Strange Checklist for Shopping

Well, why wouldn’t they notice? I pushed my shopping cart into the store with an egg carton and an empty applesauce jar. Nobody would really notice anything unusual about a closed egg carton, but it was empty as well. Nobody gave me any sort of odd stare, as people hardly notice anything about anyone these days. Just a casual glance before they looked away and went about their other business.

Not too many people would take these things into a store unless they were up to something. This was the case for me. The egg carton and applesauce jar were my shopping list. My task was simple: just get a jar of applesauce and a carton with a dozen eggs. How straightforward could it be?

You would be amazed how many brands of applesauce you can find in a grocery store! I located the right brand, and then I matched the size of the empty jar in my cart. That was simple enough. I had my hands on the right brand, right size jar. Once it went into the cart, I was ready to approach the eggs.

Oh, but wait! There’s more! I had a jar of “ORIGINAL” applesauce in my hand, and was about to put it into my cart next to the empty jar marked “NATURAL.” It's a safe bet that I was glad for my shopping list! What an embarrassment it would be to go home with mismatched jars.

I almost got caught off guard, but then I was very careful to check out the eggs. That was a snap, since only one kind of carton had the color and markings of the one in my cart. So as soon as I opened the new carton and made sure all the eggs were unbroken, I was ready to go.

At the checkout counter was a final act of humiliation. The checker said, “You were sent here, weren’t you?” She had my number. She knew I didn’t want to disappoint my wife and bring back the wrong merchandise, but she was happy for me that I got it right. Then she put the empty jar and egg carton into my bags and laughed at me as I left.

I returned home and put away the items, leaving the empty containers on the counter for my wife to validate my efforts. All was well.

Good grief! How complicated can it be to get a jar of one brand’s natural applesauce and the right kind of eggs? Aren’t we being too much of a nerd by putting this much effort into getting a very simple thing right? At my age, and with my experience buying groceries, shouldn’t I be able to accomplish a simple task?

In this particular case all of these questions are valid. They are great to ask. But consider this question. How many times do we figure we “got it right” and discover later that we’ve forgotten something?

Have you ever heard of an airplane pilot who forgets to lower the landing gear, and the plane makes a very sickening sound as it scrapes on the runway? The pilot immediately knows that he or she has landed with the wheels up because it takes so much power to taxi. Not only that, the altimeter reads about two feet lower. And the pilot gets to meet a lot of interesting and important people. To add insult to injury, someone takes the landing checklist out of the airplane seat pocket. Sure enough, the checklist has an entry that says “Gear [wheels] down and locked.” The pilot has lots of hours in this type of airplane, knows the controls and procedures by heart, but somehow just didn’t get one of the details right.

I want to assure you that every time you ride on a commercial airline flight, the crew in the cockpit goes over the checklist line by line. And in addition to that, the “black box” (actually, it’s orange) makes a voice recording of the crew members calling out the line items. So your chances of a pilot forgetting simple items such as lowering the landing gear are very slim.

I could take this into the area of tragedy when pets or children are left in a locked car. Now I’m done with this because it’s more serious than I want to get.

Let’s go in the direction of our Bible study. Give me the answers to these questions.

1. Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden for eating what?
2. Noah took how many of each type of animal onto the ark? (Yes, it’s Noah. Nobody’s trying to trick you by saying Moses!)
3. Who cut Samson’s hair, causing him to lose his strength?
4. How many Magi went to visit the Christ Child?

Here are the answers.

1. Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden for eating a forbidden fruit, not necessarily an apple.
   Genesis 2:16-17; 3:2, 6, 11
2. Noah took seven pairs of “clean” animals and one pair of the others.
   Genesis 7:2
3. Delilah didn’t cut Samson’s hair. She called a man to cut it while he (Samson, not the nocturnal barber) was sleeping.
   Judges 16:19
4. The Bible doesn’t say how many Magi brought the gold, frankincense, and myrrh when they went to visit the Christ Child.
   Matthew 2:1, 7, 11, 16

See? How many did you get right? Could we do better with our Bible knowledge if we spent more time studying even the things we think we know?

So the next time you see me in a grocery store with a 3-dimensional checklist, maybe there’s madness to my method.

Or maybe there’s method to my madness?

Grace and Peace,
Charles+

Well, They All Sound Alike to Me!

This morning I received a call from a longtime dear friend, asking me for a Scripture reference. He said, “I remember, there’s something in the Bible about people in the last days calling good evil and calling evil good. Do you know the verse that’s taken from?”

We talked for about an hour, just catching up on things. He gloated about the beautiful weather he’s having in his part of the country, and I slipped several notches in my piety because of the sin of envy. He told me the wonderful things happening at his church, and I rejoiced with him.

All during the conversation I was searching my various concordances to no avail.

“I think it’s probably Pauline,” I said. He agreed it sounded like it belonged in 2 Timothy, around the “itching ears” text in 4:3-5.

After we finished our conversation and wished each other well, I kept scratching my head. All my keyword searches (“evil,” “call,” etc.) were to no avail. Why? Because I was looking at the New Testament passages for my answer.

Finally, I consulted one of the two theological experts in my life: either Google or Bing, I forget which. Searching on “call evil good” returned about 3 finish-the-phrase search lines, one of which took me exactly where I wanted to go.

Well, no it didn’t. It took me to Isaiah 5:20, one of the “Woe” prophecies. “Woe unto them that call evil good” was not what I wanted to read. I wanted to read something like my friend had said: “In the last days there will be false teachers who call evil good and good evil.” I was disappointed for some reason.

Then it came to me. No, actually, two things came to me. The first was that Paul, in telling Timothy about the itchy ears being scratched by false doctrine, indirectly was saying exactly that. After all, when we look at the teaching that pleases the high-rollers in the progressive churches, it’s teaching that is blatantly false. It’s teaching that reinterprets such statements as John 14:6 (“. . . I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me”) as “I am one of the ways to God.” It’s teaching that excuses sex outside of marriage as long as (a) it’s consensual, and (b) neither party is married to another person. (Trouble with that one is that Jesus in Matthew 5:28 didn’t talk from the same memo; he didn’t consider consent, nor did he consider marital status when he defined adultery.)

The second thing that came to me was the consistency between Paul and Isaiah. Paul was never considered a prophet in the same sense as those great figures of the Old Testament, yet he often spoke and wrote prophetically. His words to Timothy and others concerning the last days had a prophetic ring to them, and his letters to the various churches expressed the Divine Revelation. So here I thought “they all look alike, don’t they?” Well, probably not. But I still enjoyed the consistency between Paul and Isaiah, and there are a lot of other consistencies just sitting around like gems on the ground as we reflect on the Scriptures.

May you be blessed in your own treasure hunts.

Charles+

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^KJV 2 Timothy 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; ⁴ And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. ⁵ But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.

^KJV Isaiah 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

^KJV John 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. ² In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. ⁴ And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. ⁵ Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? ⁶ Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. ⁷ If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.

^KJV Matthew 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: ²⁸ But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.