[b]Ted Chiang
If your ultimate goal in loving God was a reunion with your spouse, you weren’t demonstrating true devotion at all.[/b]
Isn’t that for God to decide?
He tells people that they can no more expect justice in the afterlife than in the mortal plane, but he doesn’t do this to dissuade them from worshipping God; on the contrary, he encourages them to do so. What he insists on is that they not love God under a misapprehension, that if they wish to love God, they be prepared to do so no matter His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.
Besides, what else is there?
Low expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Though sometimes entirely appropriate.
The hand’s dexterity is the physical manifestation of the mind’s ingenuity.
Praise the Lord?
For people like him, Hell was where you went when you died, and he saw no point in restructuring his life in hopes of avoiding that.
And that’s probably the way it turns out to be.
As he practiced his writing, Jijingi came to understand what Moseby had meant: writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements. Writing let you look at your thoughts in a way you couldn’t if you were just talking, and having seen them, you could improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate.
You know, in the either/or world.