Osler's Razor

About a year ago, my parents were visiting, and my mom broke her hip. She ended up having to stay in Minnesota for weeks as she recovered, doing physical therapy and building up her strength.

She is tough, and strong. Despite her hip replacement, she worked on her recovery so thoroughly that last week she went for a 15 mile walk. When she got back, she sat down at her desk in the living room, the old folding-shelf desk where she has paid bills for 40-some years, and she wrote thank-you letters to everyone who helped her-- the doctor who did the surgery, the nurses, the people at the nursing home where she recovered-- telling them how much their work had mattered.

What a wonderful thing to do! Wonderful, and rare.



This week, in Los Angeles, I was driving past a large hotel. In front of the hotel one man was savagely beating another. The victim was lying on the ground, unconscious, while the other man was straddling him, MMA-style, and punching him in the head again and again as the victim offered no defense. With each blow, the victim's head was bouncing off of the pavement. A small crowd stood around, watching passively. One man was filming it with his phone; two blue-jacketed security guys from the hotel stood behind the scene, making little effort to intervene.

I'm certain that the beating (perhaps killing) had little to do with anything important. It probably started with a stupid comment or a dispute in a bar.

The tragedy is that the violent act is such an accepted part of our society, while the act of kindness is often hidden and unnoticed. As I waited for my plane, a boy sitting next to me was playing a video game that eerily re-created the violence I had seen on the street-- in our culture, such violence is entertainment for children.

In the end, I reflected on a simple, sad truth: That in our nation of Christians, following the teaching of Christ is as counter-cultural as it was in his own day.