"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority ... the Constitution was made to guard against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." - Noah Webster


"There is no worse tyranny than forcing a man to pay for what he does not want just because you think it would be good for him."
-- Robert A. Heinlein

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

What Time Is It?

[note: There is more I need to add to this post, and I hopefully will this weekend.]

Everything happens for a reason.

I don't care if you believe that or not.  You can move on to the next blog or whatever.  I've got decades of experience that has cemented that concept in my soul.

I had a good friend that I knew from High School.  Where he is now I have no idea.  He visited me once in the 90's when he was a high ranking member on the team of the United States Air Force Thunderbirds.  That's all I will disclose.

He asked me lots of questions about God and the Bible.  He was searching something fierce.  He'd ask questions that I'd heard and answered before and he actually had many books in his library by well known Christian apologists.  But it didn't matter. 

He would ask me a question.  Having experienced the question and having done the research before, I would proceed to deal with the question behind the question.  I would work to the heart of what was bothering him.

He didn't like that.

He once told me that I was like the character in a story where a man asks what time it is and instead of just saying what time it is, I explain how to make a clock.

For years I have let that bother me.  Now that I am older and I see where our society and world are going due to ignorance and stupidity, I will never feel a shred of shame again.  I'm not the one who is trying to be ignorant. 

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.  If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

The more I questioned my friend about what he believed or "knew" the more I began to understand that he had been conditioned to just accept the pronouncements of "experts."  Don't question.  Just rely on credentials that "everyone" accepts.

I did my best to not just tell my friend why he should believe the things I had come to believe.  I tried to tell my friend all the facts and how I came to believe what I believed.  I wanted my friend to come to his own conclusions based on the truth.

I approached my friend as if I was the defense attorney, dealing with all of his claims. 

What say you?

1 comment:

  1. "If you give a man a fish...."

    On the other hand, if you build a man a fire, you will keep him warm for one night. If you SET a man on fire, he'll be warm the rest of his life." ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Please don't make me disable comments because you couldn't maintain decorum and civil discourse. You can disagree all you want to, just don't get nasty.