Two Manchester men, Ali Abdullah and Muqtar Nuren, came up with a scheme to take driver's license tests for people (both the driving test and written) even though it is illegal to take a driver's license test for another person. Between them, they had 35 clients and took 43 tests but failed 33. They passed only seven driving tests and three written. Their scheme didn’t impress their clients and certainly didn’t impress authorities who sentenced them to four years in prison. I guess people foolish enough to cheat on a test designed to protect their safety and others, would also be foolish enough to hire these two. People make even worse decisions with those they trust to take care of their souls! Many folks make spiritual decision on “What my pastor says” or “What the church I grew up in taught” rather than looking to the Word of God. Many religious authorities are as ignorant in what the Bible truly says as these two men were about the driving rules. Those that trust them to “pass on” God’s teaching to them will find themselves woefully ignorant on judgment day.
Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
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