If influence were cash capital, you would have a finite quantity of dollars  in the bank and a supermarket of important issues from which to choose.

How do you assay the relative value of each and choose where to invest your arguments?

Then there are opinions.

What's the difference between an opinion and and onion?

PI.

Pi are square and onions are round. Circle around that and you are left with an onion upon which to suck and most opinions do.

My opinions are like most people's – born out of my biases, nurtured by my selective evidence gathering, and hopefully, challenged by the facts (while being nudged by the Spirit).

Hopefully that nudging  comes before I influence too many people to share them or spend my influence with them and lose my credibility.

In forming opinions, it helps to ask a lot of questions.

Sometimes I ask questions for which I do not have the answers. I am not a trial lawyer. I would like to think I want to follow truth wherever it leads.

Of this, you can be sure (most of the time): I will not ask questions to bait you or entrap you.

If we are of equal value, we do not need to play cheap tricks on each other to win.

These were all originally, individual posts on social media which hopefully fit together and advance the cause of civil dialogue in our uncivil world.