He Came as a Thief in the Night

 In Arcana Coelestia we read:  "The ancients divided the neighbour into different categories, giving each category one of the names that describe those in the world who are plainly in the greatest need of help. They also taught how charity should be exercised towards those belonging to one category and towards those belonging to another. In this way they organized their teachings; and they regulated their lives in accordance with those teachings" (AC6705). If we are to take the Lord's advice to cast our nets to the right side of the boat, which means evangelizing and proselytizing charitably, then we will surely want an appropriate way to evangelize to, for instance, Muslims or Buddhists. One has a developed system of tools for New Church evangelization to Muslims -- here and elsewhere --which spring from a desire to engage in positive, sharing, mutually-enriching evangelization. It is how one conceives of bringing the religions of the world to sit at the Divine Human...

Episodic characterization differs enormously from novelistic characterization, a common expectation modern people project on the Word of God. Episodic characterization involves things like the stories of Ananzi in Africa, where he will face first one challenge then another; but not really 'remember what he did last Friday'. Or again, it involves things like Archie Comics or X-Men or Donald Duck: do these characters 'remember what they did last Friday'?  Or do they more seem to have the memories of goldfish and live for the first time in each story about them? This sense that the character has the memory of a goldfish is one of the defining features of episodic characterization, which typically uses characters to express a definite moral or spiritual message; not to worry about character consistency between different stories, especially not as much. For sometimes there will be traces of both characterological consistency and memories of goldfish in the exact same text.  ...