day no. 15,315: die on the high ground rather than live on the lower

"Positions are seldom lost because they have been destroyed, but almost invariably because the leader has decided in his own mind that the position cannot be held.”— A. A. Vandegrift

Positions are abandoned by unbelief before they're surrendered to unbelievers.

Positions are not surrendered as often for being overcome by the enemy as they are for the occupant becoming overwhelmed. The one holding the position is overwhelmed by the defense of it and abandons it, not because it has been demolished, but because the confidence in its centrality has been abandoned.

Having a position presupposes assiduity.

Positions are picked for certain reasons. Of all the positions one could have taken up, this is the one best suited to the passion of your mission and the realities of the missionfield. It also presupposes that attacks will come from the one on whom your will is being imposed (the enemy) and that attacks must be made from the vantage point and position you have picked.

So then, when attacks come, the last place one should want to be is away from the position best suited to your main objective. To abandon the position before it has been destroyed is to reveal that you distrusted the centrality of the position. To retreat to a secondary position is to confess it as your primary objective and point of centrality. Anyone who is not fiercely committed to what they say they believe most ferociously, will sooner or later be less committed to it.

For example, the high ground is actually advantageous both geographically and ethically. But to surrender that ground in the face of danger is evidence that the higher ground you had was procured accidentally and not in actuality. If the higher ground is possessed in the firmest sense of the word, it could not be abandoned for lower ground. It would rather die on the higher ground than live in the lower.

"Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing."
— Robert Conquest’s Second Laws of Politics

In other words, if you do not explicitly hold to trinitarian orthodoxy, you will, sooner or later, be less trinitarian and more unorthodox. These positions are held, not loosely, but tenaciously and purposefully. They cannot be held lightly. To hold them lightly is to let them slip through your fingers.

Most positions are abandoned in theory before they are abandoned in reality.

Positions are lost first by lack of faith and then by lack of participation and finally by lack of presence altogether. They are surrendered and left to be abused and ravaged by its enemies.

In other words, if a position is believed to be unable to be held, it won't be much longer.