On safety and success.

There are two fundamental dispositions: security and expansion. You can either be aimed toward not making mistakes or toward not missing opportunities. This is true in regards to money. This is true in regards to relationships. It’s even true of food, music, art and most everything in life, including ideas.

When it comes to truth and expression, some people rarely say anything new because they want to avoid making errors. Others are willing to explore untested ideas or formulations because they want to discover new insights. However, the avoid-error types like to pretend they have a corner on safety because they make fewer mistakes. But it’s just as unsafe to miss truth as it is to commit error.

In this way, baseball serves as a wonderful metaphor. See, an overly eager batter can strike out by swinging at bad pitches. But it’s also true that an overly cautious batter can strike out by looking at good ones. And suffice it to say that never swinging means never getting a hit at all. So the key is to swing wisely, since, as in life, there is no way to “bat safely.”

On immature arousal.

When I met my wife, I was aroused by her luscious hair, shapely legs, and amazing eyes. When I dated her, I was aroused by her sense of humor, brilliant mind, and solid character. But the truth is that many women have all of these things, perhaps even better versions of them. And if my interest in my wife depended on that stuff, it would be a fragile thing indeed. So after 13 years of marriage, they aren’t really why my wife arouses me anymore.

My wife arouses me now because she gave life to my sons, because she made my family debt free, because she held me as I cried when my mother died, because she threw me a surprise party for my 40^th birthday, because she watched Tron Legacy with me, because she made me visit my grandmother regularly, and ten thousand other, similar things.

In short, many women can offer me what attracted me to my wife in the beginning, but there isn’t any woman who can offer me everything my wife has meant to me since then. And only a fool would find such insignificant things as legs and laughter more arousing than that.

Headline: Famous person arrested for horrible thing.

The editorial you’ve never read:

“A well-known and influential person was recently arrested for doing something atrocious. At this point, the charges have yet to be confirmed by a jury verdict and so we have decided to wait before publicly tarnishing this person’s name. Some of our competitors have opted to publish the details even while attempting to shield themselves legally by using the phrase ‘alleged crimes.

“However, since we understand how the human mind actually works, we know this will do nothing to impede anyone from associating such acts with this person permanently. We also know that if it turns out to not be true, subsequent repudiations (imagining they are even published more than once) will only make the connection stronger not weaker. The person who becomes known as ‘that guy who didn’t do the evil thing’ is still indelibly connected to what was not done.

“Since this stain can never be fully expunged, we think it best to never spill the ink on him in the first place, thus honoring the legal principle of innocence until guilt is proven. We know you can get the information from others, but we sincerely hope you will support us in resisting the temptation to murder this person’s character without a trial.”

Sincerely,

Editors of “The Daily Virtue”

Random observations

Three totally random thoughts:

For fourteen hundred years after the Resurrection, there was no such thing as a printing press. This means that, statistically speaking, almost no Christian ever saw, let alone read a Bible during that period. And yet, the Gospel spread anyhow.

Christianity has been present and thriving in China at least three different times, with an almost total eradication in the interims: From the early 7^th to the 9^th Century, from the early 13^th to the middle 14^th Century, and from the middle 16^th Century to today, with a failed effort to wipe it out in the middle 20^th Century.

If Henry VIII hadn’t wanted an illegitimate divorce from Catherine of Aragon, England might never have become Protestant and may have retained the strict investment liability rules of Catholicism. Only when these rules were loosened could individual investors avoid personal liability for corporate losses, and the Joint Stock Company was formed, without which it’s hard to tell when, if ever, America would have been settled, or whether we would have “corporations.”

Imago Dei

Why do Christians believe that people being made in the Image of God requires us to treat them so carefully?

First, God made humans to be the unique carriers of the Divine creative stamp or identity. We must therefore handle them very carefully because they point to and reflect Him. They are His IMAGE.

Second, God has expressed His infinite love and care for these works of art He has made. We must therefore treat them lovingly as the prized possessions of Someone who has temporarily entrusted them to us. They are HIS image.

But both of these perspectives focus on the other person and thus overlook something vital. God has also created ME in His image, and He has cherished me enough to save me and conform me to the Image of His Son. In so doing, I acquire a special obligation to look like as much like Him as possible. And the way I look most like God is by treating well precisely those who don’t deserve to be treated well. Honoring this Image of God in me is at least as important as is honoring it in them.