When God made man, both male and female,
He made them that they should give a formal account for themselves
When it was all said and done, at least—
If not from time to time before that
In special cases.
This was the nature of the reality
Into which the human life was set;
It was a certainty.
This was the set
And they were the cast
And the play was on.

They were made in his Image—
To walk in his Way—
To show the Gardener some return for the
Planting of their lives on the Earth—
To invest themselves in truth
And knowledge and character
And in their work—
To be faithful servants,
Reporting back to the Master
At the end of their tenure
With the fruits of their labors,
And showing what they had done with
What they had been given.

And God thought this plan
Was very good.

But mankind,
Not so much.

Since the beginning,
Many have sought to
Dodge the brunt of
Accountability for self,
Thinking the dodging a better use of their time
Than learning the lessons
And bearing the fruit
For which we were put here.
And they have found a thousand ways
To pretend themselves exempt.

And while not all manage,
Surely, we have seen a great many
Find some serviceable level
Of happiness in this life,
Though skirting their responsibility in various ways—
And if not in this, then in that.
And they may seem happy enough to most,
Who also fancy too much what they
Think to be the “freedom”
Of the irresponsible life.

It is a grand error,
And I haven’t the time to
Spell it all out for you,
And its consequences,
But I’ll tell you that they are
Not really free who have
Trained themselves
Not to learn and to grow
And to correct themselves
When they are wrong
And to solve a problem
Rather than to persist in it.

No, they are slaves to their
Own erroneous notion
That the responsible life—
The accountable life—
Is not worth living.

And we do not get to see
Their final interview.
We don’t get to see what
God makes of it all,
Unless we should dare to
Learn from the Book
What we should expect him
To make of it all.
But that’s what a responsible
Person would do, while most of us
Would rather put off our homework
Until later.

And so begin the countless excuses
For why we are as we are
And why we are not as we are not
And why some others succeed where we fail
And why those who judge us
On such matters are sinning
And why we ourselves are not sinning when
We judge them as sinning judgers
And why hypocrisy is worse when others do it
And why our faults are not our fault

These are the chores the “free” must do
To maintain their make-believe lives,
Where they pretend to have
No obligation to be
Accountable for themselves.
They are fugitives—
Restless wanderers on the Earth
Who can never settle down
And be at home with Reality—
Who cannot bear the whole truth
About what kind of people they are
And why.

And if you corner them
And press them about it,
Watch and see if they do not blame
Nature
Or Adam and Eve
Or even God himself
For why they have not yet changed
What they could have changed by now.
And if you press them further,
They will either turn from their ways—
Miracle of miracles that it is when that happens!—
Or turn on you.

They are at odds with
The very reality into which
Their lives have been set.
They cannot be at peace
Until they yield.