While some of us, by the sheer grace of God, manage to escape the lure of the most powerful idols, not one of us does not have some habit, some recurring pattern of thought, substance or device that we turn to when we are feeling vulnerable—something that assuages our vulnerability and elevates our sense of capacity to act. They offer us, in a word, control—for the very essence of control is authority without vulnerability, the ability to act without the possibility of loss. Control is the dream of the risk- and loss-averse, the promise of every idol and the quest of every person who has
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