Stick a Fork In Me, I’m Done.

For generations, it was a battleground not only between the classes but also between religion and culture. When it first was introduced, the clergy condemned its use outright, arguing it went against the creation and God’s providence. Hundreds of years later, a noblewoman was rebuked for her ‘excessive sign of refinement’ for using it and when she later died of the plague, clergymen preached her death was divine punishment for her using it and a warning to all not to follow in her example. Men that used it were labeled as finicky and effeminate. Women that used it were labeled ‘Beyond Belief’! For many, it reeked of privilege and class distinction.[1]

What could be so divisive and controversial? Of all things, it was the fork.

It isn’t just our ancestors that find some interesting ways to stretch the spiritual into the everyday. It amazes me how many folks will pull faith into arguments from politics, to legal matters, to customs, to food, even to grammar! While our faith is a part of our entire lives, we need to be careful we don’t make matters of personal opinion test of faithfulness.

But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels.

2^nd Timothy 2:23

There are too many things of importance to get bogged down in arguments over things that of little importance. We need to less quick to judge and condemn others over every little thing. Those types of argument are detrimental to the cause of Christ. Those that persist in doing it are destroying themselves and others (Titus 3:9-11).

It is time to stick a fork in and be done with the trivialities.

[1] Source: Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things by Charles Panati

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

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...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog