Matt W Cook

Have you ever noticed the default typing for most desktop publishing programs? You know those nonsense words that just fill up the empty space before you start typing?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…

It turns out, publishers had been using the same words to fill space for 500 years. And it’s not just gibberish. It’s a quote from Cicero’s work, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Goods and Evils). It seems to be a pretty neat piece of work. The whole paragraph from which Lorem ispum is taken could be translated like this:

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

For some reason, this reminds me of Christ’s command that we deny ourselves. That we pick up our cross and follow him. Why should we deny ourselves? Why pick up that cross? why subject ourselves to so much pain and crappy living? Is pain an end?

No. We do not deny ourselves because there is something good about denying ourselves. We don’t endure and submit to pain and willing take actions that will hurt us because pain is good. We do it for a higher good. We are willing to be hurt because any light, momentary afflictions that we endure properly will work together for our good and produce and eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.

We work for good. We bleed for good. We die for good. So long as we are attached to The Good.