Proverb of the Day

Looks like rain.

--Buddha

Is this politically incorrect? Is it culturally insensitive? Oh well, lighten up. All in the spirit of fun. The ideology that has no sense of humor is bound to wither and die, for humor is often the function through which we best understand ourselves and our beliefs.

I remember once hearing a joke about Jesus. Standing before an angry mob about the stone a woman caught in adultery, Jesus said "Let that person among you who is without sin cast the first stone."

Straightaway a good sized rock flew in.

"Mommmm!" Jesus said.

Now that has always seemed funny to me.

Another joke goes like this: Whose prayers does God hear best--those of the Christian, the Jew, or the Muslim. It is the Muslim, of course . . . they use loudspeakers.

It may be suggested that a lack of humor is always accompanied by an increase in intolerance, for the offense taken is not toward God--certainly not for His sake, for He has no need to be defended by poor creatures such as us. Rather the offense is the result of peevish self interest and a poverty of true self-esteem.

The Harm In Words

Talking to you is a waste of my breath.

Has anyone of you ever suffered such an insult? I wonder what could be more dismissive, more hateful, more calculatedly cruel? Someone once said this to me. Someone I loved. I have never forgotten it (as you can see).

How horribly we people treat one another sometimes. It makes you wonder if we were not really God's single mistake, as Mark Twain suspected. The only thing wrong with humanity is the human being.

See how great a forest a little fire kindles! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. 8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.

--James 3:5-12

Yet so they are.

We are inclined, in the corruption of our nature, to be careless and not careful, hard and not tender, judgmental and not tolerant.

"Hear and understand: Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man."

--Matthew 15:10-11

So said Jesus. And yet we have still not heard.