day no. 17,069: pick your poison

“It is true that all men want health; but it is certainly not true that all men want the same medicine.” — G.K. Chesterton, Irish Impressions

One man's medicine is another man's poison and one person's cup of cold water is another person's water boarding.

Health is not a mathematical equation even though it is a balancing act. That said, each person's balance may be a bit different. You cannot say, for example, that healthy people are 5' 10' You cannot even say that people who are 5'10" should weigh 170 lbs. Different people and different body types wear that weight differently. Obesity is not necessarily a fixed number as much as it is a number of observations combined.

One man's sobriety may be another man's drunkenness. What takes the edge off for one may make the other edgy. 

Proverbs 17:22 

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine:

but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Gratitude is the best medicine. A contented soul is a good serum. This is the good elixir God gives to all His saints. The Gospel of Christ is the balm of Gilead for everyone to whom it is applied. It is a salve that staves off the sting of every wound that sin can cause.

1 Timothy 5:23

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.

The wine of God is better for you than the bottled water of man, even if it is harvested from glaciers. 

Jeremiah 8:22

Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

A bruised needs more than a band-aid and a sick soul cannot be satisfied by anything less than salvation. Why do you prefer to wallow in your wounds when the mending of God is so close at hand?

"In the bathroom two water tumblers were sealed in cellophane sacks with  the words: 'These glasses are sterilized for your protection.' Across the toilet seat a strip of paper bore the message: 'This seat has been sterilized with ultraviolet light for your protection.' Everyone was protecting me and it  was horrible. I tore the glasses from their covers. I violated  the toilet-seat seal with my foot... I began to formulate a new law describing the relationship of protection to despondency.  A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ." — John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley In Search of America

A virus is not as dangerous as a victim-mentality. Holding on to your life for dear life is the best way to see it slip right through your fingers. Only sick people spend their time thinking about their health. A healthy person makes wise decisions and wants to be healthy, but this usually manifests itself in spending their time not having to think much about their health. The tighter you clutch the sands in the hourglass of time, the faster they fall to the ground.

"It happens to many men, and I think doctors have memorized the litany.  It had happened to so many of my friends. The lecture ends, 'Slow down. You're not as young as you once were.' And I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism.  In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap... Who doesn't like to be a center for concern?  A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span.  In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child... I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby... And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity.  If this projected journey should prove too much then it was time to go anyway.  I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage.  It's bad theater as well as bad living.  I am very fortunate in having a wife who likes being a woman, which means she likes men, not elderly babies." — John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley In Search of America

If you want to live, you must lay your life down. Resurrection power is the only cure for entropy. You are going to fall one way or another, but if you fall on Christ you will be raised back up.

day no. 17,068: microwave majesty

“What is hurried has to be hackneyed.” — G.K. Chesterton

You cannot create something original on a whim. It takes time and energy to come up with something truly novel. The extemporaneous is touted as original and authentic, but it's easy to imagine. While I don't always know the precise script, I can pretty quickly imagine someone spouting off. But I cannot, even now, after much thought, imagine a different color. That creation, if it were possible, would take a great deal of thought and intention. In other words, true creativity takes time. It is not the product of ejaculatory, unchecked impulse. Anyone can do that. And most people do.

"Be regular and orderly in your daily affairs that you may be violent and original in your work." — Gustave Flaubert

An original idea is often the product of disciplined mind. One cannot merely be spontaneous without falling into tropes. There is nothing more unnatural than being told to act natural. And nothing is less cool than being caught trying. The stream of consciousness is polluted by the corporate dumpings of drivel. Insight and inspiration is nowhere to be found in that brackish. Creativity is purified by the process of filtration. And that takes time and intention.

There is no microwavable version of majesty. You cannot build an original world in a moment. Like Rome, original stories are not written in a day. So, if you want to be a hack, do it all in a hurry, but if you want to be a legend, invest in the creative process like it's a luxury. No one rushes a bubble bath. A hurried tale is a harried one. Like the vapor of your breath on a crisp morning, it is not long for this world.

day no. 17,067: the world will someday recite the Apostles' Creed

“I am personally quite convinced that if every human being lived a thousand years, every human being would end up either in utter pessimistic scepticism or in the Catholic creed.” — G.K. Chesterton., William Blake

Everything is going somewhere and sooner or later it's going to get there.

“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family – anything you like – at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.” ― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Everything is becoming more itself and eventually it's going to be what it is.

1 Corinthians 15:24-26

Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

In the end, all things will have to be reconciled to Christ.  By then, everything, save death, will have been reckoned with. 

Fear not, little flock, the future is Christian and the fold will grow.

Christendom is the inevitable course of human history because Christ is King and His kingdom comes, just as He instructed us to pray.

Matthew 6:10

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

The whole world will someday recite the Apostles' Creed.

day no. 17,066: truth based

“In short, if one is really to exaggerate the truth, one must have some truth to exaggerate.” — G.K. Chesterton., William Blake

Lies require truth the way darkness requires light. You cannot walk outside and turn the dark on, but you can walk into a dark room and turn the lights on. You cannot tell a lie without having something true to lie about. The truth, in other words, is substantive; lies are derivative.

2 Corinthians 13:8

For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.

You cannot cancel the truth, but the truth will cancel every lie.

Revelation 21:8

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

The lies will die, but the truth will reign forever.

day no. 17,065: foot soldiers

“Pornography is not a thing to be argued about with one's intellect, but to be stamped on with one's heel." — G.K. Chesterton

You will never win a debate with a demon. The serpent is subtle and talking things through with him never changes his mind.

Genesis 3:1

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, "Yea, hath God said, 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'"

You cannot dance with the devil without getting your toes stepped on. In Christ, however, you can put your heel on the serpent's skull. 

Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

The sin dragon has been dealt a fatal blow. Do not get into a debate with its bruised brains. Set your feet, instead, upon its face. Shove it down and shut it up.

Psalms 91:13

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder:

the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

Those who follow in the footsteps of the Serpent-slayer, will themselves stomp on snakes.

Mark 16:18

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

It is better to have a fang in your foot than in your neck. It is better to be bruised a bit in a great battle than to have one's brains bashed out by staring at a flickering screen. By the grace of God, you can endure a death match with the lust demon. So, get to stepping.

Romans 16:20

And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

The God of peace is at war with pornography and He wants to use our feet to stamp its fire out completely.

Kick the habit.

day no. 17,064: see something, say something

“Math will hurt their feelings, because math reminds everybody of the Last Judgment. The answer is right or wrong, and you can’t blow sunshine at it.” — Douglas Wilson, Keep Your Kids

The facts do not care about your feelings. Reality does not come with a "none of the above" option. It is a true or false question with one right answer. Experience is a rough teacher: it gives the test first and the lesson second. Those attempting to ignore reality must at some point deny all fixed realities because they follow you around and heckle you wherever you go. Up and down and right and wrong are constant reminders of the Reality hovering all too uncomfortably behind the realities.

"Think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Insanity is getting into a staring contest with reality and expecting it to blink. You can make believe that two and two make five, but you cannot make the extra unit ex nihilo. There is still only four in existence, even if you call it five. The only way to pay off the one you owe is to borrow it from another equation, but that would only create a deficit somewhere else. Math is ruthless and relentless in that way. The sums must square.

"Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer." — G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Yet, here we are in a world where some  outrageously insist that boys can get periods and that girls can have bulges and others even more outrageously insist that we must take the first people seriously, sometimes even at the threat of job loss.

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” — George Orwell, 1984

To be fair, reality can defend itself. It does not need us to hold it up. That said, it does not refuse its allies. When swords are drawn to fight over the greenness of grass, reality will outfit its defenders with sharp points while its attackers will be left to brandish dullness.

"We must stop being experts in only seeing these things in bits and pieces. We have to understand that it is one total entity opposed to the other total entity. It concerns truth in regard to final and total reality -- not just religious reality, but total reality. And our view of final reality -- whether it is material-energy, shape by impersonal chance, or the living God and Creator -- will determine our position, on every crucial issue we face today. It will determine our views on the value and dignity of people, the base for the kind of life the individual and society lives, the direction law will take, and whether there will be freedom or some form of authoritarian dominance." — Frances A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, chapter 3: The Destruction of Freedom and Faith

A land that accepts reality may endure a few crazies, but a land that condemns realities must affirm them. Freedom is the ability to say what you see with your eyeballs. Wherever people are forbidden to speak about what everyone sees, a warped way of seeing the world is being enforced.

day no. 17,063: war is a racket

“The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous." — George Orwell, 1984

A just war must have a defined objective. You cannot wage indiscriminate warfare in a godly way. In addition, the objective must be possible to obtain. You cannot in clean conscience send someone else's sons to die for a lost cause. A wise king will count heads and make peace or wage war based on his confidence (Lk, 14:31). Lastly, once the objective is obtained, the war is to cease. There is no moral way to make an attack last longer than necessary. One must pursue their objective to the very end, but once it ends, so must the pursuit. If warfare is ongoing, it is either because the objective was corrupt from the git go in that it was never meant to meet a particular objective (which reveals the true objective was merely to keep fighting,) or because the means of waging war are so ineffective that they delaying a resolution by their incompetence.

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." — George Orwell, 1984

Someone's sons continue to die because someone else's fathers are not involved in the actual fighting. They are not in the foxhole wishing for the war to be over. They are sleeping soundly in their own homes miles away from the fray. That is why they aren't more willing to wrap things up. An end to the war games would put a rap on their net gains.... that is until the next war can be manufactured and marketed.

“War Is a Racket.” — Major General Smedley D. Butler

There is more money in blowing things up and building them back than there is in maintaining and cultivating them. And so, young men die and fat cats get fatter. In the end there are less men to share the pie with and bigger forks in the hands of those serving themselves. But someday God will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. In those days, nations will no longer lift up swords against other nations and neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4).