Doesn’t Doctrine Mean Anything to You? – Another Troll Conversation

    “What are you doing, Carter?”

    It was late in the afternoon; the sun was setting and long shadows stretched across the lawn. I was sitting on the porch looking across the street. “I’m waiting for Sorrow to return.”

    Gunner raised an eyebrow above his slightly hyperthyroid eyes - a particularly strange look considering the way the left eye drooped. “You are a weirdo, aren’t you?” he said, but I didn’t bother to explain that Sorrow is one of the stray cats we’ve been feeding on our porch. He used to come around and mew at us with his tired, smoky cat voice, but we haven’t seen him for several days. And when last we saw him, he was looking pretty weak. I’m afraid he went off somewhere to die.

    “Why are you here, Gunner?” I asked.

    “First we need to talk about your hair.” He flicked the ends of my hair.

    “What about my hair, Gunner?” I said, flinching slightly.

    “You know you need a haircut. Up in a femboy, manbun like that… ‘Doesn’t the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair it is a disgrace to him?’”

    I laughed a little and then said, “Yeah. My dad used to quote Paul at me too. But that verse doesn’t really cut the way you think it does.”

    He didn’t seem to notice the pun. But that was okay.

    “The Nazarites were actually required to have long hair, remember?”

    Gunner scoffed. “Are you saying you’ve taken that vow, Carter? Can’t drink any more of that IPA beer you like. Can’t make any more of your homemade wine...”

    “No. I’m just saying that Paul’s argument isn’t universal there. It’s cultural. ‘Contrary to nature’ doesn’t automatically mean ‘morally deviant.’ Miracles are, by definition, ‘contrary to nature’…”

    He glared at me for a second and then waved me off. “Fine. You’re wrong. But whatever. That’s not really why I came here. It just bugs me, your womanly locks. Man up and get a haircut, Carter.”

    I sighed and asked again. “Why are you here, Gunner?”

    “I want to return to something you said in one of our previous conversations. You said that in the context of salvation, ‘All means all.’ Did I get that right?”

    I affirmed it.

    “So, tell me, Carter, who's a Christian? A true Christian? Roman Catholics?

    “Yes,” I affirmed again.

    “Jehovah's Witnesses?”

    “Yes.”

    “Mormons?”

    “Yes again.”

    So doctrine means nothing to you? You don’t discriminate at all, you’ll just let anyone and everyone in?”

    “Well it’s not up to me to let anyone in, as you said. Or to keep anyone out, either. But no, I don’t think that doctrine is meaningless, irrelevant, or pointless. Some doctrines are healthier and better realized than others. I think the Word of Faith folks are unhealthy and unhelpful with their brand of prosperity gospel. And I think the Latter-day Saints have a particularly weird theology. Some churches have doctrines that I think are clearly mistaken. Seriously so. But if they call Jesus Lord and trust him for their salvation, that’s enough for me. Yours for example. I know your Christian Reformed Church wouldn’t welcome me. That’s your theology and you believe it. I still count you as a brother. Estranged, maybe, but a brother in Christ.”

    “But…” Gunner began to object.

    “No buts. But one caveat. Not everyone who calls out ‘Lord, Lord’ is recognized by the Lord. The true disciple is the one who does the will of the Father – feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, healing the sick.”

    “But…”

    “It’s not a matter of orthodoxy versus orthopraxy. But the true test of orthodoxy is orthopraxy.” I said over his objection.

    “Don’t give me your liberal college words,” Gunner said. “Answer the question plainly.”

    “Maybe the question isn’t who is a true Christian but rather, what is pure religion, undefiled and unspoiled in the eyes of God – and that question is already answered for us. We don’t have to wrestle it. Pure religion is coming to the aid of orphans and widows in their hardships – the poor and defenseless, the outcast and the outsider.”

    “And keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world!” Gunner insisted.

    “Yes. And keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world,” I assured him.

    “You’re still a Universalist. You’re still a heretic. You’re still a deviant.”

    “Maybe,” I said still looking up and down the street for Sorrow. “But you keep coming back, don’t you?”

An Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll (the first of the series) 
I Will Not Fight the Argument (the second)
Supermarket Wrestling (third conversation)
Do You Even Pray (the troll returns)
All Means All (A fifth conversation)
The Doctrine that Cannot Be Challenged (sixth conversation)
Toward Sodom - (a halfhearted seventh conversation)
Millions of Years of Death (the eighth conversation)
Truth with Untruth (the ninth conversation)
Bulls, Dogs, and Villains (the tenth conversation)
The Righteous Forsaken (the eleventh conversation)
A Sabbath Garden (conversation number twelve)

Money Makes Demands

    It was both later and earlier than I realized. It must have been some time after midnight. I was in a thin corridor, crowded and cluttered with posters framed photographs – all the artifacts of a rich man’s gilded and spoiled history, that led away to the left. I considered the hallway a potentially useful exit, especially as they approached. Laurence would be here soon with a list and inventory of demands He was expecting another fourteen grand from me, but I didn’t have the money. I never had it, any of it. The whole deal was skunked from the beginning. Confound him and his perpetually raised eyebrows.

    Yet, let it be said, the old man did, in some ways, remind me of the moon.

    Looking around, I saw little in the way of any other help or aid at the far end of the room. One victim was still there on the wall. Flashed and slashed. Beside the body was an old television on a stand, pointed at the corpse. Some silent film noir played upon the screen. A man in a fedora, a woman with a gun… Beyond the archway was an open-plan ceiling. Moonlight but no escape.

    And at the far end of the hall, yet unnoticed by everyone, a room without a view. I stared into the blackness and felt the faintest rush of morning air. Something breathing. A way out? Or was it just another way further into the dark? There was no time for this or any of the other old debts.

    “Why am I here?”

    I stepped and staggered over the unmade bed, ignoring the blood on the bed sheets, withdrew the key from my pocket and told myself to breathe. And breathe again. When I arrived, I had expected something to happen, but not like this. And now it was too late. Treacherous panic reared up within me. I narrowed my eyes and, despite the stench, breathed in through my nose.

    The old man’s lower body was gone but not through the open door. Exposed from the waist up. Arms pinwheeled, hands pinned. A body posed in perpetual tumble. Mickles and muckles on my mind, I must have missed much. Like the fact that one of his eyes was smaller than the other. The other had been gouged out. He was old and severed by a vicious knife wound. The cause of death couldn’t be clearer.

    Two years ago there had been another the same. Slashed and flashed. Left in the basement surrounded by pornography and filth. Laurence had come back sober. His share of horrors was particularly dark. After the fire, no one attributed it to coincidence. Burning old news and secrets. So many secrets.

    “Why am I here?” Drop everything. Go. Follow. Flee. Get out.

    There were additional stab wounds, but I didn’t have time to count them. White, now desaturated. I’d taken too much time getting here. Clearly too weak, too feeble. Too late to form an opinion. Trying to think. Trying the door handle.

    One last time, “Why am I here?”

    I thought once more of my family, my daughter and all the notes and maps in her room. She knew about this. Probably. All that research in the libraries of Europe, she had to have known. Right? Either it hadn’t registered or she didn’t want to risk telling. Was it all my fault? I wouldn’t doubt it. I had failed her too often. The last time I’d seen her was at the carpet shop, abandoned there. I couldn’t expect her to wait anymore.

    I paused. Was that the elevator? Someone upstairs? Down? I opened the window and peered out. Moonlight was spread across the lawn like silver milk. There was nothing in the unsupported air. Had someone called the police? Where were the lights and sirens? Why the delay?

    I buried the key beneath the books and journals and newspaper cuttings inside my backpack. Laurence would demand it. Money makes demands. Always. Eternally insistent. Another pause and I shoved my backpack behind the bed. Further behind.

    “I heard that you’d called,” Laurence said from the door, annoyance in his mouth and that superior arched eyebrow. The man standing there in that silver three piece suit and silver revolver in hand. “And now you are going to...”

    “I’m sorry,” I blurted out, spinning round. “I have to you,” I stuttered, words spilling out of my thoughtless mouth. “I mean, I have to tell you. There can be no excuse. A full report, properly. In person.”

    “Why are you here?” Laurence asked. “It can’t be because of Franklin, can it?”

    Silence.

    “Was it something to do with Franklin? It’s very important that you tell the truth. Don’t lie to me, my boy. My good boy.”

    Silence. And then “I can’t tell you that right now, but if you’ll give me, if you’ll let me…”

    Sudden gunshots and armed intruders, masked, crashed through the door. The military police had finally arrived. Splintered boards clattered across the room. From where I lay, prone upon the floor, I watched as Laurence turned his gun upon the police. He fired once, twice before a salvo of automatic gunfire ripped him to shreds.

    I screamed my way into the darkest levels of hell.

Topics for Discussion – Prophecy Club – Meeting May 14

    The European Union has ten member states, now eleven. Count the number of stars in the flag if you don’t understand. The Prophecy Club has all this information. We know the identity of the all-seeing eye.

    JFK’s assassination was a Masonic symbol enacted in life – or death, rather. Strike him on the left breast. Strike him on the neck. Strike him on the head. Dead.

    Remember the exploding teeth of the 19^th century? Metal fillings generated a galvanic effect, filled with hydrogen and exploded like a gunshot.

    Ground penetrating radar was used to discover subterranean rooms and chambers in a ‘boat like’ geologic anomaly in the mountains of Turkey. Ron Wyatt found it and nearly a hundred other Biblical artifacts. Explain that one if you can.

    The Parthenon of Greece has forty-six pillars. The human body has forty-six chromosomes. Do you see it yet? It’s all there if you know how to see. If you know how to count. 

    The James Webb telescope is already discovering galaxies that should not exist. Aren’t you even curious as to why?

    Pale as a ghost and dressed in black, the rulers of darkness know only the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Lawless and loveless.

    We are concerned how the prosperity of the community will be affected by the proposed construction of a Muslim cemetery. It will bring unwanted traffic into the neighborhood – traffic that puts school children at risk. Sign the petition to keep the dead Muslims out of our community.

    The secular humanist misunderstands biology so that he can better misunderstand theology. History, the same. Mathematics too. Precept upon precept, it all adds up. But he refuses the call of Wisdom.

The Articles of Faith of Trump Brand Christianity

    1 – The Trumpet of God is the trumpet of faith, true and living. Thank you, President Trump, harmonious in power, just in wisdom, empathy, love, and truth.

    2 – No subscription, no price. A pure estate Printed free. Your deposit will not be returned.

    3 – We believe we are a chosen people, of a favored nation, on these blessed shores unto salvation and eternal life. Particular and unconditional. America first and amen.

    4 – Utterly depraved with no desire for freedom. Failed and fell, our desire is to be deceived. Nothing is less expensive. No one is safer. We voted for this.

    5 – This our obligation to good works. Appearing and disappearing from our reality dimension, a new faith. Forever cursed by law though the courts are on our side. To change the laws and times and seasons is our reward.

    6 – Power is for control. Power is for external and internal use only. These are the ordinances of the church. Immersion is the only mode and none but those who have been baptized thus are to be admitted. DHS will determine if deportation is warranted.

    7 – We are stubborn and obdurate. Everlasting to everlasting without question, without doubt, without turning, without treason. Humiliating hopefuls and rivals alike. The perfect ticket has little to offer.

    8 – Who are the vulnerable? What systems of injustice? The punishment for resistance and dismantling initiatives will be swift and eternal. Federal ecclesiastical authority is clear.

    9 – The Scriptures are best preserved in the only authorized King James Version, fully licensed and endorsed with the Presidential Seal, embossed in gold. This is how to govern in full faith and practice.

    10 – The Great and final days will come with the full weight of the American military. Thrust and counter-thrust. Strike and counter-strike. The righteous will live in America forever. The unjust will be crushed with iron and sold to recoup our losses. A regency of fear forever. Amen.

Uniformed Pentagon Officials and Witchcraft Lesbians

    There are places underground, deep within the dark caverns of the earth, where evil spirits dwell. A uniformed pentagon official assured me this is true. He stood in my door and told me what it is that he is not allowed to say. No hearth, no home, no love or kindness there in the dark depths. But what did the prophet say, ‘I saw gods ascending from the earth.’ Where exactly do you think they come from

    Meanwhile, men around the world regularly meet for this, and what is it they are come for? To share the bonds of camaraderie and bonhomie. To share a laugh or two. To hone leadership and speaking and socialization skills. But what they invariably discover is the working of discord on the surface of the earth. The spirits of the deep unleashed. They are primarily women who can’t shut their mouths. Witchcraft lesbians who won’t shut their froward mouths. These women, these people, these grotesque people – they are black frauds and white liars. Their heads are full of noise that escapes through their ruby lips. They are at the same time both superiorous and inferiorous. Ladies' night! Who can explain it

    She will do him evil and no good all the days of her life. In her tongue is the law. Her slick, moist tongue. When she opens her mouth, she does so wily, in her tongue is deception. Moaning. Her clothing slips and so do the men. Physical beauty is easy and so is she. The world is unkind. Do not expend your energy on women. They will use your wealth to ruin kings. She gets up early, before the dawn, giving orders to her girls. Awakening strength and spontaneity at the mouth of hell. Her lamp does not go out at night.

    Fine dining, speeches, and a Q&A session designed to stimulate robust and masculine discussion - certain traditions that have no need of feminist spoil. This is not the possible. This is not the possible. This is the promised of God. The whole prophetic event in one picture. Complete

    Severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings here. Already we hear the sirens. We are under warning and under wicked assault. We cannot now say more about the mystery of the rapture or the wickedness of Sodom. There is no time. Rain and hail is falling all around. These are the falling gods of the iron kingdom. Iron and clay commingled and burning as they fall. The lightning flash is the flash of familiar spirits from the depths of the earth.