people swings as a pendulum, forgetting their leader is the Lord.

Skeptic: Has the Lord abdicated, realizing His influence has vanished, leaving control of His creation in the hands of humans?

Excalibur: The Lord never gives up. Human free will allows us to ignore His plans, deceitfully declaring His will be done, creating decrees to authorize people's will be done, to forget His essential and most necessary command, convicting all people to unify in love for one another.

Skeptic: What about all of believer's doctrines and dogmas, dividing them into different religions, trusting them to be essential for salvation?

Excalibur: They must all be discarded, distrusted for all the agony and suffering they generate, leaving people with the greatest challenge possible.

Jurdan: Democracy works best when it represents one or more deities, depending on who people are accustomed to worshiping, providing freedom of religion. Some rulers try to succeed by eliminating all remnants of religion and rely on secret police to control people, a possibly harsher method, using whatever one thinks will work, slaughtering as many as needed to enforce edicts of their ideology.

Excalibur: Diversity of religion requires people to minimize threats when following a single religious doctrine, protecting their domain by slaughtering heretic bystanders at their borders, testifying to the perception of imminent danger since diversity perpetuates many doctrines and dangerous dogmas.

Skeptic: You propose a single religious ideology, trusting it to be harmless.

Excalibur: Can love be threatening, commanding unity in loving other human beings as oneself? Threats only maintained by divisive doctrines and dogmas, recommending violence when needed to restore the unity of creation's beauty, would be done well by leaders abolishing them all.

Skeptic: Doctrines and dogmas must rule in heaven, being strictly enforced for all accepted by the Lord. How does one's obedience begin to dwell with Him in heaven?

Excalibur: Unity is never achieved until it is universal, bringing all people into the fold, requiring everyone to dispatch their doctrines and dogmas and gain pledges from all to adopt and practice the Lord's commandment on love. Hear a common objection, rejecting such a proposal.

I Man: I condemn your heretical proposal. Our doctrines are sound, preparing individuals to join ranks with ones most holy by accepting our beliefs, trusting them for entrance into Valhalla, equated with journeys to Mecca and we battle to preserve our beliefs, fulfilling our follower's hopes.

Skeptic: Is unity achieved through compromise, tolerating other's convictions, realizing this requires conceding one's prejudices and expecting others to give up theirs. Unity is never achieved by wholesale abandonment of one's convictions, to surrender completely.

Excalibur: Is it more acceptable to yield to reason, ignoring all imagination and intuition, denying their source, coming spontaneously from spiritual inspiration, reasoned to be no more than daydreaming?

Stranger: If one attributes doctrines and dogmas to reason, thinking their convictions agree with common sense, one cannot deny they will survive only moments in the Lord's time for humans, knowing they will change and eventually disappear, replaced by new convictions of reason.

Skeptic: Then why should we be created with reason? Is it a cruel joke designed by our Maker? Perhaps we would fare better without reason, living only by instincts.

Excalibur: Then we would survive by fear, scanning our surroundings for every danger, but we are told the Lord didn't create us to fear, satisfying His followers who trust in Him. If He created us with the capacity to love, living by the steadfast love Jesus asked three times in, Do you love me, we must never live by reason or instincts but by His single great commandment.

Commoner: Do believe anyone would deny this commandment's truth, knowing all have heard it from His many prophets, reminding all of its declaration in their inherent code?

Jurdan: Prophetic words fade with entropy doing its thing, it's truths lasting until they can be forgotten and perhaps perpetuated only as myths, legends seeming to interest some, lying dormant until recovered as a relic, an artifact for a scholar to develop a theory.

Skeptic: Give people time, and they will produce reasons to disbelieve every truth they develop for creating doctrines and dogmas. People might have to wait before accepting the truth of the Lord's great commandment, the only verity never created by them.

Excalibur: The Lord knows people's time and being patient He will wait for their implementation of His truth.

Prancing Grace: Scriptures tell us execution of His truth will be end times, destruction of our earthly home and population of a new heavenly home for His followers. I can't imagine this happening in my lifetime, even though many pray for this event to happen now.

Excalibur: People might see this as end times, but it will be beginning times, believing it is likely He will continue creating His kingdom on earth and never elsewhere, considering all the time and effort He has put in so far.

Prancing Grace: Will beginning times start when all humans comply with His command to love one another, to love all?

Excalibur: That is likely, and nothing I recommend or do can convince people any more than by what the Lord has already done. He has already spoken, and perhaps He still is patiently waiting for our response, watching us using the sword for slaying others to believe doctrines and dogmas we created. He rusted my sword of reason, destroying its ability to convince others of human truths.

Prancing Grace: All I can promise is for my will to be done, and I must be certain that no deceit will creep in to tarnish my message.

Skeptic: Success in establishing ideologies can be attained with the sword, destroying dissidents and heretical thinkers, but instead use democracy where success can be bought, using wealth to disseminate deceitful messages, lies embellished to be accepted as truths.

Prancing Grace: Democratic leaders build wealth by stealing wherever they can, claiming people's will making them leaders authorizes accumulation of treasures.

Skeptic: Their wealth comes from somewhere, where else but from minorities failing to win leaders' backing.

Commoner: With an invitation, asking for conversion to democracy's thoughts and opinions, how much must I compromise my walk with the Lord, knowing solicitations conceal deceit despite their vows of transparency, flattering my soul to give up its only messenger for truth, trusting people to reconstruct my wisdom?

Prancing Grace: Your advice shouting out to convince me that errors are likely hidden in our cause, telling me to abandon all to follow the Lord, crucifies all my thoughts, destroying all their virtues, abandoning their value, my efforts a lifetime in the making, and no one will consent to be an ally.

Skeptic: You are advised to be inclusive, asking all to be unified in obeying the Lord's Great Commission, and you know this is impossible, like trying to herd cats intent on going their own way.

Prancing Grace: If I must choose one religion to tout, selecting one to establish people's trust in me, which would you suggest?

Excalibur: It makes no difference. People want leaders most charismatic, testifying to unimportant doctrines and dogmas, religious decrees ignored by the masses. Leaders driven by charm to succeed will never force their followers to abandon all their doctrines and dogmas and become obedient to the Lord's one great command.

Prancing Grace: Your advice being unsound offers little hope.

Excalibur: Your ancestors begged God to give them the prerogative to select their leaders and what did it get them, nothing but ambitious fools legislating unending decrees, thinking their advice can become more important than His Great Commission.

Prancing Grace: On trusting your advice, telling people to increase their love for all, abundantly to obey the Lord, all will love me less, questioning their decision to call me as their leader and more likely consider me to be a fool. Has His Great Commission anything worthy to offer?

Excalibur: Unveil your eyes to see all creation's goodness passing before you, focus your vision on its beauty revealed only by light moving out with its truth in tow, bearing the radiance of the Lord's wisdom. You never need experience of a mountaintop to meet your Creator, being with you always, promising never to leave you. His wisdom, waiting patiently for an invitation, never crying out for attention, is given by grace, attending to all who welcome His appearance, honoring Him as their Lord and Savior. Is there anything worthier to offer?

Commoner: I am not my own, belonging now to Jesus, responding to His will, never troubled by circumstances He lays at my feet, being obedient without reservations, and that makes it impossible for me to be possessed by another, never free to be a witness for Prancing's cause.

Jurdan: Some religions teach pupils from a young age to hate others, to tolerate nothing outside their beliefs, to treat others as infidels, to trust their faithful ones to destroy all remnants of other religions by sowing seeds of intolerance, punishing ones disobedient to their ideology and destroying any if necessary. Are you one of them?

Excalibur: Trusting their innocence, notably marked by ignorance, having acceptable ideologies ingrained, suitable prejudices modeled by their teachers, youth can be an asset, easily indoctrinated, hopefully with obedience instilled, but caution is advised in seeking to enlist them, offering changes they are likely to reject.

Skeptic: Beware of causes led by youthful exuberance, inexperienced and likely leading into inescapable quagmires. Or would it be better to survive under ones tottering with age, safely leading nowhere?

Prancing Grace: We must include a cast of ignorance, knowing their stupidity will inflict no intrigue, generating no dangerous evil, allowing freedom to do evil only for themselves, assuring they have little intelligence to endanger our agenda, providing simple minded bodies for marching to our drumbeat. Their mental clarity must know little good but enough to be obedient and follow us.

Skeptic: Even if your cause loses everything, someone always scrambles for its remains, often only crumbs from a tumbled dynasty, fragments from once treasured kingdoms, persisting memories of what once seemed great, destined to fall as all human empires doomed to die, each one waiting its turn to be relished as spoils of someone's patience, having expected to collect booty laying scattered in debris.

Prancing Grace: Listening to others, seeking advice from everyone, I design plans for a kingdom to last, following reason directing it to last a thousand years.

Stranger: Nothing lasts a thousand years, not even nations blessed by God. Creating stone tablets and transcending to inscribe them with holy obligations, God wrote His commandments, thinking they would give His chosen ones life, but they murmured and failed, ignoring their commitment to obey Him and keep His covenant promised to be a unique treasure for people He singled out from all others telling them, The earth is mine, and He ordained them to be a kingdom of priests, members of a holy nation, blessing them to be a blessing, but they failed to integrate His plans with any human endeavors.

Jurdan: Your God must do more than send people prophets and ordain priests, seeing how incompetent they have been.

Stranger: Prophets planting seeds never assures a harvest, trusting the Lord for all else expected to follow, rewarding sowers with results they may never see, so be content with one's commission, ordained to serve without payment, never to behold any results, with none ever being incompetent.

Skeptic: Flooding the earth with prophets, revealing Himself to all people, sending one as a Son called Jesus, confronting Him with time, committing Him to earthly conditions, trusting Him to do what failed for His written tablets, God destined Jesus to be sacrificed before age could take Him, planning His death to be followed by an unheard-of resurrection, returning Him to the Creator, for continuing His existence as part of God. Jurdan calls this absurd.

Jurdan: Indeed the earth is filled with prophets. What human is not a prophet, telling people to trust them, but they all die without proof of anything beyond their imaginations.

Commoner: Jesus tells me, If you want to be My disciple you must be devoted solely to Me, ignoring other's prophetic words, telling me to run after no other promises.

Excalibur: Few humans listen to the Lord's prophets attempting to guide their thoughts and actions. Wait on the Lord knowing He sends prophetic messages and trusts His single essential message to love one another.

Prancing Grace: Heeding your advice I searched and found one who loves people and reveals it for all to see one's work, witnessing to the Lord with all one's heart, claiming ordination by Him to preach the Word and selection by Him to lead all followers.

Jurdan: Have you found a theocratic despot, self-assigned to be your God's apostle on earth, appearing to people and convincing them of being the fabled Elijah, returning to perform miracles such as when the prophet Jesus appeared on the scene?

Prancing Grace: Being famous for performing miracles by praying for people afflicted with many different diseases, people flock to have such prophet's hands laid on them for healing, and they testify to being healed.

Skeptic: Your leadership would be threatened by such a prophet, one emboldened by success, claiming to be more than a prophet, trusting to be first in the line of Christ's apostles, ready to convert all people deviating from following Christian doctrines and dogmas established by religious scholars since the Gospel was written.

Jurdan: Self-ordained apostles are always a threat because their goal is to create a theocracy, demanding everyone to follow their edicts, decrees never honoring any deity's Great Commission.

Prancing Grace: We welcome apostles, trusting their control over people's thoughts and actions can mediate fancies of their free will, convicting them to accept our goals.

Skeptic: You don't understand. Commitment to follow your constitution legislating a democracy is anathema to any theocracy, where decisions are made by a single person overseeing all matters, ruling as a tyrant or a benevolent dictator.

Prancing Grace: My leadership won't tolerate followers deliberating democratically, voicing diverse opinions, arguing over trivial matters, offering ideas certain to create discord and disrupt unity.

Skeptic: You are still committed to democracy with the ruling majority taking whatever advantage they can over a neglected minority relegated to suffer from whims of ones in power. At least with a theocracy rule is authorized by some deity who plans how people must be governed.

Jurdan: Since your God doesn't exist, being conceived by people's imagination, theocracy is a term fabricated to describe a dictatorship, claiming rulers are authorized and directed by their God while following the lead of doctrines and dogmas created by humans.

Skeptic: Dictators rely on miracles to charm people into following them, viewing doctors, scientists, warriors, and preachers all as miracle workers and sometimes their claims clash within them. Prophets boast of being miracle workers, taking credit for good things happening, healing people by prayers to the Lord, and this conflicts with doctors healing by medicine and surgery. Riots with each group clashing against the other, fighting to protect their territories can and have occurred, violent ones in the street and now more likely with battles of words.

Commoner: Miracles come only from the Lord, none from any human.

Jove: Life is a bundle of miracles, a network of chemicals continuously interacting to maintain viability, directed by the Lord, designed to assure life's designated span.

Jurdan: Miracles are recognized as coming now but only by scientific advancements, never by prayers, fate or destiny. Where do people seek healing but by the hand of their doctors and if this fails they will turn to prayers asking their God to intervene as a last resort or accept their problems as determined by fate.

Excalibur: Atheists like Jurdan will always be an outsider, never understanding the Lord's great command to love one another and having a running discourse with ones like Skeptic. They are no danger to your campaign. Let them be.

Prancing Grace: I seek ones committed to His great command and find few free of burdens ready to join ranks.

Excalibur: If they are burdened with doctrines and dogmas, find ways to release them, calling on prayer warriors if necessary.

Prancing Grace: All prayer warriors are burdened by doctrines and dogmas, maybe different from others, but all the same mired in unmovable tenets, trusted to be from the Lord.

Excalibur: Perhaps the Lord would turn back the clock and send His Son again to reiterate His great command to love one another and to reveal nothing else for scholars to surmise His being.

Skeptic: Loving one another can never happen, following the Lord's command to love all others. Trusting in its possibility some people defer to His promise of their returning to His kingdom for a better existence, escaping from life here that offers nothing but despair and suffering.

Excalibur: Turning back the clock to restart existence and limiting our free will could make it possible for people to love one another, but only by preventing doctrines and dogmas which tempt people to seek a better existence elsewhere. Look at their efforts today, sending probes throughout the cosmos to discover other planets that could support life.

Skeptic: Moving one's life to a different location has always failed to escape human struggles. Following the promises of religion's doctrines and dogmas, people escape only by ending their lives here for trust in going to a better place, celebrating their departure by suicide. Remember martyrs' words, singing hymns of joy, marching to the gates of heaven, freed from all pain and suffering, anticipating the treasures the Lord has waiting for them.

Jurdan: What you describe is made possible by religion, having created decrees to reward the faithful. You Christians have no monopoly on doctrines of salvation. You may claim numbers of recent martyrs that surpass all those dying in the name of Christ in the previous nineteenth centuries, indicating your persecution continues. How is this different from other religions such as the Muslims who convince followers that self-destruction also sends them to a better place, a heaven of eternal bliss, peace, and joy.

Excalibur: Tyrants hijack their religion's dogmas and use them to further destruction of creation's goodness and beauty. As an atheist, you can sit back and criticize all human endeavors.

Skeptic: What is religion's threat to any state but doctrines sacrificing human life to death, believing life to be death and trusting true life lies beyond death, bringing people to a better place. Does suicide differ from martyrdom?

Jurdan: Why do people act by guessing on its results, imagining some reasonable profit to ensue, having no proven reason for their actions? Many are free in what they claim to be, notably in what they confess, empty-headed seeking something with a deserted spirit yearning to be filled. They can be lured into following anything, unless being free is for being and doing nothing.

Excalibur: Ignoring the Lord's proclamations we were never made to fear. Human training begins with dread and anxiety blended into fear, transposing fear into hatred, teaching ones to hate from an early age, using doctrines and dogmas as syllabi to convince young minds of the need for hatred. With hatred as their gold standard to view the world, their creation never established as being good and described as beautiful, many deny their lives and seek ways to escape. Religions offer solutions for their dilemmas, hoped-for paradises beyond with roads to reach them, revealed by prophets and verified by scribes.

Commoner: Looking to religions where hatred is most important in their curricula, what does one find? Their hatred is expressed in activating mayhem, terrorizing anyone thinking differently, pursuing hatred until it can be consummated in self-destruction, rewarding victims by their leaving this world. Are they heroes, sacrificing their lives to honor religious obligations, trusting in better lives to come?

Excalibur: Honoring heroes follows people's decisions to fulfill requirements of religion's doctrines and dogmas. Do they remain heroes on entering imagined paradises and receive a continuing honor, acknowledging proclamations that martyred ones are first to receive the blessings of heaven?

Prancing Grace: How can I offer as much, competing with promises of paradise for people loyal to religious decrees?

Excalibur: Convince people those promises will never be fulfilled and rely on the Lord's only reliable command to love one another. Persuade them to discard their doctrines and dogmas, all except ones to love one another.

Jurdan: Success with your suggestion would eliminate people's need for your Lord as God, destroy expendable doctrines and dogmas, knowing they could never love one another, realizing this has been only some ancient philosopher's platitude and then they could accept our truths. Pragmatism has always prevailed, doing things that work, forgetting about certain impossibilities, seeking people's will to accommodate their desires and acknowledge their wishes so don't look for anything idealistic and so far from reality they would be ridiculed and forgotten.

Prancing Grace: People clamor for change. What must I offer to promise anything different?

Excalibur: Pragmatism is certain to maintain diversities living in poverty or wealth, preparing to wage wars or ensure peace, to disrupt relationships or create unity, accepting what humans have versus thinking things could be better. Could you be one with excellent ideas or is life acceptable the way it is?

Skeptic: At best be immersed in history and learn how others became leaders, borrowing their words, copying their motives and imitating their actions, realizing there is nothing new under the sun and you will find nothing to be successful. So, study their ways and disguise your ideas and measures to make them appear original.

Prancing Grace: Compelled to be different, articulating new ways to lie, must I follow the lead of others, competitors fighting to rule?

Skeptic: You compete against candidates all fighting to lead the masses, having found a certain means to become wealthy. Can history document anyone retiring from a leadership role by accepting life in poverty? The only misery retired leaders could anticipate is bankruptcy of their life by imprisonment for thievery, misguiding their followers and stealing whatever they can from other's treasures.

Commoner: They never suffer from cheating on their promises, however, by lying under oath and ignoring disparities between the haves and have-nots.

Excalibur: The day will come when people are no longer obligated to doctrines and dogmas, needing none because they follow the Lord's command to love one another, and knowing when they are obedient, joyously pleasing Him, willingly submissive to His will, doctrines and dogmas will no longer be needed. Prophets will cease to be necessary, and scholars will cease writing decrees to rule human lives. People will understand those seemingly innocent doctrines as well as flaming dogmatics destroy human dignity and are used to devise diabolical schemes, inquisitions to prey on people. Only love bonds all people made to be diverse. Without diversity would love be necessary?

Bystander: Diversity is absent in chaos--everything needing nothing to unite anything to another, so love is never necessary or possible in chaos. Anarchy has the goal of returning all to chaos, to unbind particles of matter by breaking bonds that tie, to disunite what the Lord's Word united to make something out of the primordial soup He created from nothingness. His principle action was to bind all together and form goodness and beauty, and when it came to creating humans with free will He needed to bond them with an adhesive to unite their diversity, and God's Word creating everything chose love to bind all diversity together, defying humans will to split anything asunder.

Excalibur: Humans fragment the Lord's binding with love, exercising their will's devices, creating doctrines and dogmas to disunite whatever they can find to dismantle, all diversity they cannot tolerate, believing love can be dismissed as unneeded when diversity is destroyed.

Bystander: If anarchy is to be prevented from destroying all that the Lord's Word creates, love must be maintained, unadulterated by human doctrines and dogmas. People must trust the diversity of creation and its goodness and beauty, believing its unity is maintained by their will to love.

Stranger: Think of love's possibilities. It would eliminate any existence for Satan, destroying all need for demons.

Jurdan: Demons are imaginary fabrications, created by humans who created their Lord, and demise of evil spirits would confirm my denial of anything unseen. People then would be likely to accept my disbelief in any phantom deity including your Lord. Love would be welcome, accepting all diversity by uniting everyone by its power, and your Lord knows commanding unity for all people is something impossible for humankind, recognizing it would eliminate all need for people to believe and worship Him. With everyone united by love, dogmas declaring they are conceived to be sinful would lose all meaning. Does your Lord really want us to be united as one, fearing this would erase any need for Him?

Bystander: The Lord anticipates nothing. He knows everything happens according to His plans. Are you another philosopher intent on verifying your reasoned speculations? All will exist in the unity Jesus prayed for when they return to Him in the heavenly realm. You will never see what our assurance is. Heaven will have no place for distinguished scholars of philosophy, who have chosen nothingness to embrace our world's creation.

Jurdan: If all human words are tedious, boring repetitions of our thoughts and feelings here on earth, will we expect the same monotony in your Lord's heaven, doing nothing more than to eternally please and glorify Him?

Stranger: Could we convince you of creation's goodness and beauty, and allow your reason to give evolution credit but with no explanations for its plan, moving you to imagine existence of a creator God, arguing for love being the foundation of everything and its ultimate manifestation made real, understanding the unity He calls for, accepting it as the only verity to live by?

Bystander: Studying atoms and observing their ways, always related one to another, never deviating from their given paths, can you find one misstep, a single deviation, isolating one from all others, breaking bonds established for their relationships in creation, confirming you are no different. An atom or its pieces separated from its intended relationships ceases to exist, so you must consider the same for your relationships, broken by your will, damaging all you are meant to be. An atom, unlike you, cannot choose to exist alone by willing isolation, for it then it would cease being, ignoring inherent directions mandating relationships without which you would be nothing. The Lord gives you free will to determine whether you choose love for the bond to answer His prayer for unity. Abandon all doctrines and dogmas having failed humankind, denying their adhesion for unity, dismissing the truth of His forces binding everything in relationships, while gifting humans with free will to ponder love for their relationships with others.

Stranger: God's grace reflects His endless love, embodied endlessly in creation, certifying its goodness, attesting to its perfection, portraying its beauty. Can we express such grace, flowing from unconditional love? Does Prancing Grace promise unrestricted love with the name he bears? Grace must be more than a calling card.

Prancing Grace: Without doctrines and dogmas, I would have nothing to govern with, making my leadership a token of nothingness, designating me as only a figurehead with control over no relationships, leaving them in control by the Lord, with love finally binding humans in the unity He commanded in the Great Commission. Consequently, I fail in either case, unable to lead with every decree conceived by people and unneeded with every doctrines and dogma eliminated, yielding to rule by the Lord as it was in the beginning when He created humans to exist as part of goodness and its beauty bound together by undistracted and unrestricted love. I can no longer pursue any will to rule.

Bystander: Bless your decision. When commitment to doctrines and dogmas fail, you discover only love expresses purity in one's heart as the prerequisite for becoming one with God, recalling what Jesus said: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Salvation is impossible without seeing God, never joining in relationship with Him.

Jurdan: We trust in being deified greater than any hope of salvation, the promise of being with your Lord in eternity and being committed to sharing all with Him. Salvation is for deifying our free will to become like Him.

Commoner: Never knowing if your words bewitch us, proclaiming promises awaiting abortion, should we trust your rhetoric or eloquence, knowing we cannot delve into your soul and know what remains hidden?

Jurdan: If you can be free to trifle with the unseen, don't deny this for comrades in reason who can argue better for their convictions. Weak strands of logic can sometimes be my nemesis, trying to rely on incompetent rhetoric handicapped by lack of sense, so I must gird my thoughts with durable fibers, assuring my ideas will not break because of one weak thread.

Skeptic: Before long, age will steal upon you, weakening and fraying the strands of your fiber until they can easily be broken, and others watching will be ready to pick up its pieces and seize the opportunity to replace you.

Stranger: When reason creates one's sanctuary, making it a cradle for violence, training individuals to destroy the Lord's creations, His goodness and beauty, killing heretics and themselves for rewards of paradise, denying love as a useless virtue, believing in destruction epitomized by Yahweh, love can never be a valid obsession speaking out against disorder, being only a plea of passion never attributed to agape love determined by the Lord binding all together, the glue of unity preventing the strands of creation from breaking.

Skeptic: Open societies, hiding nothing, allow individuals to compare their lot with all others, where reason cannot subdue envy or ignore one's fear, making reason an emotion controlling one's thoughts, with violence dismissing reasoned responses, overriding truths determined by the people's majority.

Jove: You would deny my prolific harvest of reason, seeing it mismanaged by fits of passion, overwhelmed by lusty wants, afflicting all hope down to my bones, cursing me with remorse from unmet fulfillment, dragging me into nothingness where desire has fled, leaving me alone to lament my fate, denying reason has brought me all that I am, allowing me to do it my way.

Bystander: Finally, for beloved people doing all by my way, authorized by doctrines and dogmas, think about whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy of praise. Do only what you have learned and received, heard and seen in the Lord, and so by always rejoice from the God of peace being with you. As the bystander always at believers call, trust my messages above the world's hostilities trapping you in and providing only doctrines and dogmas for escape.

End Waiting for a new beginning

Other writings

Virtue in Dystopia

Brothers Keeping: Joseph and Job

http://biblemetaphors.com

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