Not Wrong, Just Different

The pastor’s message is on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, but God is talking to me privately as I watch two of our kids fill in the blanks on their bulletin inserts.

Lately I’ve been chafing under edits to my writing, and quite frankly I’ve gotten bent out of shape. But as blobs, shadings and various graffiti appear on Liza’s sermon sheet beside me, I hear calming words in my mind “Not wrong or right, just different.”

You see, her brother Levi’s approach is different – completely different. The penmanship is perfect, almost as if it had been typewritten. He earnestly suggests he might talk to Pastor Len after the service to fill in words he has missed while listening to the sermon. And be sure that Levi would never claim the reward – a candy bar – unless he’d filled in every blank.

I had lost perspective somehow, obviously forgetting how subjective is the matter of writing. Editors do not communicate in mathematical, algebraic, and calculus formulas; but instead subjectively. Then just as an artist casts light on his subject, the writer brings out different shadows and hues for the reader to feel, see and experience.

I watch Liza scrawl a quick answer into the blank, then hurry back to her shading. She also chooses to decorate her sermon sheet with a couple of Christmas messages, “Christ is born” and “Happy Christmas.”



Enter my thoughts, Alexander Meiklejohn, a philosopher and educator. A free speech champion.

I think of my reading of the evening before. Meiklejohn described how in 1919, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that speech normally protected by the First Amendment could be regulated by authorities if such speech poses a “clear and present danger” to the government.

The Court unanimously upheld a lower court’s conviction of men who’d been accused of obstructing the draft. In subsequent rulings, Holmes further refined the definition of a threat, or as he wrote, “opinions that we loathe and think to be fraught with death” may still be voiced “unless “an immediate check is required to save the country.” Meiklejohn summarizes by saying Holmes’ newer language means the threat must “be clear and present, but, also, terrific.”

A brilliant legal mind, recoginized in any discussion of the First Amendment. Also, a man in process. Could I admit that I am likewise a work in process, a writer in process? I think of Holmes’ incisive mind but flawed worldview and muse how Meiklejohn can at once hold the late Justice in high regard and also dissect and discount some of his views.

Why would I need to be right when a different opinion is very valuable? Sometimes another’s opinion; sometimes my own views after more study, more thought, more prayer.

And Lazarus by now? With a little expository license, Pastor Len has us chuckling as he imagines Lazarus charged in court before the Sanhedrin on a repeat offense: “he was dead and he came back to life.”

Wonder enters. Two kids from the same mom and dad who do things entirely differently.


And hopefully for the coming week, patience with others. I need to carry something with me. And patience with myself. I am a work in progress.