Yeshua Explored
21st November 2022
Words
How lucky are you?
Previous articles are still available on the Premier Christian radio website – https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Blogs2/Yeshua-Explored – (until they finally pull the plug!)
So, moving on to another aspect of our speech, the use of certain words in common parlance.
Read on …
The World is not as mysterious as it once was. Until our scientific age started digging away at the foundations, God was very much seen at the centre of all aspects of life. Of course this may have led us into making incorrect conclusions about the mechanisms that control our lives and our World, but they got it right in that God is still very much at the centre of our lives. Here’s a good example.
Strokes these days kill or disadvantage thousands of people. It is described as a rapid loss of brain function due to the lack of blood reaching it. Of course we know that now, but we haven’t always known that. In fact the word itself comes from the phrase, “a stroke of God’s hand”, attributing a divine cause to the condition. Interesting and curiously apt, as God has His hand on every aspect of our lives, whether we choose to believe this or not.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. (Psalm 139:9-10)
After all, don’t doctors still say, as both a comfort and an admission that they have done all they can, according to their knowledge, “It’s in God’s hands now”? They probably don’t mean what they say, but that doesn’t diminish the power of the concept.
Now there’s another set of words that we use all of the time that tend to make me feel very uncomfortable. Here are a few sentences that illustrate this:
You’re a lucky man! How fortunate you are! What are the chances?
We’ve all said these things, they are so tightly knitted in our everyday banter. Yet, when we look at the origin of these words …
Fortuna was the Roman goddess of luck, fate and fortune and the daughter of the chief god, Jupiter. She had temples dedicated to her and owned the wheel of fortune (now a TV game show), that she spun randomly to determine the fate of individuals. If you are fortunate, then Dame Fortune is surely smiling at you. A lucky person is surely in league with Lady Luck!
What are we really saying when we use these words? Is there a sense of invoking these pagan deities or at least acknowledging the power behind what seems to be random forces? Or is it a load of old nonsense and we shouldn’t worry about it?
The next time you accidently hit your thumb with a hammer, meditate for a moment before your exclamation (as if!). Here are a few options you have that don’t involve blasphemy or obscenity: oh dear, deary me, ouch, that hurts! Controversially, it may even be “spiritually correct” to utter a quick f***, s*** or b*******, rather than taking the Lord’s name in vain.
Which brings us to our Sinner’s Charter. How does the World view this “commandment”? I would suggest the following:
We must learn to respect each other in words as well as actions, so we must be careful how we speak, otherwise you may be (perhaps unwittingly) committing an offence against society and be dealt with accordingly.
This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp
