In a culture gone increasingly rogue, it has become apparent that our actions are designed to bypass the questions whose answers would invalidate those actions. And are we naïve enough to believe that because we bypass the questions, the questions will not eventually answer themselves at our expense?

Ethics might be optional, but the consequences are not.

If the compass that I hold in my hand is driven by the agendas that I craft in my head, that compass is something more like a windmill erected in a place where the wind never stops blowing.

I think that bravery comes when the conviction to the principles that we hold dear takes our focus off the ferocity of the challenges that stand before us and instead directs our focus to the ferocity that is unleashed when a conviction is let off the leash.

Our actions must be directed, tempered and brought under the full authority of a greater calling. For if they are not, chaos, pain and a host of other less than savory things are certain to come calling.

If I possess a conviction that is not firmly grounded in an immovable sense of ethics, morals and values, what I have is a rogue agenda dressed in the finery of a conviction.

In any culture where agendas have shaped ethics, we will find a culture that has in fact purged itself of ethics. And that means that in time there will be no culture.

Thankfulness is a lethal weapon of unimaginable power. And because it is, it allows us to rise far above all of the dark and maniacal forces that assail us. And in refusing to lower ourselves to the squalid terrain from which these forces have launched their sordid attacks they are doomed to surrender, not because we outwitted them in battle, but because we stole the battle.

Sometimes I just sit and stare out of the window wondering what the world is going to do today. And my prayer is that what the world does today is based on Who God is every day.