“4 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor 4:1-6 ESV)

With so much by which we were known now placed on the Altar, it is not forgetfulness, oblivion, oversight that our Deeds wrought in Christ are Deeds unblemished and deeds not letting an Enemy dictate the terms of battle. We do have a table to eat from that is invisible to an Enemy, not because of some magic trick but some things are hidden in Plain Sight. We do have a compunction and Moral gestalt that is dogged, that Understands the moment of clarity—remorse for our sins, “Oh yeah” to our sins, and new Awareness of how hopeless it seems once we’ve acknowledged the Enemy’s game—and acts on the Moment of Clarity via going to a few Special Places allotted Christ and His followers.

We have these Capacities in our hearts because He has gone a route Even More sober than our best efforts at acknowledging: acknowledging pained existence, acknowledging tried principles, acknowledging Hateful regimes of society on all sides, acknowledging that some Special Understandings are dogged and hated and hounded from the mindspace.

His Route, even more sober, is where that soldier suddenly—and they Hate this—is the focal point of the community, because he or she has been allotted the Duty of Service, of martyrdom, of whatever the ending may be, simply of Service. And so Life reinvents the Focal Point Sublime. Life reinvents the passive Courage: I am a Formed and Participatory member of the community, I can stare down evil accusations even as the temperatures and fashions go Ill and go Evil. I have sufficient Personal Composure to ride the high and sober plane, the playing field Principled and Certain: see me, no furtive shade hiding out in the corners, but when Awoken, vocal and active to Partake and to Share and to Inspire, most of all Utterly Free of those things they accuse by way of desecrating, denigrating, denying.

Because it is a hound of an ill spirit that chases down by way of insinuation, until—this is the errant hope—we somehow out of false guilt or imputed ill-at-ease do act out the furtive Guilty Ones’ blemished Presence. We are Not blemished in our personal composure. We are Firm to State that ours is a ship, indeed a sinner this ship, but a ship forthwith and strange days Hated for the Testimony. The Testimony that unseated so much comfort in the pews, so many would-be Christians who tolerate all but lack any Personal Experience of so much placed on the Altar called Repentance. They look for any and all reasons to Exclude and Shun the ones that put them at discomfort.

Let this then be the Occasion to Insist that historians rightly tell, nothing would have worked without the Love of the Godhead. He in sad Awareness, saw it “for real” truth that Saints are Hounded and so many good deeds are Hated. And an Enemy… they say “he’s a believer now, let us show him what Christ went through…” This is unbelieving sod. This is unbelieving rubbish. This we cannot engage in dialog, but we are those who fall back on our Basic Training and our Staid Composure: see I can stand tall and stare down the charges, even if—and the Enemy hates this—I am a focal point. The enemy then ensures it is a focal point of society’s fascination and fixation on Any and All ill rumor. But ours was never meant to be a lazily comfortable Life. Ours, and this the Enemy hates, was always meant for brevity and a refusal to Cave In or Acknowledge some frustrations. We are not Frustrated, because we have Him. We have Jesus on the Line. We are going back to basics, to remember that a Basic Dialog, Basic Exchange, Basic Back-and-Forth, brought us here, and they want a retroactive judgment, but such a judgment can go both ways. Anything can become a lawsuit, when aped and group-think Offended by the Truth Claims. We have no legal counsel except to wear our heart on our sleeve, in Concert with so many dear Saints in the Land who have gone for broke.