Love based, Fear based

My wife, the divine Mrs. L, continues to work on her dissertation. Her class work is finished and all that remains now is "The World's Largest Research Paper." During her class work, she had an instructor who taught them, among other things presumably, that a method of critical thinking is to view decisions, our own and other's, as either Love based or Fear based. On the initial hearing, I discounted this as left-coast looney talk. However, as I've tested this theorem I've found it to be surprisingly accurate.

Try it out this week. Look at the decisions that you are making and look at the decisions that others are making. Evaluate them on the basis of either Fear or Love. I think you may be surprised.

Now, for the value of this method of evaluation. Fear based decisions are seldom (I emphasize seldom, not never) good decisions. Love based decisions are seldom (again, not never) bad decisions. As you contemplate the decisions you will find that the Fear based decisions seldom work out for anyone's good. You may also find, as I believe I've found, that some people and some organizations do almost everything out of Fear or they do almost everything they do out of Love. Decide for yourself which of these systems better serves the decision maker as well as those affected by those decisions.

You can expand the idea... since Fear and Love seem so personal and intimate. You can broaden the terms to include Offensive and Defensive, for you sports fans. You might use the terms Expansive and Constrictive. You may use Inclusive and Exclusive. As always, no single word is perfect because we all have our own connotations but if you observe behaviors you'll see what I mean and you can label it whatever works for you.

The Bible tells us that God is love. His son, Jesus came to earth to open the doors of heaven to all who would accept His sacrifice. Seems to be a Love based decision to me.

Christians, the people who recognize that Jesus' sacrifice made their relationship with God possible, ought to be making a lot of Love based decisions, wouldn't you think?

Go. Do better today than you did yesterday. Love somebody like God loves them.