“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen”
~ Matthew 28:18-20
Dennis Loyd proofs what is undoubtedly the most well-proofed bulletin in the brotherhood. It is also proofed by Kathy Jarrell, Tommie Collins, and Anne Marie Robertson. So when you spot my mistakes, you ought to feel talented. Another way to look at this is that I make so many mistakes it takes four people to catch them all! I’m sure I’m often a blot on the senses of these talented “grammariticians.”
Even before my “stuff” ever gets to anyone else, my computer checks it out. It spots words I have “made up” either intentionally or unintentionally. It spots verbs that do not wish to agree with their nouns. And it spots sentences that are too long or incomplete. It also gives me suggestions on how to mend my grammatical sins.
A couple of weeks ago I was working on an article on baptism. Of course, I inserted Matthew 28:18-20 where our Lord not only gives us directive (teach/baptize/teach), but direction (go into all the world). When I told my computer to put those verses in, it complied, but then it put a red line under the sentence telling me something was out of place. The sentence, it told me, was too long. I first thought about telling the computer to take it up with Matthew, or Christ, or the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t my sentence anyway. It gave me some options on what to do with this long sentence. One of them caught my eye: Ignore Sentence.
Ignore sentence. While there are a lot of options of what to do with Jesus’ words, I suppose my computer pointed out the one most often taken— ignore sentence. Many individuals have decided to do that with this verse. Just ignore it.
Some read the clear importance our Lord places on baptism here and ignore the fact that it is the Son of God telling one to be baptized. Some have heeded the command to be baptized, read Jesus’ words to “go” and “teach” and having heard that commission, choose to ignore sentence. Still others choose to “ignore sentence” by ignoring the fact that after a person becomes a Christian, other Christians have an ongoing responsibility to continue to teach them. They evidence their conviction by minimizing programs of work, fellowship, and edification—those things which aid so greatly in sustaining young faith. If my computer chooses to ignore the words of Christ, at worst it may crash, but if we choose “ignore sentence” we will crash and burn.
