Mean what you say
August 17, 2011 (Wednesday)
Years ago I taught a class for new Christians, attempting to help them understand the church, the Bible, the Christian life, etc. During one of the classes, I started a sentence, but soon realized that I had made an error in my statement. Instead of stopping in mid sentence and explaining my mistake, I unwisely decided to try and cover it up with a long, involved argument that successfully veiled any meaning whatsoever. One of the ladies, a new believer, was staring at me as I wrestled unsuccessfully with my pronouns and adjectives, waiting for me to get through the sentence to end all sentences. Then she said to me, “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Truer words were never spoken.
I don’t remember what I was saying at the time, or even what the specific subject was, but I read recently a few quotations that I think revealed a confused state of mind similar to mine. Here’s one from a contestant in a beauty contest. She was asked, “If you could live forever, would you and why?” Her answer: “I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.” (Listen! Hear a drum and cymbal?).
Celebrities have to be careful when they speak to reporters without preparation. One well-known lady said this: “Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.”
Another famous star that I really like spoke these words of wisdom: “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.” She could have followed that up with a quotation attributed to various people: ““I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
This quotation is attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”