When my friend Lindsay Graham died a week ago, I was shocked. His death reminded me and I suppose everyone of how suddenly and unexpectedly death can come.
Lindsay and I used to work together on cases when we were Air Force JAGs in Europe. Back then, he told me he wanted to become the governor of South Carolina, but he pursued federal office instead.
He prosecuted the guy who tried to murder me by stabbing me in the upper spine and then, after I lost all feeling from the waist down, tried to strangle me.
The near-death experience I had during that attack changed my perception of mortality. Among other things it led me to my oft-repeated philosophy that the hardest thing about mortality is how real it seems.
Which also relates to the setting of the Book of Mormon.
The pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding eliminates incentives for contention. People can happily disagree once they seek understanding instead of consensus, coercion, conversion, etc.
Clarity seems to remain the most difficult obstacle for many people to overcome. One purpose of this blog is to bring clarity to the issues, and we'll keep doing so, recognizing that there are many far more important issues than the setting of the Book of Mormon.
