Nichols' 4th Law

Nichols' 4th Law says that you should, "Avoid any action with an unacceptable outcome." This is about as straight forward as you can get, but it probably still needs to be broken down. There are those who choose not to accept anything and argue against everything. I would call them naysayers, but they don't really run around saying "nay" so I guess that title is out. I will call them funsuckers, because they have the ability to enter into any conversation and suck the fun right out of it.

In fact, here they are now.................

Ummmm, now.....................................................

Okay, now?

"Every thing can have an unacceptable outcome, so I guess this means we should do nothing. Is that what you are telling us?"

"Yes, that is exactly what I am telling you. Do nothing. Nothing at all. That shouldn't be hard, right?"

"I do nothing all the time."

"Untrue, doing nothing is impossible. I dare say you are not factually reporting. Care to argue that you do nothing?"

"I don't do anything when I sleep, so there,"spoken with outstretched tongue!

"Actually, you are dreaming, breathing and your muscles are repairing themselves while you are sleeping. Just an FYI, sleeping is not doing nothing. Sleeping is definitely doing something. So is sitting, standing, laying down, playing video games, etc. You are always using muscles and you have neurons firing electrical impulses. Do you have anything else? I thought not."

Now it is true you can do just about anything and have a negative outcome. It is also possible that you can do just about anything and have a positive outcome. Case in point, I heard about a guy who took ecstasy for the first time and was hit by a semi. It was deemed the semi's fault, and the guy who took the ecstasy was awarded $3 million. I would not recommend going out and taking ecstasy to get rich just because of that one occurrence. That is a random, chance occurrence that is highly improbable.

So what we are talking about is outcomes that are likely. We mean you should not be taking any actions that make unacceptable outcomes probable. Here are several example:

1. I don't want to get into a bar fight. Going to bars could lead to this outcome, which I have deemed unacceptable. Therefore I do not go to bars. "That doesn't mean you won't get into any fights, just because you don't go to bars," yells the cynic. "True," I reply, "but the fights I get into won't be bar fights. If it's in a house, it will be a house fight. If it's in the street it will be a street fight, but there is zero probability it will be a bar fight because I do not go to bars."
2. Imagine I don't want to have a baby. I know that having sex can produce babies. In fact, it is one on a very short list of ways babies are created, and the only way for it to happen unplanned. If I have sex and I do not want/am not ready for children, then it could produce an unacceptable outcome so I will not have sex.
3. I don't want to go to jail. I know there are multiple things that could cause me to go to jail. They range from murder to theft to doing drugs and on and on. I make sure, to the best of my ability, that I follow the law.

So, what is Nichols' 4th Law? It is using logic and common sense to make informed, positive  choices. Using rational thinking and a process of elimination/deduction, you look at the possible LIKELY outcomes of an action before you engage in it. If the outcomes are acceptable, then you take action. If the probable outcomes are not acceptable, then you do not.

I used a hybrid of this that I call, "The 1 Rule That Changed My Life." Before I would engage in something, I would ask myself these 3 questions:

1. If my son or daughter was standing here, would I say or do this?
2. If Jesus was standing here, would I say or do this?
3. Is this something I want my son or daughter to do?

If I could not answer yes to all three of these questions, I had no business doing it myself. I get more indepth with the explanation of the rule here: http://spiritualspackle.blogspot.com/2011/10/1-rule-that-changed-my-life.html

Let us use "The 1 Rule that Changed My Life" with drug usage. For starters, do you want your children to watch you doing drugs? Would you get high if you were standing next to Jesus? Finally, do you want your children to do drugs when they grow up? Not will they experiment or will they do drugs, but do you want them to? If your answer to any of these questions is no, then you should not do drugs. So I know I should not do drugs. How do I most readily accomplish this?

Nichols' 4th Law states that I should avoid any action that would make me doing drugs a possibility. I know that being around people who do drugs and going to places where drugs are abundant could enable me to use drugs. Therefore, I avoid playgrounds and playmates where drugs are likely to be in use. It is that simple. If I am not around drugs they are hard for me to do. If I do not do them and my kids know I don't do them, they are less likely to use themselves. That is what I call a win/win situation.

That is why Nichols' 4th Law is important; it forces us to think before we act. So I hope that you can apply this law to your life. After all, it makes you think. What could be more important than that?

Tactics by Gregory Koukl Chapter 8: Practical Suicide.

Last chapter you learned that some people's objections you do not have to defend. Instead, you show that their point commits suicide, meaning all you have to do is ask questions about the point that is being made and it will fail. Some views can also be self-defeating, just in a different way. One of those ways is practical suicide.

In this type of suicidal view, "you can hold the view, but you can't promote it." I used to say that I could not stand prejudiced people. In saying that about a certain type of people, I was showing myself to be prejudiced. So although I may dislike prejudice, saying that I do not like prejudiced people made me a prejudiced person.

Others say that apologetics is not adequate, because it uses reason to discover truth. "In fact, I will give you three good reasons why you can't use logic to find truth." Another view that commits practical suicide is  "condemning condemnation." This is where you state your belief that someone is wrong for doing something. In turn, someone tells you that you are wrong for condemning people like you just did. All you have to do now is ask them why they are condemning you.

When you share with others about Christ, you are following the command that Christ gave us with the Great Commission. You may have others of a different faith tell you that it is wrong to try and change their religious views. In saying this, they are telling you to change your religious views. They want you to abandon your views of evangelism and instead adopt their views.

A moral relativist will push their morals on you, whilst telling you that it is wrong to push your morality on them. Greg Koukl says: The only consistent response for a relativist is, "Pushing morality is wrong for me, but that's just my personal opinion and has nothing to do with you. Please ignore me."

Hopefully through these examples you can see exactly what a practical suicide view is. It is another view point that will self-destruct. It will not self-destruct due to internal contradiction. Instead, it is a view that one can believe, but they cannot promote it or act on it because they will violate their own convictions, for example, "It is wrong to say people are wrong."

See you next time when we introduce a couple more self-destructing points of view.

What's Wrong With Faith?

How many of you stop at a green light?

I am asking that question for a reason. We will get to the reason later. That said, I am a firm believer in faith. Currently I am a Christian, and I have faith that what I believe is true. When I was an Agnostic I also had faith that what I believed was true. I had a confidence in both instances that I was right in my belief, therefore I had faith.

Unfortunately when I was agnostic I abused drugs and enjoyed hurting people. I tried multiple methods to get off of drugs: prison, jail, house arrest, counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, prescription medication, residential treatment, outpatient treatment, scared straight, anger management even suicide. Nothing secular worked. I couldn't even be successful at killing myself!

Since  I have been a Christian, I have not used drugs nor have I been arrested. I turned my life over to Christ February 1st, 2009 at 2 A.M. and I have not smoked a cigarette, shot up, got into a fight, used drugs/alcohol nor had premarital sex since. To me that is nothing short of amazing. I used to deal dope and ruin lives, now I deal hope and share recovery to those who do not have it so that they may use my testimony to gain faith that they too can overcome their personal habits, hurts and hang-ups. My relationship with God allowed me to change. WIthout faith I was mired in addiction and crime.

Here are two examples of faith that I see in my daily life. First, I work in the substance abuse industry. Depending on the study you look at for methamphetamine, recovery occurs in only 5-10% of cases. Those odds make the idea of recovery disheartening at best, and unattainable at worst. Yet I have seen many people who in the face of these odds still have faith that they will succeed. I was in addiction and every one that I knew that tried to quit drugs always came back. Today, I have faith that those same people can and will change.

Second, I have seen on several occasions a car in front of me get t-boned going through a green light by a car running a red light. In one of those instances two people died in the accident. Many people have seen a car get hit by someone running a red light. I would further estimate that most people have at least witnessed a near miss. Therefore, we have logical proof that people run red lights.

So if I believe that people run red lights and cause injury to those who don't stop at green lights than I operate on faith every time I go through a green light without stopping. I have logical proof and material evidence that people run red lights. If I operate on logic and reason I would slow down if not stop at green lights. I assert that if we were not operating on faith, we would slam on our brakes before going through a green light.

So, how many of you stop at a green light?