Like it or not, you and I are now unwelcome citizens of Clown World. Whenever you leave your home, you risk encountering clown people. The kind of people who corner you when you won’t heil BLM. The kind of men who chase you around Target with shame bells for not wearing a mask. Or the kind of men who want to fight you when hoop earrings and a pink purse can’t quite hide their neanderthal stature or Macho Man Randy Savage grunts. The kind of women who slap you because “KILL ALL POLICE” isn’t nearly as offensive as “BACK the blue”. The kind of teachers who tyrannize and intimidate your student for their personal beliefs and choices. And, most recently, the kind of women who bully you out of a multicultural center in the name of inclusivity. That last video really got to me, probably because I would have handled almost everything differently from the way the poor young lad with the “police lives matter” sticker did. (I say almost because it was definitely the right move grabbing his Chick-fil-A before boogying out of there.) He assumed a submissive posture, didn’t record a thing, didn’t call any authorities, apologized after doing nothing wrong, tried to reason with ideologues looking for a fight, yelled and cussed at them, then finally buckled to their demands by leaving! He underestimated the level of crazy in Clown World and, as a result, was caught flat footed when it came dancing down his stairs. To be fair, though, how many of us have prepared for a deranged cackle of hyenas to publicly shame us for holding entirely respectable political beliefs, disparage us for the color of our skin, and bully us into leaving an area of our own campus? Yeah, nobody. That’s why I’d like to turn this into a teachable moment, just in case you or anyone you know finds yourself in a situation similar to any of the above. But where do we turn for guidance? It’s not exactly like there’s a textbook on encounters with rabid SJWs. Well, it may froth your soy latte a little to hear this, but you and I are not nearly as unique as we like to think. Neither is our zany little slice of human history. There’s nothing new under the sun, so if you’re looking to avoid a sunburn, look to the One who made both. The Psalms and Proverbs are brimming with advice on dealing with the fool and the wicked, the proud parents of today's clowns. But perhaps Jesus sums it up best in Matthew 10:16 when he sends his disciples off with a word of warning: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Just because the wolves recently took to painting their faces doesn’t mean that maxim doesn’t still apply to us today. Same circus, different show. So, if a clown is silly or sinister enough to make a target of you, here’s your serpentine protocol: Before you go anywhere, be spiritually fit (confident in your resting place), physically fit (able to run and fight), tactically fit (armed with a weapon, or four, you’re proficient with), emotionally fit (even-tempered), and mentally fit (educated on the world and how to navigate it). Whenever you enter a space, quickly identify the exit(s), entrance(s), any suspicious people, and anything that can conceivably be used defensively (either as a weapon or as cover). If you’re sitting, sit with your back to the wall and at the end of the row, bench, table, bleacher, pew, whatever. When the lunatic approaches, quickly assess the threat level, including how many people will be for or against you should things escalate. If the threat level is low (as in this video), give yourself ten feet from the person and position yourself defensively (stand with feet apart, face the person on a diagonal, take hands out of pockets, remove earbuds, etc.). Start filming immediately and state for the camera what led up to this moment. Repeat in a firm and commanding (not angry or shouting) voice, “I do not know you, and I will not talk with you. Please go away.” If they persist for more than thirty seconds or get more aggressive, call or pick out someone to call the police. Tell the operator (1) your exact location, (2) that an unprovoked stranger (described in full) is verbally harassing you, (3) that the stranger does not seem in their right mind and you feel threatened. According to the Michigan Penal Code, Act 328 (of 1931), Chapter 750, Section 167-1e, f, and l: “(1) A person is a disorderly person if the person is any of the following: [...] (e) A person who is intoxicated in a public place and who is either endangering directly the safety of another person or of property or is acting in a manner that causes a public disturbance. (f) A person who is engaged in indecent or obscene conduct in a public place. [...] (l) A person who is found jostling or roughly crowding people unnecessarily in a public place.” These sorts of action constitute a misdemeanor and are punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a maximum fine of $500. Insist to stay on the line with the operator until a unit arrives, stating that you are concerned for your safety. As you wait, describe to the operator in detail what the lunatic is doing and periodically take pictures or video of them doing it. When police arrive, identify yourself as the caller, succinctly present them with the brute facts, and if they ask, tell them that you want to file a police report and/or press charges. For bonus points, post your video online and send it to a few sympathetic news outlets (e.g., Not the Bee, Louder With Crowder, Young Americans for Freedom). In all likelihood, the screwball will realize around step 5 or 6 that they bit off more than they could chew and will crawl back into the hole they came out of, muttering something about cisnormativity and environmental racism as they go. If they happen to be dense enough to wait for the police, then congratulations, they now have a criminal record and will think twice before falling for the same mistake. By following this protocol, you avoid the two extremes that the clowns are hoping for: (1) emboldening them by tucking your tail between your legs and (2) retaliating in a way that gets you canceled, fired, jailed, hospitalized, or worse. Even though that unfortunate ASU student was the definite hero of the story, he stuck his hand in both honeypots and walked away a mess. Be wise, folks, and remember that Christ has already overcome the world—that includes Clown World. (Clown Laughing by Armand Henrion, 1930) *It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m not a lawyer, and none of this should be taken as personal legal advice. Every situation is different, and you should contact an attorney for your specific circumstances. #clown #woke #clownworld #cancelculture #wisdom

For our first episode in this tactical discourse series, we will be examining another rule of combat. Far from the Geneva Convention style of the first rule (the Golden Rule), this one serves an unapologetically lethal end: “Aim for the heart.” When planning to strike down an entire system of thought, it might not be obvious where to launch your attack. We do not want to miss our targets with red herrings, maim them with ad hominems, or torture them with straw men. The goal is to penetrate right to the heart of the issue. Remember, the heart may be a vital organ, but it is also a small one, often presenting itself in a single word or phrase from the opponent. When in doubt, listen for a bold statement repeated often. This brings us to our series’ first victim: a far-out relic of the ’60s and '70s known as the hippie. This blast from the past was known to occasionally spout the claim to have “found himself,” an assertion we will scrutinize at length. (For the sake of simplicity and clarity, a hippie will be defined as someone who follows the general lifestyle, hold the basic beliefs, and shares the core sentiments of the prototypical flower child.) Now that we have our target phrase, it is time to tune-in our scope, beginning with large, crude adjustments and working our way to small, fine ones. The latter requires nuanced and controversial reasoning (i.e., rationality), but the former will usually be done with our ever trusty tool: logic. When it comes to truth detection, there’s nothing better. Logic, at least first-order classical logic, rests on indisputable laws (e.g., law of noncontradiction) which reliably and drastically narrow the scope of possibilities. Discovering these possibilities is usually a matter of asking “Why?” To demonstrate, one might reasonably question why almost everyone who “finds themselves” always turns out the same, a hippie? If we are to take them at their word (re the Golden Rule), only a few logical explanations present themselves. (1.) All are born hippies. → Some embrace hippiedom. → These find themselves (a.) Everyone is, in their core, the same, thus everyone who truly “finds themself” finds the same hippie person(ality). (1.) Some are born hippies. → These embrace hippiedom. → These find themselves (a.) Unrealized hippies (or, those temperamentally inclined to the cause) are attracted to the lifestyle, so when they enter it, they invariably “find themselves” to be a hippie. (1.) None are born hippies. → Some are made to embrace hippiedom. → These become hippies → These find themselves (a.) The hippie lifestyle (or some other confounding, extrinsic factor common to all hippies) turns you into that type of person. The first explanation is very near unfalsifiable—there is no way to prove, one way or the other, if all us non-hippies are repressing our desire to smoke pot and join the drum circle. It does, however, fly in the face of modern psychology, which has shown a great degree of variability in the distribution of the Big Five indices across all measurable populations. That is to say, the multivariate personality profile of the hippie occupies only a small subsection of the observed responses to the Big Five Inventory. If this evidence carries no weight in the eyes of the hippie, perhaps the glaring contradiction might: the one who claims to accepts every person simultaneously denies the authenticity of those persons. The implicit assumption in explanation #1 is that all those outside the hippie ranks, from Adam to you, have been leading inauthentic lives. (Yes, even the hippie himself was living a lie before his conversion.) So, far from accepting everyone in hallmark hippie fashion, he arrogantly strips all outsiders of their honesty, self-awareness, and individuality. The case is even more untenable if its defendant is a believer—unlikely as it may seem, the Christian hippie did exist. It takes quite an uninspired or impotent God to create a humanity so homogeneous, and it takes an egodystonic or malevolent one to do so while also imbuing us with an unquenchable thirst for diversity—that is, unless the defendant is willing to contradict themselves for a second time by regarding diversity as a thing not to be desired. In truth, every Christian knows that, far from a transcendental monolith, the God of the Bible breathed life into a complete, living body, one with a great multitude of parts, each deeply valued in their idiosyncrasies. I’d even venture to say that every religion, absent Buddhism, affirms and celebrates the uniqueness of each created person. It is the mark of a poor philosophy to not comport with the general human experience, least of all this most precious aspect of it. The second view, that all those who “find themselves” are, by nature, predisposed to the hippie lifestyle, seems appealing but misses the mark in similar fashion. Starting again with hard evidence, we turn our gaze from the young hippie to the aged one. Or, at least, we try. You’d have better chances finding an albino termite in the Antarctic. Why don’t you see hippie septuagenarians dropping acid and smelling flowers in the streets? Perhaps the hippie movement didn’t age well because the “selves” that the hippies had found weren’t their true ones. We know from statistics that, as we advance in years, we generally grow more conscientious (i.e., industrious and orderly), more conservative, more agreeable, and less open (i.e., creative and intelligent). If we view hippiedom as a transitory product of youth, these results make perfect sense. The question of why the movement was so pronounced in the youth of a single period, the 60s and 70s, will be addressed later. For now, let’s refocus on the second explanation’s central claim that the hippies were born to be hippies. If it is a matter of simply coming into one’s own, then why is it not expressed in those terms? Is the hippie ever so generous as to extend the phrase to a class clown turned comedian or a math wiz who landed in accounting? Never. Instead, the words are delivered with an air of condescension, as if they have less to do with the hippie and more to do with the stiff on the wrong side of the beachfront. This is a recurring glitch in the hippie’s ideology. More than anything, he considered himself a countercultural, so much so that, in his eyes, a modest rejection of conventional values won’t suffice. Not only were social norms and mores not for him, they weren't for anyone; they went against not just their nature, but everyone’s! See what has happened here? We have landed ourselves right back at explanation #1. Universalizing narratives are supposedly the hippies’ greatest enemy. In their fear of them, they construct a fort for themselves; in their hatred for them, they blind themselves to the universalizing narrative out of which it is built. Another inconsistency on the board. The third view postulates that hippies were born of ordinary, perhaps indeterminate, men, hooked in by some force, swept up in the movement, and transformed from the outside in. This, I’m sure, was most often the case; hippiedom is a young man’s game, and where there is youth, there is plasticity. Seen in this light, the hippie was a positively banal figure, just like the rest of us. So, what was it that drew the loathsome phrase out of these Sneetches’ starred bellies? It was that initial, compelling force. Unlike most professionals and tradesmen had, there wasn’t a Board of Hippies subsidizing newspaper adverts for the regional Positive Vibes Conference, nor were there hippie recruitment centers sending representatives into high schools. Nobody in a tie-dye button-down ever rode door to door with a bong under their arm asking for a minute to talk about their Chord and Player, Jimmy Hendrix. There wasn’t even the crooked finger of the government wagging them in. More common was the man who stumbled into the mix seeking a place to hide. The hippies were a movement of people who began their journey running away from one thing and ended it running toward a whole other. To see this, we need only imagine one, prototypical hippie, born in 1940 and converted in 1965. Let’s call him Johnny. From birth, Johnny sat back and watched as the horrors of war unfolded in front of him: his dad fought overseas all throughout his childhood, his mom struggled in poverty, his schools practiced nuclear fallout drills, his friends were drafted and killed in a pointless war. All the while, he’s asking himself why a strong government, a stable career, a Christian faith, or a large family offered none of the protection he and his loved ones were promised it would. In fact, by all appearances, these conventional establishments caused all the tragedy. Well, the older generations might be too stuck in their ways to see the problem, but Johnny boy is in college now, surrounded by enlightened liberal professors and sour students whose mouths water at the thought of another young soul disillusioned with the system. It doesn’t take long before his hatred for large institutions (religion, government, corporate America) and all the limitations that they impose drive into him the tender arms of the hippie movement. It is in those arms that he “finds himself.” Panning out a bit, it's clear that Johnny found himself not by falling into a mold, but by falling into whatever space exceed the molds. There’s a reason why the hippie slept with anyone; seldom bathed or shaved; ate vegetarian; worshipped music; lived in nudist communes; and dressed in neon, beaded, shaggy clothes. It’s because no other group of people did any of those things, let alone all of them. No doctor, priest, businessman, lawyer, housewife, architect, soldier, professor, or any other type of mold (especially in his Western world) featured those characteristics. The hippie had found himself by virtue of losing everyone else. It wasn’t that irrational of a plan either. In a world where universalizing molds and conforming norms destroy lives, it may seem best to imagine a meta-mold and become its antithesis. Sure, you will be regarded by most as unsuccessful and very near worthless, but you will have one thing that they do not: the ability to claim that you have “found yourself”. Unfortunately, this is not a long-enduring plan. Just as a secret ceases to be secret as soon as it is shared, the countercultural movement ceases to be countercultural as soon it is followed. How can the hippie claim liberation from conformity if the twin ideologues to his right and left are busy doing the same? By the late 1980s the hippie movement had grown and outgrown a mold of its own. We have seen this same phenomenon with the hipsters of the 2010s, and I believe we will see it again with the socialists who grow richer by the day. If we are to learn from our mistakes, if we are to silence history's boisterous stutter, we must identify what could have prevented the birth of such a hollow movement. It would be asking too much of past generations to demand that they had avoided all the evils of the 20th century which precipitated the hippie revolution, yet a few decisive steps could have been taken to keep it from sinking so deep into the bones of the American youth. For one, the Church could have better preached the true gospel, with less of an emphasis on legalism and more on creatio imago Dei. For another, the home could have been a place of refuge instead of fear. Finally, the American government could have chosen integrity over the corruption which eventually caught the moralizing eye of future generations. We must ask ourselves: Why would anyone seek to “find themself” outside all molds when, from birth, they were loved and nurtured in a tailored mold created by God, supported by family, and protected by state? Now, there’s a deadly important question aimed at the heart of something truly great. (The Flower Power photograph by Bernie Boston, taken during "March on The Pentagon", 21 October 1967) #hippie #rule2 #tacticaldiscourse #worldview #culturalapologetics

When flesh is torn and mind is lost, Soul remains to bear the cross. For pain in nerve is pain indeed, Yet this, my spirit, cannot bleed. Watch my steps cut through fire Chasing shadows ever higher, Relenting not for friend or foe, Until this world I outgrow. Time, now here, soon is not. Behind it all, the fleeting thought That should tomorrow be my day All was given to pave the way. Dedication: To Brent Thompson, a stoic awaiting his centurion. #poem #death #Seneca #stoicism #pain

There are a few guiding principles one must follow when putting a philosophy or worldview to the test, the most important of which is none other than the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Not much has changed from when these words were first spoken; we have simply exchanged bodies for ideologies and weapons for theorists. Nobody appreciates an underhanded argument, yet it seems that none of us are willing to debate in good faith. To illustrate, it is a favorite trick of modern people to pick our scholars and launch a battery of contentions against our opponent. An atheist might take up Freudian arms against his Christain friend, indiscriminately launching rounds of wish fulfillment. His pious brother will likely return fire with a fully-loaded Paul, chambered in Romans 1:18. After hours of guerrilla warfare, the two will stand amidst the carnage, amazed that neither has advanced an inch. Moreover, it will never occur to them to ask why. Well, neither actually desire to enter no man’s land in the first place. That would mean compromise which, in today’s polarized climate, is tantamount to treason. They would much prefer to carry on firing blanks and aiming high than to abandon the safety of their trench and the favor of their rank. Honest and open dialogue is lost art, though I am convinced that it is not for lack of desire. Demand is high, but supply is low. Very few can manage to enter, much less facilitate, deep yet congenial conversation, which is why those who do (e.g., Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, Joe Rogan) are wildly successful. How can we train people to think and discuss like these sharp-shooters? I propose a trip to the range. The American people, myself included, need practice attacking ideas, but we are too heavily invested in and biased toward the live targets of today. We must first train our sights on the philosophies and peoples of the past. This next series of mine will endeavor to do just that: to profitably dismantle antiquated ideologies. With any luck, it will serve as an example of how to attack modern ideas in earnest and extract valuable lessons from their corpses, all while leaving the ideologue him or herself unscathed. A tentative list of contenders for this series includes the hippies, the Mafia, the Nazis, the Confederates, the Crusaders, and the Sophists. Stay tuned! #debate #ideology #philosophy #worldview #past

Show me a man with love to spare, His heart too full for mortal itch; He who Lucifer need forswear, For live in him is Glory’s pitch. Show me a man with wisdom sound, Known not by folly nor by vice; One whose counsel years redound, To mend the rent a trice suffice. Show me a man with wit unmatched, A quip from whom pales sharpest sword; Someone followed by laughs unlatched, Company’s joy is his inward. Show me a man with mind for want, Who thirsts of reason e’er more; In him is learning, save all vaunt, Yes, e’en that from days of yore. Show me a man with virtue yet, A person true to God and own; Any for whom by test is whet, Worthy this life, ere the unknown. Show me a man with this in full, Love, wisdom, mind, wit, and virtue, And him to my breast I will pull, For he is Hoàng, my father too. Dedication: To Hoàng, the man who helped show me what godly manhood is. #Hoàng #manhood #mentorship #poem #Christianity

Without a morning and nightly routine, you will not be successful. Success is a measure of one’s ability to reach one's potential, and in the absence of this vital tool, you will never so much as conceive of the upper limits to your ideal self or your ideal life. Routines, if properly formulated and precisely executed, create positive habits, impart enlightening perspectives, and promote unimaginable progress. The compound effect of this over weeks, months, and years makes this one of the 20% of your actions which will yield 80% of the improvement in your life (re Predo distribution). There is a simple formula to any daily routine, though it need not always be in this exact order: 1. Specific Cue – a time, activity, object, or location which serves as the routine’s trigger 2. Mental Reframing – a period of mindset adoption 3. Ordered Goals – a list of goals, concrete/daily and abstract/distant, to be attained 4. Holistic Edification – a series of physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual exercises 5. Constructive Preparation – a final task to establish directional momentum for the day Allow me to demonstrate how this works using my morning routine 1. Specific Cue – waking up (6:00 AM) 2. Mental Reframing – prayer and positive affirmation 3. Ordered Goals – today’s tasks and future goals (pick at least one from every category) 4. Holistic Edification – workout, bible reading, meditation, journal, and cognitive exercises 5. Constructive Preparation – brush teeth, wash face, and dress Here it is all written out: And its corollary, the nighttime routine: Feel free to take my template as your own. Adapt it as you see fit, share it with others who need it, and watch as the world around you transforms. If we take the time to perform routines like these, it is impossible to stay the same person for very long. The process will ensure improvement, almost independent of your efforts, so long as it is (1) designed correctly and (2) adhered to, very similar to impeccably crafted computer code designed and proven to enhance your software. Just as the user need only press "Enter", you need only obey your routine's trigger. Finally, never forget the two main purpose of having both a routine: 1. “Control your environment, or your environment will control you.” 2. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” #selfhelp #routine #potential #success #progress

God is very much like time: sovereign over our every thought and deed yet so humbly unobtrusive as to content himself with constant, almost universal disregard. Almost. Just as there are those who consider time in their everyday lives, so too are there those who consider God daily. Some, the apologists, take the role of pious physicists; they dutifully, though often coldly, theorize about and experiment on God. Others, the theologians, play the part of priestly philosophers; they all too regularly reduce God to a mere contemplative muse. Others still, the anti-theists, act as embittered patients in a holy hospice; they simultaneously deny and resent God’s existence and, what’s more, His inexorable predominance. Lastly, there are a select few, the humble servants, who live as Christ’s children; they experience God anew in each moment. Unlike the rest, theirs is a relational faith. As if grasping tight to a father’s leading hand, they simply delight in each step of the journey that He has prepared in advance. This may sound nice or perhaps even comforting, but as with any archetypal father, both God and Time do not always exercise the tender forgiveness of their female counterpart. All of us who take these two for something they are not or who rebel against their authority will eventually meet them on their terms, and when we do, we will not recognize the fiercely obtrusive entities before us. #God #Time #Philosophy #Theology #Apocalypse

Time has run and so have you. “To what?” is the question. The answer, you never knew. A status? If so, what peculiar taste, For who will respect a decaying face? A place? If so, how strange, indeed, that there a body you mustn't need. An age? If so, please tell me the hour. What once was fresh has now grown sour. A number? If so, I’d like to know, How many obols to make Cheron row? A feeling? If so, what masochism is this That death throes bring such grotesque bliss? Time has ran but not like you. “To whom?” is the question. I answer, the King of the Jews. Philippians 3:12-16 "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained."

You have lost your compass, dear. Map and rudder too. Adrift in seas of people, None to see you through. What has happened to your sail, child? Where has your anchor gone? The storm is growing nearer. What clothes have you to don? Stand up, my weary sailor. Fix shoulder to the dawn. Pray to the One above; Below, old souls spur on. Here are stars to guide you, Winds to carry you home. She who was beside you, Now inside wherever you roam.

Take my ears, don’t let them hear. Take my heart, please spare them fear. Have my sleep, allow their rest. Have my tears, just stay their chests. Use my feet, make them secure. Use my mind, but leave them pure. Here is my smile, keep them happy. Here is my husband, give them daddy.

A stir to spark unfettered love; Miracle descendant from above. Time runs thin by sweat of brow; Time it is for truelove’s vow. Life for life and cry for cry; Rife with strife, to die so nigh. Innocence begotten by frame betrodden; Pain forgotten by heart to soften. Moments hound by farce and storm Quell dreams born to sheets so warm. Yet bloom outdare both home and wood In quest ennobled by root of good. Dedication: To Erika Thompson, my root of good. #poem #contest #call #answer

Neuropsychologists, and those who have given the subject more than a minute’s consideration, have long understood that there is no willful action without some internal motivation (i.e., “feeling”). Moreover, when multiple motivations are in competition, the strongest of the bunch is invariably carried to behavioral fruition. In fact, this phenomenon is occurring within you at the present moment as your brain subconsciously decides whether it ought to endure the prattle of yet another unlettered, run-on sentence from yours truly or go back to Facebook stalking your high school crush (or whatever you weirdos do with your time). The decisive factor is the ratio of favorable to unfavorable neurotransmitters (e.g., dopamine:norepinephrine) that each option stands to offers. All this to say, when people trot out that old adage, “Love is not a feeling; it is an action,” what they really mean is that love, when true, is a feeling so deep and preeminent that, despite whichever superficial emotion happens to plague the moment, its referent remains your “idée fixe,” your principle concern. This carries with it a number of interesting implications: (1) love is not just any old feeling, (2) love is not “achieved,” and (3) love is an illusion without God. The first implication is a definitional one requiring a degree of precision that the English language, in all its poverty, simply cannot afford, so you’ll forgive me as I resort to Greek instead. On this “theory of Love”, if you will, we will assume the “feeling” itself (what I will henceforth call “Love,” with a capital “L”) is an almost evenly heterogeneous mixture of three composite “loves”: eros, pragma, and agape. Eros in that this Love is, at root, an unmistakably and exclusively passionate one. The carnal nature intrinsic to (and the pedagogic pederastic history latent in) eros is hopefully offset by our second constituent: pragma. Pragma—the love characteristic of long, satisfied marriages, for instance—is practical, steady, rational, and enduring. Finally, Love is part agape, that is, altruistic and unconditional. This, the love of God for man, will only ever be approximated in our earthly relationships. Nevertheless, we now have constructed a subtle, sophisticated Love that defies the extremes of today’s hedonistic culture (eros), yesterday’s anachronistic culture (pragma), and tomorrow’s heavenly culture (agape). Implication the second: Love does not run on binary. Can we please dispense with this tired, all-or-nothing vocabulary? You do not “fall in Love”; you sink into it as you might a warm bath, one just shallow enough to prevent full immersion. You do not “find Love”; you explore it as you might a new and exotic land, one that stretches on for all eternity. You do not “confess your Love”; you narrate it as you might a suspenseful story, one where rising action never turns to climax. Simply put, there is no limit on Love. The brain is so complex that we could never reach the upper limit of our neural pathways’ ability to grow, both in strength and in number. Furthermore, God is so awesome that even His image could be loved in an infinite amount of ways. I am certain that this alternate conception of Love, if adopted by the masses, would change the way our culture approaches and ends relationships from infatuation then apathy (or worse, disdain) to Love then love. For our last implication, we turn our attention to God, without whom Love is, in the final analysis, illusory. Allow me to present to you the Moral Argument for the Existence of God: (P1) If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist; (P2) Objective moral values and duties do exist; (C) Therefore, God exists. Basically, if one regards certain actions as moral or immoral regardless of time, place, or circumstance, then he is saying that morals do not exist in the mind of man but rather are grounded in some transcendent source, some universal (i.e., God). Taking the argument one step further, if God is the source of morality, then He must also be the source of emotions, namely love. After all, how might one separate a moral/loving act from the love that compelled it? For example, there is no morality in saving a child from drowning if doing so was merely an evolved reflex. And worse, if the act was performed in malice—perhaps with intent to rape the rescued child—it would be positively immoral. Love is, therefore, the bedrock of morality, and since God is the standard of morality, He is by necessity also (the standard of) love itself—a formula which works almost just as well in the reverse. This, of course, includes the (romantic) Love that we have been discussing all along; God is the original groom, and we his bride (Ephesians 5:22-33). Love: call it feeling, call it action, call it whatever you desire, but please, may we never turn a blind eye to its implications. It shapes almost every aspect of our lives, individual and collective, as it is also the raw material that forms, and the glue that holds together, the most basic structural unit of society: the family. If we take it for any old emotion, we are bound to hurt both ourselves and others when we discover on pain of heartbreak that it is anything but. It would be like a doctor taking a scalpel to be any old instrument when it is, in reality, at once the most dangerous and most life-saving tool in his collection. Furthermore, if we greedily grasp for Love in full, we will miss even the part. Just like the monkey with fist clenched in jar of rice, better to enjoy a little than lose everything. Finally, if we forget who gave us Love, we will forget how to Love. Because Love without right and wrong is about as meaningful as a compass without north and south. And, no, I will not apologize for my excessive use of analogy; it is the language of Love. … Okay, now you have my permission to go back to Facebook stalking your high school crush. #love #God #culture #romance #implications