So, this post may be somewhat confessional (in a harmless way), but in thinking back on my life, there are a few things that have had positive impacts on my life that started out with dubious motivations on my part.
I take comfort in knowing I’m not totally alone in this. Here are a couple of examples:
One is music: Like most guys who learn to play the guitar at a young age, I have to honestly say I did it because it seemed like “a good way to meet chicks.” Not that it actually worked out that way. I never really played the Guitar for my wife until after we were engaged, and since then I’ve taught myself to play around a dozen different instruments and have gotten on a few CDs. I found out I loved the music for its own sake, rather than the dubious (and slightly sexist) initial motivation I had as a teenager.
The second is Greek: I initially studied Ancient Greek not because I wanted to connect with our rich Classical heritage, but because I wanted to get revenge. On my mission, I was tired of preachers and self-styled autodidacts who would proclaim “well, the original Greek in the NT says this and therefore Mormons are evil” and decided if I learned Greek I could slam them: “NO! It does not say that, it says this you eeeeediooooot!”
Not a very noble motivation, yet I feel that knowing some Greek has enriched my life – it’s helped me in writing papers for my major and even helped me get a nice high score on the GRE vocabulary section. Plus, it is nice to be able to connect to our rich Classical Heritage in its original language. But all that came later. The idea of revenge on preachers I met on my mission may be the furthest thing from my mind now, but it got me started on the path, anyway. (Hint to missionaries though: 90% of the time, when you are told “well, if we look at the original Greek, we see that it really says this….” they’re lying or at least stretching the truth quite a bit).
Well, the scriptures say nothing good can come from an evil source (bad wells and bad water and bad trees and bad fruit and all that), but it seems things worked out for me anyway (at least in those areas).
So – who else wants to confess? (This means you, Clark! I know you worked for Los Alamos because you wanted to take over the world or something like that….. ) 😉