Why is the word abbreviation so long? There is also no abbreviation for abbreviation. To abbreviate is to make something shorter, and shorter, especially in this age of instant gratification, is (or seems to be) better. So often we try to make things better, but only seem to make them longer. Consider the internet. URLs are typically abbreviated www.something.whatever so often that my computer wants to make that a hyperlink. The letter W is the only non-monosyllabic letter in the English language. In fact, it is a tri-syllabic letter. The letters www stand for World Wide Web, three monosyllabic words. This means that we abbreviate 3 syllables with 9 syllables. Plus it's wordier, yet no one seems to care or want to correct it. Even if we say triple W we have nearly doubled the length, and time it takes to say, the original word.

Someone by the name of Lewis Mumford who lived from 1895-1990 once said that "Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity." I don't know who Lewis was, but as a Traffic Engineer (even though I haven't worked in traffic since I left my last private consulting firm I still consider myself a traffic guy) I can relate to him. So often we think that the solution to our problem is simply to make more room for our problem. The only thing this does is make our problem bigger and more difficult to handle.

This concept is a little more difficult to relate to the overarching theme of my blog, but we do at times make Christianity harder than it should be. Jesus never said a sinner's prayer with anyone. Not the woman at the well, not Zacheus, not even Judas Iscariot. This isn't a bad thing though, because, like us, Jesus made things more difficult, too. By speaking in parables, he confused his disciples. They were constantly asking him what he meant. In talking to the crowds he spoke in anecdotes, but he explained to those that were with him all the time. If anyone should "get" him, you would think it would be those that traveled with him. Yet they didn't, and the masses did.

Maybe oversimplifying isn't all it's cracked up to be.

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