12 February 2010
If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. Matthew 5:30
There has to be a conspiracy! If it isn’t the anti-Christ behind it, it is the devil himself, and he’s got a lot of help. Life used to be simple; today, it’s quite another matter. For example, it used to be that you could open a bag of peanuts and enjoy them--no problem. Now, instead of a real meal on an airplane, you are offered a small cup of coke (mostly filled with ice) and presented with a bag of electronically sealed, forever glued at the top salted peanuts. Okay, so you don’t get meals on planes anymore--along with less space between you and the guy in front who pushes his seat back into your lap. That’s bad enough, but try and get those peanuts out of the bag. You find the small print—very small print, at that—which says, “Tear here!” You pull and squeeze. You try using your teeth. Not a chance.
Don’t tell me there isn’t a conspiracy!
Or what about trying to take an aspirin? A generation ago, you screwed the cap off and shook one or two into the palm of your hand, and got over your headache. Now, you pay extra for the super lock cap with the two arrows which have to be lined up at precisely the right angle. Then you push, and the cap is supposed to snap off. Sure, I know, it’s so the little kids won’t take them, but by the time you finally get to the aspirin, your headache has turned into apoplexy or a stroke, or you end up saying things that you are quite sure may keep you out of heaven when you die.
When I was a kid and we got the fish hook stuck in our backside when the cast whipped around the wrong side, we went to the local family doctor, and he gave it a flip with his wrist, and the greatest problem was our embarrassment at having to drop our Levi’s to get it dug out. But all of that has changed. Now before the doctor will touch you, you are presented with a sheet of possible complications which you must read and sign before he’ll dig out that misplaced fish hook. You are told that you may have complications including cramping, high blood pressure, nausea, palpitations of the heart, and possibly blindness—all from that one problem. There’s one thing for sure: the large print giveth, but the fine print taketh away.
I’ve noticed something else, too. It used to be that the instructions for something were printed in large enough letters that you could read them. No more! They now use print small enough to demand either glasses as thick as Coke bottles used to be, or else a magnifying glass. But your frustration doesn’t end there. Things used to be written in simple English, like “Slip the wheel over the axle, and put the cotter key through the hole to keep the wheel on.” Then you smacked the hub a couple times with a rubber mallet to insure it stayed on, and you were finished. Now, you are more likely to read something like, “Squeeze center while pulling up,” or “Be sure that the C-moss virus is free from your bootable floppy disk.”
Okay, maybe the fine print means my eyes are not as strong as they once were, but you can’t convince me that those airline seats haven’t shrunk, or that the Communists who are still out to take the world aren’t behind the conspiracy to kill us by strokes as the result of not being able to get the peanuts open. But when my doctor tells me, “My accountant says you need an operation,” I’m heading for the nearest door.
Before his death at almost age 89, my father said, “Why don’t you give up on those computers and go back to a good manual typewriter?” “Dad,” I said with a smile, “there is no going back.” Some way, somehow, we’ve got to learn to cope. Maybe business class is the answer, or eating peanuts which we bring from home—the kind which are still in their shells. And if everything else fails, put out the sign, “Gone fishing!” Because that old bit of wisdom is still true, “The worst day fishing is still better than the best day working!”
About this time of the year, the fish are biting, and when the big ones are hitting, who cares about the peanut conspiracy. After all, if Peter, James, and John—the three closest to Jesus--were fishermen; could anything be more spiritual than going fishing? Resource reading: Hezekiah 5:1-10