Dear world:

Will you be patient and righteous for a moment?  Will you let a prisoner speak to you? 

You have placed me in chains, I can do you no harm.  But will you entertain the words of this man you have accused and imprisoned?   I ask you no more than that.

By the necessity of survival, you have made laws against such men as I.  And it doesn’t matter if your laws are just.  They are your laws and you enforce them just the same.

So I have been accused and condemned, before the Society of men, as one who does not play well with others.  For the sake of propriety I speak softly among you.  But propriety is the steel you have forged to enclose me in my cell.  But if I must speak to you for the sake of understanding, I must speak to you in the language of propriety.

Propriety is a shifting mechanism; it changes according to the fashion of men in every generation.  And so men like me are forever jailed by your own laws.  You do not seek to rehabilitate me.  Your accusations, condemnation, and imprisonment are sufficient to please you.  The horrors of your prisoners never enter your mind as you celebrate at your feasts.

I do not hold this against you.  You will not change, and it does no good to accuse you.  But I must begin this message with what is true.

You have tattooed my forehead with the word “MEAN“.  And you were not wrong to wield the branding iron.  At first when you accused me I was angry.  And I gathered what truth I could and slung it back at you.  So your accusation was confirmed among you.  And you rightly confined me.  And this according to your own laws.

But in my confinement your accusation has become unfounded.  For since you would not let me be a one with you, in my confinement I searched for what is true.  And I have found Him!

Your own laws of confinement speak of corrective action.  But this is the purpose which you ignore.  For if one who is confined by your laws turns away from violent behavior, you do not accept his change.  You do not offer corrective action!  You simply seek to rid yourselves of what you do not approve.  Anyone who is not profitable to the ways of men is cast away forever.

By this foolish standard you are the ones who are jailed.  And the brand you have placed on my forehead has become my glory.  So I am right in releasing you from any accusation concerning me.  You have meant it for evil, but God has used it for good.

The One I have found, while imprisoned in your social standard, is the pure standard you think your yourselves to be.  He is not limited by death, as are we.  He is not limited by a tidal wave of lies.  He is the absolute truth.  And he teaches all his people to be bold among you.  Thus I have written this message.

He is the standard by which every man will be judged.  For he has walked among us with perfection.  And God the Father has placed Him eternally as FIRST.

While I have been imprisoned, he has come to set me free.  Even while your bars of social standard are placed squarely between you and I.  I range freely in the open space of forgiveness and love.  And from this place I warn you.  Your ways which you hold in such high esteem are wrong.

Were I to gather a crowd of a million people, and speak these things to your face, you would no longer desire to jail me from your celebrations.  You would, in fact, desire to kill me.  Even as the men of a generation, which saw the Christ walk among them, murdered the Holy One of God.

You would see a man who is just like you.  And this man would proclaim that you are wicked and worthless, as one.  I do not make the proclamation on my own.  I speak only what the Living God has said.

Yes I am a man like you.  Yes I was trained in the volume of your lies.  Yes I was violent toward you, both in word and in deed.  For you yourselves trained me!

But the Christ has come to set us free!  And any who believe this message, can have this freedom.  We need not be chained in the volume of teaching that is a lie, any longer. 

I stand boldly and tell you, “Man can become holy”.  I stand boldly and proclaim that we need no longer to live as liars.  God is willing to teach us what is true and faultless.  And his teaching is full of power to overcome the lies of this place.

Most of you will balk at this message.  For you love the volume of lies more than you love the volume of truth.  And you will not put up with one who calls your ways wicked.  But I will call your ways wicked just the same.

I was mean when I did your will.  Now you count me mean when I do His will.  You see how your corrective action is at fault.

But I have not written this for the sake of meanness.  And I have not straightened my back before you as an act of defiance.  I have appeared before you as one who is not ashamed or afraid any longer.  And it is love that straightens my spine.

Love makes me turn around.  I had been kneeling before the One who is love.  With awareness of what he has done for me, I have remembered the people from which I came.  I have returned without fear to give you this message of truth.  God will see, how many of you respond.

These words belong to God.  They are only mine, in that he has given them to me.  Yet they are not mine, for I give them to you.  I have come as a messenger and nothing more.

By His Grace