“11 I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! 2 For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. 5 Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. 6 Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things. 7 Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God’s gospel to you free of charge? 8 I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. 9 And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way. 10 As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. 11 And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! 12 And what I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. 13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.” (2 Co 11:1–15 ESV)

Money can’t buy good “what’s out there” intelligence. Christ taught that those not for us are against us; the Revelation of dubious Central Figures, is an occasion both to mourn and to Laud the Father for His provision. Provision of centralized Otherness. Provision of a magnet for so many ill spirits “out there”. And the factual Good Mannered, Well-Intentioned, Trustworthy, man or woman at the helm of Opposition, is also something money can’t buy.

We reflect on state declaring war against state, perhaps, but truth is, there is an Exorcism to perform on each State “out there”. Christ is in the business of some Blessed Assurance wherein our War is not against the children and innocents on “the other side”, but against a Magnet, Lightning Rod, Great Attractor for Evil. He provides. He makes it all Logical. He rewards our Thinking Caps because they evolved and were therein Designed, to Cogitate over this-and-that thinking, over platforms and platitudes, over logical Denouements and measured, statistical, rational Back-and-Forth.

The most important sentiment, then, of the Believer, is that sentiment of Contrition: it changes everything. The believer becomes Malleable and awoken, eyes bright to the dawn of a New Day. We even begin to Share a Hope with the malfeasance, with the Enemy, with the Opposition.

Maybe we can’t buy good intelligence, but we can be Attentive and Submitted to a weather-forecaster’s sanity and listening Spirit. We can learn to move beyond the heavy Thuds and Panicky Urgent demands. Each of us also is called to Fight for a principle, not going the route of cuteness or of manicky demands or hatreds. We learn to hate less. We learn to Appreciate just how an enemy Sees Us, too. We cannot “sue our religion” for existential Answers: our religion was designed by a (Child?) Man named Jesus, as a best guess as to How to Heal and Persuade the people; our task, since any Game can be appropriated and made into a mockery of itself, is to go tight-lipped and tough-stanced in Favor of this Experiential, Rewarding Faith and Religion. We must fight for the Principles, not mock the Truth claims. We must hold the Resurrection in High Regard, not complain that people are “getting away with things”.

When we Engage, the Ontology (what’s “out there”) comes in and out of focus: some Evil is too tantamount to its own victory for us rightly to “See”. We can go burrowed mode, hiding from such stark self-awareness (that is, the awareness of being enfeebled by said Evil), or we can literally see ourselves as others see us, like a casual comment about our person accidentally overheard. All evil is fleeting and ghostly, hiding out and unable in and of itself to spell Life. The Strength of the Believer lies in this Refusal to absorb evil, refusal to legitimize it: Universalism is the doctrine all life is given by God and pleasing for Good Works; we believe all life is spiraling this way and that, but we see eddies and backwaters; nonetheless we know our Success is not a product of our own Skills and Blessedness… why then do we Pray? What about life Excites? The Christ’s Religion informs and enables us to Do Good notwithstanding Evil so tantamount as to be unable for us squarely to Face. Such evil cannot self-perpetuate and self-propagate. It requires Complicity. And Now is as good a time as Any to let light shine into the shadowland. Actionable Intelligence is Ours, here and now: to own the plain gameday Ontology and Denouement, own it as Our Victory as Gifted by the Son on High. We go sanguine and Patient, in light of His Goodness as evidenced in three peripatetic years. There is such a thing as good and evil; our task is to watch the waves of Good transcend and perpetually Recreate.