Handwriting

And I thought all the emphasis Mrs. Fritsch placed on handwriting in third grade was wasted.  Turns out, it’s important career guidance.  For instance, recently a would-be bank robber failed largely because the teller could not decipher his illegibly scrawled “This is a robbery” note.  And thus another village has occasion to give free room and board to its idiot.

            That’s not to say poor penmanship is a sign of poor intelligence; certainly I hope not, as do all my doctor friends out there (and more importantly, their patients).  No, I mean that if a person is communicating the most important message of his day directly to his intended audience, it would seem obvious that clarity of delivery would be paramount.

            I don’t know anyone who would challenge the logic behind that thought.  Yet it is challenged constantly by people who claim the Bible is too difficult to understand.  Yes, I know it’s just an excuse; people actually have a pretty good idea what God is trying to say, they don’t like it, so they play the ignorance card.  But there’s excuse-making, and there’s lazy, ill-conceived, common sense-impaired excuse-making.

            Paul says of his own writing, “when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ” (Ephesians 3:4).  And he’s the one who wrote “things hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16).  Why would He lead the apostles into “all the truth” (John 16:13) and have them write it down in gibberish? 

            As in Daniel 5 and the famous “writing on the wall” scene, God makes sure the message gets through.  Let’s not learn that lesson the hard way, like Belshazzar did.