Many times people will put style over substance.
I'll never forget the story that my dad would tell us on occasion, dealing with this very subject. As a young boy growing up in the sandlots of Pittsburgh , he had a chance to play quite a bit of baseball, and ended up on an organized team when he was a teenager. The team improved enough to make the playoffs.
The story goes, as my dad tells it, that some of the boys knew that there would be a fair-sized crowd to see the playoff game, so they cleaned up their uniforms and bought some new shoes, caps and even gloves in order to make a good display.
The game was very close, and going into the ninth inning my dad's team was down by one run, but with two outs, was able to get a runner over to third base. On an infield smash, the runner at third base made a dash for home. The catcher got the ball, holding the ball high for a tag. All the runner needed to do was slide... but he didn't. He ran toward home, and was tagged out by the catcher, and that was the end of the game.
My dad and his teammates surrounded the runner. "Why didn't you slide?" they asked. "You could have tied the game."
"Hey," said the runner, "these are new shoes, and no way I'm going to risk scuffing them up."
In order to keep up his appearance, the runner forgot that the main reason he was out there was to win the game!
He forgot the obvious.
This came across my desk some years ago and I've kept it in my file for quite some time. It was from an international business magazine, and the article was talking about strange and odd bits of news. The report came out about an unusual business move by the owner of a South Korean movie house.
It seems that the theater owner got the rights to a very famous American movie and with joy, announced its release to the public. However, when he previewed it, he was bothered by what he saw. This theater owner decided that the movie "The Sound of Music" was too long, and wanted to pack in as many people as possible. He decided to take care of the problem by shortening the movie so he could have more showings per day. How did he do it? Believe it or not, he shortened it by cutting out all of the musical scenes!
Sometimes in a rush to get a result, people will make poor judgments that divert them from the very goal they seek.
In Acts 4:20 Peter and John are warned to speak of Christ no longer. They answer in a straightforward way, by replying that "we cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard. The words in the Koine Greek "ou dunamai" denote more than Peter and John's reluctance to stop speaking. The word "dunamai" is where we get the word for dynamite. More strongly worded, it could say this: "We have no power to stop speaking of the things we witnessed." Peter and John knew the reason they were put on Earth; they knew their ministry. So should we Christians. Simply be witnesses of the fantastic things Christ has done for us.
