Running out the Clock

I was thinking today of my impending trip to Hawaii, around 35 days left. I was thinking of the term "running out the clock" in regards to coasting towards the trip. Then I started thinking about the phrase, "running out the clock". It's a football phrase to describe a protectionist policy. Basically, if you are up by a touchdown, and you have the ball, and there are 2 minutes left, you want to run low-risk plays that will take a lot of time and are not meant to accomplish anything, running plays, since each running play has a low probability of success, but takes up 40 secs of time. If the other team had the ball, they would be running a "hail mary" play, basically a forlorn hope that they could somehow score to tie and win the game.

It's a very logical thing to do, but it is at the core, cowardly and unsportsmanlike, especially if you are the stronger team.

The last season the 49ers won the Super Bowl, in their NFC Championship game against the Dallas Cowboys, they shot off to an early lead. Because of this, they decided to not play aggressively and to protect their lead. For the stronger and better team to choose to play timidly, that caused me to dislike them much. The behind team, who happened to be inferior, was playing aggressively, and aggressively is how the game is meant to be played. Risks are meant to be taken.

In one of my favorite series of books, the Horatio Hornblower series, the protagonist makes this quote: "Timidity is rarely the best course of action". That's how life should be lived. Not out of timidity, not out of protecting what you have, not out of circling the wagons and living in fright. But in bravery, in taking the fight to the enemy, in aggression and audacity, storming and advancing and invading...

Living as a target is not living.

Confidence and Doubt

In regards to the "May 21" prophecy by Harold Campen that predicted the end of the world: I was surprised that there was so little doubt by those believers. All of them were supremely confident that the world was ending, to the point where they wouldn't even entertain the "what-if this isn't true".

I was also pondering about Harold Campen, whether he could be considered a false prophet. I don't think he could, simply because he wasn't claiming that God told him, just that he took numbers and crunched them. He claims that it took revelation from God to understand, but not that God told him, thus he can't be labelled as a "false prophet" technically.

But aside from that, what caused such single-minded fervence in his followers to where they wouldn't even entertain the notion of there being a 5/22.

Then it hit me: when you are deceived, you won't doubt because doubt and deception comes from the same source. The enemy gives deception and not doubt to those that are deceived, and the enemy gives doubt to those that are in the truth. Doubt will come to you when you are doing right. Few Christians question the notion of there being a "trinity" of gods in heaven, but those that believe in One God, Jesus-name baptism will question it, even if the entire Bible backs it up, simply because it IS truth.

Bottom line: If you are finding resistance, if you feel like you are battling, if the enemy is fighting you, you're probably on the right track.