Ignorance in Christian preaching highlights the spiritual blindness and lack of true knowledge about Jesus and salvation, despite outward claims of understanding. It often uses images of darkness, blindness, or foolishness to contrast human folly with divine truth (Ephesians 4:18; Proverbs 1:7). This theme warns against rejecting the gospel and calls for repentance and enlightenment through Christ.
Many claim religious knowledge yet remain ignorant of Jesus and the gospel.
The mother of a respectable family said to a lady visitor, in a very incredulous manner, "They say there was a man whose name was Jesus, and the people murdered him, and he came to life again. Do you believe it?" In further conversation, it came out that she had been to church three times in a life of thirty-five years, and thought herself therefore well informed in religious matters.
Some are unaware Jesus is not a distant figure but central to salvation.
An army surgeon, on duty in Western Virginia during the late war, was called to attend on one of the poor whites, — a young woman, — whom he found beyond hope of relief. Thither he sent the chaplain, who asked the dying girl, "Have you ever heard of Jesus?" — "I reckon I have: he lives in Boston, don't he?" she answered.
Foolishness persists despite warnings, leading to harm and rejection of truth.
A number of monkeys that lived in a mountain sought on a cold, windy, and rainy night for a fire to warm themselves. At last, they saw a glow-worm, and, thinking it was a spark of fire, they gathered some wood, and threw it upon it. Not far off there was a bird upon a tree, which, observing what they were doing, cried out to them, and endeavored to convince them of their error. This scene attracted the attention of a man who was passing by, who told the bird that it was wasting both time and patience; and that no one thought of proving a sword upon a stubborn, impenetrable stone, or of making a bow out of a piece of wood that would not bend. The bird, however, without attending to him, flew down to them to prove to them that the glow-worm was not fire; but, in recompense for his pains, was seized by one of them, dashed upon the ground, and killed.
— G. W. Hervey
Heathen ignorance contrasts with civilized knowledge, shown by misunderstanding ironworking.
The contrast between heathen and civilized men is indicated by this incident:
“Why did we not think of heating the hard stuff,” the natives exclaimed when they saw the welding of iron, “instead of beating it with stones?”
Knowing proverbs doesn't protect one if the source of danger doesn't understand them.
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However wise a man may himself be, he does well to guard himself against the ignorance of others:
Ah Wing Lee was walking down the street the other morning when a dog ran up behind him, yelping and barking horribly. The end of the Celestial’s pigtail rose in the breeze as he leapt aside in great alarm.
A benevolent passer-by, seeing the terror painted upon the yellow countenance, hastened to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder.
“Come, come, my friend, you need not be afraid. The dog won’t hurt you. Don’t you know the old proverb, ‘A barking dog never bites?’ Surely you--”
“That’s all velly good,” interrupted Ah Wing doubtfully; “you knowee ploverb and me knowee ploverb, but do the dog knowee ploverb?” (Text.)
An old man unable to teach children illustrates the problem of ignorance in education.
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Stauber, the Lutheran minister who first ministered to the five villages in the Swiss mountains, which he afterward persuaded Oberlin to take as his parish, tells this incident to show the character of the people:
The Ban de la Roche, as you may know, is on a spur of the Vosges Mountains about twelve leagues from Strasburg. The people are very wild and ignorant. When I (Monsieur Stauber) first went there I visited the only school. A number of children were gathered together in a miserable cottage. As I entered I heard an appalling noise of scuffling, quarreling, and shouting.
“‘Silence, children, silence!’ I cried. ‘Where is your master?’ One of the children pointed to a little old man who was lying on a bed in the corner of the room.
“‘Are you the master of this school?’ said I, in some dismay.
“‘Yes, I be the master, sir--I be.’
“‘Humph! But don’t you teach the children anything?’
“‘No! I don’t teach the children nothing--for a good reason.’
“‘It must be a very good reason, indeed. What is it, my friend?’
“‘Well, I don’t know nothing myself, sir; so how am I to teach?’
“‘But, my good friend, why did they send you here, then?’
“‘Because, sir, I be too old to take care of the pigs?’”
Not going where the lost are explains why some never see native converts.
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An English army officer and a foreign missionary met on an ocean steamer. The army officer contemptuously said he had lived in India thirty years and had never seen a native Christian. Shortly afterward, he recited with gusto his success in tiger-hunting, declaring that he had killed no less than nine tigers. “Pardon me,” said the missionary, “did I understand you to say that you have killed nine tigers in India?” “Yes, sir,” pompously replied the colonel. “Now that is remarkable,” replied the missionary, “for I have lived in India thirty years and have never seen a tiger.” “Perhaps, sir,” sneered the colonel, “you didn’t go where the tigers were.” “Precisely,” was the bland answer of the missionary, “and may not that have been the reason why you never saw any native converts?”
Lack of basic historical knowledge disqualifies one from responsible citizenship.
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An Italian tailor living at West Hoboken, N. J., appeared before Judge Carey and made application for citizenship. He told the judge he had been in this country twenty-two years.
“Do you know who Abraham Lincoln was?” asked Judge Carey.
“No, I don’t know who he was.”
“You don’t know who Abraham Lincoln was?” repeated the judge.
“No; does he live in West Hoboken?” asked the applicant.
“He is dead,” said Judge Carey.
“Well, I never heard of him,” continued the Italian. “Was he a tailor?”
The judge advised him to go home and study up on history and geography, and said: “No man who does not know who Abraham Lincoln was is fit to enjoy the privilege of American citizenship.”
When asked to name six of the United States, he answered, “New Jersey, New York, Boston, West Hoboken, Union Hill, and Hoboken.”
Ignorance causes distrust and loss, shown by a woman losing savings due to misunderstanding banks.
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One day recently a hard-working woman, the wife of a New York tailor in a small way, went out to market. In her hurry she left the apartment door ajar. Moreover, she forgot to replace, under the mattress, the red-flannel bag in which she and her husband kept their savings of fifteen years--some diamonds, a gold watch, and $1,400 cash.
Only a quarter of an hour later she came back--but the red-flannel savings-bank was gone. At last reports the police detectives had not recovered the money.
The pity of such a loss is more than personal. It is a national calamity. The vague distrust of all banks follows the popular ignorance of the difference in nature between a business man’s bank and a true savings-bank. Ignorance was the root of this small tragedy.--_Review of Reviews._
A man mistakenly walks railroad tracks thinking his ticket allows walking, illustrating ignorance of rights.
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Many of us are as foolish as a poor immigrant who was discovered walking on the tracks of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in New Jersey. On his back he carried a huge package containing household utensils, as well as clothes. He seemed tired, tho he trudged sturdily on. He had not, however, acquired the veteran tramp’s skill in walking on the ties, and his journey was evidently telling on his physical powers more than the same distance by the roadway would have done. An agent stopt him and ordered him off the track, telling him that he was liable to arrest for trespass, besides incurring the risk of being killed by a train.
The man, who was a Hungarian, demurred, and produced a railroad ticket, good from Jersey City to Scranton, Pa. The agent looked at him in amazement, and asked why he was walking when he might ride. The Hungarian replied that he thought the ticket gave him only the privilege of walking over the road. His right was explained to him, and the tired man delightedly boarded the first train that stopt. (Text.)
— LOUIS ALBERT BANKS
Ignorance in dietary knowledge leads to waste and poor nutrition, especially in young men.
See CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION; FEAR.
IGNORANCE, DIETARY
The untrained housekeeper is responsible for the sheer waste of one-fifth of the average salary--wasted because she does not know how to buy her foods, in quantity or quality; because she has not known what kind of foods to give to produce the best results; because, as a bargain-hunter, she is the cause of the great quantities of “material just like the goods, but at a cheaper price” which flood our markets and lack durability.
No man would employ a purchasing agent who did not know the materials he was to buy; yet woman, with the greatest purchasing power, goes at it without knowledge.
We find that the majority of young men in the universities who go wrong are of those who live in boarding-houses where landladies know little of the choosing and preparing of foods. An inadequate lunch is followed by hunger during the middle of the afternoon, with the resultant glass of beer to satisfy the appetite for the time being.
An Irishman’s ignorance of language causes confusion and humiliation in military service.
Frederick of Prussia had a great mania for enlisting gigantic soldiers into the Royal Guards, and paid an enormous bounty to his recruiting officers for getting them. One day the recruiting sergeant chanced to espy a Hibernian who was at least seven feet high. He accosted him in English and proposed that he should enlist. The idea of a military life and a large bounty so delighted Patrick that he at once consented.
“But unless you can speak German the king will not give you so much.”
“Oh, be jabbers,” said the Irishman; “sure it’s I that don’t know a word of German.”
“But,” said the sergeant, “I know you can learn in a short time. The king knows every man in the guards. As soon as he sees you he will ride up and ask you how old you are; you will say, ‘twenty-seven years’; next, how long you have been in the service; you must reply, ‘three weeks’; finally, if you are provided with clothes and rations; you answer, ‘both.’”
Pat soon learned to pronounce his answers, but never dreamed of learning the questions.
In three weeks he appeared before the king in review. His Majesty rode up to him. Paddy stept forward with “present arms!”
“How long have you been in the service,” said the king.
“Twenty-seven years,” said the Irishman.
“How old are you?” asked his Majesty.
“Three weeks,” said the Irishman.
“Am I or you a fool?” roared the king.
“Both,” replied Patrick, who was instantly taken to the guard-house, but pardoned by the king after he understood the facts of the case.--_Judge’s Magazine._
A man’s illiteracy causes humiliation during a trial, showing the handicap of ignorance.
An incident in a trial for a capital offense, in Nashville, Tenn., is thus spoken of in a news item:
A splendid, clean-looking young man was under examination and Mr. Fitzhugh, of Memphis, of the prosecution, got to the point of asking him which newspapers he had read at the time of the Carmack killing. The talesman had testified that he was thirty-one years old, a farmer, and the father of three children. His answers had been bright and his face sparkled with intelligence. But he hesitated when the interrogation concerning the newspapers was put to him.
“I haven’t read any about it in the newspapers. We don’t take any newspapers in our house. I--I kain’t read and I kain’t write, but I can farm. I never got the show to go to school but two or three days in all my life.”
A blush mantled his cheeks and for an instant there was a glistening in his eyes, then, throwing back his head, he left the witness-stand and marched out of the court-room, his expression of defiance silencing the laughter of the unthinking ones in the crowd. And this was only one of more than a score of examples of illiteracy.
How many a life is thus handicapped. It is not a commendation of parenthood that the child should thus be distinguished against in this age of widespread learning. On the other hand, all honor is to be given to the man who through diligent application in after life is able to surmount the difficulty of scanty knowledge.
Sometimes ignorance protects from fear, as a man unaware of gunpowder danger on a boat.
It is sometimes best not to alarm persons in peril by revealing the danger, as is illustrated by the Rev. Asa Bullard in the following incident:
On our way down the Ohio River one day, in a thunder-shower, my brother requested me to remind him on reaching Cincinnati to reveal a secret to me. That secret was, as I learned on reaching the city, that we were then sitting directly over several casks, not of whisky, but of gunpowder! He was acquainted with some of the officials of the steamer, and tho it was unlawful to carry that article on the boat, they had told him of the fact. When asked why he had seated himself in such a dangerous place, his reply was that “if the boat should be struck by lightning, or if for any cause the powder should be exploded, we were probably as safe there as we should be in any part of the steamer.”--“Incidents in a Busy Life.”
Human ignorance about life’s origin and destiny remains unchanged over centuries.
We know no more of our beginning and end, of what preceded the one and will round off the other, than King Alfred did. “Our life,” said he to his nobles one evening, as they were sitting beside the great fireplace, “is something that is bounded by impenetrable obscurity. A little bird flies from the darkness of the outside night into the brightness of this room, flutters a minute or two in the warmth and light, and then flies through the opposite window into the night once more.” Nearly two thousand years have gone by since Alfred delivered himself of this fable, but the centuries have brought us no new wisdom.--San Francisco _Chronicle_.
Ignorance leads to ineffective remedies in medicine and morals, shown by a native doctor’s practice.
See UNKNOWN REALITIES.
IGNORANCE, PALLIATIONS OF
In “Gloria Christi,” we read the following:
The change in methods inaugurated by modern medicine in Syria is shown by an anecdote. It is said that once when Dr. Jesup was visiting Beirut, a native doctor asked him for an American newspaper. He secured it, and some days after came back for another. “What do you do with them?” asked Mr. Jesup. “Oh,” he said, “I tear them in pieces, soak them in water, and feed them in oil to my patients. It cures them all right!”
The palliatives of ignorance everywhere abound. As they are in medicine, so they are in morals.
Illiteracy leads to practical mistakes, illustrated by a policeman unable to spell a street name.
While a policeman was covering his beat near Delaware Avenue and Dickinson Street, says the Philadelphia _Times_, he came across a dead dog.
Taking out his book and pencil, he wrote the following:
“Dead dog at Delaware Avenue and Dick----” and stopt.
Picking up the dog by its tail, the policeman carried it to Tasker Street, where he dropt it. Here he took his pencil and book out again and wrote:
“Dead dog at Delaware Avenue and Tasker Street.”
A passer-by asked the policeman what made him carry the dog to Tasker Street, to which he replied:
“Well, I couldn’t spell Dickinson, so I took the cur a square down to an easier street.”
Ignorance of money's value can lead to wasting great wealth unknowingly.
A sick-nurse in a Vienna hospital administered by nuns was observed burning up a bunch of paper money which she had found in the bed of a deceased patient.
She thought the bank-notes were rubbish, and it took the authority of the mother superior to convince her that the rubbish represented a small fortune.
Subsequently it turned out that the sister, who had lived in the nunnery since her third year, never went outside, and had nothing to do with the administration or with worldly things whatsoever, had never heard of the existence or use of money in any shape or form.--Boston _Post_.
Clearing ignorance is vital, like dispelling fog that causes great loss and confusion.
Literal fogs may be very detrimental, but it would be more valuable to clear away the fogs of ignorance and prejudice from human minds.
Fogs are not only disagreeable, but very expensive, especially in fog-bound London, where they are often the cause of great loss to merchants. During the week preceding Christmas in a recent year it is estimated that as a result of foggy weather at least $50,000,000 was lost in that city, business being paralyzed for the time being. This being the case, the invention of some means for clearing the air of fog would mean to the British merchant a very material increase of prosperity. The problem is one of such serious importance that experiments are now being carried on with a view of finding practical means for dispelling the dense atmospheric conditions.--W. RAYMOND, _The American Inventor_.
Blindly following tradition can perpetuate meaningless or harmful customs without understanding.
Custom makes laws harder to break than those of the land in which we may happen to live. It frequently happens that these laws are founded on experience, on mature judgment, on good sense, but occasionally they are founded on old superstitions which in other forms have passed away. Among the unfortunate customs that still linger is the habit of crippling the left hand.
If a child in shaking hands offers the left, the horrified mother or nurse at once corrects the blunder and apologizes for it to the bystanders. She does not know why she does this beyond the fact that “it is the custom”; she does not know that in medieval times the right hand was the “dextrous” hand, the hand of good faith, while the left was the “sinister” hand, the hand of bad faith. We have crystallized these beliefs in our present interpretation of these words; if we are “dextrous” we are doing things in a right-handed way, while the mildest meaning given to “sinister” is “unfortunate or awkward.” So the child is crippled in its left hand to conform to a custom which has been discarded and forgotten. (Text.)--_The Medical Times._
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit health advocacy organization, took a survey of students, 8-12, in Wash D.C. and Maryland. They know more about booze (5.2 brands identified) than U.S. Presidents (4.8). One 10-year-old girl could name 14 different alcoholic beverages but only 4 presidents.
Jerome Butler is a convicted killer who robbed and shot to death a Houston taxi driver in 1986 and who was scheduled to be executed April 21, 1989, at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. "I'll wait for you in Hell!" is what he told one of his death row companions.
This is sad for two reasons. First, it is pathetic that any human being would speak so lightly of eternity. Second, it is tragic that the redemption our precious Lord provided for this dear man [who can imagine the hopes his mother had for him at his birth?] is so foolishly scorned.
Even as Americans are coming to terms with the complexity of end-of-life issues and the challenges of medical technologies, the lack of a worldview consensus on these basic questions reveals a dangerous confusion at every level of our national life. Doctors, lawyers, philosophers, and the public at large are divided over the most basic questions of human dignity, human life, and how to make decisions of right and wrong when these are essentially questions of life and death.
The tragedy of Terri Schiavo catapulted these questions into the nation's consciousness. Nevertheless, it is by no means clear that the nation learned anything of significance through that tragedy and the attendant controversy. Indeed, a large number of Americans seem to be relieved that the tragedy of Terri Schiavo is safely out of mind and off the headlines.
Lennard J. Davis argues that the controversy over Terri Schiavo revealed a dangerous lack of “biocultural literacy” among the American people. Davis serves as Professor of English, Disability and Human Development, and Medical Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he also directs Project Biocultures. The complexity of Davis's professorial title indicates something of the strangeness of his academic post.
In “Life, Death, and Biocultural Literacy,” published in the January 6, 2006 edition of THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, Davis argues that the absence of biocultural literacy in the academy and in the general public leaves us all unable to cope with some of our most pressing contemporary questions.
Davis begins his essay by looking back to Victorian literature in which novelists such as Charles Dickens portrayed death as the moment when one's identity “often comes to fruition.” He contrasts this with today's clinical context of death. “But while Dickens had metaphorical hearts and angels to enhance self-revelation at the time of death, we have ventilators, feeding tubes, and defibrillators. Death for us isn't so much a final revelation of identity as a series of decisions preceding a finality.” As Davis concludes, “Our sense of identity is much less clear than it was for people in the past.”
In that assessment, Davis is clearly on to something. Americans are no longer united in a worldview shaped by Christian truth that establishes identity and human dignity in Creation and in the reality of the image of God in every single human being.
Looking at the contemporary debate, Davis notes the contrast between liberal and conservative arguments. “Liberals might argue that one's identity ceases to exist with the loss of a certain level of consciousness, accompanied by the necessity of mechanical life support, such as a feeding tube and a ventilator.” On the other hand, “The religious right contends that one has an identity as long as one's heart is beating, regardless of one's cognitive function or the need for external life support.”
Accordingly, some persons looked at Terri Schiavo and responded with the fear that they might at some point be reduced to being a “vegetable” with no consciousness or personal identity, while others looked at the same situation and feared the termination of life while one's brain is still functioning and death is otherwise not imminent.
As Davis understands, a surge of interest in “living wills” was one practical result of the controversy. Nevertheless, these documents often fail to deliver on their promises, are often ignored by medical professionals, and often fail to protect the interests of the one who adopted the document in the first place.
Davis seems to believe that a greater depth of knowledge in all the related fields of medicine, technology, biology, religion, psychology, and law would lead to a better understanding of the moral questions involved in such crises. Beyond this, he would add disability studies and the relatively new field of bioethics.
There is undoubtedly some truth in his assessment. For example, when Davis asserts that most Americans “know very little about biology, don't keep up on recent developments in neurology, and barely know the difference between a coma and a persistent vegetative state,” he is clearly describing a reality we can recognize.
Yet, Davis's main concern is with the absence of an academic discipline that adequately integrates all the fields that have an interest in such questions. “The public historically has turned to scholars and researchers to inform difficult public debates,” he notes. “But it isn't really clear what part of the academy should be the go-to profession or department.”
The bioethicists are ready to offer their advice, even as philosophers and political theorists are ready to speak of such questions in terms of justice and liberal theory. Davis also suggests that the field of disability studies, which is “beginning to pull together several disciplines to address the philosophical, moral, legal, medical, and cultural questions emerging from the intersection of biotechnology and identity” can offer important advice.
At the same time, Davis doesn't believe that either of these academic disciplines is adequate to the task. The field of disability studies, he explains, “is fundamentally based on, among other things, the idea that people with disabilities should have autonomy over their own lives.” Bioethics, which emerged in recent years as an academic specialization, takes as its goal to promote a notion of patient autonomy as opposed to the previously unchallenged authority of the medical profession.”
The very fact that Davis has framed the debate in this manner demonstrates the inherent limitations of our concept of personal autonomy. For, as he is careful to observe, the bioethicists and the disability advocates generally ended up on opposite sides of the debate over Terri Schiavo. Though both were operating on a basic commitment to personal autonomy as the greatest good, the bioethicists tended to locate the autonomy in Terri Schiavo's supposed wish to avoid living in any state of diminished consciousness (at least according to her husband), while the disability advocates saw her as a symbol of what happens when those who are debilitated or disabled are assumed to lack the ability to act on their own behalf. As disability advocates saw Terri Schiavo's situation, here was an example of a human being denied a basic right to life on the basis of diminished capacity.
If nothing else, the controversy over Terri Schiavo demonstrated that personal autonomy is simply not a sufficient foundation for any medical ethic or understanding of human dignity.
Davis seems to understand this, at least in part. He cites the fact the bioethicists fear government intervention or the influence of religious groups because this might threaten to “muck up the principle of patient autonomy.” But, at the same time, he also explains that “autonomy is a somewhat limiting principle, despite its obvious utility, if you think of the issue not as what a legal guardian wants, or says a patient wants, but as what or how a society defines 'a life worth living.'“
As an answer to this lack of national consensus, Davis suggests the development of “biocultural literacy.” While this term is never fully defined in his essay, Davis obviously has in mind an integrative approach that would bring together political, cultural, medical, scientific, and religious implications of hard cases and matters of life and death.
One of the central problems in Davis's proposal is that his concept of biocultural literacy requires a simultaneous knowledge of so many disciplines and fields of study that no single individual, much less the man or woman on the street, can be expected to be conversant, much less an expert, on such matters. Nevertheless, the larger problem with this proposal is Davis's confidence that an academic field of study is the proper arena for such questions to be adjudicated and such decisions to be made.
His approach does promise key insights when it takes the form of cultural and theoretical analysis. In an interesting section of his essay, Davis attempts to identify some of the strengths, weaknesses, and inconsistencies of positions taken by both liberals and conservatives on these crucial issues. He cites the fact that conservatives historically have supported individual autonomy against the state and thus the Right “has generally opposed federal intervention in individual states' rights.” But in the case of Terri Schiavo, conservatives did seek federal intervention, arguing that Terri Schiavo's inherent right to live was far more important than her husband's supposed right to speak on her behalf in terms of moral autonomy.
“For the right in general and the religious right in particular, one's identity is based on the sanctity of life, extending to patients in comas or vegetative states, fetuses in the womb, and byproducts of fertilization such as stem cells and unused embryos,” Davis explains. “But any logician could inform the debate by pointing out the inconsistency between these positions and support for the death penalty, war, and even the eating of animals.”
If this is “biocultural literacy” we are in big trouble. Davis must be unaware of two millennia of Christian thinking on these issues that carefully makes distinctions between the very issues that he raises. If this is a demonstration of biocultural literacy at work, it is a dismal and embarrassing failure.
Davis also argues that, even as liberals favor autonomy with respect to the body and resist “the idea that the state should dictate how and what we do with our bodies,” it runs into conflict with its own basic principles when faced with the hard questions related to disability and those who are unable to express their own intentions in terms of personal autonomy. Furthermore, he rightly observes that, “because of biotechnical advances, the line between inside the womb and outside the womb has become somewhat arbitrary and largely a matter of conjecture.” So, on matters at the beginning of life as well as at its end, liberals should be forced to rethink their positions based upon developments in science and medicine.
In his essay, Davis is addressing himself to the academic community. “In the end, we are all poorly served by an academic community that does not promote biocultural literacy,” he argues. “As this century moves on, many issues the public needs to discuss will increasingly be tied to biotechnological advances that challenge our definitions of what it means to be human. We will need all the resources that we can command to come up with consistent, logical, and culturally relevant ways of conceiving of and bidding farewell to our bodies, ourselves.”
The Christian worldview, however, must press beyond a notion of “biocultural literacy.” If nothing else, Davis's article should assist serious Christians to understand the limitations of personal autonomy as the foundation of any ethical system -- much less an ethical system related to the excruciating questions that now arise at both the beginning and the end of life. The Christian worldview must point to a more comprehensive ethic -- something even more demanding than biocultural literacy -- that is based in a consistent affirmation of what it means for human beings to be made in the image of God and for all human life to be of sacred value -- without regard to an individual's ability to operate as a supposedly autonomous being.
Here again, we can foresee a confrontation between Christian and secular modes of thinking on important issues of public policy. Yet, there is more here than meets the eye, for this is also an opportunity for Christian witness, as thinking Christians should enter this debate ready to explain why we must define human beings in terms different from those of the secular academy. In its own way, this may be one of the most important avenues for Christian witness in our postmodern times.
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[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]
We often fail to consider the gradual, cumulative effect of sin in our
lives.
In St. Louis in 1984, an unemployed cleaning woman noticed a few bees buzzing
around the attic of her home. Since there were only a few, she made no effort
to deal with them. Over the summer the bees continued to fly in and out the
attic vent while the woman remained unconcerned, unaware of the growing city
of bees.
The whole attic became a hive, and the ceiling of the second-floor bedroom
finally caved in under the weight of hundreds of pounds of honey and thousands
of angry bees. While the woman escaped serious injury, she was unable to
repair the damage of her accumulated neglect. #1878
*
A Denver woman told her pastor of a recent experience that she felt was a sign of the times. She'd walked into a jewelry store looking for a necklace.
"I'd like a gold cross," she said.
The man behind the counter looked over the stock in the display case and said, "Do you want a plain one, or one with a little man on it?"
Common obstacles to a deepening relationship with God.
1. Ignorance.
2. Busyness.
3. Pettiness.
4. Laziness.
5. Fear of the cost.
One hundred and fifty years ago the Karen people of Burma were considered savage and ignorant. A saying went, “You can no more teach a Karen than you can a wild buffalo.” The civilized inhabitants of Burma despised the Karens and did not permit them to live in the same section of the village with them.
One of the Karen achieved considerable fame as a bad man. He was involved in several robberies and was alleged to have committed several murders. He was finally apprehended by the Burman government and sold into slavery. He was big and strong, but sullen and seemingly unteachable. He was purchased by the pioneer missionary, Rev. Adoniram Judson, and freed. He worked for Mr. Judson as a coolie, and Judson gave him daily instruction in the Christian faith. It was frustrating work. Judson wrote to some relatives, “I have never taught so stupid a man. Here at the end of six months his mind seems just as darkened as the first day.”
Nevertheless, three months later Ko Tha Byu saw himself to be a sinner and recognized the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior. While Judson preached to the Burmese, Ko Tha Byu reached out to the Karen and with difficulty had success in converting entire villages. Ten or fifteen years later several large groups accepted Christ as units and Christian leaders could barely baptize people fast enough. Modern Karen Christians show a determination and self- sufficiency that is remarkable.
[see also book “From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya”]
“We would be deluding ourselves if we thought that evangelical thinking in our day has progressed very far.”
In February 1993, Mark Noll spoke these words at his induction as Wheaton College’s McManis Professor of Christian Thought. In a talk entitled “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” he decried the anti-intellectualism he saw in modern evangelical life. As his ideas gained greater exposure with Christianity Today’s publishing of his address (Oct. 25, 1993, p. 28) and the 1994 release of his book with the same title, a debate spread through the Christian community: Was the evangelical mind really in such bad shape?
Other evangelical scholars added to the discussion. Alister McGrath, theology professor at Oxford University, presented a more optimistic outlook in EVANGELICALISM & THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY (InterVarsity; excerpted, Christianity Today, June 19, 1995). Fuller Theological Seminary president Richard Mouw urged Christian intellectuals to learn from popular religion in Consulting the Faithful (Eerdmans; excerpted, ct, July 18, 1994). Dallas Theological Seminary’s Darrell Bock, a New Testament professor, promoted a fresh outlook on a theological tradition in his book PROGRESSIVE DISPENSATIONALISM (Victor/Bridgepoint, coauthored with Craig Blaising; summarized in Christianity Today, Sept. 12, 1994).
This spring Christianity Today brought these four together for a three-hour discussion on the state of the evangelical mind. What follows is their lively and wide-ranging discussion.
I. The state of the evangelical mind
How would each of you characterize the current state of the evangelical mind?
Noll: I am most concerned about the widening gap between the evangelical populace and the evangelical academy. Every popular forum I have attended that has discussed The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind has been dominated by the most rigid kind of six-day creationism. I’m not sure where this is coming from, and I do not know exactly what it means. But I think its elevation to the status of dogma is crippling to the Scriptures and demeaning to the Christian tradition.
I feel the same way about Christian politics, which in the United States is in a degenerately low state. Any positive insights the academics have drawn from the Scriptures to think about the body politic have simply been lost in the great engines of media that are prostituting Christian values.
On the other hand, in the Anglo-American world, evangelical Bible work is very good. Although an undertow of fundamentalist overreaction remains, the situation has never been better. The kind of work that Darrell Bock and his colleagues at Dallas are doing is an indication of a new sophistication that combines fidelity to orthodox tradition with real savvy in using modern scholarship.
Theologically, the situation is worse but therefore better. It is worse because there is more confusion, but better because people are re-examining some important basic matters. Personally, I do not like the direction of Clark Pinnock’s THE OPENNESS OF GOD (InterVarsity), for example, since it seems too much like process theology. But I’m glad that it was published, because it puts some important matters on the table and is getting solid rather than knee-jerk responses.
In other parts of the academic world, evangelicals are doing solid Christian thinking, especially in philosophy. There is also good work beginning in psychology, sociology, and economics.
So while good things have been happening, the effort needed to develop the evangelical mind is huge. And we’ve just begun to realize the dimensions of the task.
Mouw: I agree that there is an evangelical mind that is misfunctioning. But I also think that there’s an evangelical mind that is functioning well, albeit not always in a uniquely evangelical way. Then again, who says that a good Christian mind has to be a uniquely evangelical mind at every point?
And if the evangelical mind is in bad shape, so is the mainline Protestant mind, the Roman Catholic mind, and the Eastern Orthodox mind. But frankly, I believe we have the best intellectual networking going on anywhere. Evangelical political scientists get together. Evangelical sociologists get together. Evangelical literati get together; evangelical philosophers, evangelical economists. We have official organizations, workshops, conferences, symposia, publications, and e-mail networks. There’s nothing like it in any other part of the Christian world. I can’t imagine a better place to be an intellectual right now than in evangelicalism.
McGrath: I would characterize evangelicalism as an “emerging” movement: from a period where its primary concern was numerical strength to this current period focused on intellectual and spiritual maturing. I would not have expected an evangelical mind to exist at this point, in light of the movement’s recent history. In the past, we were worried about surviving and maintaining our distinctive identity. But that period of our history is behind us.
Evangelicals now feel sufficiently confident to confront the issues Mark has raised in his book. They are aware that there is a culture waiting to be addressed, and that evangelicalism has the resources to do it. We have yet to achieve anything like what our forebears did back in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. But I see very hopeful signs for the future, particularly amongst younger evangelicals.
Bock: I wouldn’t say the evangelical mind is emerging as much as it’s re- emerging. The church was bleeding at the beginning of this century in the face of modernism, and it had to withdraw, retreat, and rebuild itself, almost from scratch. As a result, the church had little energy to do reflective, calm, deep thinking. When a body is in trauma, its first priority is to save itself.
If I can change metaphors, the evangelical movement is like a teenager coming of age in which she is now facing major decisions about adulthood. So the question is this: Now that we have the potential for recovery, how do we move on from here? Mark stepped in at this point and said, “Let’s take a courageous road to full recovery.” He gave us a good warning about the kinds of decisions we should be making. On the other hand, we should never forget that the evangelical church emerged out of a bloody battle with modernism. We should be grateful to our forebears.
Mouw: And it was a battle in which we lost academic institutions. How many times have different evangelical groups said, “They’ve taken away my college, my seminary”? So if we have become protective of our academic institutions in a way that has restricted the academic enterprise, we need to remember the real and painful historical experiences that catalyzed the defense-building.
Noll: What took place at the end of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth century was indeed a drastic time that required drastic remedies. Although I think the remedies were extreme and ended up in unwise excesses, they were basically good reactions. I have one qualification to add, however: our institutions were not only taken away. I think, in part, they were given away.
Also, I do not see anti-intellectualism only as a problem. Some parts of the Christian faith have to be anti-intellectual. All orthodox Christian movements possess a foundational place for faith that is not grounded on rationality (though neither is it antirational). The problem is much more the misfunctioning of minds: bad thinking rather than no thinking.
How and when did the “bad thinking” begin?
Noll: The time between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was one of crisis for the church. Supernaturalism was under attack. The Bible was under attack. The role of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life was under attack. And groups within the broad evangelical stream did the right thing in defending the Bible as the written Word of God, the reality of the supernatural, and the real work of the Holy Spirit.
So the Holiness, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal movements were all foundationally good, but they went astray. And they did so in terms of the life of the mind by seeing their efforts as a replacement rather than a balancing act. Supernaturalism replaced nature. The work of the Holy Spirit replaced the work of the mind. Trust in the Bible replaced an openness to instruction from the world as a whole. These extremes have left behind the anti-intellectual legacy, which may be in process of being overcome.
What I would appeal for now is the development of an ability to let ancient Christian traditions provide norms for the more recent traditions- fundamentalist, Pentecostal, Holiness movements. We need to have a dialogue across the centuries so that the foundationally solid and instinctively sound aspects of those reactionary movements can be magnified and the excesses trimmed away.
What is at stake in this debate?
Noll: There are some important pragmatic matters at stake: being able to hold your head up high as a self-identified Christian in certain venues-in the academic world, in the arts, in modern media. But those matters are not nearly so important as honoring God, the Creator and Redeemer.
God made the world. God entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ. And God through the Holy Spirit redeems the world. These fundamental Christian realities should push the church to take very seriously the study of what God has made possible: the natural world, the world of human institutions, aesthetics, et cetera. I think fundamentally this is a theological problem. But I realize that other people are not as Puddleglumish or Eeyorish about these matters as I am.
Mouw: We all agree that there is an element of scandal here. But I think it’s important to understand the legitimate reasons why evangelicals have been suspicious of the mind. Evangelicals are the heirs to a tradition that has had great, necessary moments expressing bold suspicion toward the mind. One, for example, was in the seventeenth century, when the pietists reacted against rationalistic orthodoxy. They wanted more than a religion of the head; they wanted a religion of the heart. Another occurred when evangelical Christians took a stand against the Enlightenment mindset that viewed human consciousness as the highest standard of truth. These were two glorious moments.
But anti-intellectualism developed when people moved from a legitimate suspicion of a rationalism-whether it was an orthodox or heterodox rationalism-to an illegitimate rejection of the intellectual life as such.
And to clarify-and I think Mark glosses over this a little bit-fundamentalism is actually a highly intellectual approach with its very strong emphasis on assenting to truth. It is not so much against the mind as it is against the academic mind or the mindset of the academy, which is an important distinction to make.
McGrath: I know it’s historically nave to put your finger on a single episode, but I think the Scopes trial signaled a change in the fundamentalists’ outlook on learning institutions. Universities and colleges no longer were seen as inherently Christian, no longer signified sound learning, and actually displayed an anti-Christian bent.
This is the central issue of the state of the evangelical mind. The word academy no longer means “scholarly, informed, having access to wisdom.” Some modern universities instead seem to posit agendas that are often anti- Christian. Fundamentalists saw this process happen but did not know what to do about it. They knew academic excellence must have a place in evangelicalism. So the founding of evangelical institutions and seminaries became part of the long process of reconstructing an evangelical mind.
Mark does a good job of depicting how fundamentalists realized they had a big problem on their hands, and what they did in response. But looking back, what else could they have done? It’s very easy for us to be wise in hindsight.
II. Inerrancy
How has this distrust of the academy influenced the way evangelicals deal with and formulate our doctrines of Scripture?
Noll: First of all, I do not think there is any future for Christian thinking from people who do not have an implicit, thorough trust in the truthfulness of the Bible. What was glorious about the fundamentalist, Pentecostal, and Holiness movements was their seriousness about the Bible. But as evangelicals were attacked in their view of Scripture, they began to pull away from classic holistic understandings of the Bible toward sectarian, particularistic understandings of the Bible.
The new cruxes often became matters such as the interpretation of Genesis, Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation or the authorship of Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and other Pauline epistles. Although these are reasonably important questions, they are not the fundamental issues of the Bible. The fundamental issue of the Bible seems to me to be what John addresses in chapter 20, verse 31: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”
Without the defensive work of the previous generation on the Scriptures, we would be lost. In this way, critics like myself show themselves to be smaller people than some of the supposedly narrow-minded people we criticize. But by the same token, what we need now is a more vigorous, better rounded, more organic, more classically Christian use of the Scriptures. We do not need to solve details of problems that are mostly extrinsic to the biblical authors themselves. Instead, we need to concentrate on what the Bible focuses on, namely, the history of redemption culminating in Jesus Christ.
Bock: The church needs to develop a prioritized theology that concentrates on and emphasizes the things that Scripture does. And the questions that Scripture covers in less detail, we should give less attention to as well.
Even though we are redeemed, we still have fallen minds. We still make judgments that are sometimes wrong, so we need to do our theology with humility. And if we emphasize what Scripture emphasizes, we are going to have a better chance of getting it right than if we pick areas of interest to us just because they’re fascinating.
McGrath: The British scholar David Bebbington makes a point that the Cross seems to have no central place for most American evangelical theologians this century and asks, “Why not?” The answer is that American evangelicalism has become reactive. It has had to defend its own understanding of theological authorities and methods, emphasizing the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. But as a result, American evangelicals rarely hear what Scripture actually says. They have defended the authority of Scripture using words that have been coined for this particular strategy, which are not themselves biblical.
I hope that as American evangelicalism regains its confidence, it constructs theologies that deal with what Scripture says rather than concentrating on why Scripture has its authority.
Bock: I’m torn because, on the one hand, I identify with the concerns that the text be taken for what the text is doing and what it presents. But in the back of my head there’s a little whisper reminding me that the bleeding church we were talking about went through a nightmare because other people made certain kinds of wrong and destructive decisions about what Scripture was doing that created the problem.
So we walk a tightrope of asserting the authority of Scripture without making interpretations that deny what we’re asserting. But this is part of having a good mind, being able to sense when you have to tread carefully, gently, and circumspectly.
We’re all aware of detailed passages with two or three interpretive alternatives, where the decisions between them are tough, and no options are totally clean in terms of what they offer us. And yet, to give some description of the Bible’s trustworthiness without asserting Scripture’s fundamental truthfulness leaves us in a no-man’s land in the midst of that circumspection.
Mouw: The emphasis on inerrancy has been helpful in that, however we spell out what we mean by the word, we have guarded the message character of Scripture as precious-in a way we do not find in other communities and traditions. But I think, for all of the problems of the past in terms of evangelical biblical scholarship, we’re really in pretty good shape right now.
When Darrell writes about progressive dispensationalism, he says there’s an emerging commonality to an evangelical hermeneutic. Nobody is talking about the chaos of evangelical studies at this point.Part of the reason why we’re not in chaos is that we never entirely accepted the critical approach in the first place. It was no big surprise for us that biblical scholarship is guided by presuppositions.
So we can be a little more relaxed and more constructive today because we do not have to deconstruct our own past projects. Maybe God, in his providence, used our defensive, isolated, biblical scholarship to preserve an integrity that allows us calmly to pursue issues that are being loudly dissected in other places of biblical scholarship.
To push the point a little further, inerrancy has played a critical role in evangelicalism’s recent history. The claim that someone is “soft on inerrancy” is a significant and potentially threatening criticism. What does this say about the problem we’re discussing?
McGrath: I believe in the trustworthiness and sufficiency of Scripture, and that’s where all evangelicals are, really. But the problem is that we move in situations where these beliefs come under threat, and then we have to erect additional fences to safeguard these tenets. And these fences are, in effect, temporary structures to safeguard us against the threat that is here today and gone tomorrow. For understandable reasons, the fences have come to be seen as being at least as important as the truth they’re meant to safeguard.
We cannot ignore history. We cannot ignore situations that have resulted in this need to safeguard beliefs that once would have been taken as indisputable by all Christians. We’ve got to respect the past. But the situation has changed, and now we’ve got to make sure that we defend what once did not need to be defended. I’d still like to maintain the emphasis that what we are defending [the content of Scripture] is actually far more important than the means of defense we bring.
III. Evangelical populism
Noll: In complex situations such as inerrancy questions, we can discern an academic evangelical response and a populist evangelical response. In the academic area, there is not much of a problem. But on the popular side, we see something different: the translation of academic issues into litmus tests and, therefore, the promotion of nonthinking in order to cut out a cancer or to handle a desperate situation. It’s at this level that we do the most damage to Christian thinking: an issue that requires some discrimination, some complexity of thought, is handled like a political football. The measure of success becomes not clarity of thought and the ability to discriminate between levels of discourse, but whipping up a crowd using political maneuvering. So the person with the best political skills will appear to win the theological battle when, in fact, the real issues are simply being obscured.
Aren’t you using the words academic and popular to mean “mature” and “immature,” because the debates you are referring to took place at scholarly gatherings?
Noll: It’s more complicated than that. What you’ve just called immaturity, which I would call populism, is precisely the force that sustains the U.S. evangelical movement in a way it is not sustained in Europe, Britain, and is barely sustained in Canada.
So there are Christians who are immature intellectually but who are dedicated evangelistically, and very savvy in media and politicking. They may cause problems in intellectual arenas, but in other areas of life, they are necessary and a delight.
Mouw: In America, there is a populist, anti-intellectual Christian remnant that feeds on overstatement, rhetorical overkill, prooftexting, and sloganeering, which grows out of distorted, grassroots pietism. I’m a pietist, so I do not mean to be trashing pietism. But this is a distinctly spiritual issue, the lack of humility, of self-criticism, of a “Search me, O Lord, and try my thoughts” attitude among the populace.
Bock: There is another, insidious element to this issue. The character of our populist theological debates mirrors the lack of civility our culture-at- large has at carrying on substantive debate. If you ask, “Where can I find reasoned discourse today?” you might not get an answer. Frankly, this is what scares me more than anything else. We need to create in the church a sense of value and integrity so that we can conduct our debates in ways different from the world.
What can we value in evangelical populism?
Noll: There’s much, much to be valued. If American evangelicalism has something to offer to the world, it is the virtues of Christian fellowship. The theme of “the people of God” is a critical biblical theme. The people of God are terrific at knowing when the gospel is being violated. But for the purposes of what we’re talking about today, the Bible does not say the people of God are to be the ones that decide most intellectual questions.
American evangelicalism is wonderful in that it has no boundaries. The terrific fellowship, helpfulness, and lack of concern for authority and place have all positively affected Christianity in this country. But American evangelicals often function like an engine run amuck when it comes to intellectual questions. And this explains why, generally speaking, there are fewer active believers in Britain than in America but much better Christian thinking. We have the virtues of our vices and the vices of our virtues.
Nathan Zohner urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical "dihydrogen monoxide," and for good reason, since:
1. It can cause excessive sweating and vomiting;
2. It is a major component in acid rain;
3. It can cause severe burns in its gaseous state;
4. It can kill you if accidentally inhaled;
5. It contributes to erosion;
6. It decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes;
7. It has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients.
He asked fifty people if they supported a ban of the chemical dihydrogen monoxide. Forty-three said yes, six were undecided, and only one knew that the chemical is more commonly called "water." The freshman at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair on April 26, 1997. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to the alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. The title of his prize winning project was "How Gullible Are We?" The conclusion is obvious.
Nathan was discouraged with what his little test indicated. "I was appalled that my peers were so easily misled....I don't feel comfortable with the current level of understanding."
The above is not an urban legend and was confirmed by James Glassman of the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service of October 22, 1997. Glassman says adults are just as likely to fail the test and to suggest banning the substance. "The implications of Nathan's research are so disturbing that I've decided to coin a term, 'Zohnerism,' defined as the use of a true fact to lead a scientifically and mathematically ignorant public to a false conclusion."
Did you hear about the man that decided to buy a chainsaw? A logging foreman sold him a used one that he guaranteed would cut down 100 trees in a single day. A week later, a very unhappy man came back to report that the saw must be faulty because he could only cut down 8 trees per day.
The logger looked at the carburetor. He checked the gas and the spark plug. He commented that he couldn't find anything wrong. He then grabbed the saw, pulled on the starter cord, and the chain saw promptly went "BZZZZZZZZZZ." The man who had bought the saw jumped and cried out, "What's that noise!"
The town of Fruita, Colo., wanted something a little less boring than the usual "pioneers" to focus on for Colorado Heritage Week, so the city revived the story of Mike the Headless Chicken. In the 1940s, farmer Lloyd Olsen went to get a chicken for dinner. Wanting to leave as much of the neck as possible, he lopped off the chicken's head as tightly as he could. The chicken did not die, and continued to "peck" for food as it walked around the yard. Amazed, Olsen started feeding the chicken with an eyedropper. The headless bird, dubbed Mike, appeared in Life magazine and traveled to exhibitions around the country. Fruita's "Mike the Headless Chicken Festival" is a smashing success, and a new Mike sculpture ("I made him proud-looking and cocky," the artist says) was recently unveiled downtown. Mike lived for 18 months after his head was chopped off. (AP)
...Big deal: politicians can live like that for decades. [so can Christians]
_____________________
(Holwick: most people loved this illustration - some were grossed-out - but a few doubted their Faithful Leader. A little research completely vindicated me, as the following article shows. The original contains several photos. It can be found at http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/headless_chicken/ )
MIKE THE HEADLESS CHICKEN
He really was a chicken running around with his head cut off.
The e-mail message seemed innocent enough. A reader simply asked "Ever heard of the story posted here at this link?" and offered a hyperlink to another web page. I clicked and came across a story that I was sure had to be pure fiction. The only problem is that the story appears to be totally true.
This is the story about Mike the chicken. Mike, of course, was not your ordinary chicken. No, not ordinary at all. You see, Mike was a headless chicken. If you want to be really specific, Mike was actually a headless Wyandotte rooster.
I should point out that Mike wasn't always a headless bird. In fact, he was born 100% normal, complete with a head (most normal chickens have one of these) in Fruita, Colorado.
On September 10, 1945, Mike's short five-and-a-half month life was about to take a turn for the worse. On this day, Mike received a death sentence. His owners, Lloyd and Clara Olsen, decided that it was time to slaughter a group of birds, some to sell and to prepare others for themselves. Out to the hen house they went...
Watch out Mike!
As you can probably imagine, Mr. Olsen was the one whacking the heads off while Clara plucked and cleaned the birds.
Bash! Down came the ax and off went Mike's head.
Mike's head was surely dead. Mike's body was not.
Now I know what you are thinking - it is well known that chickens will run around frantically when their heads are chopped off. That's probably where that old expression comes from. And, everyone knows that a headless chicken just can't survive more than a few moments.
Apparently, Mike forgot to read the rulebook for playing the game of Life. His head may have been lying on the floor, but he had no problem standing up and strutting around as if nothing had actually happened. The next day, Mike was still flopping around, so Lloyd decided to feed him to see how long he could keep the bird alive. Day after day he continued to gain weight.
Mike could easily balance himself on the highest perches without falling. His crowing consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat. Mike even attempted to preen his feathers with his nonexistent head (apparently he never noticed). It seems that Mike could do just about anything that any other chicken could do, if you exclude all of the functions of his head.
As I'm sure you can imagine, headless chickens are not an everyday event. In the tradition of that famous huckster Barnum, there was money to be made in this oddity. A promoter by the name of Hope Wade came along and convinced Lloyd that Mike would be a big draw in the sideshow circuit. Miracle Mike, as he soon came to be known, toured up and down the West Coast of the United States. Just six weeks after his beheading, Mike was featured in a Life magazine article and his fame grew. For just 25 cents, anyone could pay to get a look at Mike. At the height of his popularity, Mike was raking in a cool $4,500 per month, which was no small potatoes in those days. They probably would have thrown in his head as a bonus - it was stored in a canning jar and toured along with Mike. (Actually, a cat ate Mike’s head. Some other poor chicken’s head was pickled in the jar.)
And, if there was money to be made, there were also copycats. Other people in Mike's hometown began to chop the heads off of their own chickens in an attempt to get in on the scheme. One copycat headless rooster was named Lucky and he managed to live for eleven days before bashing himself into a stovepipe and dying (Lucky wasn't that lucky after all). Several other headless chickens lived for a couple of days.
So how was Mike able to survive? Scientists examined him and determined that Mr. Olsen had not done a very good job at chopping Mike's head off. Most of the head was actually removed, but one ear remained intact. The slice actually missed the jugular vein and a clot prevented him from bleeding to death. Apparently, most of a chicken's reflex actions are located in the brain stem, which was also largely untouched. Mike was also examined by the officers of several humane societies and was declared to have been free from suffering.
Through his open esophagus, Mike was fed a mixture of ground up grain and water with your typical eyedropper. Little bits of gravel were dropped down his throat to help his gizzard grind up the food.
One serious problem that Mike commonly experienced was that he would start to choke on his own mucus. The Olsens came up with the simple solution of using a syringe to suck the mucus out. But, one day tragedy struck. Mike was traveling back home to Fruita and was roosting with the Olsens in their Phoenix motel room. They heard Mike choking in the middle of the night and quickly realized that they had left the syringe at the sideshow the day before. Miracle Mike was no more.
The exact date of Mike’s belated departure from this world was never recorded. Years later, it was estimated, based on Lloyd’s information, that Miracle Mike died in March of 1947. Eighteen months living without a head could be considered a world’s record. Yet, Lloyd didn’t want to admit that he had accidentally killed the bird, so he claimed that he had sold the bird off. This little white lie is the reason that many of the stories printed about Mike claimed that he was still touring the country as late as 1949.
But wait, the story is not over! Mike actually has his own holiday! On May 17, 1999, Mike's hometown of Fruita held the first "Mike the Headless Chicken Day" in honor of one of its most famous citizens. Some of the events included the 5K Run Like a Headless Chicken Race, egg tosses, Pin the Head on the Chicken, the Chicken Cluck-Off, and the classic Chicken Dance. The food offerings included - you guessed it - chicken, chicken salad, and the like. Let's not forget the great game of Chicken Bingo in which the numbers were chosen by where chicken droppings fell on a numbered grid.
If you are interested, Mike the Headless Chicken Day is an annual event. As peculiar as it is to describe, it actually sounds like a great time. And it’s all done in celebration of the life of one lucky bird named Miracle Mike.
Useless? Useful? I'll leave that for you to decide.
*
More often than not, I am the minister who tries to offer words of hope at a graveside funeral service, but on this particular day I was simply part of the grieving crowd. Since I had no ministerial responsibilities, I took the occasion to observe and learn. I listened carefully to the minister and watched the mourners' reaction to his well-chosen words.
The minister's words from the Scriptures had a soothing effect on those gathered around the graveside and I could tell his short eulogy brought comfort and hope. The minister concluded his remarks by asking those gathered to recite, by memory, the familiar words of the 23rd Psalm.
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ..." One by one the mourners began to mouth the familiar words.
"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures ..." As I looked around, I noticed some of those gathered around the graveside were silent. Their mouths did not move during the recitation of the words.
"He leadeth me beside the still waters ..." As I glanced across the crowd, I noticed a distinct pattern. People who were 50 years old or older were reciting the Psalm. Those who were 40 or younger were silent.
"He restoreth my soul ..." Then it dawned on me. The younger members of that congregation did not know the 23rd Psalm by heart. They could not recite "the familiar words" because, for them, the words were unfamiliar.
For me, this experience was but another reminder of the pervasive biblical illiteracy characterizing our nation today. An ever-increasing number of people are unfamiliar with the words contained between the leather-bound cover of their Holy Book. Seemingly, the Bible is the book everybody has, but nobody knows.
A survey of graduating high school seniors was recently conducted to determine how much they knew about the Bible. In that survey, over 50 percent of the students thought Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. Sixty-six percent did not know who preached the Sermon on the Mount and 79 percent could not name one of the Old Testament prophets.
The problem of biblical illiteracy seems as prevalent among church folks as it does the unchurched. Because the average church attender no longer knows the Bible, I am increasingly careful about the terms I use in preaching. Twenty years ago, I could have used the name of Joshua in passing, but not so today. Regrettably, many of my hearers do not know the difference between Joshua and Jezebel.
What are the consequences of this biblical illiteracy? Only time will tell, but I don't like what I see. The evolution of a society without the knowledge of "holy words" scares me. In times past, holy words have provided a foundation on which society's morals were built. If the foundation crumbles, what will fall next?
Granted, you can't tell a book by its cover, but you won't know the book at all if its cover stays closed.
*
These are from a book called Disorder in the Court. These are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters - who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.
==
Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July fifteenth.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.
==
Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
==
Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?
==
Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.
==
Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke up
that morning?
A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
Q: And why did that upset you?
A: My name is Susan.
==
Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo or
the occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.
==
Q: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he
doesn't know about it until the next morning?
==
Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year old, how old is he?
==
Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
==
Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?
==
Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q: Were there any girls?
==
Q: How was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
==
Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?
==
Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice
which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
==
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
==
Classic!!
Q: All your responses must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.
==
Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.
==
Q: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
==
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began
the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, never the less?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing
law somewhere.
*
Teaching Math in 1950:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price.
What is his profit?
Teaching Math in 1960:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is
4/5 of the price, or $80.
What is his profit?
Teaching Math in 1970:
A logger exchanges a set "L" of lumber for a set "M" of money. The cardinality of set "M" is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of the set "M." The set "C", the cost of production contains 20 fewer points than set "M." Represent the set "C" as a subset of set "M" and answer the following question:
What is the cardinality of the set "P" of profits?
Teaching Math in 1980:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment:
Underline the number 20.
Teaching Math in 1990:
By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees?
There are no wrong answers.
Teaching Match in 2000:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $120.
How does accounting firm Arthur Andersen calculate a profit margin of $60?
Columbus was once stranded on Jamaica with dwindling supplies. Natives were not friendly. C. happened to know a lunar eclipse occurred that PM. Told chief: "Unless you help me my God will curse
you & moon will lose its light!" Cheif refused but changed his mind when eclipse began. In early 1900s
a British explorer who had read C.'s biography, tried same trick on African cheiftan. "Unless you obey me
you will be cursed and the moon will lose its light!" Cheif: "Oh, you're talking about the lunar eclipse that's happening day after tomorrow."
Shortly before his death Chief Justice Melville Fuller presided at a
church conference. During the progress of a heated debate a member
arose and began a tirade against universities and colleges, thanking
God he had never been corrupted by contact with a college. "Do I understand the speaker thanks God for his ignorance?"
interrupted the Chief Justice? "Well, yes," was the answer. "You could put it that way if you wish." "All I can say the," said the Chief Justice, "is that the member has a
great deal to thank God for."
During a business meeting in a small country church, one of the
deacons said, "Pastor, I think we need a chandelier for the church."
Another deacon stood up and said, "No, I'm against it!" "Why don't we
need a chandelier, brother deacon?" asked the pastor? The deacon answered, "Well first, nobody in the church can spell it.
Second, nobody in the church can play it. And third, what this church
needs more than anything else is more light!"
- Unknown
It is said that Ole Bull[*] and John Erricson met for the first time in the city of New York, and the great musician said to his new found friend, “Come around and hear me play tonight.” The invitation was not accepted. It was given the second time and again was not accepted. The third time Ole Bull said if you do not come and hear me play I will come and play for you, and John Erricson said, “Do not bring your violin into my shop for I do not care for music.”
But the next day Ole Bull was there and he said, “There is something the matter with my violin,” and they talked about tones and semi-tones and fibres of wood, and then he said, I will show how it is.” He strung up the instrument, drew the bow across the strings and began to play. In a little while the building was filled with waves of harmony. The men left their work and gathered about the great musician.
John Erricson rose from his desk, stood for a moment in the outer circle, then came close to Ole Bull and listened to every note that came from the violin. At last the player drew his bow across the strings for the last time and stopped, the men turned back again to their work; not so John Erricson. With tears streaming down his checks he said, “Play on, play on, I never knew what was lacking in my life before.”
This it is with many a man who thought he knew the needs of his soul, and sought to be satisfied with honor, and wealth, and power, but only Christ call satisfy, and until we learn this and claim him we shall be devoid of peace.
[*] Ole Bull [1810-1880] was Norwegian and one of the greatest violin virtuosos of his time.
________
“Present Day Parables” by J. Wilbur Chapman
One could say much of the merits and message of the book to which Ruth gave her name, as well as of the many lessons to be gathered from it. Benjamin Franklin, who was ridiculed at one time in Paris for his defense of the Bible, was determined to find out how much of it his scoffer had read. He informed one of the learned societies that he had come across a story of pastoral life in ancient times that seemed to him very beautiful but he would like the opinion of the society.
A night was arranged for Franklin to read to the assembly of scholars a lyric which impressed him. The Bible lover read the Book of Ruth, and when he had finished the scholars were in ecstasies and begged Franklin to print it. "It is already in print," said Franklin. "It is a part of the Bible you ridicule."
________
"All the Women of the Bible"
====================
Another version:
When Benjamin Franklin was in Paris among the infidels and scoffers of that day, he was ridiculed for loving the Bible. He determined to find out how many had read the Book at which they scoffed. He informed one of the learned societies of which he was a member that he had come across a story in pastoral life in ancient times that appeared to him very beautiful, but he would like the judgment of the society upon it. On the evening appointed, Franklin had a reader, of finely modulated voice, to read to them the Book of Ruth. They were in ecstasies over it, and one after another rose to express gratification and admiration and the desire that the manuscript should be printed. “It is printed,” said Franklin, “and it is part of the Bible.”
===================
Another version:
When Benjamin Franklin was the Ambassador to France, he occasionally attended the Infidels Club -- a group that spent most of its time searching for and reading literary masterpieces. On one occasion Franklin read the book of Ruth to the club, but changed the names in it so it would not be recognized as a book of the Bible. When he finished, the listeners were unanimous in their praise. They said it was one of the most beautiful short stories that they had ever heard, and demanded that he tell them where he had run across such a remarkable work of art. He loved telling them that it came from the Bible!
________
Brian Bill in “Ruth: A Loyal Love Story” on www.sermoncentral.com
In His earthly life among men, Jesus, more than once, virtually
said that if they had really known who He was their course of action
would have been widely different. It was so of the whole Jewish
nation. They had long waited and sighed for the coming of their
Prince, but when He came they knew Him not.
A young man was taken prisoner and was to be shot at sunrise. As he
lay upon the ground that night between his sleeping guards, his heart
was full of bitter thoughts. Oh for a single sight of the dear ones at
home! What would he not give to be free once more?
Suddenly, he saw a solitary figure steal out from behind a clump of
bushes. The man saw that he was awake and began to make signs, as
though trying to communicate with him. He crept nearer and nearer. The
soldier thought he could see a grin of derision on the man's face.
Evidently, one of his enemies had heard of his plight and had come
there to taunt him. He was mad with rage. It was enough to have to die
like a dog, but this cruel mocking was more than he could endure. With
a shriek of anger, he sprang up. In a moment, his guards had awakened
and the entire camp was in an uproar. In the midst of the excitement,
the stranger had fled, and the condemned man never knew that the one
he repulsed was a friend who had come to deliver him from the hands of
his enemies. --McCartney
Many years ago a poor cripple was cruelly nicknamed "Old
Rattle Bones" by a group of boys on the street. The ringleader
named Freddie was quite worried, however, when the man headed
straight toward his home one day. Because his friends were with
him, the boy tried to hide his anxiety. "Go on, Old Rattle
Bones," he shouted, "see who cares if you talk to my mother."
The man said with sadness as he continued on his way, "You
wouldn't call me names if you knew what caused my condition."
Arriving at his destination, he was welcomed by the boy's
mother. She told her son to come in also.
Turning to Freddie, the man said, "Years ago when you were just a
baby, your nurse took you out in your carriage for a ride near the
river. When she let go of the handle for a moment, it suddenly began
to careen down the hill. Before she could catch up with it, the buggy
had plunged into the water below. I jumped into the river
and after a difficult struggle brought you safely to shore, but I left
before anyone could ask my name. The water that day was frigid, and
it aggravated my rheumatic condition. Now, 10 years later, I can
scarcely hobble along." Freddie hung his head and began to cry.
"Thank you for saving me. And forgive me for calling you 'Old Rattle
Bones.' I didn't know who you were!"
In 1883 in Allentown, New Jersey, a wooden Indian -- the kind
that was seen in front of cigar stores -- was placed on the
ballot for Justice of the Peace. The candidate was registered
under the fictitious name of Abner Robbins. When the ballots
were counted, Abner won over incumbent Sam Davis by 7 votes. A
similar thing happened in 1938. The name Boston Curtis appeared
on the ballot for Republican Committeeman from Wilton, Washington.
Actually, Boston Curtis was a mule. The town's mayor sponsored the
animal to demonstrate that people know very little about the
candidates. He proved his point. The mule won! Such election
results don't seem so far-fetched when we consider that many voters
seldom take the time to investigate a candidate's moral standards,
political philosophy, and position on vital issues. --7700
Illustrations
Did you hear what happened when our Census Bureaus were comparing
notes relating to their recent national nose-counting. One of them
said he knocked on a door in west Texas and explained to the lady of
the house what the census was all about. He said, "Madam, every ten
years the federal government tries to find out how many men, women and
children live in the United States." The lady said, "You came to the
wrong house, mister. I sure don't know!" --Associated Press, 3-21-91
When John A. Broadus was the president of Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Louisville, he went to a country church
to preach one Sunday. A man approached him after the service
and said, "Brother, God kin git along without all your learnin."
Broadus replied, "Yes sir, God can. And he can also get along without
your ignorance."
Canada and the United States have long been the best of
friends, justly proud of the undefended border between them. It
has not always been so. During the War of 1812, between the
United States and Britain, the Americans crossed the border and
destroyed York, modern day Toronto. The British retaliated by
burning Washington, D. C. Finally, on December 24, 1814,
representatives of the two countries, who had been meeting in
Belgium signed the Treaty of Ghent, which agreed on the details
of an armistice. Unfortunately, the news of the peace was
delayed, and, on January 8, 1815, unaware of the armistice, the
two armies met in the Battle of New Orleans. More than 2,000
men lost their lives in a totally unnecessary battle, because
they were ignorant of the peace treaty.
Have you ever wondered why our compass has 360 degrees? Or
why clocks are divided into 12 hours, with 60 minutes to an
hour? Actually, the "counting by sixties" system (called
sexagesimal) came from ancient Mesopotamia. But, according to
Wycliffe's senior statesman/scholar, Dr. Richard Pittman, the
system had a very common and explainable origin. In fact, the
method of counting by sixties is still in use in parts of
Southeast Asia.
Dr. Pittman, one of Wycliffe's specialists in linguistics, helped
to create the Alphabet Museum at the JAARS Center in Waxhaw, NC. His
theory on the origin of this unique system is as follows. The ancient
Mesopotamian man would, using his right thumb as a counter, touch each
joint of each finger of his right hand in turn, with the tip of his
thumb, counting as he did. (Try it yourself as you read this. With
your right thumb touch the three joints of your index finger
--counting as you go. Then move to your middle finger, etc.
By the time he finished he had counted 12 joints on his right hand.
Then, moving to his left hand he let each finger count for 12. He
would fold down his fingers as he counted, making a fist. By the time
he got to his thumb he had counted to 60 in multiples of 12. (Go
ahead, try it. Your index finger on your left hand is 12. Your
middle finger is 24. Your ringer finger is 36. Your little finger is
48. Your thumb makes 60).
Having counted up to sixty on his fingers, the Mesopotamian would
then move to the joints of his arms. This time each joint would count
for 60. His left wrist would be 60. His left elbow 120, his left
shoulder 180, his right shoulder 240, his right elbow 300, and
his right wrist 360. By being able to distinguish his right from
his left, each joint of his body would have certain consistent
numerical value. That is, his left shoulder would always be 180. His
middle knuckle on his right hand would always be 5. The little finger
on his left hand would always be 48. Fascinating!
Dr. Pittman says it was probably this counting procedure which led
to the widespread current division of circles into 360 degrees, hours
into 60 minutes, minutes into 60 seconds, feet into 12 inches, and in
earlier times, years into 360 days.
Knowing this helps us understand what God meant when he told Jonah
that he pities the city of Nineveh "in which there are more than
120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left"
(\reference{Jonah 4:11}{Jonah 4:11}). By that we conclude they were
illiterate and/or unskilled in arithmetic because they didn't know how
to count.
My son Zachary, 4, came screaming out of the bathroom to tell me he'd dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. So I fished it out and threw it in the garbage. Zachary stood there thinking for a moment, then ran to my bathroom and came out with my toothbrush. He held it up and said with a charming little smile, “We better throw this one out too then, 'cause it fell in the toilet a few days ago.“
*
[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #7155]
My Source:
STANDING IN THE GAP, 18 July 1999
Nesbit church of Christ
P.O. Box 383
Nesbit, MS
Author: Wayne Jones
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
AND WHEN THEY HAD BROUGHT THEIR
SHIPS TO LAND
by Wayne Jones
As the fifth chapter of Luke's gospel account opens, Christ begins to select his disciples. This story has been told to us from our youth. There is even a song which many of us sang as children about the selection of Christ's disciples. This was an important and unique event in Scripture. In fact, this event was so important that each Gospel account contains it (Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; John 1:40-44). However, some of the smallest details about this wonderful event can teach us some of the greatest of lessons.
One such lesson is found in verse 11 of Luke's account:
"AND WHEN THEY HAD BROUGHT THEIR SHIPS TO
LAND, they forsook all, and followed him."
While these called men came quickly, there was something very significant that they did before they could come. You guessed it, THEY BROUGHT THEIR SHIPS TO LAND. Whenever any man or woman comes to Christ for to follow Him, he or she must bring some proverbial ships to land. In this article we will notice a few.
--->FIRST, some must bring the ship of PRIDE to land before they can follow Christ. In every generation, some have always fallen to the sin of pride. The nation of Edom was destroyed because of their pride. God told them, "The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee... Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down..." (Obadiah 1:3-4). The rod in the mouth of a foolish man is one of pride (Proverbs 29:23). Pride is referred to as the condemnation of Satan (1 Timothy 3:6).
There is but one way to bring this vessel to land. We must deny our own wills, wishes, and wants. Christ proclaimed: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). Only those willing to let Christ live through them, rather than living for themselves, will be able to follow Christ. May our pride never hinder us from faithful, loving service to the One who has called us through the gospel!
--->SECOND, some must bring the ship of FAMILY to land before they can follow Christ. Far too often is it the case that an individual refuses to obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ because they fear what their family may think or do. Others decline the precious blood of Christ because of those family members who have already departed from this life. What a shame it is to see precious souls being lost each day because they regard the ideas of family members higher than the commands of God!
Christ spoke on this matter while on earth. Matthew reveals: "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37). Yes, the Bible commands us to honor our parents and to love our children. However, that love can not exceed our love and devotion to Christ. Do we want to be counted worthy of Christ? Then let us bring the ship of family to land so that we can follow Him!
--->THIRD, some must bring the ship of IGNORANCE to land before they can follow Jesus. Many are lost in the world today because they do not know the truth. There are various causes for the lack of knowledge which many in our world possess. Some are ignorant of God's law because they want to be. They view the Bible through prejudiced glasses which do not allow them to see the truth and obey it. Others are ignorant because someone has taught them error. Others are ignorant of God's commands because no one has ever taught them the truth. Please, let no one reading this article, go to judgment ignorant of God's will for mankind. The vengeance of God will extend to those who were ignorant of God's Word and to those who simply refused to obey it (2 Thessalonians 1:8).
The significance of those called in Luke chapter five bringing their ships to land is magnified in the very next phrase. It reads: "they forsook all." Without bringing these before mentioned ships to land, along with many others that people may have, we truly cannot forsake all. We have a promise from God that if we will forsake all for Him, He will never forsake us:
"Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be
content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I
will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5).
"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late."
-- Felix Frankfurter
"True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance."
-- Akhenaton, Egyptian Pharaoh
"To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the rising and falling tides (of affairs), so that with nature and law at his back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. Man thus becomes the victim of the tides when he should be their master."
-- Helena Petrova Blavatsky
"Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as in knowing what to do next."
-- Herbert Hoover
"At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), statesman, B&P 10/18/02
"Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences."
-- Norman Cousins
"There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure about the universe."
-- Albert Einstein
"Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time."
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th U.S. President, B&P 3/5/03
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan (1934-1996), astronomer, B&P 3/7/03
"Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it."
-- Doug Larson, QFTM 3/15/03
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
-- John Wooden, QFTM 3/15/03
"The time for extracting a lesson from history is ever at hand for those who are wise."
-- Demosthenes, QFTM 3/15/03
"The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier."
-- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), satirist, B&P 6/30/03
“Experience comes from what we have done. Wisdom comes from what we have done badly.”
-- Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School, eSermons.com 8/26/03
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
-- Confucius, QFTM
*
According to Peter Kendall in the Chicago Tribune, Ruben Brown, age sixty-one, was known on the south and west sides of Chicago, as the friendly neighborhood cockroach exterminator with “the Mississippi stuff.” The Mississippi stuff was a pesticide Brown had bought hundreds of gallons of in the South, and it really did the trick on roaches. Brown went from door to door with his hand sprayer, and his business grew as satisfied customers recommended the remarkably effective exterminator to others.
In the process, however, Brown is alleged to have single-handedly created an environmental catastrophe. The can-do pesticide-methyl parathion-is outlawed by the EPA for use in homes. Southern farmers use it on boll weevils in their cotton fields, and within days the pesticide chemically breaks down into harmless elements. Not so in the home. There the pesticide persists as a toxic chemical that can harm the human neurological system with effects similar to lead poisoning.
The EPA was called into Chicago for the cleanup. Drywall, carpeting, and furniture sprayed with the pesticide had to be torn out and hauled to a hazardous materials dump. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the total cost of the cleanup would be some $20 million, ranking this as one of the worst environmental nightmares in Illinois history.
Brown was charged with two misdemeanors. He apparently didn't know much about the pesticide he sprayed so liberally. Brown's attorney said, “It's a tragedy. It is one of those situations where he did a lot of harm, but his intention in no way matches the damage he has done. He is a family man and handled it with his own hands. Do you think he knew how toxic it was?”
What you don't know can hurt you. That is true both of pesticides and of false teaching.
______________
Choice Contemporary Stories & Illustrations For Preachers, Teachers, & Writers Craig Brian Larson, Baker Books, p. 134.
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