Taking an ax to hypocrisy

I pulled the ax over my head and thrust it down hard on the large log in front of me. Thwack! I took another swing. Thwack! And another and another.

When I was in high school, I worked several summers on a small farm. The farmer hired me to do odd jobs like mowing his yard, fixing fence posts, moving furniture, fixing machinery. The jobs tended to vary from day to day.

Comin’ in hot

When I arrived for work one morning, the farmer must have recognized that something was wrong. I was actually seething inside. He asked me to cut up a large oak tree. The tree had fallen a few weeks back. He wanted it divided into smaller pieces of firewood. He had a wood-burning stove and would dry the wood out over the summer and then use it to keep the house warm in the winter.

I went after the logs like a tornado touching down in a forest. I turned whatever I saw into kindling. Rat-a-tat-tat. I was splitting whatever was in front of me one after another. I was wood cutting machine. I was at it for three hours. When the farmer called me in for lunch, I was soaked in sweat and grime. My muscles ached too.

When I pulled up to the farm that morning, I was boiling mad. I was upset by a know-it-all neighbor who had spewed self-righteous, judgmental opinions about one of my teachers. The neighbor was soliciting support to go to the school board to stop the teacher from using several books, including Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and 1984 in class. The neighbor claimed the novels were “trash.” She went further. She claimed the teacher was a bad influence and was confusing young impressionable minds.

My parents paid the neighbor no attention, but I was livid. I found the idea preposterous. Banning William Golding, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, and George Orwell. I still find it crazy.

A lesson in understanding people

My friend, the farmer, knew exactly how to help me vent. He let me attack the woodpile and then we grabbed lunch and chatted. He didn’t say much about the neighbor. He just ate his sandwich while I got my feelings off my chest.

After a few minutes, the farmer, who had once worked as a big city English teacher, asked me if I had ever watched the movie To Kill a Mockingbird.

He reminded me of the line that Miss Maudie, a friend and neighbor to protagonist Atticus Finch, uses. She gives a lesson in morality in one simple line.

She says: “Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of another.”

Blessed are the peacemakers

It’s a favorite line of mine. It reminds me that self-righteous interpretation of faith can lead to greater moral failings than other so-called sin.

In fact, the Bible can be a weapon in the hands of the wrong people. Instead of love and compassion, it can promote harm and intolerance. I find the line especially telling during crazy times like the present when many folks confuse right and wrong and seek out division instead of unity.

In the end, Author Harper Lee’s line teaches me an important lesson. Hypocritical behavior is self-serving. It leads people away from God. It does not lead them to him.

We all should aim higher.

Letting it up to God

And oh yea, the nosy neighbor. She didn’t get too far with her quest to ban the books. She gave up when she told her preacher about her plans. He listened intently but suggested she could find better things to do with her time.

She was especially disappointed when he told her that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and 1984 were two of his favorite books.

Yes, let’s aim higher.

. . .

—”The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” –Socrates

—“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” –Leo Tolstoy