The Precariousness of Pretension
Have things changed, or is my memory (just a little) exaggerative? Stored in the annuals of my memories are recollections of Saskatchewan snow banks as high as the house and temperatures that dipped to that brittlizing minus 50! Not that we need or want them, but how is it that we don’t have those kinds of Sask winters any more?
Another childhood memory that I don’t care to have repeated is that of major chest colds, bronchitis and the like with no anti-biotics to even give hope of relief. Instead, Mom had those flaming mustard plasters that inhibited any hair growing on a boy’s chest!
Last week, we viewed the video of the life of Fanny Crosby, writer of more Christian songs than any one else—ever (I suppose). What spiritual insight for one who lived almost all of her life blind.
And it was mustard plaster that did it! A quack doctor who pretended to know what to do with a little girl’s eye infection—blinded for life!
So, I got thinking about the dangers of pretentiousness, especially among professionals: doctors, teachers, consultants, nurses, counselors, ministers, parents, grandparents, to name only a few. When one’s word carries so much weight that a lifetime can be marred (or benefited). When an eternal destination might be determined by a sentence, a word, a tone—or absence thereof! Holding another’s destiny in ones hand is no small responsibility.
Perhaps this is at the heart of the biblical admonition: “Let not many of you presume to be teachers… because … we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). It is no accident, I am sure, that that verse comes in the context of a discussion concerning the importance of controlling ones tongue.
How presumptuous of me to pose as a “teacher.” But I did and I do! Scary!
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