Limburger cheese
A soured or angry or cynical heart has a hard time seeing properly and it has an equally hard time bridling its speech. In its ugly way it takes hold of all the truths that support its agenda and ignores everything that would lower the temperature.
Did a sinner trespass against me? Here! Here are forty passages that deal with transgression and every one of them thrusts the wrongdoer down to a hot hell. It doesn't matter that the bulk of the texts are not parallel to the situation I'm facing. This isn't the time to be fair much less merciful so if the verses look like they're useful to my cause I'll pour them out.
The sour heart's unwilling, because it's unable, to see things in the best light. My sour or cynical heart's unwilling, because it's unable, even to grant that there might be another way of looking at the situation. Two people can look at the same thing and interpret it differently. Paul Scherer reminds us that when Ecclesiastes sees the sun rising and setting, the teacher takes it as proof of the moral indifference of life. When Jesus sees it he says it proves his Father's faithful generosity in making the continuously rising sun to shine on the wicked and the good. Qoheleth would say, "See, it doesn't matter if you're evil or good the sun shines on you both." Jesus would say, "See, the sun shines on the evil and the good. Isn't my Father generous!"
The two kids smeared a little Limburger cheese on the moustache of their sleeping grandad. In a moment or two he wakened, sniffed and then complained of an awful smell in the room. He went to the kitchen, the living room complaining as he went of the smell in each room. "The whole whole house smells bad," he muttered as he stumbled outside. Outside he took a deep breath and concluded in amazement, "The whole world stinks!"
Maybe, after all, Dickens was right. It wasn't Christmas that needed changed. It was Scrooge!
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.