The photo accompanying this has been
edited to remove the stupid comment attached as an attempt at humor. And, I suppose some people would find it
humorous. I didn’t. I thought it was, well, stupid; the stupidity
of which being amplified by the incorrect dating attached to each piece of the
composite image.
Einstein is alleged to have quipped
“People are stupid. Individual people
have the capacity to be highly intelligent, but people as a collective whole
are generally stupid.” It’s probably an
urban legend. The attribution, I
mean. Of the voracity of the conclusion
itself, I have no doubt and concur completely.
I just can’t prove it was Einstein who said it. Not Albert Einstein, anyway. Ralph Einstein, maybe. Could even have been George Carlin. After all, almost everything else clever or
witty on the internet is attributed to either George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Robin
Williams, or that tough sheriff in Arizona, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the
sheriff guy. It wasn’t Dub’ya or Obama
either, so it stands to reason it probably wasn’t Einstein.
It makes sense, though. Statistically, I mean. People individually are smarter than the
herd. Every presidential election since
Reagan should prove that to you. The ‘crowd’ may be hip, ‘cool’, ‘in’, and all
that, but generally speaking, they’re generally statistically wrong.
After all, the ‘crowd’ told Chris
Columbus he was probably going to fall off the end of the earth – if the
dragons and sea serpents didn’t get him first, that is; the crowd told Galileo
the Sun orbited the Earth which is the center of the universe (a fact many
still believe today, albeit on a somewhat more localized level) and the crowd shouted to a bewildered Pontius
Pilate, who himself proclaimed, “I find no fault in Him” – “CRUCIFY HIM!!!”
But you see, I found both the quote and
the attribution to Einstein (Albert, not Ralph) on the INTERNET! And EVERYBODY
knows IF IT’S ON THE INTERNET IT HAS TO BE TRUE, RIGHT?????
O…………………………………………………..k.
That’s not to say individuals cannot be
just as stupid as the crowd. Let’s go
back to that JPEG image for a moment.
The guy on the left is Christopher Reeve. He played the man of Steel in four feature
films. Well, three if you’re
honest. The fourth one was a politically
correct statement for some nonsense or other that even Reeve was embarrassed
about after he cashed the check. Note the date in the upper left hand
corner. 2006. We’ll come back to that in the ‘Individuals
Can Be Dumber Than A Box of Rocks” (with apologies to any rocks we may have
offended) portion of our show. The guy
on the right who looks like he just climbed out of a coal bin in his new K-mart
PJ’s and prosthetic 6-pac abs (which, by the way, Christopher Reeve refused to
wear – he chose instead to put on about 40 pounds of muscle for the role) is
Henry Cavil, the Man of Steel for a new generation. The follow the crowd tweet me, like me, pin
me, tag me, internet generation. The
generation for whom ‘getting personal’ is tweeting the girl sitting next to you
that you like her rather than just telling her.
Yeah. That lot. This is the
generation whose Batman, Spiderman, Hulk, and now Superman is slipping another
step further away from the light and into the darkness which is every day a
little bit more our world.
But me, I dunno. I still like Christopher Reeve; still prefer
the brighter, more colorful Superman Alexander and Ilya Salkind delivered back in 1978. Didn't much care for Warner Bros. turning
Batman into the 'dark' knight in every sense of the word, and not liking the
continuation of the trend in the new SuperDude.
Why do our childhood heroes have to be tarnished? In 1978 the tagline was “You will believe
that a man can fly!" Less
heroic? What's the point of that? That Superman was bright, heroic, and
hopeful. Just as Michael Keaton's Batman
was Dark without being morbid, Christopher Reeve managed to be "This
strange visitor from another planet who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild mannered
reporter for a great American Newspaper, fought a never ending battle for
truth, justice, and the American way" without being morbid, scary and
dark.
And now, thanks in no small part to
politicians who apologize for our great nation everywhere they go, to the point
where we Americans ourselves no longer believe in the dream that was
America...unless we can weasel it out of some kind of entitlement plan...are
left with a darker America, and hopeless, dark, no longer heroic heroes. So sad.
And that brings us back to the
picture. Those dates. They’re what trouble me. And the way a little lie hidden inside a big
truth dusts the truth with the silt of darkness. The left side of the photo - the bright,
colorful, hopeful side with Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel is an
advertising still for Superman the Movie, released by Warner Brothers in
1978. Twenty-eight years prior to the
date on the image and two years after Chris Reeve died in 2004!
Simply because someone, for whatever
reason – probably just picked the year out of the air – did what hundreds if
not thousands of people do every day on the internet and in other walks of
life. They made up a lie and passed it
off as truth that hundreds if not thousands of other internet users will then
blindly pass along. Insert quarter,
press play, repeat.
Apart from the seemingly inexplicable
need for Hollywood to taint our childhood heroes this one example is pretty
harmless, but every day I see hundreds of ‘pictures’ passed along on Facebook
by individuals who, if they bothered to read the message they were blindly
forwarding and the darkness they were blindly spreading they just might grasp
the fact that they are thoughtlessly doing so from the very basket from which
Jesus so passionately begs them to reveal His Light! As they lift the basket from one side to
reveal His Light, they are working equally hard to seal the cracks on the other
side lest the light somehow escape and penetrate the darkness that so quickly
surrounds them.
So, tarnished heroes aside, I am left
with the firm foundation of belief that Jesus is the eternal rock of my
Salvation.
He is the much needed light of the world;
the one hero Who neither time nor time’s minions can tarnish, their combined
and tireless efforts notwithstanding.
Still having just enough ‘old school’ in me to dust it off and remember,
I am reminded of the 19th century Lutheran minister, Edward Mote, who, while
preparing a sermon taken from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Chapter
seven, verses twenty-four through twenty-seven; ‘the Parable of the Two
Builders’ and later set to music in 1863 by William Bradbury, a hymn I know
from my youth as
On Christ the
Solid Rock I Stand.
My hope is built
on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood
and righteousness;
I dare not trust
the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean
on Jesus’ name.
Refrain:
On Christ, the
solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground
is sinking sand,
All other ground
is sinking sand.
When darkness
veils His lovely face,
I rest on His
unchanging grace;
In every high and
stormy gale,
My anchor holds
within the veil.
His oath, His
covenant, His blood
Support me in the
whelming flood;
When all around
my soul gives way,
He then is all my
hope and stay.
When He shall
come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in
Him be found;
Dressed in His
righteousness alone,
Faultless to
stand before the throne.
According to the internet Department of
Contrived statistics, 97% of you won’t pass this on, while 3% will ‘get the
joke’, wipe some of the tarnish from the beacon and share the light with
someone.
Or, as Jesus put it,
“And Jesus came and
spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and
on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded
you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Amen.” Matthew 28:18-20 NKJV
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