[GCFL-discuss] Original

Wed Oct 5 20:11:24 CDT 2005

Carla, I am SURE he didn't understand my reply. If he did, he wouldn't
have asked the question. Now, what do I mean by "overly-well-groomed"? I
didn't say he was overly WELL groomed. Just overly-groomed. There is
indeed no such thing as too well or too good. One CAN be groomed to the
point, or in a way, that it is not well anymore, but sickly.

First, it has nothing to do with being TOO clean. If anything, he may
have had a bit too much on him in the way of oils and such, which by
definition make him NOT perfectly clean. But I think the adjective that
comes to mind is PLASTIC. It is the difference between looking like a
neat, clean, human being who respects those around him, and being a
moulded product. If he had been a department store manikin, he would have
looked about right. Groomed beyond the point of clean and neat.

As to being a servant of the most exalted of the Kings of the earth...
that is conjectural. It depends on what is written in the tract, what its
impact is on those who receive it, to some extent what his reasons for
offering the tract are... The reason I decline such tracts is that they
leave so much out, in the anxiety of their writers to get people's
attention. They also make things up in their desire to get people's
attention. Many of them endow God with an appalling and unlikely
readiness to let Satan set all the rules. I sometimes wonder if the
Gospel is really what anyone gets out of a gospel tract. My own church
has one, I even have a few copies, but I still distrust the approach.

I won't run through the three worst tracts I ever read here. But there
are a few.

Just a technical point: the verse you cite appears to describe King David
(see v. 20) not Jesus or God. But the possibility of that kind of
multiple understandings or misunderstandings is why I am doubtful about
tracts.

Oh, the young man who plays the keyboard at a church I often visit in
this area replied to the "Original" story with two words: "Right on."

Siarlys