Cogges Parish newsletter June 2000

From the newsletter ...

Plain Speaking

One of my favourite "Newspeak" phrases is the one that occurred during an American space launch: "The Spacecraft" intoned the commentator "has presently entered a temporary operating non-functional mode". In plain English (or even plain American) the launch had broken down, but it must have seemed a little indelicate to say so plainly in such a costly operation,

Sometimes I wonder why using imprecise words about a precise situation is thought to make things better. When the doctor last told me to hop on his scales and refrained politely from whistling, I was not in a state of "Waistline Engirthment Challenge" but Obesity, and only accepting the hard fact would help.

I remember being checked by a friend after I had used the phrase "Blackest Sin" to describe accurately some awful wrongdoing, because it could be thought that I was selectively running down men who were black. I wonder how he would have got on with the Bible verse which says "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as wool". By my friend's reasoning this could be thought of saying that North American Indians (the Redskins) are awful and the Palefaces are OK. That's what it might seem the verse is saying, but the truth is entirely different. This Bible verse is not, in fact, saying "things will get better" but "things will get very much worse", because the colours described are the early and advanced appearances of a deadly skin disease: leprosy.

So I suppose one could say that Blackskins, Redskins, Whiteskins, and indeed Allskins are sinners; and this would neatly fit in with what the Bible states with emphatic clarity: "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." And in that state things do not get better, but disastrously worse. Unless one takes the remedy, that is.

My old Ancestor, William, found the remedy in 1872, and wrote about it with much joy. He is much endeared to me because he misunderstood about the contrast between scarlet and white. As a wool buyer and blanket maker, he could clearly see the advantage of the whiteness, and he realised that this is what a personal acceptance of the death of Jesus does for one. It cleans the sin nature right away, and establishes a person as a son or daughter of God. It doesn't end there, of course, because although being a Christian starts as a relationship with Jesus, it continues as a life-long process. But William got there - I look forward to meeting him.

David Smith

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