Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Prove You Love Me

Prove You Love Me

How do you prove you love me?

By professing love and devotion, for sure.

But also by action.

See, you show that you love your wife by exhibiting, to her, the characteristics of love.

All that cliche stuff: Patience. Kindness. Gentleness. Generosity. Being Humble.

And you show that you are a Christian by loving other people.

In every aspect of life, never underestimate the power of action.

Action propels everything.

All of this raised a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. How do we prove who we are? I don’t mean who our driver’s licenses say we are or what our careers suggest about who we are or who we tell other people we are or who they tell us we are. Jesus talked to His friends a lot about how we should identify ourselves. He said it wouldn’t be what we said we believed or all the good we hoped to do someday. Nope, He said we would identify ourselves simply by how we loved people. It’s tempting to think there is more to it, but there’s not. Love isn’t something we fall into; love is someone we become.

-Bob Goff, Everybody Always

Ben Franklin On Religion

Ben Franklin On Religion

I have seen controversy around Ben Franklin on religion.

What were his views? Was he a Christian? An atheist? An agnostic?

It seems like nearly everyone has an opinion about his opinion.

But what if we let him tell us exactly what the thought?

I mean, what a novel idea that would be.

It’s almost like a quote, or something.

Thanks goodness he chose to document his life.

I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and though some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as the eternal decrees of God, election, reprobation, etc. , appeared to me unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself from the public assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying day, I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world, and govern’d it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter.

-Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Sterling Terrell