Paddle Ball
WORD PICTURE: PADDLE BALL
Scriptural Reference: Galatians 6:7,8
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature (or his flesh, from the flesh) will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
1. Have someone(s) read the scripture from various translations.
2. Demonstrate the paddle ball (a toy that consists of a paddle with a ball attached by an elastic cord), then read the hypothetical story of Ronald Opus, who died from a shotgun wound to the head:
At the 1987 awards dinner for the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, AAFS President Don Harper Mills included a tall tale on complex forensics in his opening remarks (it has since been passed around the internet as an urban legend.) The following is a recount of Dr. Mills' story:
On March 23 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a gunshot wound of the head caused by a shotgun. Investigation to that point had revealed that the decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building with the intent to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency.) As he passed the ninth floor on the way down, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, killing him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected outside the eighth floor to protect some window washers, and that the decedent would not have been able to complete his intent to commit suicide because of this.
Ordinarily, a person who starts into motion the events with a suicide intent ultimately commits suicide even though the mechanism might be not what he intended. That he was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not change his mode of death from suicide to homicide, but the fact that his suicide intent would not have been achieved under any circumstance caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
Further investigation led to the discovery that the room on the ninth floor from which the shotgun blast had emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. He was threatening her with the shotgun because of an marital spat and became so upset that he could not hold the shotgun straight. Therefore, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife, and the pellets went through the window, striking the decedent.
When one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. The old man was confronted with this conclusion, but both he and his wife were adamant in stating that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. It was the longtime habit of the old man to threaten his wife with an unloaded shotgun. He had no intent to murder her; therefore, the killing of the decedent appeared then to be accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.
But further investigation turned up a witness that their son was seen loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal accident. That investigation showed that his mother (the old lady) had cut off her son's financial support, and her son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that the father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of that son for the death of Ronald Opus.
Further investigation revealed that Ronald Opus himself was the son who became increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to get his mother murdered. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth-story window.
The underlying message of this urban legend: what’s sent out comes back (at least).
What I Shared
After I became a Christian, I learned about the principle of tithing-- that you can’t out-give God. My husband, however, felt that tithing was a risky way to budget for a family.
Money became tighter and tithing more of a conflict between us, when, suddenly and after twenty years of marriage, we were expecting a baby. During that pregnancy, I learned to pray that God would show both my husband and me how to make the best use of our resources as He blessed us.
I prayed that I would let go of both the conflict over tithing and my fear that our income would not meet our expenses.
After baby Ned was born, I joined my husband in the ranks of unemployment. Our child now had two parents out of work, worried, even despondent. Despite all this, the baby grew into a strong and enthusiastic toddler. But all I knew was that I was scared for him – and us. Financial scarcity had won, at least to my natural eyes and here was this child, a mere toddler, with both of his parents out of work. For me, professionally, the best alternative seemed to be to offer myself as a free-lance writer -- an unlikely solution for garnering the $1,000 per minute that was required just to breathe in Fairfield County. Nevertheless, I did. And an amazing thing happened. I got some work. Not much, but enough. Three hundred dollars was better than nothing.
And when that tiny check came, I decided right then and there to tithe. And this is the true summary of what actually in fact and indeed did happen as I started writing out that check for a tithe of $30. The phone rang. It was my brother saying that "Mother needs to gift out of her income for tax purposes, and it means we are each to receive $10,000." That phone call came as I was putting the decimal point into my check for $30. I hung up the phone and said out loud, “Okay God! I get it!”
So—do you tithe? How do you pray concerning money? What about the issues in the story of Ronald Opus?
All Scripture references from the New International Version of the Bible (NIV).
Copyright by Whitney McKendree Moore, October 2006