Killing Our Own Dreams

I've been reading a talk recently by Bruce Young. I don't remember the title, but it talks about the miracle of faith and the miracle of love. Admittedly, I am a little wary of something being called a miracle. To me, it seems like the word miracle implies not only a fantastic or amazing event, but carries a connotation that that event is fantastic or amazing in part because it was the result of little actual work. In any event, I got past the title and kept reading.

I haven't finished the talk quite yet, but I have to say the ideas in it are provocative. I mean that in a good way, as in: "The talk provoked me to serious reflection." One of the main ideas he posits is that in both faith and love individuals often keep themselves from the very happiness they claim to want. I hated the idea. I still do, except now I think it could be true. It turns out, whether or not I like an idea has little to no impact on the veracity of that idea. His point is that with faith we have confirmations of what is true and yet, at times, we doubt those confirmations. We doubt that such a good thing, such a wonderful thing as the gospel could be true. Why do we doubt that? To paraphrase Bruce Young's idea with my words, we would rather be sure we're going to hell, than unsure if we're going to heaven. It goes back to pride. We don't want to be wrong. We don't want to be disappointed. So to avoid that disappointment we give up hope. I know I'm not the only one who hasn't pursued a relationship because I might be rejected or might be disappointed. Oddly enough I think Wayne Gretzky said it best: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

It seems, at least at times, that people would rather not try and be sure of their failure than risk the possibility of being disappointed after hoping for something, never mind that there is the possibility for success through hope and effort. I think as far as dating goes it's being able to meet someone new and actually think something could come from it. The talk also points out that overanalyzation can kill a relationship.

You know I start posts off fully intending to write about something new, but somehow it comes back to the same things. I've already blogged about the human tendency to choose a crappy certainty over a happy possibility. Guess I'm all out of new ideas.