Re: Behold, I thought
Ian Dorion (dorioni@intellinet.com)
Sun, 16 Mar 1997 22:02:10 -0600
Farrell Till wrote:
>
> APRIL
> and the boy tells her bible stories (creation, David and giant, Shadrak et
> al, Nathan --I didn't know this one--a guy who is cured by dipping 7 times
> in some river,
>
> TILL
> This would have been Naaman the leper, a Syrian captain whom the king of
> Syria sent to Elisha the prophet to be cured of his leprosy. According to
> the story, Elisha didn't even come out to see him but had a servant deliver
> a message telling him to go dip seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman was
> insulted at the slighting and went away angry. "Behold, I thought," he
> said, "that he would surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name
> of Yahweh his God, and wave his hand over the place, and recover the leper."
> (1 Kings 5:11). Part of his complaint was that the rivers of Abanah and
> Pharpar in Syria were just as good as all the waters of Israel, so why
> couldn't he wash there and be clean? Naaman's servant suggested to him that
> if the prophet had told him to do some great thing, he would probably have
> done it, so why not do the simply thing and give it a try? Naaman then went
> to the Jordan River, dipped himself seven times, and "his flesh became again
> like the flesh of a little child" (v:14).
>
> I used to preach a sermon based on this story, which I entitled "Behold, I
> thought." The idea was that people often don't do simple things that God
> tells them, because they make no sense to them, and so they try to make
> religion, especially worship and the plan of salvation, complex. However (I
> would warn severely), just as Naaman wasn't cured of his leprosy until he
> had done exactly what God had told him, so we won't be saved and our lives
> won't be pleasing to God until we do exactly what he has told us to do, no
> matter how silly it may seem. What people should do, of course, is the
> five-point plan of salvation of the Church of Christ, and then meet each
> Sunday to mouth a few hymns and a prayer or two, eat a pinch of unleavened
> bread and drink a shot of grape juice, and then listen to some preacher air
> his views.
>
> So how did I do, Jerry? Do you need a guest speaker to fill your pulpit
> from time to time? I'll bet that those who don't know better would never
> suspect that I'm not the real thing.
>
> Does all of this give everyone on the list an idea of how stupid I was at
> one time? I wouldn't object if anyone said that I was an idiot back then,
> because I was.
>
> Farrell Till
> Skepticism, Inc.
> jftill@midwest.net
(Ian 3/16) Farrill if you were stupid then, you would still be stupid
now. It's all a matter of being brainwashed. I don't think the
fundamentalists are stupid - at least not most of them. They are
brainwashed however and if they would just admit to the possibility,
they could be on the road to recovery.