When a friend’s Facebook profile has “It’s complicated” in the “relationships” space, that’s bad news. Granted, being single can be complicated. So can being married. But in this context, “complicated” means something that the friend in question is hesitant to try to qualify with a simple word.
In The Corporate Coach by James B. Miller, a book on my shelf that is left over from a long-abandoned career in sales management, James Miller discusses the role of “the twitch in your elbow” while interviewing job applicants. Gut instinct, we might say. And a big part of that, he says, is the commitment the applicant shows toward other activities. If he’s a scratch golfer, he didn’t get there just with 18 holes on Saturday. Maybe he’ll cut out of work early some days. If he’s out on his boat every weekend, who’s to say he won’t miss a few Monday mornings?
Commitment is a character trait not everyone has. It is to be admired.
On April 27, 2017, off-duty border patrol agent and expectant father Dennis Dickey fired a high-powered rifle at a target packed with an explosive known as Tannerite. It exploded in a huge ball of blue smoke, indicating to the delighted crowd of friends that his child would be, in fact, a boy.
To put it mildly, things went downhill from there.
In the latest installment of This Week on Facebook, I present a meme: “Just imagine how great life would be if biscuits and gravy made you skinny.”
Well, sure. But why stop there? Let’s wish that video games increased our intelligence, or alcohol improved our driving, or pornography strengthened our marriages. The only difference is, I’ve heard people actually argue the last three. Not even kidding.
Here’s the report from planet earth, though: Good choices are frequently painful choices, and indulgent choices are rarely good choices. I am no stoic, but I must decry the rampant hedonism in our culture that has been sold to us as a tonic for what ails us.
Medicine tastes bad. Exercise hurts. Work wears you out. And yes, tragically, healthy food is less appetizing than fattening, artery-clogging food. Frankly, we should be highly suspicious when someone tries to tell us different.
But we do have a tendency to believe “information” that supports our indulgences. Most of my brethren who have tried to get around the clear teaching of Matthew 19:6 and Matthew 19:9, for instance, have a divorce and remarriage situation very close to home. The truth does not always hurt, granted; however, it doesn’t become less truthful when it does hurt.
God’s word is truth (John 17:17). Our current understanding of it may or may not be truth. We owe it to ourselves to be honest — painfully honest. If it means giving up a tasty morsel or two, so be it.
She’s barely holding on. She is losing feeling in her fingertips. She became convinced a while back that starting this climb was a mistake in the first place, but by then she had no choice; it was continue upward or fall to certain death. So she continued upward, on a journey she had already decided she could not finish.
And then she stopped to take a rest. It was never a long-term plan. She just wanted to do anything but climb. …
My second-favorite television couple is splitting up, it seems. Tarek and Christina El Moussa, of Flip or Flop fame, have been separated for eight months now. They have no plans to divorce yet, but they are in separate houses and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
