Saying Dumb Things
“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:36-38)
It’s intriguing how the seemingly insignificant things we say have a way of standing out more in our minds than the most profound, wise words of great insight. Like when I tried to impress my sixth-grade friend by calling a fifth-grade teacher “an old bag” as she was leaving school on a Friday afternoon. Not long after that I was experiencing an intense heat on a certain part of my body thanks to our principal, a man named Shirley Morton (“Don’t call me Shirley. Yes, Mr. Morton!”) Even though that was almost sixty years ago, I remember the scene, the iron fence that bordered the school playground, and Mr. Morton’s powerful swing, probably made even more painful by the fact that it happened after school on a Friday afternoon.
Our dumb words said or done become like Jeopardy categories in our mind: “I’ll take Dumb Things Said To Girls for $100.” Or, “Let me try Idiotic Pranks Gone Awry for $200.”
Quite frankly, Jesus had a bookload of dumb things said to him. Instead of “Dad Jokes,” they could be called “Dumb Jokes.”
For instance, how about Martha, whining to Jesus about her sister, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself. Tell her, then, to help me.” (Luke 10:40) I’ve known a few church people who have berated others for what doing the work that only they thought was important.
Or there’s James and John, on a mission to impress the Son of God and asking Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Their words came after a Samaritan village did not welcome Jesus. Jesus rebuked them for their words. What must it have felt like to be rebuked by Jesus after saying something that you thought was a good suggestion, and then came to figure out that it was a dumb idea?
The Pharisees and teachers of the law always seemed to have been chomping on chewable dumb tablets. It seems that the only people who are not listed in the dumb book are children and most of the people that Jesus healed, many of them social outcasts.
So I realize that my tendency to “dumb down my words” puts me in a vast company of others. I keep searching my mind for something wise-worthy, but I keep coming up empty. As a result, I keep going to scripture and finding a verse that needs to be underlined or words said by Eugene Peterson or Philip Yancey that resonate in a sweet way like strawberry preserves on a hot homemade biscuit.
On the positive, whenever I get a little too uppity, I remember one of the dumb things I said in the past seven decades, and it humbles me back to reality. And, boy howdy, there’s a lot of material there to be humbled by!
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