There’s a silly, but dangerous, little document making the rounds threatening faithful and sound brethren everywhere. Called, “Ten Commandments of Human Relations,” the second commandment is especially pernicious. It reads, “Smile at people. It takes 72 muscles to frown…only 14 to smile.” At first it didn’t seem so bad, but then I began to hear reports of those liberal brethren in Nashville, San Antonio, Dallas, or one of those hotbeds of the new hermeneutic actually smiling! Well, brethren, right then I knew it was something faithful brethren should avoid.
Only 14 muscles to smile, huh? Okay, right here you have one of the problems with smiling…it’s too easy! When people look at me, I don’t want them doing something lazy like smiling. Let them expend some effort and give me a good glowering frown. Smiling seems so…so…goody-goody or something. I don’t need all those smiling ninnies trying to make me feel good. In the unlikely event I want to be happy, I’ll handle it myself! You start going around smiling and people will think you’re up to something.
There’s a spiritual dimension to this as well. How can you be a faithful member of the church and have one of those idiotic grins on your mug? Look at those pictures of the restoration pioneers. Were any of them smiling?
Brethren, it’s not just the act of smiling that bothers me but where will it lead? The first thing you know, we’ll be seeing false teachers seduce Christians into having a good time! Soon people will get excited about their faith, start telling others and…well, need I say more? Surely you can see right there why we must nip this smiling business in the bud!
We have a time-honored tradition of maintaining stony-faced soberness in our assemblies. I know many faithful brethren who haven’t cracked a grin in years! We don’t need any liberal or modernist smile-agents disturbing the weak in faith. By the way, you can find a complete list of those advocating such unsound practices in my book, Behold the Slander. Look for the chapter entitled “Facial Expressions of Unsound Brethren.”
One last warning: smiling is extremely contagious! First one person smiles at another…who invariably smiles at someone else and, before you know it, “…a little leaven hath leavened the whole lump!”
Tragically, I hear there’s smiling going on some campuses of our Christian colleges. I hear that some of the professors actually have advocated this nonsense in the classroom! The graduates of these institutions tend to have their heads filled with “uncertain sounds.”
So, be warned: wipe that smile off your face! Can you think of anything more disgusting than a formerly sound and faithful church being filled with smiling Christians?
4 Comments
May 30, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Dear Dwight, I totally agree. If it were not for those simple smiling faces we often see when looking at a rainbow in a drought plagued landscape, then we might loose all sorts of perspective as to how we are to respond to the great gifts of God. We might have to “rejoice” and that can only lead to “rejoicing yet again”. What a catastrophe! Glee in the church! Why, there may even be jokes told -at Church services, -by preachers, -on purpose! There might even be room for ‘christo-ethnic cynicism’. Oh, you are so right, brother! I shall be more careful in the future and shall refrain from smiling, except when I see such brilliance in a diagnostic morphng of reality. Oh, yes brother!! Marvin, your non-smile-disciple down in Australia. I shall pass the word.
May 31, 2007 at 2:23 am
Brother Marvin…I am rejoicing that you have once again affirmed the truth. May we be blessed with more faithful brethren like you who understand the dangers of those upturned lips and smiling eyes. When Irish eyes are smiling, sure ’twill be a terrible thing!
June 1, 2007 at 5:47 am
Dear Dwight
Is there any hope for me?
In my eagerness to reform my sisters into experiencing a happier and healthier lifestyle, I have actually taught classes on LAUGHTER - a step far beyond SMILING!
Being totally ignorant of the great danger I was subjecting myself and others to, I used scripture to back up my words - (out of context, and without understanding the REAL meaning of the words, I now believe.)
THANK YOU for bringing this great error - I have a hard time saying sin - to my attention.
Somber, sober, unsmiling repentence is seriously called for. I”ll work on it!
June 8, 2007 at 10:40 pm
There he was again! A very “Religious” young man (30ish) I used to work with in a warehouse, who absolutely hates the church of Christ with a passion. Just as he proclaimed his “righteousness” in the warehouse with his “frown and scowl” routine, he began again at the table in the restaraunt , speaking to his “family” loud enough for my Shirley and I to hear. He proclaimed to his extremely quiet and submissive wife and young son about how defensive church of Christ people get when he blows them away with his Bible knowledge. …I must confess, I have joy and peace in believing, and I, uh, I was, uh,…smiling.
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