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Jennifer Pierre

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“How could it be progress when the countryside was being stripped of its life, he wondered. Without successive generations of families keeping their feet on their own land, the countryside would be a dead place - a desert. A thousand efficient machines could never replace the joy and satisfaction that a man drew from hearing the laughter of his children playing in the fields as he tended his finca, no matter how small it might be.”

“People have been on earth in our present form for only about 100,000 years, and in so many ways we’re still ironing out our kinks. These turtles we’ve been traveling with, they outrank us in longevity, having earned three more zeros than we. They’ve got one hundred million years of success on their resume, and they’ve learned something about how to survive in the world. And this, I think, is part of it: they have settled upon peaceful career paths, with a stable rhythm. If humans could survive another one hundred million years, I expect we would no longer find ourselves riding bulls. It’s not so much that I think animals have rights; it’s more that I believe humans have hearts and minds- though I’ve yet to see consistent, convincing proof of either. Turtles may seem to lack sense, but they don’t do senseless things. They’re not terribly energetic, yet they do not waste energy… turtles cannot consider what might happen yet nothing turtles do threatens anyone’s future. Turtles don’t think about the next generation, but they risk and provide all they can to ensure that there will be one. Meanwhile, we profess to love our own offspring above all else, yet above all else it is they from whom we daily steal. We cannot learn to be more like turtles, but from turtles we could learn to be more human. That is the wisdom carried within one hundred million years of survival. What turtles could learn from us, I can’t quite imagine.”

“An example of making this delineation of responsibility, outside the realm of codependency, is when a person witnesses for Christ and shares the Gospel with an unbeliever. While the Christian is responsible to the Lord, he is not responsible for the unbeliever's response to the gospel. That is between God and the unbeliever. If the Christian who testifies for the Lord without apparent results thinks it's his fault the listener is not converted, he is limiting the sovereignty of God and taking responsibility beyond his capability. Likewise if a spouse or friend assumes responsibility beyond what God has given, he is operating outside his own area of obedience to the Lord. When that happens, he may tend to discontinue obeying God, since he is unsuccessful in accomplishing the responsibility given to others.”