Virtue in Dystopia

Virtue in Dystopia

Tristam Joseph

Smashwords Edition

Text copyright 2013

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-9619272-6-4

Table of Contents

Beginning's Polemics

Working to define one's self, beginning from nothing

Demonstration-exercising one's definition

Adventure's consequences-laws and truths

Adventure's consequences: indiscernible suffering-suffering in discernment

Contingency-assuring uncertainties waiting

Hope's assurance-lasting information

Information's assurance-relationships

Relationship's requirement for suffering

Tempests to sanctification-crime

Interlude-my self's honors award

Contingency’s ending

Into the shadows

Transforming innocence

Confession-out from the shadows

Into the light

Incarceration: confined, refined and redefined

Lighting the way-working out salvation

Re-gathering dispersed comprehension, installing discernment

Despair stealing delight

Redefining ending, modifying beginning

The last temptation

Justin’s testimony

Virtue in Dystopia

Beginning's Polemics

Working to define one's self, beginning from nothing

Bystander: Humans roam existence to understand its beginning and ending. Can anyone determine life's endings if unable to judge its beginnings

Jordan: In the beginning a void embraced all, nothingness crafting emptiness, waiting for the Word to deliver information for creation's initiation of all things, waiting only for cleansing's completion, nihilism's workings to insure only goodness would mark perfection for the impending genesis, starting anew by removing all imperfections, vestiges of blemishes resisting love's establishment and workings of the Word to fashion creation, acknowledging creation kindles only urgings of love. Grace, love's handmaiden, prepared the void, implicit in knowing: Without love grace does nothing. Grace's Mover, speaking His Word, moving His creation to formation, empowering His Word to envelop all with His love, was God revealing goodness for all He created, fashioning all with garments of ultimate beauty.

Bystander: God's words are revealed for our understanding, telling us what is intended for our knowing, realizing all is profitable in His revelations, recorded for reading in His Scriptures, heard in messages spoken by the Holy Spirit, revelations for our vision and hearing, portraying His creation, nature's cosmic wonders, timed for release from mystery, revealing unknowns, showing how His Word can be sensed, manifesting His divine designs, demystifying what He wants us to know, unraveling His mysteries, leading us stepwise in ways we can understand.

Jordan: God's creation of heaven and earth, flowing everything from His Word, composing His designs, leading all by grace, initiated by love, bearing its goodness, promising His perfect love, manifesting ultimate beauty, knows no evil can come from His love-His grace never evil's companion, His Word never creating destructive evil, always decrying human's invention of depravity.

Evan: Can anyone believe these claims, choosing to live by them, accepting them as truth, trusting them to lead us, to be important, to show meaning and significance for our existence? Tell me how Scripture's messages can comfort us, bringing us peace and understanding, filling us with wisdom, blessing us to live with reverence, by reading God’s words scribbled in His first testament, testimony ascribed by early ones to be God's words, written by One using His image to make human beings. Also, by repeating your words do you think I didn't hear you the first time?

Bystander: The words are voiced by ones faithfully instructing His truths, words recorded by many in the past.

Evan: Scripture's early testimony depicts God’s goodness as inconsistent, leading us to believe: Humans made in the image of God are no different, differing us none from God but unable to coherently claim His goodness, forcing us to disbelieve the possibility of being created by His love. Provoked to anger, God destroyed His people, telling us: It is I who created the destroyer to work havoc and create calamity, showing us how to vindictively respond, teaching us to learn His ways, establishing His habits to follow, adamantly believing vengeance is not only His, justifying mine to unleash. Binding people to laws, edicts impossible to obey, God's commands promise us hopeless dreams, tantalizing illusions enticing us to follow, compelling us to join Him or else we will pay dearly. How can we live without trustworthy assurances, believing empty promises, disguised in illusory hope, threatened by unceasing condemnation, justice without possibility for redemption, believing restitution is a phantom of dreams, dooming humans already born in sin, but forever seeking righteousness, the treasure we are never able to find, the glory escaping us, eluding all born sinful in Satan’s realm, releasing us to our will, freeing us to its leading, traveling ways knowing no justice, wondering what prophets can promise us, never more than what we discover?

Jordan: Can you trust prophets, securing your allegiance, calling you to rejoice when hearing their claims, conveying messages bearing truth, trustworthy words to invade your thoughts, for inscription on your heart, beliefs to witness divine realities, trusting them to come from the living God, discerning them from messengers who come with their own discoveries, truths of their own making? In revelations brought humans, recording witnesses by prophets and apostles writing in Scripture, God's authorities, ones of His choosing, are seemingly randomly selected, having nothing people deem noteworthy, spiritual paupers on whom He sends the Holy Spirit, transfiguring ones to be chosen, blowing across their mental junctures, turning their will from themselves, transforming their beliefs for new encounters, growing them with God's wisdom, awakening them to discern ways of His word and consider no others for insuring, protecting and healing creation, preserving it for eternity.

Sincerity: Evan invites me to endorse his accusations, questioning God's goodness, when Scripture’s records of His Words tell us: I will stir up the spirits of a destroyer. He never equipped me to destroy, never preparing me for assignments to abolish, never for duty to demolish. Even beliefs to be the accuser, described by some as who I am, identifies me as merely a messenger, no more than a foretelling prophet often conveying unwanted words, chosen by many to never hear, leaves me reflecting: How many prophets bring messages for soothing human ears? If victims must know enemies plotting their destruction, seek them out and never accuse messengers who bring no harm, realizing killing the messenger will never stop enemy haunting, knowing they continue with devious plans. Although my tongue can accuse, my mouth has no teeth to inflict harm, never threatening your survival, but perhaps insulting you with words never wanted to hear.

Evan: If God created everything good, imputing the goodness of His love, where does He find a destroyer possessing a spirit He can incite, a waster to wreak havoc? Are you abdicating your role, choosing to deny God’s design for you, a destiny established by His Word, telling all you are created to destroy God’s creation?

Sincerity: Look to yourself, examine your inclinations, confess you are the one created with free will, enabling you to choose power, to join its ability for destruction, admitting God gave you this gift but He never gave me authority to plunder another's being. I know my limits, never being one to bring down fire, to move winds for destruction, to remove people's hedge of protection, never being one to seek powers forbidden me, and I remain satisfied to be a messenger, content to be no more. As you wait for the day to see God crush me, to destroy me under someone’s feet, you will join my dismay, realizing my destruction will leave you without excuse, my leaving you with no one to blame, forcing you to burden your misdeeds, never finding me to share your guilt, unable to indict me, vanished, long-gone.

Evan: So you accuse, wishing to see me as the ultimate sinner, sent out as a scapegoat, eternally imprinted with sin, never to return, satisfying your goal as the accuser?

Sincerity: No I need your kind. Humans trusting me to be more than a messenger, more than what I am authorized, come begging, asking me to kill their hated ones, but never warranted to be an executioner, I merely sit by, watching the comedy of human ways, mimicking Yahweh's, seeing Him order slaughter for thousands, answering Hebrew prayers for vengeance, human’s never-ending requests for retribution. Given no weapons for defense, no armor for protection, created to be only an accusing messenger, equipped for nothing else when God designed messengers, giving me no hand in bringing His messages of hope, leaving me unauthorized to comfort innocents, to prevent injustice, I was not created to protect undeserving human's demise, blameless ones wearing garments different in color, virtuous ones cloaked in hues marking them for death. I came only to be the scapegoat, carrying away people's burdening sins, blame for me to forever carry. Yes, I am useful here for how else could anyone, righteous by law, find someone other to protect them from martyrdom? Humans find no closure until they can find someone guilty to blame, conviction demanding sacrifice. Never condoning murder, having no basis in my heart, I seek no reason to end your life, taking away your last breath, knowing prophets will always appear to foretell your being's ending.

Evan: Reason and common sense can justify condemning you into oblivion, but you protect yourself well, reason answering reason well. Some being disabled as this poor man Irrational, a being of creation’s goodness, has no will for thinking well, never being gifted with reason, still waiting for its arrival, common sense never having come, concludes nothing from human words. Meet one knowing this well, a person I know by no other name, perhaps for asking now.

Irrational: Asking my name gives no understanding of my being, planted in the nothingness of this meaningless space, bearing value only to supply my needs, seeing nothing more than a place for a feral child. What more could I become, companion to another human being? My self’s most precious treasure are my monologues, protected and cherished, constructing meaning's only source, supporting my feral being, isolating me in protection from this creation's nothingness. Dialogue forces me to give up my freedom, venturing from my isolated domain, entering creation's meaninglessness, dragging me into worldly interactions, exposing me to manifestations revealing the world's nothingness, into an existence with events leaving my will powerless, giving reason nothing reliable to choose. If a void marked the beginning, does more now exist, persisting, increasing yearnings to become meaningful, knowing no substance can be found in nothingness?

Bystander: Why are you given the seemingly inappropriate name of Irrational, and why would anyone need protection in a realm of nothingness? Does this warrant your name of Irrational, believing reason must contribute to making choices? You cannot define yourself as something, not even anything to call yourself Irrational, existing where nothingness describes all.

Irrational: I was created powerless with no will to reason, equipped only for following laws, innate directions within my being, instructions given by the unknown Other, instructing me to accept and endure, never tempting me to seek transformation, and never invoking reason to escape His will. Greater wisdom to discern my name and understand its meaning comes after crossing the river, after my transfiguration to become His son. Why this belief? I believe; therefore I am, but never deriving it from human reasoning, never resting on human wisdom, only from what I am, seeing myself in this world, relying on the power of God.

Evan: His name fits him well, telling us when looking to the heavens, he sees two morning stars, one being Lucifer. Hear him as he tells it.

Irrational: Through Scripture's windows I see two morning stars, two being made at Creation: one for light, the greater light, one for darkness, the lesser light. The morning stars, having no light of their own, are revealed only by God, by His light, one seen by His light, the other without, glimmering only by falsehood.

Evan: Your claim for the unseen comes naked, having no reason, no verification, no one else with visions for its truth, not even someone imagining what you see. Never claiming to manipulate another's mind by mysterious unknowns, I suggest others to discern understandings for honest conclusions of reason. Look to other's observations, recording their truths as reason demands.

Irrational: Who else must see it, attest to its reality? Is not my belief enough? We need not resort to beliefs contaminated by reason. I never attempt to record anything, writing being a signature of foolishness, seeing human writings add to God's revelations, philosophizing to better His words, disregarding His Word as bringing creation's goodness and beauty, never acknowledging human words as being other than vain and useless, trusting His revelations, never depending on me to reason, relying only on my belief, my faith in God and the self-knowledge He inscribes in my heart, never contaminated by reason's intrusion with secular ideas, confounding messages from the Holy Spirit, confusing us into many doctrines. Reason scatters truth into doctrine, dispersing it into dogma, conspiring for their worship rather than for The Lord, to satisfy the barren emptiness of my self’s concerns. Can you touch doctrine to feel truth or chase after dogma to discover The Lord?

Evan: There must be reason for it to be seen. What promise does it offer your vision?

Irrational: Having no gifts of reason to answer, as my name describes, unable to satisfy your question, I hope for no promise, having sufficient faith for my vision's truth, claiming no reason, no discernment in reason for what I see, remaining as your unseen, waiting to be your seen. Strengthened by good reason for this unseen to remain unseen, you would need strong faith to embrace your unseen appearing to me seen. Needing no trust in reason for seeing my vision's truth, I never have days where my vision frustrates me to nothingness, having been given wisdom and insight into the mystery of His will, revelations to unite me in Christ, conforming me to His Image, making me holy and without blame, prepared to receive every spiritual blessing, glorifying me to be like Him now, waiting for no later, trusting reason cannot renew my mind, transforming me into the likeness of God.

Evan: Come now, let us reason together. Everything seen promises effects, a certainty for all events, composed, created to be in relationships. No one can survive without reason. Claiming no gift of reason, denying its value, never being useful, can you claim dignity or perhaps you need reason to claim it, enabling you to be irrational and claim dignity or does being irrational preclude one from claiming dignity?

Irrational: Not in an existence of nothingness, where I know faith in reason creates illusions, compelling humans to narrate, no, better to say construct truth for history, never knowing dignity is an illusion of reason.

Evan: If you are a prophet, boasting no cause, should your vision-never depending on reason-become truth? Will time tell?

Irrational: You may claim truth for your words, developed from relationships with others, but treachery stalks me when interacting with others, delving into dialogue’s unexpected unknowns, never knowing what may threaten, jeopardizing security's peace and safety, sheltered in my self’s realm, never needing reason's enlistment, never choosing its pitfalls, never seeing consensus as the only way to project truths.

Jordan: You are made for interactions, designed as all creation to interact, known by interactions, having no identity to describe yourselves other than what you do, more than being a feral child, limited by ways of a nurturing primate beast, without needs to reason, having justifications to be called irrational, but your genes make you more, instructing you to be known by more than plans for a primitive creature, however, you should recognize the feral's way is also created for interactions, for dialogue with others, realizing monologue activity insufficiently allows interactions essential for human life, even for all described as lifeless, realizing nothing speaks only to itself.

Irrational: Placed in this meaningless creation crafted in nothingness throughout, show me a good purpose for reason to serve me here; knowing you can't, I claim none, accepting what I must accept, merely to exist an emptiness never of my choosing, but consoled that I need no longer to live as others when trusting Christ lives in me; for me, to live is Christ, escaping creation's nothingness, died to its life, hidden with Christ in God, ever consumed by my passion for Him to keep reason in abeyance, protecting me from encounters with temptation.

Jordan: How do you see nothingness, perhaps visioning what appears to be deplorable, joined with what God despises, bringing all to nothing, imagining sights of desolation, leaving you to believe: I can put nothing into this void. Do you deny yourself reason, abdicating use of free will's gift, disabling all interactions, justifying your claim for existing in a void of nothingness? With reason established for your being's creation, could you ever claim to know by reasoning logic any arguments for never choosing to be placed in a cosmos of nothingness, or for knowing your domain is void of all meaning? So, accept your fate, your destiny to live by reason, having been so equipped for no other way, understanding the feral child cannot learn this from a beast.

Irrational: Do you claim I can be with your wisdom and not to be is a person's fate found only in a realm of meaninglessness? But cannot one choose not to be by following reason to select this existence? Reason leading anyone not to be, implementing a choice to live like a feral child, while confessing reason is seldom invoked, never acknowledging a use for reason, but only when considering wants and desires, leaves me wondering: Do beasts need reason to satisfy their needs?

Jordan: Discover what you are gifted to claim, realizing your mind is more than a feral child’s and enables you to choose what you want to be, trusting you will never want not to be.

Irrational: How well you don't seem to know me. My father's instincts destined him to dump me, discarding me as a pack of empty beer bottles, never wanting to see me again. My mother left me, retreating into in her world of indifference, removing her from everything into another existence, a life of hallucination with drugs. This was my parent's role, creating me to their regret, bringing me unwanted into being, leaving me on my own, abandoning me to develop as a feral child. I could have entertained no different judgment for my Creator-God in heaven, asking: Why would He be any different, seeming to never hear my voice, deaf to my claim for being, creating me to be thrown away-knowing God doesn't accept blemished goods-trash having no worth, forming me for no reason, depositing me in creation's bog of indifference. If there is one consolation being in a seeming meaningless existence, able to survive, existing with nothing to fear, threatened by nothing, intimidated by no one, neither Satan nor God, I ponder: What can they do to one believing nonexistence is preferable to existence? I have deposited all I need to know, filling my heart and soul, bypassing my mind, securing my selected spiritual needs, protected from all intrusions, invasions into my sanctuary, attempts to plant different human truths for my beliefs, unneeded rubbish, unwanted refuse, workings proselytized from deceitful vendors, hawking words at their Vanity Fair, deceiving me, lying to gain my favor.

Bystander: Did Adam come as the first feral child, untaught, instructed by neither human nor beast, trained innately only by instincts, or was he gifted with reason, overriding any feral directions, giving him a will to decide, promoting a reason to leave Eden? Maybe Irrational longs to visit Eden, returning to Adam's first abode, remaining to live where he needs no gift to reason, never reasoning to thrive in creation's goodness, forever free from following laws, continuously savoring the paradise God made for humans. Complacent in never needing reason, satisfied in wanting no more, he would be comfortable remaining a feral child in Eden, but unknowingly he would remain a beastly fool of instincts, someday realizing its foolish folly can evolve to nothing better, leaving him little choice but to reclaim his inherent gift to reason, innately bestowed, patiently waiting to be used, trusting it’s never being erased.

Jordan: Humans can only imagine a peaceable kingdom, Adam's paradise never returning but in dreams. Peace is found only in a new kingdom, discovered by a person's choosing, revealed for most by reason's uncovering, opening the realization for reason's purpose, understanding beasts cannot reason, never to know and seek peace, to follow reason's promised hopes.

Irrational: No peaceful kingdom, none dreamed of, none to speak of, can exist with reality for me. Words cannot change my mind to make existence exist with reality for me. Words cannot change my mind to make existence different, not even the mind-altering drug of reason, blathering deceit, twittering to convince me of nonsense.

Evan: Your soul accumulates pity in discarding reason, trashing the gift making you something more than a beast, vacating your mind, preparing you to join a beastly mindless life.

Irrational: How has reason enlightened you? Have your reason's visions blessed you with serenity and peace, rewarding you greater than for beasts? Deprived of reason I fear no living creature except a reasoning person, expounding few truths, living in foolish ways, trusting one’s own wisdom, snatching needs from others, hoarding creation’s abundant provisions, pilfering gifts, manna to sustain my life, never changing one's extravagant needs, neglecting those to love, to find rest in Thee, never requiring reason to purify love, the love already certified as pure by my Lord. Behold beasts, never blessed with reason, never enabled to grieve or lament, never suffering depression to invoke despair, never made to shed tears-cascading when my passion's power overwhelms any need for reason-unlike brutes; grieving humans with no hope are committed to reason's failure.

Evan: You are nothing without reason, never becoming an I am. Pondering your existence, grappling with human wisdom, questioning all its benefits, reason equips you to ask why you are here and whether it makes you someone. Maybe you never choose to reason because you dare not ask why you are here.

Irrational: Study what latent human wisdom conceals to discover reason's and common sense's ways for sending people’s deeds to oblivion, creating deserts of nothingness, leaving much blood staining hands of reason’s saints, crippling plans for building temples to my selves, havens reason seeks for safety and peace. Pray the scapegoat never returns from its continuous roaming, retracing its way to you, revealing life's consequences, returning to disgrace humans with their wisdom's reason.

Evan: You recall the long forgotten, hidden in archives, its memory in dust, never more for remembering by reasoning people.

Irrational: Your arguments may satisfy you, comforting your reason, convincing you of your truth's lasting, enshrining your memory in time, but your place will change so you will be remembered no more-such being the fate of pride-your place once honoring new convictions, discovering and creating new truths, bestowing countless rewards on your myself.

Evan: Irrational does not belong here. Why was he put here, created to be someone different, not one of us?

Jordan: Not all want to be gifted human. Irrational rues being cloned like his parents, lamenting his existence, his gift of life, equipped to be more than a feral child, deploring assignment to his designated mentors, inconsistent with his creation partaking God’s goodness, breathing in the spirit making him human. Perhaps, somehow remembering from their fetal development, such people recall what it was like to resemble a beast, developing nostalgia for being no more, satisfied, waiting patiently with others, believing in coming back in an ensuing afterlife, blessed in some form of animal being.

Evan: Can anything be done for him? If nothing, what should life do with him? Is he merely an animal who can reason if he wants to? Or maybe a person unable to reason or choosing to never reason?

Jordan: You see humans reasoning who are little more than beasts, claiming wisdom for constructing truths, built on unreliable information, hidden from usefulness and concealed from facts, spewing words saying nothing, revealing little gainful for knowing anything. Irrational trusting in nothingness for human manipulation of creation, adding nothing more to its perceived void filled with nonexistence, trusting humans can never originate truths, unable to contribute lasting wisdom, denies any use for reason, disclaiming any need for it to develop understanding.

Irrational: The cocktail of reason blended with beastly instincts, two precious gifts for making human beings, provides the drink for mayhem. What beast would alienate an odd colored one from its herd or end another's life cloaked in the Lord’s gift of a coat with splendor? Exercising reason enables people to judge others, energizing decisions for excluding anyone from inside the boundaries of their domain, contriving verdicts for favored ones, but when conflicting with God's pleasure, they wonder why God creates any who act for His displeasure. Does He do this to punish humans, believing they do not suffer enough, reasoning they must not live in peace? Need I more reason to never reason?

Bystander: God, showing us good can come from evil, allowing plans intended for harm to bring forth good, has many ways to implement His perfection, revealing it for all to see.

Irrational: The evil you speak of, needing reason to appear, can have no rational explanation. Why not have creation built on all of God’s goodness, His beauty having no evil, questioning then any need for reason, removing our temptation for coveting pride rooted in sin?

Jordan: God’s creation shines throughout with goodness, a truth-filled foundation of His Work, evident for all awakened ones to see, manifesting its meaning.

Irrational: His Words speaking of no acts of goodness, only of goodness, leave me wondering if there can be goodness where no noble acts are found, in His creation unable to live by goodness, although living in His goodness. You see by this, I must live by my name, never trying to reason the obviously unreasonable trying to destroy my faith.

Evan: You dismiss the most precious gem in God's treasure of goodness, savaging the gift of reason, discarding uses for all rational thoughts, casting away any potential for creating your wants, enabling you to become like God. Accept creation, although never seeming perfect and work to make the best of it, trusting in success with your gift of reason, acknowledging you will fail without it, leading you to despair, giving life little chance.

Bystander: And such is life. Never to reason, Irrational never heeds a reasoning companion, never seeking rational others, deaf to words of logic, deciding to hear no others, believing only in his myself, ignoring other voices beckoning him to follow, to listen and join their way, being careful, never questioning his myself, ever intent on protecting his goal’s vision-the achievement of being nothing-continuing to trust his unreasoned truths, believing in their dismal rewards, knowing nothing can come from his efforts. What else can there be?

Evan: I never question rewards for my efforts, trusting in reason to have worked them out.

Bystander: Is it by faith in your reason or can you trust your reason without faith in believing your hopes will be rewarded?

Evan: My efforts never partner with hope, never trusting in hope as a reliable partner, never considering its imagination reliable, believing it insults my reason, making reason no longer reason in needing hope's magic wand, seeking mystery to insure my aspirations, fancying dreams to confirm my conclusions, to certifying their truth.

Bystander: If hope never dwells in your home, forever uninvited, isolated and hidden away elsewhere, never for you to encounter, you remain open to unleashed demons, seeking refuge, discovering sanctuaries no longer protected by hope.

Evan: Demons don’t exist, abiding nowhere but in one’s imagination.

Bystander: With no belief in demons, claiming they could never control you, realizing unbelief can will them away, exercising reason for your disbelief, can you trust in reason for denying their existence or is it by your faith demons don’t exist?

Evan: Never sustained by faith, living by none, scientists live by reason, not by faith.

Bystander: Do they also die by reason? Deciding to commit suicide, did your scientist friend make his final decision by acting freely on his ability to choose, deciding by reason, but believing-not reasoning-there was no more?

Evan: He decided everything by reason, having faith in nothing else.

Bystander: Do humans basing all life's decisions on reason, counting on those dear to their myself, using only reason to establish truths, finding them no other way, never from faith, from nothing else, but maybe listening to unreasoning demons, bringing their reasonless truths, telling ones to destroy themselves, sacrifice their lives to such truth-proclaiming demons, resurrecting a faith hiding in secret hopes, lost until now, epitomizing faith's endurance with reason's departure.

Evan: Telling us he had nothing more to live for, believing all his work was done, he decided on a noble ending for his life, choosing the time and selecting his way, satisfying himself with a reason for all, having defined his way to live and die.

Bystander: Is there logic in spending one's entire life learning, working to better one's every thought, to reach achievement's pinnacle, only to end all by jumping off into the unknown, a chasm reason cannot explain, leaving on looking comrades thinking: Is this a tribute to reason, ending one's existence reasoned to be by his way, proclaiming faithlessness, belief in nothing on entering an eternal nothingness? Where did understanding come from when telling him his purpose was done, his work was finished? Had he ever considered his work could continue, working out salvation promised by hope, revealed by eternal truth's wisdom?

Evan: Having no faith, wisdom could come from nowhere but his reason.

Bystander: Then did his reason create a reward less eternity, buried in a heap of nothingness? Did he leave more, be remembered for more than promised for Irrational?

Evan: Demons may exist, mangling human reason, convincing some with lies, driving them to commit irrational acts, having no recourse, disturbing their inborn instincts for survival. They may even be able to show how nothingness can be amassed, piled into heaps.

Bystander: Can this be intrusion by faith to disturb one’s thoughts, acknowledging demons may exist, fiends meddling with human lives, driving them to their demise as for swine and lemmings, causing them to leap from cliffs to end life's story, to conclude human existence with their wants and desires fulfilled, ending all yearnings, finalizing their dreams, dismissing hopes offering no promise, proposing no place to find peace, leaving them unable to tolerate anything, wandering aimlessly, discovering only a longed-for-nothingness in life's ending.

Evan: Here comes my friend Justin. His reasoning comes up short but never reaching the void of Irrational’s, permitting us discussions that leave us with respect for each other, bonding us into a lifelong strong relationship, making him my best friend, but trusting me not to follow.

Irrational: For joining in, becoming a comrade, you must have reasons, realizing you cannot befriend and unite with another for no good reason, a justification I choose not to follow, never following purpose, refusing all support coming from reason.

Justin: Joyful blessings enrich my being, gracing me to hope, to anxiously await each day, drawing me closer to the Lord, tarrying with Him, reveling in celebration of His beauty, of His goodness evident in all Creation, seeing God rejoice in proclaiming this precious virtue for all His doings. Can goodness have no purpose, wondering about this disturbing question, reasoning anything good must have purpose, concluding no purpose leaves everything no more than nothing, leaving me to ask further: Can you show me nothingness is ever good?

Evan: The meaninglessness of nothing can be neither good nor bad, unless reason mandates it being something either good or bad.

Irrational: Maybe I should have never left Eden where there is persistent goodness without any claims for purpose, establishing it as a domain for meaninglessness, stamping its realm with nothingness. Using reason, I might have left its purposeless peace and tranquility, but using no reason I may have wished to have stayed, lamenting destiny's action to force me out, but no one can compel me to reason.

Justin: But you have purpose, recognized by acknowledging reason, summoned only by courting reason, essential for knowing your purpose, found only with escape from Eden, the never-never-land, never created for anyone to find purpose, in paradise where purpose is unneeded.

Irrational: From what you say, I, as Adam, must sin for I was born in sin, barring any return to Eden, forever exiled, banished from paradise, preparing me to learn my purpose, never to be known by remaining in Eden, living in its nothingness, having no commission to train one in purpose, never needing to embellish me with greater goodness, to exist with never knowing sin, realizing sin only appears with reason's beginning, destroying any yearning for Eden, becoming the paradise lost. So why not place us, as ones created without reason, in a meaningless creation, exuberant with nothingness, one different from here, leaving us unable to sin and lust after all temptations, never awakening us to human wisdom, never realizing we cannot sin if we exist in nothingness. If all creation is without meaning how could there be sin, having sin also without meaning, for sin having no meaning cannot be sin, being only nothing, understanding a nothingness can be neither evil nor good, realizing it can claim neither, leaving any God for its creation unable to create sin, leaving me without recognition, asking: Does this creation have purpose?

Justin: Eden needs no creatures with purpose, this paradise being God’s goodness, proclaiming all His glory, having been completed and needing no more to be done, wanting no more to be done, revealing nothing more for mere mortal deeds, having nothing more for any endowed purpose, but with nothing in creation without purpose, no one lives in Eden, knowing paradise gives nothing purpose.

Irrational: Fearing purpose, using it to change me, I must remain without purpose, avoiding any challenge for me to change.

Evan: Your name, branding you with despair, describing your fallacy, miring you in meaningless nothingness, acknowledging you accept a fate for nothing more, convinces me I can do more.

Bystander: Thinking isolation to yourself, striving to magnify your myself, convincing pretensions for truth in your fantasies-you being like all of us-existing only to be bombarded by many unwanted interactions, relationships against which you have no defense, you hide in futile efforts despairing your fate, vainly seeking my self’s protection, secluding your myself, secured within your best-chosen wisdom, but your face springs forth, voicing words to beg for optimism, until now devoid of hope, thinking you can claim none, realizing despair may not lag far behind, but never following, accompanying hope, where hope cannot be hope.

Irrational: I have no despair-a sin of unbelief, semi-belief-knowing my redeemer's certainty, reading His witnesses' words, assuring us in Scripture's truth, testifying to His credibility, written by His knowing disciples, witnesses to His resurrection. You label me, fixing me with a name, chosen because I don't obey your thoughts, constructing human wisdom never able to survive without reason, convicting me to be unthinking, naming me Irrational. Your commitment to unchanging truths of reason is rare and partial, lasting sufficiently to support your gods, my self’s reason for framing your religious posture. For me I have no sins of despair, grateful that reason never brings me there.

Justin: God gave life to the dead when calling them out of Eden, bringing them into our reality of time and space, into creation's new existence, giving purpose after none was needed, gifting humans with meaning, significance unneeded in Eden.

Bystander: God did not create everything good, merely for remaining inertly unchanged in Eden, but for everything to interact, equipping all for relationships, enabling all to participate harmoniously in a symphonic interplay, interacting with more than nothing-noting nothing can interact with nothing-understanding this more than us, knowing nothing exists in a meaningless creation, a void where relationships of nothing with nothing is impossible. Most things you never understand by seeing their form, knowing them only by recognizing what they do, their doing becoming history's story, never by creating things, but by their enabled activity does God create history, His history continuing to fulfill the cosmos’ purpose created by His Word, assuring us always with His presence.

Irrational: He fulfills little history with my being.

Bystander: This is not for you to know now, especially when you deny reason and cloud your conclusions-or better your non-conclusions. Wait, some day you may rely on reason for initiating faith, realizing humans learn to rely on reason to support and confirm their faith, exacting faith's rewards, assuring convictions that faith needs reason, recognizing that neither alone adequately shows purpose, now convinced by reason and His grace this will be known.

Justin: I may have been born innately good, embellishing my reason with pride's luster, preparing it to never tarnish, except I suspect my goodness can be dishonored, but perhaps only by me. Entering this world to be encountered by circumstances for aborting goodness, I witnessed people abdicating their assigned roles, discarding jurisdiction dictating them to be stewards of God’s creation. If I ever claimed a vision conferring me goodness, it must have been an illusion, never cleared by truth, flashing imagined pictures before me, flickering opposites of bad and good, blurring my comprehension, pretending to guide me, but never appearing robed to be a helper, a comrade never ready or willing to be my leader. With Evan appearing, coming as a helper, we joined in learning to live out our truth's illusions, to magnify each moment's importance, trusting nothing else mattered, nothing to mar the happiness we shared. Having no helper other than me, he was free to begin defining himself, beginning at an early age, understanding this is how we are made.

Evan: In my youth I soon learned I was not created to be cared for, understanding this early when my mother cast me out, beginning my experience to be alone, unwelcome in a cold world, driven by her to reclaim lost space, restoring freedom long overdue, escaping by denying parental obligations, releasing her for relaxation to inhale contentment in smoking her puffs. Meeting Justin, I began to learn important things, sharing youthful thoughts, creating wisdom for our lives, ignoring voices of sometime fading helpers, enlisting deafness to silence their few words offering help, regarded now as suggesting barely useful wisdom. Maybe I was somehow placed here merely to watch others, muddling through ways to forget theirs, avoiding their actions for achieving defeat, drifting through circumstances promising little to follow. Luckily, I was born with reason and common sense, showing me ways to create myself, promising me fulfillment, assuring profit from their investment, enlisting them to promise more hope than from any helper, trusting them to never leave me, to never forsake me and return me to be an orphan, telling me: We are with you always.

Justin: Knowing you would surely become someone, more than merely a little-active something, could I ever hope to be more than nothing, being less than nothing for so long, never understanding its reason, seeking a worthwhile definition, waiting for fate's wind to change, to bring me fortune, to fulfill my hopes, rewarding my dream's promises, but never revealing the way to more than nothing, never showing me what to do, what words to say, to determine my will's direction, nothing for revealing the way, nothing for knowing the times to avoid collision-if possible with nothingness-encountering obstacles as my caregiver’s circumstances, preparing me for like conflict, destroying any order I had nurtured. Evan, entering my life, restored me, restoring my disarray, removing my guilty disorder, showing me I could be more than nothing.

Bystander: Scripture says we must love God, love Him for His deeds, creating all with goodness, and we must love our parents, exercising their God-given rights to create us and for being ordained as stewards of His creation, obeying His will for us to be more than nothing, commissioning parents to insure we become more than nothing, assuring we will never cast our lives into the eternal abyss.

Justin: Jesus came with a different plea, denying rights to exclusive parental love for claiming unquestioned obedience to filial desires and wants, exhorting us to leave earthly parents and follow Him. Love is not obedience; realizing obedience unlikely comes from love, but comes from reluctant observance of laws. Love not law, realizing pure love needs no law; so much for Yahweh’s law, asking: Does He love us by His laws, wondering if He can He love us without them, without laws confusing our free will?

Evan: Being no more than nothing in a void of nothingness, I would have no need for free will, there being nothing to choose. Accepting less than nothing is difficult, believing in love for nothing except my wants and desires. Reason tells me there is nothing persuading anyone to care for me when I am created to exist in a world no different from an asshole. Is creation bad enough for anyone to describe it so, picturing it at perhaps its best, using my parent's evaluation, painting the world's fate in waiting, anticipating God's punishment, all creation expecting the Day of the Lord, foreseeing the prophet's words of doom? Unable to satisfy the Lord’s laws, humans join Satan, believing his way will bring happiness.

Sincerity: They do the right thing. Why would God create everything good, put you in His creation and then create circumstances for you to hate it? Fickle is the Lord, one day finding great pleasure in causing you to prosper, never knowing when He will find pleasure in destroying you. Creation is good indeed, however, made to be enjoyed, persuading you to savor it now, never knowing what eternity will bring. Love life here, the existence you will eventually lose; like all other life make the most out of these moments you are privileged with now.

Justin: My caregivers believe in human's innate sinfulness, all being created with designed defects, born blemished with imperfections, dooming all of us to deserved destruction. But some helpers, hoping for my salvation, encourage me to deconstruct my free will, disabling my gift to choose, to prepare me for following all of God’s laws, as He watches determining my judgment, waiting for my life to end, for death's final crushing blow, bringing me to creation's claimed to be deserved end-times, seeming to be waiting an eon for the young, believing and trusting in creation’s evil, its badness proclaimed by my mandated providers.

Evan: What action remains for reason's common sense to remove us from uncertainty, a quandary the world forced upon us, knowing we were born with none of these thoughts, but evolved as human brilliance developed during centuries of civilization?

Justin: Before I listened to worldly caregivers, I saw goodness for all creation, trusting Scripture to tell me this truth, documenting all this for the first human’s vision, awakening all to God's first revelation, letting them experience creation's beauty. His goodness promising fulfillment for all insures my expectations to see God's full glory, waiting on Him with reverence, His day being every day, working to transform me, partnering me into His beauty, but I don't know if the world allows escape into His eternity, sometimes questioning this hope as an illusion.

Evan: But how will transformation into God's beauty help circumstances continuing here, reasoning your departure to leave with others of like kind will create a greater vacuum, abandoning concern for the still suffering, isolating remaining ones without transformation into His beauty? Will human anguish continue with transformed people's departure?

Justin: We don't have to leave. Transformation into His beauty can happen here, lifting the veil separating us from God, splitting the curtain, renting the barrier of laws, revealing God's glory, trusting this change will shower us with blessings to grow our health and prosperity, bestowing His beauty to gain us joy beyond imagination, releasing us from conformation to worldly ways here.

Evan: Having greater faith in reason, more trust in common sense for some working out their problems, fortifying them with others’ reason, believing their truths, assures me, counting on their coherence with mine, I ask: Why don't you use these gifts to help others? Living with noble aspirations, how do you continue to be transformed, trusting ancient myths, preaching at me to follow, never realizing you cannot threaten my confidence in reason, tempting me with your unreasonable mumbling mantra? My self empowers me to be whatever I chose, but never for seeking a nebulous beauty and linking it to goodness, knowing some beauty never has virtues of goodness.

Sincerity: You have great confidence in yourself, little realizing history will likely prove your truths empty, patiently waiting until a time unknown, beyond your vision's life with its seeing done, when others fill voids left by failing truths, manipulating your thoughts and replacing them with more acceptable rational conclusions, boasting honesty attested to by a majority.

Justin: Lacking human tools to engage your thoughts with mine, never preparing for discussions you propose, I question reason's power for answering you and have little regard for using common sense, leaving me ignorant-having no tools to confirm my truths. Seeking wisdom, fulfilling this need by a seemingly vital college education, can equip me to discuss thoughts with others, but choosing where to start may be difficult. Religious studies at a Bible college seem to be a profitable place to begin doing God's work, to prepare me for reasoning, no confirming His existence, His Being, beyond my powers now to reason.

Evan: Seeing you read the Bible so much, how can a religious study program prepare you better? College religion professors are obliged to teach new ideas, molding your mind to change its views, to promote new beliefs, for instilling different truths, resizing your ideas, recasting them for acceptance by current waves of thought, working many different schemes to wash out your Christian convictions. Do you think any of them train students to be Christ’s messengers for carrying out the Great Commission? Religious study teachers have become philosophers, teaching students how to use their own ways, their reason and common sense to equip them for building an utopian kingdom here, telling them to forget hope in God, and if anything, to become theologians and use philosophy to hide their ideas in respectability, packaging them with beautiful logic, believing philosophy exalts the mind, cleansing it of irrational reasoning, enabling it to reason rightly, to think clearly and critically, to accept all truths are relative, promising salvation and never disturbing us with despair's intervention by judgment, guilt or shame, telling us to flee from responsibility to eternal truths, suffering us with moral disorder and self-alienation, destroying what we are meant to be, telling us to find a new god to fill the void, to deny any spirit of The Lord resting on us.

Justin: You may be right. I must protect what I believe.

Evan: Justin you are a good guy, making you such a dear friend, but experience of the academic world might show your faith needs no integration into everyday life activities, threatening a loss for your convictions, destroying any innocence protecting your beliefs, transforming you into a semi-believer, worshipping only on the Lord’s Day to manifest your obedience to Christ. I hate to see you change, becoming one of so many whose ministries ignores virtuous ideals, chasing after worldly desires, coveting wants of all others, believing nothing new is gained by living an ascetic life, striving in vain to be holy. With science and technology holding people's only promise for improving humans, consider their potential to reveal unimaginable unknowns, waiting to be discovered, brimming with hope, foretelling new healings, promising longer life. What new ideas can you propose in religious studies, knowing everything has been revealed, writings now being only for new variations on old themes, recycling ideology, rewriting to reinvent, redesigning the wheel for each new century, uncovering known messages on old parchments, hidden in caves, waiting for new words to revive their thoughts? Do they help humans in any way? I don’t think so. How many know Christ by these endeavors?

Justin: Knowing its difficulty, I try not to judge value by determining success in improving humankind, recording achievement in numbers and calculating how many I have led to Christ. Are some missionaries, spending decades in their labors while converting few souls, successful or not? Who can say? Consider also accomplishments claimed for science and technology, asking: Are we healthier and happier? So how do people struggle for success, searching for promises of joy, endeavoring to find happiness, understanding their lofty goals can change, relegating all to nothing? Young people studying to practice medicine, invariably claim motives for helping people, but later change their incentives to make money, as they scramble for rewarding specialties, rather than for practicing up front where help is most needed.

Evan: Well, we live on our dreams, even with knowing they all change with time.

Justin: I live on truths, not merely dreams, knowing my Lord's words, my delight, perishing in my afflictions without them, His words preserving my life, witnessing this to others, speaking and writing His messages to make my joy complete. With my claims His, trusted to be unmatched, selecting different paths for their employment, I meet spirituality's true test on encountering injustice, disgrace, corruption and turmoil, attempting to rouse them from spiritual laziness, from encouraging failure, from descending into indifference, leaving complacency to deny joy for my soul.

Evan: Your regard for my thoughts, your considerations never demanding, always respecting my great expectations, demonstrating a love honoring one’s gifts, glorifies creation's goodness.

Justin: Why be so kind to me, tempting me to imagine myself virtuous, trusting me to show myself humble, to be lowly and considerate, prepared to serve and always relating with others.

Evan: Destroy all your tolerance for humiliation, for despising your pride, ridiculing your strive for noble achievements, because some day we will rediscover Eden and find its fabled tree, waiting to reveal its promises, hidden, trusting to be uncovered, enlightening us to know all things, compelling us to believe in this legend's truth, trusting in its fruit to reveal wisdom for knowing, to bring us understanding, thereby ending creation's commentary instigating our suffering, for justice to end injustice as we reclaim our pride stolen by humiliation.

Justin: How blissful is our youthful ignorance, knowing it must leave, forcing us to plan now on embarking, destroying our innocence, insuring its fading away, realizing knowledge we gain will likely separate us, moving us into different worlds, leaving our relationship with its memories of happiness, sealing our companionship, imagined to be a life-long destiny, but now seeming to forfeit little, dismissing youthful dreams, now a long-forgotten prosperity. If we rediscovered Eden, acquiring all from its tree of knowledge, losing our childish ignorance, is it worth having, knowing it would end our relationship?

Evan: We may discover too much knowledge, changing us to harm our relationship, forever damaging perceptions for our companionship’s importance.

Justin: But God-with His goodness somewhat concealed-separating one tree as forbidden, telling us not to eat of it, withholding His hidden information, preventing its knowing by His newly created beings, believing all their given knowledge was sufficient, preventing His novel creation from becoming God, His humans to become Godlike, vying with the jealous One wanting no other god before Him, maybe waiting until His new creation could survive testing, to pass fitness for being crowned as the glory of God's creation.

Evan: Your will, as you have said, is to be transformed into the beauty of God. Will a truly jealous God justify this hope if He envies like you, believing your creation in His image describes God to be like you, for sharing in His beauty? Can there be a better reason for forbidding the fruit of Eden's tree, wondering whether God might have denied the apple to protect our potential for relationships, necessary for us to develop, for living in harmony with all else, implementing our creation's plan. Relationships end in worlds of myself, the my-selves possessing all knowledge, needing none, ignoring all coming from relationships. So much for the tree.

Justin: Yes, I want to be transformed into God's beauty, but never into some of His attributes, the Lord I worship, never wanting His wrath for others to fear me, never for becoming like Yahweh, always seeking vengeance, exacting retribution, threatening His created beings, leaving them to tremble, but never seeking His beauty to acquire honor, to shower me with never-deserved reverence, I rain love due only for God and proclaim this as my transformation, glorifying me with His beauty, radiating joy and witnessing for all to see, while I ignore Him before His transformation from Yahweh.

Evan: Maybe the Eden story is the best scribes could write, but Adam seemed to know nothing of Scripture's creation story telling us everything was made good, never comprehending creation's goodness, preventing him from its understanding, blinding his vision to its potential, never to know God's plan for Adam if he remained in Eden’s goodness, for acquiring God's beauty, giving him the potential of being in or having the beauty of God. Damaged in Eden before even having a chance, people’s relationship with God, estranged from their Creator, recovering little since creation, has been inadequately considered for mending since.

Justin: You offer thoughtful explanations, persuaded by your reason to be best, supported by common sense, but they comfort me little, cultivate discontent and reward me only with despair, giving me no satisfaction with your understandings.

Irrational: Whatever you do, you can never find satisfaction if all is meaningless, all creation being in a state of nothingness, leaving nothing to seek, nothing meaningful to do, asking by your reasoning: What can be chosen where there is nothingness? Name something to tempt anyone committed to never reason.

Bystander: Temptation is not sinful but if humans believe it is wrong, they can create a loophole which they oblige with scapegoats, forever seeking and finding someone to blame, doing whatever it takes.

Justin: Who can I be tempted to blame? Let's ask Sincerity who might have been a candidate he would have tempted?

Sincerity: I tempt only am blamed for human failings, for tempting them beyond endurance by deceiving their innate will to choose. I scorn anyone’s condemnation acknowledging all to be my fault, accusing others for their failures, insisting on blaming me for destructive consequences of their own doing, but predictable from their freely chosen actions. Was Adam, born to sin and placed in a contingent world, created to be thrown out of heaven like me? Humans lamenting over being born into a world viewed as meaningless, ask: How can we be created good, in an existence where everything created is claimed to be good, but where we are stricken at birth to sin, prepared to bring on certain judgment and suffer punishment, evicting us from creation’s goodness, enslaving us to contingency’s uncertainties, descending us into despondency, mired in despair, dooming us to the inevitable before any first decision can be made, before breaking any law, any recognizable decree, as we acquire a sinful nature on taking our first breath? I remind you I am not the tempter, but I am indeed the accuser-but only a messenger delivering dispatches to the already accused-chosen to reproach humans, charging them, but never as the tempter, knowing I have no need for this with their temptation already done by someone other. As one also created with goodness, I offer humans love and provide meaning for their instinctual needs, ones essential to their creation. God, fencing off instincts of beasts, never limits human's instinctually driven desires, such as creating them with a prerogative for sex at any time, designing this as a bonus in their creation, leaving us to wonder why did He subsequently create laws to have sex a sinful act, rebuking ones commanded to procreate, but decreeing all must be regulated by Him, an impossibility with what He imbeds in human memory? But now, listening to their inherent makeup, humans discover sexual activity is not sinful, trusting sexual expression manifests creation's goodness.

Justin: You are blamed for temptation to sin. It is verified in the Bible.

Sincerity: Desiring to follow one’s instincts is never temptation unless you can show me a law forbidding your instincts, or do you hear intuitions telling you that succumbing to them is wrong. Never submit to lies limiting your being. Temptation is never sin, being made to face your human nature's instincts, speaking to life's wonders, understanding contingency demands temptation as part of making choices, blaming temptation for uncertainty in choosing-crediting temptation for bad outcomes and never for good results-believing we must be tempted to choose, trusting no one is immune to temptation, never shaming us, never coming in to greet and degrade us, to place us beneath contempt and destroy our dignity or restore our beastly nature to live without temptation. Created to be sinful, knowing no other way, how can humans be tempted, with being sinful their natural way, a way needing no temptations to consummate their deeds? With sinful people yielding to all longings, worshipping lust as their god, temptations no longer confuse them, banishing fears for preventing their earlier sinning, questioning their will and contemplations to follow their myself. God does not save humans from temptations, while claiming to never tempt them beyond their endurance, but He sustains temptation in their midst. I leave sinners alone, knowing they need no one to tempt them, recognizing if anything they need my comfort and support, someone to offer lifelong encouragement. I also never chase after believers truly committed to following the Lord. You can never blame me for tempting semi-believers, their my-selves convicting them, believing they follow the Lord but their