Treehouse!

Dia's insight on treehouses:

"I asked Dad how he could strengthen the treehouse's railings, because Uncle Nathan was up there pushing on them (and they were swaying baaaack and fooorrrrth and baaaack...). He said they'll be fine, the kids just can't touch them. I said, "Sometimes the semblance of good is worse than abject evil." I thought for a minute at my profoundity and then I said, "Ooooo... that sounded goood!" And Dad said, "Huh?" What I meant (I think) is that if there were NO railing, the kids would be too scared to get close to the edges. A weak railing just makes the kids (falsely) think that the edges are safe to be near and (knowing OUR family) to be rappelled from. This is true even though the distance from the treehouse to the ground has not decreased by one inch.

Sometimes I put up "railings" at the edges of my own standards. These false barriers that supposedly protect me from danger really tempt me to move closer and closer to the edges of my beliefs. If they are weak and moveable, I am in more danger than I would be without any railings at all. R rated movies, for example, are "not OK." A clearly defined, protective barrier, right? However, this barrier implies that everything up to the edge is safe--that ANYTHING within PG-13 rated films is just fine--which is simply NOT true

(Transformers II was SO BAD. We should've walked out. It was so crude and simply FILLED with cursing. Ugh, disgusting.) Seriously.
Oh, at the risk of analogy overload, I thought of another one while I was trying to keep images/lines from that cursed movie out of my head today. Bad images/words/etc are like files in a computer. You know when you try to delete one, and you get the message, "deleting this program's shortcut will not remove it from your computer" ? Even when you do uninstall it, it seems like all the files, cookies, images and connections it made on your computer linger for months afterward. The only solution to the problem is to never put the file on your hard drive in the first place.

While a bad file contaminates, we can also run the risk of a too large file slowing compution speed, impeding progress and even spreading and contaminating other programs and files, just like a bad or misplaced priority can slow our spiritual dexterity, impede eternal progression and contaminate other parts of life).

Back to the treehouse:

I cannot forget the danger of the edge in my creation of protective boundaries. I must remember the difference between the spirit AND the letter of the law in recognizing the distance between me and the edge, and between the edge and the ground.

For clarification: I am NOT saying we shouldn't have clearly defined boundaries--but we cannot let ourselves forget the dangers beyond the boundaries we have told ourselves we will not pass.

The road to hell is smooth and paved, not bumpy and twisting. If Satan can keep us oblivious, or better yet, content in our sins, it's a quick drop to him.

d
It's me again, Terina... being taught by the children.