There once was a man with a long white beard, and one day a little girl came up to him and asked if he slept with his beard inside the covers or outside the covers. He thought about it for a bit and told her he really didn't know, and for the next two nights he couldn't get a wink of sleep for thinking about whether he should tuck his beard under the covers with him or leave it outside.

I used to think this was just a funny story, but the last two nights, while not entirely sleepless, my sleep has been what historians and biographers might do well to call fitful. Doug Pagitt came by Remonstrans and asked if I "feel good going to bed at night that [I] have really contributed good things to the world".

As all of you competent philosophers out there will immediately perceive, this is a very important question. I don't say it is the most important question I will ever have to answer, but it ranks right up there with "Who wants to win a million dollars?" in this respect: it's one of those questions you don't want to rush into without doing proper research.

I recognized that Doug has a reputation for having done some amitcher flossfy, so I asked him how he defined "good".

Doug hasn't gotten back to me yet. I don't know if he got tied up in a yoga class or if he's eating the Halloween candy we sent him or if he's looking for a crayon to record his thoughts with. But while we wait for an answer from Doug, I went ahead and did some preliminary, tentative work on the problem.

This is what I've got so far:

Of all the good things I might contribute to the world, it seemed to me after some well-focused reflection that the very best contribution would be one the world needs most. Proceeding from that insight it was the work of a moment to deduce that the best contribution I could make to the world would be to help it understand its need of a redeemer; I have heard nothing good about Hell except that heretics and false teachers go there.

It follows, though I wasn't asked this question, that one of the worst contributions I might make to the world would be to allow someone to pervert the good news of a redeemer without challenging him—or them, as in the case of emergents. Making every effort to preserve the truth of the gospel is not only something we read about in the New Testament, it's purely logical.

(I don't know this for certain because the word has taken on so many new and comical meanings, but it might even be Platonic.)

And after having these thoughts it occurred to me that another significant contribution I might make to the world would be to call someone with a butterfly net to go get Doug Pagitt. The world does not need more pagittwitter. It seems clear from the evidence to date that the world is not flocking to read or discuss pagittwitter, but I like to be on the safe side and warn people about it just in case.

And so to make a long story short, that is how I feel when I go to bed at night.