his salvation, needing no audience to argue his case, nothing to explain his fulfillment of the Lord's commandments, assured of his security in being right with God. Striving to be righteous, one can only approach God's holiness, realizing it must be distant to any hope's perception. Job has much to learn, as a recovering sinner, searching for righteousness, to begin looking to the heavens, discovering there God's key to eternal truths.
Job: All your comments, spinning a web to trap my thoughts, suggesting them to be foundations for sin, enlighten me little, giving no evidence whether any sin is less tolerable than others, or maybe living in iniquity with opportunity to cancel sins by confession and repentance is the preferable way to live.
Dumdum: Confession with repentance doesn't help God's problems, hearing cries from the oppressed, demanding retribution for their tormentors, confused when He doesn't respond swiftly. Some are oppressed by seemingly trivial iniquities but these victims can mount up arguments with the best. Job must have a dedicated spokesperson to argue his case and who might supply this need he finds uncertain. When humans suffer a sense of need, God imparts them with the Holy Spirit, energizing their personal spirit by the Spirit of God, sending an advocate to satisfy their needs, ordained to plead their case before our Creator.
Job: Crowning me, establishing me as unique, more than any beastly creature, God gave me reason, equipping me to determine my wants and desires, so why should some additional spirit be needed, sending a postscript to prepare me better, an addendum for using my reason to confront a reasoning God?
Dumdum: A spirit may reveal some truths to give you more wisdom than you can extract from yours. Without the Holy Spirit, you are likely to multiply words without knowledge, forcing you to rely on yourself for advice, commandeering your common sense, trusting your memory to offer suggestions, but no more than human truths you probably heard before, verities once believed but now obsolete.
Job: I could reject all your advice, becoming one who thinks you squander your lives, squabbling in futility, using your reason to talk about an invisible Almighty One, instead of constructing life's meaning for yourself, developing idols to please your being, accumulating wants for making life worthwhile, enriching you to dwell in a happiness of your making. If I don't hear from God, He may compel me to follow my way, the option directed by my reason and common sense. I could recover all I lost without His help, and my doctor can help restore my health.
Dumdum: Beware, God scourges each person He creates, rebuking and chastising those He loves, trusting He loves all His creation, spinning them from His clay of goodness, breathing them into existence with His spirit, indwelling them with a memory of conscience, equipping them for His day of judgment. Don't dare to deny God.
Bystander: (aside) You can never deny God, creating your circumstances, willing you to direct your reactions, responding as you choose, surrounding you with people trusted by your reason, advising you with flattery, exuding confidence in their wisdom, questioning your common sense, impugning your reason, as you deny opportunities He determines to be yours. Job could become the saint God wants him to be by understanding God-sent circumstances offer opportunities.
Reckoner: Does God, giving Job freedom to choose sin, know he will lust after all, attempting to satisfy every want in this world, requiring Him to prepare ways for his punishment, a consequence evident to all human reason?
Dumdum: Your reason can never discern God's, understanding only hints of His thoughts, revealing little for you to know, so in all honesty, your ways can never be His. Bear with me a little to hear things I have yet to say, speaking on God's behalf, trusted to be wisdom He consigned for understanding Job's circumstances. We believe God is mighty and despises no one, making some with power for His purpose, hoping some would grow their strength into righteousness, lamenting others caught in consequences of disobedience, ignoring voices of their innate spirit, becoming entangled in cords of affliction, continuing to pridefully showcase their arrogance, compelling God to recognize their transgressions, commanding them to reject forays into iniquity, to return to their Maker and complete their days in peaceful prosperity, to live with His love, harmony He intended for all creation, to be blessed as the poor in spirit, trusting theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Those responding to His instruction, following His calling, will unseal their memory, revealing hidden iniquities, small as well as large, and confess their sins, trusting our benevolent God will relent, removing the stains of their transgressions and prepare them for rejoining Him in His eternal home. We must never remain ones stricken, refusing to grieve in repentance, scourged ones rejecting any admonishment, accepting no correction, wasting God's time arguing for innocence. We must not use our afflictions to arm us, embattling us to bolder actions, proclaiming blamelessness to justify our life, demanding victory without confessing failure of our ways.
Reckoner: Realizing no one is righteous, no not one, we all believe in the impossibility of living to change, minimizing the Holy Spirit's success within us, dismantling the temple dedicated to be His home, established and waiting to be occupied at our creation, but slowly we decimate its integrity, invoking idols, gluttony, alcohol intoxication, and drug use to distract our being, following thrills of reckless behavior, abandoning ourselves to idol worship, fulfilling lusty desires of all our senses, infatuating us with senseless folly. Job must answer to this, ending his impeachment of God, blaming God for inflicting him with suffering, and acknowledge we are all blameless and upright, realizing none of us can ever claim to be righteous. Nurturing anger as a favorite response to lament his afflictions, Job should have changed his tactics, crying for help, rather than demanding explanations to vindicate an unjustly perceived fate.
Dumdum: God, delivering afflicted ones by suffering, opening their recognition by adversity, revealing sins the blameless hide, calling on the unworthy to accept judgment, unleashes wrath He has concealed from knowing, contesting the decisions to name people blameless, giving sinners little reason to confess, leaving them imprisoned in tempests tormenting their soul.
Bystander: Do we rely on pride to judge, filling us with arrogance during our training, depending on the blameless to be our victims, delivering justice, abhorring anyone's rehabilitation? What can we expect God to do?
Dumdum: Behold God, unquestionably exalted in power, asking if there is any teacher like Him, His way established to be loving and righteous, allowing anyone to say, You have done wrong? Have you lived long enough to evaluate the breadth of His work, to know He can redeem the blameless, to extol His actions and praise Him for being your almighty Creator? You, who must see to believe, trying to imagine your invisible God, calling on your reason and common sense to describe Him, working for us to know Him better, acknowledge your eyes never see Him, and you must depend on the Holy Spirit for His direction, seeking to follow what is deposited in your heart.
Bystander: Also consider how a person can see God who is everywhere, maybe waiting for a vision to observe One so vast, recognizing we have sensual perceptions to see Him now, always evident in His entire creation, witnessed by people having lenses of faith, magnified to perceive and recognize Him in all things.
Dumdum: I never need to call on God to discuss His justice. Sensing His will, my heart trembles and leaps with joy, recognizing His voice speaking through His spirit within me, thundering in a small voice for me to hear, telling of great things I unclearly comprehend, never calling nature to deliver justice, never to use my reason for proclaiming nature's ways, accepting His plan to nurture creation, changing its formations as He judges necessary.
Bystander: Stop and hear my words, Job and all you blameless ones, upright in the eyes of people, spinning your virtues for all to hear; pause to consider the wondrous works of God, laying His command on all creation, bringing His light to shine on all, glorifying His accomplishments, revealing His perfect knowledge, joyfully leading us to praise Him, beckoning us to be transformed, bringing His righteousness near.
Rec
koner: Count the many self-proclaimed blameless ones, seldom standing up to recognize God's wondrous works, rarely respecting the power of His doing, occasionally rising up to worship Him, but they fall, grasping failure, thinking falsely, their proclamations never admiring heaven's judgments, dismissing God's announcements, ignoring His promises of eternal life, neglecting His requirements, forgetting His commands to love others as themselves, never living their lives accordingly, shifting them to idle while expecting more than neutral results, neglecting declarations attesting to the promise of heavenly hope, needing little of God's assurance, relying on convictions of their reason, protecting them from any punishing afflictions, isolating them from God by staying uninvolved, remaining out of the Lord's battle, investing their moments in trivial concerns, fighting others, growing wisdom in their own conceit, never believing they should fear Him.
Dumdum: Job, now in the midst of affliction, knows in time he will be given rest, understanding divine wisdom foresees death