I like pizza. I especially enjoy it when my husband saves “one of those” days with a box in his hand when he comes home in the evening. I also enjoy making it from scratch in just the perfect way: with sauce, mozzerella, pepperoni, lots of feta, a little garlic, and fresh chopped tomatoes and basil—in that order. These are the best pizza toppings by far; generic supreme pizzas have no imagination.

Except for pizza with large amounts of onions (and anchovies, of course), it’s true that I enjoy eating pizza. Generally. A generalizaion is “the formulation of general concepts from specific instances by abstracting common properties.” (Wiktionary) Probably 99.99% of the times I’ve eaten pizza, I’ve enjoyed it. I’m not even picky: thin crust, thick crust, New York style, or greasy pizza joint style. It doesn’t matter. It’s all good.

It is true that I like pizza, but not necessarily in every instance. That is to say, of course there are exceptions. For example, one time in Hong Kong, I encountered a language barrier with a waitress at Pizza Hut, and she served me cheese pizza with Thousand Island dressing as the sauce. I clutched my throat and made gagging gestures, and so she replaced the pizza, this time with tomato sauce.

It is impossible to say everything all the time or else you end up saying nothing. Now, there is such thing as a “hasty generalization,” which is “the fallacy of examining just one or very few examples or studying a single case, and generalizing that to be representative of the whole class of objects or phenomena.” (Wikipedia) And then there is the “overwhelming exception.” This is related to the hasty generalization, but working from the other end. Again, from Wikipedia:

It is a generalization which is accurate, but tags on a qualification which eliminates enough cases (as exceptions); that what remains is much less impressive than what the original statement might have led one to assume.

It can get crazy. It’s just easier to say that I like pizza, than it is to qualify every instance that I wouldn’t enjoy pizza. It could really get ridiculous if one wanted to get technical. I’d have to note that I don’t like pizza topped with ice cream, kale juice, and any other weird food group. But really, who does? Probably some guy in Zimbobwa.

All this to say, all our words ought to be God-honoring, and to that end, the fewer that I say, the less chances I have to sin. You can’t say everything all the time, and so a generalization or two, whose mileage may vary, might be in order sometimes. For instance, I like pizza.