Michael Stone charged into the parliament building in Belfast, Northern Ireland, armed with bombs, a knife and a handgun. After he was wrestled to the floor, he was charged with trying to kill several of the leaders that were inside. His defense after his arrest was that everything he did that day was merely "performance art replicating a terrorist attack." In other words it was just a joke! Many people may not have the chutzpah as Stone but use the same technique. They will criticize the church and its leader’s using humor or as if they are just “having some fun.” What it really is a thin layered attack. Those that do this may think it is harmless but the Bible says otherwise. In Proverbs 26:18-19, we read, “Like a madman who throws Firebrands, arrows and death, So is the man who deceives his neighbor, And says, "Was I not joking?" Next time we hear people veil their attacks a just a joke, lets remember what the Bible says and watch out for what they are really doing.
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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