My parents recently set off their house alarm by accident. 

There was no intruder this time, and thankfully they were able to disarm the system before the cops and firetrucks descended on their house to apprehend the imaginary invader. But this image helps me make a very simple point:

We want security systems for a reason. We want our smoke-detectors to have fresh batteries for a reason. We want our credit card companies to have fraud detection for a reason. We don’t care if 99% of the time, we don’t need any of these things, or if we sometimes set them off by accident. We still want them there.

Why?

Because we want to be warned when something isn’t right. It’s in our best interest to know if there’s an intruder — or if something’s on fire — or if someone is on a spending spree in Hawaii with our MasterCard!

We see the obvious value in being warned about all those things — but what about the state of our souls?