A recent news story on "why vitamins are bad for you" got me thinking: We too often assume that by preventing or stopping something otherwise benign, we can encourage something beneficial.
Eg 1
Personal electronics turn children into antisocial beings.
Logic: Less time with earbuds and video games will create more time with people.
Clarence: Not unless you actively replace them with a different activity. Just pulling out the earbuds does no good by itself. When I was a boy, it was TV and comic books. We were encouraged to turn off the TV, put down the comics and go outside.
Very often that led to us sitting on the patio saying 'What do you want to do?" and "I don't know, what do you want to do?" over and over, which can't be any better than television.
Adults also find solitary ways to entertain themselves, don't they? Facebook, a Kindle, a ball game on TV. We just don't like to see the kids doing it, and if we're honest with ourselves, maybe we're just trying to get them out of the way for a bit.
The personalization of media will only get more personal, until interaction with real people is the exception. It's not too early to begin finding healthy ways to manage it.
Eg 2
Using your left foot to brake when driving is bad.
Logic: Because you might apply both the brake and gas at the same time; bad for your brakes, bad for your engine, and you can lose control in an emergency.
Clarence: Police officers are taught to drive this way. I presume race car drivers do as well. It's obviously not impossible and provides increased control at dangerous speeds.
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| F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway (looks like a doctored photo) |
Eg 3
If you can't spell, you can't write.
Logic: Good writing depends on good spelling.
Clarence: A single counter example suffice, but two come to mind: Truman Capote couldn't recite the alphabet, and F Scott Fitzgerald couldn't even spell his good friend's name, "Ernest Hemingway."
Most people who make a living insisting on how English ought to be spoken or written don't understand how English is spoken and written, or at the very least, have an uninspiring relationship with words.
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| Detail from Luca Signorelli, ‘The Damned Cast into Hell’ |
Eg 4
If you think something besides a prayer of salvation saves you, you're not saved.
Logic: Salvation comes by faith alone. If you think works are part of it, you may depend on those works and never really have faith.
Clarence: There is no prayer of salvation in the bible.[1] How many people in the past few generations (in which this has become widespread among Protestants) prayed a "sinner's prayer" without believing it? And not only that, evangelicals teach that you're saved forever despite anything you do after, no matter how heinous.
What an unenviable task a lot of evangelists will have someday explaining their theology as millions they "led to the Lord" are thrown into hell.
(I cast that sentence in terms evangelicals can appreciate, but it's the set-it-and-forget-it easy Christianity that's really at issue, regardless of what/if judgement awaits.)
[2014-05-20]
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When we make such a big deal about differences of opinion, we don't just take a stand, we hurt each other in ways that last a generation and are inculcated into the next.
The ministry of Jesus was rarely anti anything. We just make it that way.
[2014-07-19]
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[1]
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