“Also, keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins” (Psalm 19:13).

There are no guarantees in this life.

I can eat whole grain foods, take my vitamins and supplements, stay with organic and get plenty of exercise, and still get hit by a Volvo while crossing the road.

Almost every magazine that comes to my house will have the occasional article telling how to cut down on life-shortening factors.  After reading several of these, you learn to predict their advice: cut out tobacco and sweets, eat more fruits and veggies, walk some every day, and laugh a lot.  Take vitamins, especially this one or that one.

I’m for all that, incidentally.  I do all those things. Well, except for avoiding the sweets.

Soldiers in combat discuss whether there’s a bullet “out there” with one’s name on it.  If such a thing exists, some will say, there’s nothing you can do, so take risks and live life to the fullest.  On the other hand, many soldiers have survived their terms of combat and reported they they took steps to minimize the risks.  They kept their helmet on, kept their armor on, looked before they jumped, maintained their guns in great shape, stayed close to their buddies, and a thousand other things.

On the highway, minimizing risk is a big deal for me.

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“Except you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

What’s lacking in the great majority of religious experts–of all tribes, all beliefs, all everything!–is a childlike humility.

I’ve sat across from the salespeople hawking Jehovah’s Witness and Mormon doctrine door to door and been amazed at the sheer gall and arrogance of these know-it-alls.

I’ve sat in the auditoriums and classrooms when prophecy teachers were spreading out their charts and telling far more than they could ever know, pronouncing their anathema upon anyone daring to believe otherwise and taking no prisoners in the process.

I’ve sat in massive conferences among thousands of my peers and heard ignorance spouted as truth but camouflaged with alliteration and pious phrases and encouraged and affirmed by thundering echoes of “amens” and “hallelujahs”.

In every case, I longed to hear someone say, “We see through a glass darkly….”  (I Corinthians 13:12).

To hear someone say, “I have not arrived. I press toward the mark….” (Philippians 3:12-13).

To hear someone say, “We do not know how to pray as we should….” (Romans 8:26)

To hear someone say, “That which I am doing, I do not understand.  I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15).

Where is the childlike spirit we hear so much of in the Word?

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Consider this a tribute to the game-changers among us.

Not all the changes we call “political correctness” or “conventional wisdom” are bad. Some are lifesaving and possible evidence that we may be gaining some sense.

Smoking is good for you? Give me a break.

This week someone posted on Facebook an old cigarette ad in which Ronald Reagan, “film star,” is touting the advantages and pleasures of Chesterfield cigarettes.  Many an ad from the 1940s brags about the medical advantages of their brand of tobacco over their competition.

After burying millions of smokers, we no longer allow those advertisements with their false claims.

Any day now, the New Orleans City Council will pass a resolution outlawing smoking in bars and taverns in our city. That’s the final straw, and about the last place smokers can puff away other than in their home, their car, or their yard.

As a cancer survivor, I say “Good riddance.”  And don’t come in here with protestations that “well, non-smokers have the freedom not to breathe the toxic air.”  How ridiculous.

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