Christian Clarity Review

jail scene. The jailer is trying to get those he is imprisoning to talk about the specifics of ..something:

Jailer: See, God controls everything. ( as he waves his hands in a circle, one hand holding the GUN)

Prisoner: Everything? ( looking at the gun ) ( his head following the gun around..)

Jailer: Everything, my friend. For instance ( as he herds the prisoner towards a cell already crowded with others ) take the coast. God controls when it expands so that men may build houses on more land and eat the fruit of trees that grow there. There is freedom in having more land. Everyone knows this. But then God sometimes ( he grips the air tightly) constricts the coastline. He squeezes all the men together in a smaller area with an iron band. See?

Prisoner: ( as they get to the door of the cell). I can see that.

Jailer: and the thing is, men like their privacy. They don’t like to be close to other men or women other than their families except for the necessities, no?

Prisoner ( as the jailer opens the door and he goes inside..) I suppose so.

Jailer: You suppose? No, I think you are certain. I think you understand that quietness is indeed golden. Especially for a person in your situation. Because you know that speech itself, no matter what is said, can sometimes be –no, a lot of the time is, the enemy. So I want you to stay in there and not say anything. You have all the time in the world, many millennia according to some for God to work these things out. God has merely constricted your coast to crowd you in with other men –other speakers. But I think –let us hope, it is only temporary and that God will act in a moment, in a miracle, for He has many, to give you more land.

Prisoner: looks at his hand and slowly constricts the air.

Jailer: See? You understand already. I want you to be quiet a very long time and then say something important. You will thank me later for this, I promise. Ch..eh, boleth. Are you familiar with this term?

Prisoner: Shibboleth?

Jailer: Exactly. I knew you were an educated man the moment I saw you. I want you to say a chi-bboleth.

Prisoner looks confused.

Jailer: Don’t worry. You will know it when it happens. ( closes the door and turns the key. Bolt loudly engages. He puts the gun in its holster.) It is different for everybody. And yet the same. You came all this way to be profound, to do what is profound. I could see it the moment I saw you, even beyond your obvious education. Do you have visions?

Prisoner: No. But I see new understandings all the time about things I wasn’t really thinking about. And I’ve heard the thought lately that although we speak a lot of words as sounds we understand and that have real meaning to us and even satisfies us, that beyond that we are saying something else with the same sounds in a language which is unknown to us; that all the little stops and starts as implied punctuation in our speech? –isn’t really, and that it is all something else. I don’t know if it is good or evil. But I think we say much more than we know in the middle of saying what we think we know.

Jailer ( after a small silence) : That is profound. You are a profound person. You will remember I said so. Unfortunately, that particular, ..how do you say ..profundity, is not what we are looking for is it?

Prisoner: Is a shibboleth a confession?

Jailer: It could be. I don’t know. I am not an educated man. It could be as simple as asking some Chinese people to say “fried rice”. You know how some of them are with r’s and l’s. It could be a bigger difference between you and me beyond you being in there and me being out here with the gun and the law. But really, I just hear things from time to time. I think you haven’t been quiet enough to find out and then tell me so we both will know. Even if we are saying mini things beyond what we know to understand, silence is the same in all languages, no? Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe ..next year. We are but men and do not know these things –until God makes our coast small and gives us time to think. ( he puts his finger up to his lips) Shhh…

add foreign country, a bottle of locally specific liquor on the jailers desk, a dirty glass half full of the liquor, a few flies, an overhead fan creaking out the moving air as it cast shadows over the floor and faces of the players, subdued street noises, guns peeking out of waistbands and under arms from obviously custom rigs, a few days of beard growth on all the men except for one who is perfectly groomed and who is the only one not sweating and obviously ready to ( resigned to) sweating all the time, at least one or two idols that the jailer’s best honesty is to think is truly representative of Christianity and to whom incense is burning in a small dish throughout the whole scene, some graffti to that idol in the jail cell, tattoos on everybody except the guy not sweating. add the truth that both jailer and prisoner are deceived in the lie of free will and though they may make allusions to lack of free will and ‘things outside their mind’, their best honesty is to be deceived anyone can say and do anything they want given the “proper motivation” specifcally aimed at their will and that they all live in the only speech in total reality and that there simply is no hope of anything else and they the are most religious people they know ….there you go.

.. compare that to those who say they search for a “lost word” within their secret rituals and cannot and never could say shibboleth at all to God in the Word that is Jesus Christ, but merely keep speaking as if they had done so repeatedly and God was the one with the hearing problem:

Luke 16:19-31 Now there was a rich man and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, making good cheer in splendour every day. And there was a poor man, by name Lazarus, who was laid at his gateway full of sores, and desiring to be filled with the crumbs which fell from the table of the rich man; but the dogs also coming licked his sores. And it came to pass that the poor man died, and that he was carried away by the angels into the bosom of Abraham. And the rich man also died and was buried. And in hades lifting up his eyes, being in torments, he sees Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he crying out said, Father Abraham, have compassion on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering in this flame. But Abraham said, Child, recollect that *thou* hast fully received thy good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things. But now he is comforted here, and *thou* art in suffering. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm is fixed, so that those who desire to pass hence to you cannot, nor do they who desire to cross from there pass over unto us. And he said, I beseech thee then, father, that thou wouldest send him to the house of my father, for I have five brothers, so that he may earnestly testify to them, that they also may not come to this place of torment. But Abraham says to him, They have Moses and the prophets: let them hear them. But he said, Nay, father Abraham, but if one from the dead should go to them, they will repent. And he said to him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, not even if one rise from among the dead will they be persuaded.

…then add again the truth that the jailer is a freemason witch with a gold tooth and that he thinks he knows a lost word and what it really means but is specifically forbidden to speak it in public. The lost words , the shibboleths he wants other people to say are beneath him to understand, no matter what they say. He thinks he is merely clever to catch other people in their primitive beliefs and make those beleifs work for him. What he says to the prisoner is just something he says to make them all think jail is temporary. He is a collector of human capital for a low-tech firm. They like to say (and advertise as much on tv in six languages) that they leverage human capital into fresh produce…

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Judges 12:5,6 And Gilead took the fords of the Jordan before Ephraim; and it came to pass that when the fugitives of Ephraim said, Let me go over, the men of Gilead said to him, Art thou an Ephraimite? and he said, No. Then they said to him, Say now Shibboleth! and he said, Sibboleth, and did not manage to pronounce it rightly. Then they took him, and slaughtered him at the fords of the Jordan. And there fell at that time of Ephraim forty-two thousand.

shibboleth: stream of water

Proverbs 18:4 The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters, and the fountain of wisdom is a gushing brook.

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Proverbs 17:27,28 He that hath knowledge spareth his words; and a man of understanding is of a cool spirit. Even a fool when he holdeth his peace is reckoned wise, and he that shutteth his lips, intelligent.

Ecc 5:1-3 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and draw near to hear, rather than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they know not that they do evil. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thy heart be hasty to utter anything before God: for God is in the heavens, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business, and a fool’s voice through a multitude of words.

Matthew 12:36,37 But I say unto you, that every idle word which men shall say, they shall render an account of it in judgment-day: for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen