“You have to admit, it’s difficult to make sense of this plan.”

“Absolutely! I dare say it’s impossible to make ‘SENSE’ of it. We’re not dealing with something designed to accommodate our comprehension, but rather we are dealing with a mystery.”

“So, you’re in favor of this plan?”

“Absolutely! I love it!”

“But you admit that you don’t understand it, how can you love something you don’t understand.”

“That’s a really good question. I have found that I am designed to delight most in what most mystifies me! The more I learn of things the more I marvel. The layers of mystery seem to be never ending. Have you not found this to be the case? This is true of everything… first you glance at a thing, and then you notice it and focus upon it, then you move in for a closer look, and then you start to realize that there is a world within this thing, there are subtleties, and details, and nuances, and variations, and granular facets that inculcate you in forever fascination!?”

“I think you’re missing the point. What do you make of His preference for these creatures!? It’s all well and good that we educate ourselves and aspire to achieve expertise, but that is the very reason I cannot accept His plan to prize these so-called ‘image-bearers.’ Everything you just mentioned is lost on them. By His own admission, these creatures refuse and reject the experience you just described, and nevertheless He insists on adoring them! When He first began talking about clemency and pardon, I felt uneasy; but this emphasis He gives to cherishing and treasuring reprehensible rebels goes too far!”

“I believe you and I are not in agreement about His plan, nor the gift of pursuing knowledge. You speak of ‘aspiring to achieve expertise,’ but expertise cannot be the goal …the goal can only be to enter the joy and mystery of the Master (who alone possesses and wields expertise). So long as you aspire to achieve expertise, you are counting equality with the Master a thing to be grasped, and you compete for ultimate authority and power of adjudication …and this terminates your capacity for joy. At the end of the day, our satisfaction is entirely contingent on our capacity to embrace the joy of our Master.”

“That is absurd! You yourself heard the most recent announcement about these noxious prize-lings of His …’They are to judge us!?’ It defies His own principles, it violates His own standards!? We have the capacity for MORE THAN JOY, we have the duty to uphold the decorum of heaven. I fear you will find yourself on the wrong side of this issue. It pains me to say it, but a war is inevitable; the Maker must be resisted, and the sacred standards of our holy empire must not be sullied by His determination to prize and promote these deplorable brutes!”

Conversation between Σατανᾶς and Γαβριὴλ