One of my hobbies is coin collecting. I haven’t been very active with it of late, but back a decade ago I was down at the local coin shops every weekend looking for another interesting piece to add to the collection. Mostly I looked for type pieces, rather than series pieces. You see, collectors tend to fall into two large categories. There are series collectors, and then there are type collectors. A series collector tries to get one of each of a series, like all dates for the Walking Liberty coins, while a type collector is looking for good representatives of each coin type. But in both cases the collector is looking for the best possible example he can find. Collecting is not about how many coins you have; it’s about the quality of the coins you find. The general rule is to buy the best example you can afford of the coin you are looking for because the value of the coin will never diminish. The rarity makes sure of that. Common, worn coins are cheap, and sometimes its all you can afford, but the goal is to get quality not quantity.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure, hidden in a field, that a person found and hid. Then because of joy he went and sold all that he had and bought that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he found a pearl of great value, he went out and sold everything he had and bought it. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was cast into the sea that caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, they pulled it ashore, sat down, and put the good fish into containers and threw the bad away. It will be this way at the end of the age. Angels will come and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. “Have you understood all these things?” They replied, “Yes.”

(Mat 13:44-51)

It’s a good idea to keep this in mind. God is a collector of souls, looking for quality not quantity. We should be the same in our attitudes, ready to sell-all if needed to obtain that one field, that one pearl, that makes it all worth-while.

This applies to many things, but I’m thinking today not in terms of people, but of ideas. In this information age (so called) there is so much information that it is easy to just grab onto the first piece of information you find and run with it, as if that’s all there was. Or, to want to hold onto old ideas because they are familiar and consequently reject the insights of others that may be unfamiliar. Or, to become fascinated by the strange and unusual. Or, to jump from thing to thing looking for the “in-thing” …

But the search for truth requires a discipline and a diligence to keep looking, keep trying, until you gather enough options to know the good from the bad, the true from the false. Like the fishermen in the parable above, sometimes we have to discard some things, skip over the things that don’t work, and cling to those precious, rare, things that rise above everything else.

I was in the store the other day with a friend who needed to buy some more laundry soap. So, we walk over and look around to pick out just the “right kind” of soap. Of Course. Because there was a whole bunch of different kinds of soap there, each touting it’s special features that will get your clothes “whiter than white” or “brighter than bright” or smelling like a forest, or not smelling at all, as you prefer.

Of course, there probably isn’t much difference (other than fragrance and some extra bleach) between the various brands and variations within brands. So what’s the deal? I suppose, maybe, perhaps, there is some valid reason for all those variations. But (honestly) I think it’s just a trick to get more shelf space. If you are a soap maker and you only have one variety of your brand, you don’t get as many packages on the shelf and maybe don’t sell as much. Maybe. In any case, soap making is a good business to be in because:

1 - people have to wash stuff

2 - soap gets used up and people have to buy more

But I’m only guessing here, because I’m not in the soap business. I am in the software business, and it is nothing like selling soap. Unlike soap, we software geeks make a product that

1 - never wears out

2 - becomes obsolete if it doesn’t constantly change

At first glance, that’s an insane business to be in when you think about it. We have to find some way to get you to buying something over and over even though what you have probably still works. Software has no moving parts to wear out, doesn’t get consumed while you use it, and will still run the same centuries from now. Except for one thing…

Computers keep getting faster and bigger and that allows software to get bigger and faster too. Thank goodness Microsoft keeps changing the operating system so that we have an excuse to sell you a new version of our software, too. See how it works? What we sell as “upgrades” are just features that look a little different or are maybe easier to use or take advantage of the new hardware. Fact is, if we didn’t get you to buy what you already have, we would go out of business.  About the only thing even close to software is music and books. But in the case of music and books, you usually get tired of them and go buy more. I don’t think anyone goes out and buys a new word processor just because they are tired of using the one they already own. Get it?

What makes this possible is that software is “virtual.” There are no windows, no folders, no documents inside your computer. (Open up the computer and look sometime if you don’t believe it.) So we can constantly add “features” to software because it is, after all, just a virtual model encoded in processing instructions. It’s soft stuff.

And that’s the other thing that makes software different from soap. There’s only so much you can do with soap, and I doubt soap has changed all that much in millenia. But with software you can invent totally new worlds if you want. There is no end to it, because it is not a physical thing. In fact, if we could figure out how to run the software without the computer it would be perfect…

Soap and software. Kinda like physical and spiritual. (HAH HAH)

Physical stuff gets used up. These old bodies we have wear down and wear out and the day comes when we have to cast it off and go on. It’s the spiritual stuff that never wears out, has no limits to what it can reach, etc.

And that’s a good analogy to faith. Faith is not something you just buy once and it’s a done deal. We go from “faith to faith” as Romans 1 points out. There is no limit really to how far faith can go, because it is not a physical thing. It is a spiritual thing, and it is the faith you develop that will carry over into eternity.

So don’t worry too much about the physical stuff. It’s like soap. You use it and it gets consumed. But the spiritual things are like software. There is no end to how much faith you can get, or how much knowledge of God you can gain.