Sunday, August 3, 2008

Platitudinous Ponderosity

"In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications demonstrate a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness, no coalescent conglomerations of precious garrulity, jejune bafflement and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous verbal evaporations and expatriations have lucidity, intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rodomontade or Thespian bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous propensity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, obnoxious jocosity and pestiferous profanity, observable or apparent."


I love words.


Beautifully crafted and eloquently uttered words get me all juiced up.


As a 10 year old, my older cousin, who was then in college, made me memorized the above quote. I would recite it to him, like a chant, over and over again. He was teaching me how to impress the ladies. According to him, the best way to win a girl's heart, especially if you have a dough devoid wallet, is to have your vocabulary wallet all packed with big sounding words.


Hearing some of us preach the message of salvation, I'm reminded of my cousin.......enticing the sinner with our empty rhetorics.


Our extemporaneous verbal evaporations and expatriations lack lucidity, intelligibility and veracious vivacity and is thick with rodomontade and is bombastically Thespian.

Here is Paul to the Corinthians:


"When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn’t use lofty words and impressive wisdom to tell you God’s secret plan. And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit." (1 Corinthians 2:1 and 4)


In this day and age of heavy commercialization and showbiz, the very essence of the Gospel is lost in the midst of banal, trite, and stale remarks which are oppressively and unpleasantly dull and lifeless......platitudinous ponderosity.....lacking nothing but the most important thing, the demonstration of the awesome power of God.


Lost in the shuffle is the real meaning of Christianity, which is, purely and simply, LOVE. The crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior is reduced to mere church membership, church programs, and the ceaseless gyrations of religious exercises.


When Nicodemus came that night, Jesus told him very simply:


"Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."


How did Jesus heal the blind guy by the Pool at Siloam? He spat on the ground, made mud of the spittle, applied it to the guy's eyes and told him to, "Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam."


The woman with the issue of blood simply touched the helm of His garment. And the man full of leprosy that asked him, "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." He reached out His hand and touched him saying, "I will be thou clean." The leprosy left him immediately.


He gave no long sermons and had no need to "get the congregation in the spirit", with beautiful songs and slow playing piano, when He healed the man with palsy, let down through the rooftop. He saw their faith and told the man, "Man thy sins are forgiven thee."


And to dead Lazarus, He said, "Lazarus come forth."


No fanfare. No dramatization for full effects. No speaking of tongues, and no long prayers.


Lofty words and useless sacraments won't get us any closer to God. Love without dissimulation, is all He requires of us all.

2 comments:

john said...

I hear you Bro.

Christianity has evolved over time: mutation might be the best description.

The Church of Christ (i.e the Body of Christ) has turned to a series of personality cults masquerading as religion. Our churches and preachers are nothing but glorified entertainers. The hottest and smoothest talking ones pull the biggest congregations and followers. Success is measured in attendance and dollars: and thus becomes the metaphor for spiritual wisdom. The "Ministry" with the largest congregation is considered a growing church, and the "Man of God" with most revelations is esteemed as God's mouth piece.

The worship of Mammon, disguised as prosperity message, has replaced the worship of the Almighty God. The church has turned worldly and it's hard to tell it apart from the world. "The only thing that is real is real estate" according to one of these great men of God.

In Christianity today we pitch the altar and build our tents. The weightier matters of the law are often neglected. The focus and emphasis is placed on the mundane - things that add no value to our spiritual enrichment.

Temi said...

Empty suits....we all. Mere gimmickry is what you'll find in most churches these days. Faking the power of the Holy Spirit. How many blind eyes or deaf ears have been healed lately?