Ideas, Good or Bad, Have Consequences

The amazing wordsmith G. K. Chesterton once observed that ideas (presumably, bad ones) can only be conquered by other ideas (presumably better ones), and, alas, “modern politicians have no ideas.”

Ain’t it the truth? And when they do flirt with an idea or two, they seem to latch onto only really bad ones.

I always enjoy the writing of Pulitzer prize-winning columnist George Will. In a recent column, Will pointed his readers to a fascinating book by Daniel Okrent entitled The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

It is ironic that Prohibition, which arose as an over-reaction to excessive and pernicious drinking, would itself be more legislatively excessive and lead to more pernicious consequences than anything it was designed to combat.

According to Okrent (and distilled by Will), among the unforeseen consequences of Prohibition were the income tax (since the federal government lost alcohol taxes which were 30% of its revenues), plea bargaining (since there was no way courts could actually try all the newly created criminals), a nationwide crime syndicate (folks as truly thankful as the most devout teetotaller for the new law—since it made organized crime filthy rich), Las Vegas (since once Prohibition was over ex-bootleggers needed “new business opportunities,”) NASCAR (since bootleggers needed hotter cars than the law’s), speedboats (same reason but on the water outrunning the Coast Guard), and a “privacy right” (“the right to be let alone”—“which eventually extended to abortion rights.” Not to mention, wealthy federal “Prohibition agents” who “cherished $1800 jobs because of the bribes that came with them.”

By the way, an interesting point in the book is that until the 18th Amendment (Prohibition), only one other amendment in the Constitution (prohibiting the owning of slaves) was designed to tell citizens what they could not do; all the other amendments told the government what it could not do. Government has not since gotten over the idea that it can do pretty much anything it wishes (even regulate trans fat and salt in restaurant fare!).

Alcohol consumption went down only 30% and freedom was held hostage in ways never envisioned by the many who truly thought Prohibition would go far to save the nation. It certainly went far.

If you think this is a column specifically about Prohibition, or teetotalism versus non-teetotalism, you are badly mistaken. It is a column about ideas and consequences. The former lead to the latter.

May God fill our little minds with good ideas so that into this needy world, good consequences follow to bring a little more peace and a little more joy. If we really want more of “God’s will” done “on earth as in heaven,” I think a very good idea is to trust God, and faith, and freedom, more than any law we might ever write ourselves.




Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Belated Birthday Congrats

Hey, folks--On a serious note, I woke up this morning and realized that I’d blown right past an important birthday!

I can hardly believe that nobody in this fine group mentioned it! Bilbo & Frodo Baggins’ birthday is usually celebrated on Sept 22, though there is some discussion regarding the actual date. But the American Tolkien Society has kindly designated the whole week that includes Sept 22 as Tolkien Week, so it’s not too late to celebrate! (Of course, it’s never too late to celebrate. Anything.)

From Wikipedia: The American Tolkien Society first proclaimed Hobbit Day and Tolkien Week in 1978, and defines them as this: "Tolkien Week is observed as the calendar week containing September 22, which is always observed as Hobbit Day", but acknowledges that Hobbit Day pre-dates their designation. Due to the discrepancies between the Shire Calendar and the Gregorian Calendar there is some debate for when to celebrate Hobbit Day. Many celebrate on September 22 of the Gregorian Calendar but other deep students of Tolkien, however, say that the dates mentioned in the narrative refer to the Shire Calendar, which has significant divergences from the Gregorian. More accurately, Tolkien said that the Shire Calendar is in advance by some 10 days (depending on the month) of the Gregorian Calendar. According to calculations, a suggested corresponding date is September 14."

And Bilbo’s was surely the best birthday speech ever! “First of all, to tell you that I am immensely fond of you all, and that eleventy-one years is too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits.” Tremendous outburst of approval. “I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” This was unexpected and rather difficult. There was some scattered clapping, but most of them were trying to work it out and see if it came to a compliment.”

Anyway, in a world where we often take idiocy seriously and the truly serious with far too little mirth, may I say, Long live Bilbo and Frodo, and God bless J. R. R. Tolkien! It’s a better world because a man of faith like Tolkien lived, breathed, wrote, and created an amazingly fine world filled with hobbits! We’d all be better off if we spent more time with them!

Need Information? Just Google It!

It boggles my mind to wonder how I ever got by without Google.

Every day, multiple times, I “google” some word or phrase looking for a trickle of the amazing flood of information available on the Internet.

I chomp down on a Tootsie Roll Pop late one evening and pop off a dental crown. What to do before the dental office opens? Google it!

My little dog looks guilty. The physical evidence indicates that she’s made a Christmas meal out of M & M stocking stuffers. I know chocolate is bad for dogs, but just how much does it take to fritz Rover? Google it! Turns out the dog would have to really chow down to be dispatched by M & Ms. (So my feeding handfuls of them to the Great Dane was just in vain.)

My motorcycle turn signals start going crazy. I push the button for two turn signal lights (front and rear) to blink, and all four light up the bike. Weird blinking. Looks like a fibrillating Christmas tree.

Motorcycle repair shops don’t like electrical problems. I don’t like paying motorcycle repair shops to deal with electrical problems. My answer?

Google! I got a whole short course in motorcycle wiring and how to attempt to read an electrical schematic. I found out what a turn signal switch or relay would cost. (Way too much, like everything labelled “motorcycle.”) I found out what to check first, what kind of electrical connection cleaner to use, whether lithium grease is electrically conductive, various options on removing a very stuck bolt, etc. I googled all that. And then started playing with wires until it was fixed.

I’ve googled info on home remedies for human physical maladies. I’ve googled up stuff on plant maladies to see why my orchids and plumeria look healthy but won’t bloom. I’ve googled info on a number of DIY projects from building a PVC flute to finding the best 21-degree roundhead framing nails to use in a nail gun when building shed trusses. I even googled, and found, the information I needed on how to “whip” the ends of a large rope for my granddaughters’ tree swing. (Just call me. I’ll show you how to whip up some sail-maker’s rope whipping. It’s fun.) And I googled up some info on the best knots to use for that swing. Fascinating!

Looking for a good sermon illustration or a great website filled with Bible study helps? Google it! I’ve just about gotten to the point that I can’t write a sermon without the Internet up and running so I can easily compare various Bible translations, etc.

So . . . if Google is such a help in finding information on “how to” build or do or fix just about everything, I wonder . . . I wonder why the Creator of the universe didn’t provide us with a treasure trove of information on, say, who to trust as we build our lives?

Oh, wait. He did! Maybe I need to “Bible” at least as much as I google!



Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

When God Posts a Warning, It Pays to Pay Attention

It had to be a government production, the sign I saw. Only a glassy-eyed bean-counting bureaucrat with common sense completely and laboriously expunged by years of mind-numbing training could have produced it. (Your tax dollars at work.)

Posted above a busy tramway, the sign proclaimed in large letters: TOUCHING WIRES CAUSES INSTANT DEATH. Good information, that.

But then in smaller letters was posted this message: “$200 Fine.”

Well, fine indeed. But I’m not exactly sure what to make of that.

I’m always as willing as the next guy to avoid shelling out two hundred bucks, but if paying up is presented as the alternative to sudden and gruesome death, I’d likely shell out a couple of C-notes.

Does the second warning belie the truth of the first? “Touch these wires, moron, and you’ll surely be quick-fried to a crackly crunch!” But maybe not. In which case, you’ll be fined, and that’ll teach you!

Or maybe there’s no contradiction at all. Maybe the long arm of the bureaucracy involved will reach right past death. The dead dumbo, smoky and smelling a lot like an electrical fire, finds himself waiting almost eternally (in a long line, no doubt) in front of a desk in the afterlife. He waits forever to file the forms in triplicate needed to remove the $200 lien on his account that’s got his posthumous processing locked up in limbo.

I’m not sure I get it. The sign’s message, I mean.

But I AM sure I won’t be touching tramway wires if I should happen to run across any. I don’t like the sound of that stiff fine.

Some governmental signs and warnings can be a bit baffling. But it occurs to me that when God gives a warning, we do well to pay very close attention. Some things that we touch will hurt us worse than even an electrified tramway wire.

Touch adultery, God warns us, and you will get scorched. Count on it.

Grab on to greed, and you’ll end up with some awfully bad burns. You can be sure of that.

Grasp bitterness, and embrace an unforgiving and critical spirit, and it won’t matter at all that you have been so mistreated and have such a very good excuse for being bitter: you’ll end up twisted and alone.

Grip such tempting wires, and so many more like them, long enough, and your soul will die, fatally scorched. And, yes, we do well to be wary of eternal death, but the sad fact is that if we choose to play with that which is deadly and embrace hellish attitudes right now, we can easily create a hell for ourselves a long time before we die. The fine inherent in such offenses is dreadfully high.

When God posts a warning, it pays to pay attention.





Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Nice Pharisees Can Be the Most Dangerous of All

We need to ponder long and often the particularly fascinating truth that our Lord Jesus was the sinless “friend of sinners.”

“Sinners in denial,” Pharisees past and present, are seriously bothered by that. “Confessed sinners,” past and present, who know they fall terribly short, love him deeply for it.

Only two types of people exist: confessed sinners and sinners in denial. The former know they need mercy and thus react to others with mercy; the latter, the opposite.

Not all Pharisees mean to be bad people. That does not change the fact that even the nicest ones are a constant danger to themselves and others. Far too nice to ever put it this way, they are beset by two foundational beliefs: 1) I fall short in lots of ways, but the ways I fall short are better than the ways you fall short; 2) If you would just try a little harder, you could be almost as successful as I am in meeting God’s standards.

Looking around, they see in our world an appalling lack of regard for God’s (and their own) standards. What makes their view so tempting is the fact that our society does indeed exhibit a flagrant disregard for God’s standards. What they have a harder time seeing is that so do we all, some in ways not as obvious as others. The best of us needs God’s grace as badly as the worst.

It’s one thing to be one of those moral chameleons this world has in plenty who don’t see anything as right or wrong and can rationalize any attitude or action. It’s another—at least as bad and hurtful—to be so unable to sympathize with human weakness that we paint the whole world as black and white with little gray at all, and, by the way, almost no warmth or color. Law is always cold as stone; only hearts hold real warmth.

Into our world comes the only perfect person who ever lived, and how does he deal with terribly fallen humanity?

At a well in Samaria he holds out hope for a gal who is a five-time marital “loser” and “shacked up” with a guy at the time.

He saves a woman “caught in adultery” lying in the dust at the feet of Pharisees.

He brings new life to a sawed-off lying cheat of a tax collector named Zacchaeus.

How would nice “righteous” folks deal with such people today? Not like Jesus did. Penance or probation would likely be involved. Head-shaking would abound. We’d call a meeting and opine, “As much as we’d like to show mercy, and as much as we believe in grace, if we’re too loose, too lenient, we’ll be sending a message we just can’t afford to send.” What makes such unfailingly black and white folks so dangerous is that, not having suffered enough, failed enough, themselves, they honestly don’t see how they can follow any other course. Such brittle “grace” is no grace at all.

With good intentions, they forget how precious a price was paid for sin, that they didn’t pay it, and that they’re as spiritually needy as the neediest person they ever met. And “they” is, all too often, “we.” And me.

Christ’s suffering paid the price for sin. Until we’ve been broken enough to see our own deep need, we’ll neither fully accept his sacrifice for ourselves or be willing to share the gift of the sinless “friend of sinners” with others.






Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.