The Wedge of Performance

“How dare you come into my classroom like that?”

The Master hit the graduate student across the face. As the pain travelled to the end of every nerve that he had, the Master grabbed a claw full of his unkempt hair. He jerked the student’s head skyward so that he was looking squarely in his eyes.

“Growllllllllll!” As the Master made animal sounds his fangs glistened with blood.

He shoved the student’s face to the floor and ground his head with his foot.

“If you ever come into my room again without crawling on the floor to show me honor, then I will kill you. Stay on the floor for the rest of the class time and don’t move.”

The student, filled with absolute terror, wondered if he could even move if he desired.

“For the rest of the class, stop your groveling and get off the floor into your desks.”

“Lesson 2 has begun. The topic today is how to drive a wedge between humans and the enemy who they call their God. Master students infiltrate humans through covert and deception not through overt sins. The trick is getting the humans to follow our deceptive procedures while thinking they are from their God.  You can just sit back and take a vacation as they continually destroy themselves in the name of the enemy. When you get a majority of the people in a geographical region following our demonic procedures then we have territorial control and it is virtually impossible to overcome us. The best way to drive a wedge is teach humans performance. Performance appeals to their work ethic, but when applied to relationship it will cause them to view their God as a taskmaster.”

“Lesson 1 showed us that the core value of the enemy is to develop relationships with those slimy water logged organic beings called humans. What the enemy sees in them, I do not know. But our desire is to stifle his desire. The less He gets his way the happier we are!”

“Our job is to put thoughts into humans that their God will love them more if they do certain things. Then when they don’t always carry through on those things we slime them with shame. They very quickly come to view God as cold, harsh, and distant, exactly what we want!”

A student in the first row asked, “Master, what thoughts do we give to humans to deceive them so?”

“Growllllllllll!” The Master made guttural sounds with his throat that sent fear into every part of the room. Long blade like claws extended from his fingertips and in one motion the Master sent the claws deep into the center of the student’s chest. The demon fell out of his desk onto the dirty floor dead.

“Growllllllllll! I told you on the first day, no questions allowed. You don’t know enough to even ask a question!”

“You do it by redefining the tools their God has given to humans to enhance relationship. He has given the bibbbbllleee (the Master had a hard time making himself say this word) to humans to show them how much the enemy loves them and how to draw close to him. He has given them another tool called the church where they can hear about how good He is and fellowship with other humans who love Him. He has given them another tool called prayer where they can talk to Him directly.”

“Our job is to turn these tools that are to enhance the relationship into tasks – spiritual duties if you will. When the germ and disease filled humans take the tools and make them tasks like merit badges the relationship is greatly damaged. They will have an extremely hard time wanting to spend time with God because they will not think about intimacy anymore but the work that is involved with doing the tasks!”

The Master’s laugh filled the classroom that was in a building next door to a church.

“I am brilliant,” he screamed!

“Even now, in the church next door a service is going on but very few humans are enjoying it. They are simply enduring waiting for it to be over. They see coming to the enemy as drudgery because tasks never lead to intimacy!”

“HaHaHaHaHa!! Intimacy equals performance to the humans! I am winning!”

“Class over.”

The students hit the floor, groveled and squirmed their way past the Master and out the door.