Southern-Fried Wisdom 2
Poop or Apple Butter
Another one of the sayings I heard as a kid, I’ll have to clean up a little for this post. It always comes to mind whenever I hear a story from someone or meet someone new. The saying has some wisdom to help us with trusting what people have to share with us. We all hear things said and stories told by people all the time. The real problem sometimes is do we really know who are what to truly believe. Proverbs 18:17 says, “Any story sounds true until someone sets the record straight.” We hear a story and just don’t know if it is true or not. Sometimes it is almost impossible to know the truth when we hear it.
Gossip spreads like a wildfire and causes just as much damage in the hearts and minds of the people it burns. Don’t you just stop and wonder why some people say the things they say. But more than that I often wonder why other people are so quick to believe it and just accept it as true. We need to trust an old encouragement from the Bible when it comes to what we hear from anyone. Job 34:3-4: “The ear tests words as the tongue tastes food. Let’s decide for ourselves what is right, and let’s learn together what is good.” We need to test the words people tell us. I may sound like I’m telling you not to trust anyone, I’m not. I am encouraging all of us to weigh the stories and words we hear from others. Especially when we don’t know the person telling the story or the person it is about.
We can never be sure why people say the things they do, we just have to make sure we keep an open mind to the fact that they may not be telling everything. It doesn’t only stop with what we hear. We need to be the ones to not tell or share things we know we shouldn’t be sharing. You have to be careful not to become “that person.” Above all else we must resist the temptation to spread lies or gossip, sometimes by not spreading it with our own mouths or by not letting it get planted into our own ears. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the wise saying, didn’t I? Well hear it goes and remember I’m cleaning it up from how my grandfather first said it to me. I heard over breakfast one day when I didn’t like what my grandmother gave me to put on my toast. My grandpa looked at me and said, “If you don’t know the difference between poop and apple butter, don’t eat toast with a stranger.” Wise words I’ve always weighed the words of others by.