It Pays To Be Precise
I would say that there’s a potential error here, and that would be the punch line. You see, you_are_out could be a global variable, and buy_some_milk could set that global variable and send you home.
What the punch link could be is that he couldn’t go anywhere, because every place he visited (the gas station, the restaurant, etc.) he would have to continue to buy some milk. This would get exponentially worse if he brought a cell phone and could order milk to go from a grocery store, whether he could buy it on Amazon Prime, or he drove by a farm.
And if she wrote the code or sent it via text message, there are all kinds of context missing. That’s why with tasks at work, we try to be as precise as we can so that there is no confusion about what was required– but not to the point of being absurd.
In reading through the book of Galatians, we are reading through the first two chapters and seeing that Paul wanted to be very precise about what the Gospel was and what it was not. You see, there were people that came along behind Paul and Barnabas trying to tell the Galatian believers that they had to basically become Jews in order to be saved, and Paul was having none of it.
He condemned these people in the strongest possible terms. He travelled to Jerusalem to make sure that all the apostles were in agreement. He confronted Peter when it seemed that he was falling back to his older pattern.
Paul wanted precision– it wasn’t through works of the law or specific rituals by which people would be saved: It was only through Christ’s work on the cross. Faith in Christ was what God expects. Everything else is nothing. Paul wanted precision on this item of eternal consequence.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
