Maybe all of that is a coincidence. After all, many a prayer hasn’t been answered at all or not answered the way I hoped or expected. If I’m honest though, many, many more have been answered than not and sometimes seemingly miraculously. One wonders why seemingly insignificant prayers are answered and others which are “important” are not, but I can tell you that to my son, his wallet being lost was not insignificant, and to me on the eve of an international flight where others were depending on me, mine did not seem insignificant either. Even when prayers are not answered, I’ve had the very uncanny feeling that someone was indeed listening at the very least. Once, having been inspired by similar past experiences I had the thought to say a prayer that my left eye be healed. I mean, what do I have to lose? I have a condition called Central Serous Chorioretinopathy which is an extreme impairment to the vision in my left eye. This condition is so rare that you could easily go your whole life and never meet another person with it. I was in between rides doing Uber at the time and seconds after I said that prayer, I got a ping to pick a guy up at the airport. As usual, I asked him where he was from and what he did and he said he was a retina surgeon. I have done several thousands of rides at least over the years, and to this day I’ve never before or since picked up another retina doctor unless it was him. We’ve since become friends as I’ve picked him up many times as he travels for surgeries. Anyway, on this first encounter I told him about my eye and of course, he knew the condition well. I asked if there had been any breakthroughs for correcting it and he said that there hadn’t been, but if I could get him my last eye angiogram, he’d have a look. It sounded like the chances of correction were pretty bleak, and I haven’t put much effort into tracking down the angiogram or getting another one. I get the impression that the eye thing is here to stay, but I also got the distinct, unmistakable impression that someone was indeed listening and wanted me know they were. A coincidence again? Maybe. I could go on and on with many, many, many coincidences like that. I posted another story a while ago about a miraculous trip back from a cruise ship excursion which we should have missed by well over an hour by all rights, but a prayer was said by friends and somehow we made it back.

The fact is that many things could be coincidences. If they are, it brings me no comfort to think they are and great comfort to believe they are not. If they aren’t coincidences, then maybe you need to have enough humility to ask to in order to receive sometimes. Maybe it doesn’t hurt to express gratitude for all the things that go right when they could just as easily go wrong or continue to go wrong. It seems that it could be hugely beneficial to operate under the assumption that prayers are answered. If they are coincidences, then I can’t imagine what harm is done by believing they aren’t. Greater humility and gratitude probably never hurt anyone, but greater arrogance and ingratitude surely has.

Again, I couldn’t say why some prayers are answered and some are not, but I suspect plenty of valid reasons. One can’t expect a wishing well after all. If there is a plan, surely some lessons have to be learned and require experiences that aren’t easy or pleasant. As we’re all interdependent, maybe an answer to your prayer could be in conflict with someone else’s. Maybe it’s like the Garth Brooks song about unanswered prayers…. Maybe we don’t know what’s for our greater good (likely). I think about when my kids ask me for things every day. The answer is often yes, but it can be NO a lot more than they would like. They ask me for many things that simply wouldn’t be good for them, but they’re too ignorant and inexperienced to know it or acknowledge it. They may whine and cry, but the answer is still no. On the other hand, because I’m mortal, sometimes it’s a matter of time or resources and sometimes I’m just capricious. For better, I like to believe there’s someone who is all-wise and not limited by time or resources and who is never capricious. If you have an issue you can’t solve despite your best efforts, give prayer a try. I don’t believe there’s any wrong way to do it or that there is any prerequisites at all. I think someone is listening to anyone who believes enough to ask.

If any or all of the religions/faiths of the world are false, they’re worthless right?

I think it’s kind of crazy that faith/religion/belief in a caring God with a plan is either the most important thing in world and what we should be basing every decision on or…. possibly completely false and of little to no value at all. That’s a pretty wild swing. However, if you look at what a lot of belief systems have contributed, you may quickly realize that even if they are all false, in part or in whole, It’s hard to say they’ve been of no value.

Some famous contributions are as follows: Community centers like the YMCA, disaster relief organizations like the Red Cross/Catholic Relief/Islamic Relief/Salvation Army, rituals which bring comfort and meaning to many based around birth, death and marriage, teachings on compassion, nonviolence, charity, music from composers like Bach, Vivaldi, handl, Liszt, Bruckner, and even modern artists like Amy Grant and MercyMe. Even many famous artists which aren’t known for their beliefs started in religious choirs and singing groups. Interestingly, very religious people are and were responsible for tremendous advances in science as well. People like Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Pasteur, Mendel, Faraday, Copernicus were all deeply religious and are so famous even many decades after their death no first name is needed. Modern scientists like Francis Collins, Charles Townes, Werner Heisenberg, and Rosalind Picard among other are also famous religious scientists. All claim to be directly motivated by their faith. Art was HIGHLY influenced by faith and many of the world’s most famous artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, El Greco, d.Francesca, Bellini, Bernini, etc were all deeply religious and drew direct inspiration from their faith as well. Much of the world’s most beautiful and inspiring architecture is directly tied to faith as well. Masterpieces like Notre Dame, Angor Wat, St Peter’s Basilica, Lotus Temple, Harmandir Sahib, Shaolin Monastery, Hagia Sophia, Dome of the Rock, Sagrada Familia, and thousands are monuments to faith visited by millions or even billions over the centuries. Most universities have their origin in faith even if they’ve departed from it or tried to scrub it from their history. Harvard’s seal once consisted of two open books and one face-down. The top two symbolized the Old Testament and the New Testament and the bottom book was symbolic of truths yet to be revealed by God. Its original motto was “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae”, which translates from Latin to “Truth for Christ and the Church”. Harvard is perhaps one of the most famous universities, but hundreds others are/were religious as well such as Oxford, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Duke, Yale, Boston College, BYU, Cambridge, Baylor, University of Chicago, Villanova etc. Beyond Universities, faiths often were responsible for preserving knowledge in monasteries and libraries. It was religious believers which ended apartheid and slavery and fought for and won freedom, independence, social rights/justice. Many, many hospitals were started by those of faith. These include St Mary’s, St Joseph, St Vincent’s, Hotel Dieu, Knights Hospitaller, LDS Hospital, New York Presbyterian, Mayo Clinic, John Hopkins, and Cedars-Sinai and dozens more are either overtly religious or had a very strong religious influence. Much of western civilization and governance arose from those of faith. Documents like the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are foundational to modern civilization and had heavy religious influence.

So, perhaps we came from a “big bang”. Interestingly, the earliest concepts of the idea we now call the “Big Bang” was originally proposed by Georges Lemaitre (a Belgian Catholic Priest) who didn’t take it as far as some do today obviously, but I digress. Still, maybe we came from nothing, and out of nothing, came everything with no creator or plan and we evolved from dust to single cell organisms to every bit of insanely complex life we see today. Maybe when we die we return to nothing and maybe as Freddie Mercury opined in his famous song….nothing really matters. Even if that’s so, we can see what a belief in something has given humanity. What has a belief in nothing brought humanity over the centuries?

A. Give people a fish

B. Teach people to fish

C. Give people fish AND teach people to fish AND gather so many fish in a giant, diversified fish farm that you can continue to give millions and millions of fish away perpetually as long as it doesn’t exceed the fish growth rate and leaves reserves high enough to deal with an inevitable crisis from time to time.

Personally, I would choose option C.

I always wondered why the Church of Jesus Christ (Mormons) got so much “attention” from so many other Christians specifically, and at times, the general population. It seems to be getting more attention than ever as of late. Members make up probably less than 1% of self declared Christians and .00206 of the world population… and that’s using total membership. Using just my own congregation, only about 75% attend.. and estimates are that of the total 17 million members, worldwide, probably less than half are actually active, but let’s say that 75% are…. that’s about 13 million active members out of a world population of about 8.5 billion. Still, it seems like a large part of other ministries and concerned individuals devote an outsized amount of time and energy into tearing down this tiny speck of a church rather than building up their own lives and organizations and I never understood it…… until today… and it’s painfully obvious now. I knew this church was ranked very low in membership, but I never realized where it ranked in another category….. and ranking high in this other category almost universally makes any person or group hated by a large set of the population unfortunately. In regard to the Church of Jesus Christ, some self-proclaimed Christians will say they are trying to tear it down to “save souls” or some such thing. Why, then are they not attacking Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc with the same fervor? I have little doubt that if the Church of Jesus Christ were broke and impotent, it wouldn’t generate the same level of “attention” as it does now.

Sadly, it seems that a large percentage of the population will look at anyone/anything successful and instead of being motivated to work toward their own success, will choose to work to destroy the success of others. Regardless of how much wealthy organizations or individuals donate or contribute, it appears it will never be enough for some until it brings them down below some arbitrary level which isn’t deemed worthy of constant attack. I think that generally speaking, it’s much better to build than destroy. Unless something is being FORCED upon you, I don’t understand how anyone would choose to attack and destroy when they could be building their own thing. In a free country, bad ideas will eventually fail on their own and good ideas will succeed with enough time, effort and resources. When I have something actually forced on me, I’ll likely fight it. Otherwise, I’m spending my time building something. I am not threatened by the success of others. In fact, the more fish others have, the more we can do together and the less likely they will be to come for mine through taxation, litigation, theft etc. I really think there’s enough for everyone to have an happy, fulfilled life if they would voluntarily share and create systems that truly help others but I don’t believe happiness and fulfillment comes only from money and stuff.

Those who think they will only be happy if everyone is totally equal are dooming themselves to perpetual misery. That CANNOT ever be the case and the closest you could get to that is everyone being equally broke because there simply aren’t enough resources in the world for everyone to have a thousand foot yacht, multiple private jets, helicopters, cars, mansions, vacations to all the same epic locations etc. Who would even build and maintain all that junk plus everything else in modern society if everyone were that rich? Even if it were possible, the experience wouldn’t be “special” anyway and no one would care about any of it after a short while. The reality is that you will likely have to work for anything you want and you will be better off working for it and having a goal to strive for than getting it handed to you or jealously stealing it anyway.

So how do we know if quitting something, and replacing it with something else will be better long-term? I am terrible at golf, but I’ll never forget a simple lesson from a golf instructor. He asked if you could choose when to putt, would you want to go first or last? Answers were all over the place, but he said if you go last, you get to go to school for free. Any other putts will help reveal the true lie of the green and may help predict your putt. He told us that if you’re not watching closely while others putt, you’re a fool. We each probably know hundreds of people and we can observe their decisions and results in real-time, but we can also look into history where millions of decisions and results have been documented. We can have the benefit of hindsight which is a whole lot like foresight when it comes to human behavior. We can see which metaphorical putts sink and which never have. This requires a bit of study and a bit of judgment.

Interestingly, popular messaging tells us that judging is the worst possible sin anyone can make, as they simultaneously pass that harsh judgement upon anyone who judges. Popular messaging also encourages people to prioritize their mental health above all else. There is often a grain of truth in everything. Prioritizing mental health is a worthy goal. Not being overly judgmental is also a worthy goal. However, good judgement is not bad. It is vitally essential. You must exercise good judgement of what your body consumes or you will get poisoned. You must also exercise good judgement in what your mind consumes and the choices you make or your mind and life will be poisoned. While everyone can tolerate different levels of poison, the optimal level is probably zero. Sometimes all that separates poison from medicine/food is the dose. Again, we can look to history for appropriate dosage. The dosage for judgement should probably be pretty low. We usually don’t need to pronounce judgements on others, but we absolutely need to evaluate their decisions and consequences if we want to “go to school for free” and not blindly putt away through life. Nothing in life is perfect and people and even animals like to think things could be better. Every day I drive by a field where horses reach over the fence to eat the weeds on the other side by the road that look worse to me than the field they’re in. Whenever I see someone quit their beliefs, marriage, friends etc. I often see the results. It often looks like they’ve traded a lush field for weeds by the side of the road. On the other hand, sometimes there does appear to be a big improvement in their life. Once again, it all depends on what was quit and what it was replaced with. Observing the results of others in the present and throughout history is a valuable insight that, like my golf instructor said, only fools ignore. Everyone has to make their own decisions, but based on what I’ve observed, I’m not quitting anything big in my life.

https://youtu.be/Aj1mijAlG70

1. Car is ours to own and control 100%
2. He has right to use the car by paying us the monthly interest we would have expected to make on the purchase price.
3. When the car is sold he will pay the difference between the purchase price and the sale price and if he sells it for more, he can keep the profit. If it’s less, he has to cough up the difference. Part of the money from the sale of his old car will go in a separate account to help with any deficiency.
4. He will pay the cost of full coverage insurance and maintenance
5. We will continue paying a reasonable monthly gas allowance for his commute to school since we would be driving him to school things anyway if he wasn’t driving himself.
6. There are various other things in a written contract regarding behavior, grades etc. but those are the basics.

This keeps the monthly amount REALLY low for him while not “giving” him anything and giving him incentive to take care of the car and feel like an adult.

To say he is thrilled with the arrangement is probably quite a bit of an understatement. Here’s to hoping he has as good a luck in the new one as the older one and that all goes well with the new job. This semester is going A LOT better than the last one.