| Psalm 119:105 – “Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” |
We grow up thinking a lot of things are true.
That’s especially true of sayings.
Think about some of these?
Nice guys finish last. (Attributed to baseball manager Leo Durocher)
Elementary, my dear Watson. (from the lips of detective Sherlock Holmes)
Dr. Livingstone, I presume. (Uttered by Henry Morton Stanley after finding missionary David Livingstone in the African jungle.)
But are they true?
Here is what was said and not said:
Durocher, the coach of the Brooklyn Dodgers, said, “They (the Giants) are in 7th place. Nice guys finish in 7th place.”
When Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes, nowhere is the phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson” found. He uses “elementary” in certain passages and “my dear Watson” in others, but never together.
No one has ever established Stanley’s exclamation. It was taken from a New York Times account but never verified.
We sometimes rely on “common sense” or “what is known.” For most things in life, that’s good enough, even if it is not accurate.
But when it comes to real living, life-and-death-and eternity issues, close enough is never enough. You need to get truth from a different place.
-Robert Taylor
