Go out into the world and do the impossible — it is your sacred duty.

Go win the lost world whose culture you don’t even begin to understand with antiquated materials and sales pitches that have been gathering mold for decades.

Go tithe and give since God had opened the windows of heaven on you and blessed you with $11,000 a year in income from your ministry job.

Go hold to standards that are both illogical and onerous and convince your friends, your neighbors, and your children that they are the only possible way to live.

Go live a life of perfect adherence to rules that constantly flex and change to suit the needs of fallible leaders — who will always claim that they have just been following their unchanging and infallible Book the entire time.

And when you falter, when your faith is weak, when you throw up your hands in despair and say “this is impossible!” then they will smile sweetly and tell you that you serve a god of the impossible. If you aren’t managing to eke out daily miracles to help resolve the paradoxes of fundamentalism then that must be YOUR problem. No doubt there’s something about it in the book of Genesis.

Dream and dream and dream the impossible. The altar awaits the penitent who just can’t seem to make it work.