when God makes cookies

its my life, and i can do what i want.

i might counter that fool-hardy and hopelessly cliche assertion with the old saying "no man is an island." do we profoundly and inherently affect each other? yes. are we interconnected beyond the scope of our the average person's observations? no doubt. are we able to ascertain in which ways we affect the world and it affects us? not likely.

not being an island makes you responsible for yourself and the ways you affect your neighbors

socrates proposed that "the unexamined life is not worth living." because i'm not God, i can't say whether that's true or not. however, i would like to suggest that the unexamined life doesn't bear repeating.

why are you living and believing as you're told?

its not that your parents hate you and they want to ruin your life and that they just don't understand (though that is a viable possibility). no matter how much they love you, you have a responsibility to think for yourself. you have an opportunity to seek for the truth with all your heart. good, kind, self-sacrificial people are often wrong.

if from generation to generation we led unexamined lives, and simply believed what our loving parents told us and made it our own, we would never make any progress. never.

i know that a lot of people don't see a need for "progress." however, if everyone through these last centuries had adopted the standards and convictions of our parents, it would still be legal to own other people. it might also be considered ethical to wipe out other people groups.

on that note, there is a long-standing tradition passed down from generation to generation of spending your life in devotion to the faith in the bible, and declaring that as faith in God.

i sincerely hope to suggest in the strongest terms possible that our cycles of assumption and presumption are dangerous and destructive to us and our neighbors. maybe we're right to look with our whole hearts for something worthwhile, for something more true than convenient.

as ever,

joel