Actually knowing what you’re talking about

I've always been a bit picky about certain things… mainly things that like no one else is picky about. I hate when people use expressions wrong, like saying “I could care less” when they actually mean that they couldn't care less, and other things of that nature. Most of it has to do with words and the way people say things, which leads to this post.

Went to church tonight and they did that song “Scandal of Grace” (chill out this isn’t a religion based post), and at one point I looked at the words and I’m like wait why are they calling it a scandal? What’s scandalous about it? Doesn't that make it sound negative?

Unsurprisingly, the person who wrote the song was not being stupid and it actually has a pretty interesting meaning behind it, but it took me asking a few people to get a good answer for it. I had to get the whole way to asking the pastor of the church to get an answer that I actually liked.

I’m not saying it’s shameful or wrong that some people didn't have the right answer to a random and largely unimportant question, but I do think that we have a habit as humans of not ever thinking about the things we say or read. People never stop to really think about stuff. They’ll read something analogous and never even think to discover the analogy.

This mainly applies to situations in Christianity to me I suppose because that’s where I see it the most… so here’s another Christian example.

There’s this Bible verse that says it’s “easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get to heaven”. Scary verse, but that’s not the point right now. The fact is that everybody I’ve ever talked to about that verse has no idea what it actually means. They think it’s just saying that it’s really hard for a rich person to get to heaven because of the comparison to a huge ass camel fitting through the space that’s occupied by a tiny little needle. GUESS WHAT — they probably didn’t have NEEDLES when that verse was written. It means something completely different and you’d just do a tiny bit of research you could figure it out. It really changes the whole meaning of the verse, which isn’t something you’d want to miss out on if you really cared.

Maybe I’m being picky again, but I just really wish people would be more conscious with their words.