Monday, January 9, 2012

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Mark Twain

It seems to me that Twain had an honesty of thought that stuns most of us. Who of us ever thought to pray for Satan? In the Bible Paul says to pray for those who vex us as it will be like pouring hot oil on their heads. Did we not ever think that might work on the old devil?
Other odd thoughts: Why do we get a hair cut and not all our hairs cut? Why do we brush our teeth with a tooth brush? Why do we call the time after sunset as "after dark"? Should it not be "after light"? I understand a pair of socks, but why a pair of underwear or pair of pants? Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? I admit that these are not original thoughts of mine; I read a lot and listen to comics. Comics seem to have the most critical minds. They have the slightly bent point of view that leads to such interesting questions. 
That bent point of view, I think, comes from not accepting the normal as normal. Why is anything "normal"?  Is it because it is what we grow up hearing and are discouraged from questioning? If we question what "everyone" says or believes, does that single us out as "odd"? Like, why do some men wear a belt and suspenders? Are they safety engineers? What if our legs bent the other way at the knees. What would chairs look like? Where would our lap be? What makes a word a "dirty word" dirty? What if a group of people got together and decided that "groom" was dirty, obscene, profane, and socially unacceptable in polite company? Would we all begin to whisper "groom" and snicker at how bad we are? I think maybe my old favorite writer Willie Shakespeare said it best about this last set of questions, "Nothing is either good or bad but thinking make it so." That doesn't answer some of the dumb questions I posed above. It does make me stop and consider my beliefs and the beliefs of others which are in contradiction to them. 
These are just some disconnected musings. I might disagree with myself tomorrow, or I might figure out some answers, or, most likely, I'll have even more questions.
Just saying... 

2 comments:

  1. When I was little I asked my grandmother if it was okay to pray for the devil. She told me there was no point because the devil will never change. I think when we're little, most of us do think of things like that, but then people older and supposedly wiser than us tell us that those thoughts are wrong or that there's no point to them.

    Then our high school English teachers are faced with the daunting task of re-teaching us how to think for ourselves.

    ReplyDelete