Before we all had phones to distract us, if
you were bored had something to write on and a friend you might have played a
game of Hangman. It was a word game where you had to guess a word or phrase
letter by letter. Each time you picked the wrong one, a little stickman had a
body part added to the gallows. If you didn’t figure out the answer before the
man was assembled, he’d swing from the rope.
Recently
I read a post that suggests building a snowman instead. You see the act of
hanging a man was deemed too violent with too many racial undertones. So
instead you assembly a snowman piece by piece. Not only was it less gruesome, it
also had the benefit of having more steps and made the game less trying for
children. If you lost it was not a tragedy, you made a nice little friend.
I guess
we have all the other problems in the world solved so we had to get onto fixing
Hangman.
Isn’t it funny how much we want everything in
the world to be perfect? Even if it means making anything, even things that are
steamily not that big of a deal, offensive. It as if we know we can’t make reality what we
want so we will just pretend like it doesn’t exist. We create problems so we
don’t have to deal with real ones.
It doesn’t just happen today. The prophet
Micah saw it in his time. In Micah 3:5-7 tells about the false prophets looking
for an issue to sink their teeth into. They claim to want peace but attack everything.
The problem, as the prophet explains, is that it doesn’t lead them to anywhere because
they are ignoring what God has said. Their message is empty. They want to feel
good but not be good.
We might be tempted to act the same way. We
love lessons that tell others what they need to be doing, but not so much one
that tells us what we need to be doing. Our desire to not offend mean we never
tell truths that are hard but necessary. We ignore rather than change. We say
things are ‘no big deal’ when they are ruining lives and removing us from God’s
presence. We create issues of no
importance to cover up our unwillingness to deal with ones that do.
The people told Michah not to speak out
(Michah2:6-7) but he told them simply “Do
not my words do good to him who walks uprightly”. We should be less concerned with getting offended
and more concerned making sure we are on the right path.
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