I have been pondering the old adage, “It’s the thought that counts.”
It is something people say when intentions were good but the result was poor. I suppose it works, to a degree, as an apology or consolation. Yet, as a philosophy for life, it is garbage.
Thoughts are cheap. Thoughts plus effort is what really counts. Consider it from the opposite direction: if someone is angry, and has thoughts of retribution and violence, yet has the self-control not to act on them, is it really the thought that counts in that case?*
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about ideas that I have had, projects that I wanted to do, particularly things that I thought about doing for or with various people… but so what? If all I ever do is think of things, but never take any action, then what is the value in that?
*It actually is, according to Jesus (Matt 5:21-22).
A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to proclaim, “I am Christian gentlemen!” This statement is obviously inaccurate on at least two counts. I said it to a co-worker as an excuse for why I did not want to stop what I was doing, turn around, and check out some random lady’s posterior.
My coworker’s response was, “Well, so am I but…” I can not remember what rationalization, if any, followed. Nor does it matter to me. I already knew the man was a Christian or I would not have bothered.
This is the point that has troubled me for some time. It is utterly inconceivable to many Christians that non-Christians could be moral people. However, I have met moral and immoral Christians, as well as moral and immoral non-believers. As far as I am concerned, whether or not someone is a self-proclaimed Christian is a fairly irrelevant indicator of their character. Especially concerning areas of sexuality as in the example above, it seems that most Christians feel those bits of the Bible were really meant for other people.
Atheists are fully capable of being as moral or more as any Christian, yet I have yet to come across any good argument from an atheist perspective as to where that morality comes from. In this particular instance, I was using the Bible as a convenient shorthand, even if I had to outright lie to do it. There probably was an argument to be made about the importance of respecting women and so forth, but I doubt I could pull that off. I am certainly not going to claim that I have never stared inappropriately at a woman, but at that particular moment, I simply was not interested.
The summer concert series for which I set up sound equipment started again this week. This means a few things. First, someone is going to die. Secondly, last year I started the habit of setting up for the event, going home, blogging, then going back to tear down. Even after the concert series was over, I continued blogging roughly once a week for what would have been a year now, except that twice in the just last few weeks, I have not bothered to post anything. Of course, I would be pleasantly surprised if even five of those posts from the last year were actually important reading.
Most significantly, the sound guy was immediately interested in what I had been doing since last summer, and I simply had nothing to say. Yes there have been some memorable incidents and quality time spent with people and so forth. Yet in terms of long term goals and life accomplishments, the past year may just as well have never happened for me. Nor can I say that the next year is likely to be much different. And as I have commented before, no amount of blogging is going to change that, much as I still foolishly wish that it could.