Last November, a guide was showing us communal toilets among Roman ruins in Ephesus. I’m glad I didn’t live in that era because I’d have been shut down with ‘stage fright’ sitting there, shoulder to shoulder in a line-up.
Murray Smith
The informative guide explained that before toilet paper was a wooden spatula called the ‘stick’ (stridulum) with cloth or sponge at the ‘business end’. Picking up the wrong end of a stick already used by someone else would undoubtedly have been distasteful. It’s proposed that from this, we have the saying ‘getting the wrong end of the stick.’
Today ‘the wrong end of the stick’ idiom, describes somebody getting something wrong- they’ve either muddled or misunderstood correct facts in a case, or failed to grasp the truth about something.
In a world where misinformation is rife, we’re increasingly vulnerable to being deceived and at risk of accepting as true, false things that are dangerously wrong. Our propensity for deception, makes having a ‘plumbline’ essential – a standard of truth beyond our own sense of right or wrong. Repeatedly on the lips of Jesus, were warnings how the close of the age would be rampant with deception. Today false standards and ideas abound and since our hearts are incapable of discerning truth on their own- we need God’s help. Humbly acknowledging our vulnerability is an important step for ‘correcting’ to avoid being misled and captured by error.
I heard a young man recalling an unfortunate workplace experience. A new girl was employed at his work. From day one she exhibited total aversion to him for no apparent reason. No matter how courteous or pleasant he was, she remained rude and contemptuous. A day came when he was leaving and staff gathered to farewell him.
Surprisingly, ‘Miss Attitude’ came to offer the young man an apology. It turned out that on her first day at work, another female worker had nodded towards a group of male staff and identified one particular guy as being ‘dodgy’ around females and advised caution. The girl had mistakenly believed this young man leaving, was who add being singled out – that was the beginning of her unjustified distaste for him.
At the ‘farewell’ she was privately recalling the talk with the woman who had ‘warned’ her on her first day. She expressed relief ‘the creep’ was leaving. Aghast, the woman exclaimed, “What? Oh Nooo…he’s lovely.”
“That was someone else I pointed out, not him… you got that all wrong.”
Accepting misinformation as fact and believing lies, produces devastating outcomes… judgement of others, baseless offences and wariness, ruined relationships, multitudes ensnared in deception, naming just a few. It’s sad seeing our culture’s appetite for misbeliefs, lies and false theories over a love for truth. It’s important you and I are careful how and what we hear.
When it comes to matters of faith, many reject investigating truth about God, clinging to misinformed, flawed beliefs, failing to establish personal relationship with Him and proving by experience His love and goodness.
By humbly embracing Jesus’ words and His righteous and holy ‘plumbline’, there’s safety.
He alone could claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…”
