Leaving Stuff Out

It is amazing what leaving something out can do to the meaning of an idea.

A great example of this is a new blog, Garfield Minus Garfield. From the description on the site:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

And what follows are actual Garfield cartoons, with everyone removed but Jon, Garfield’s owner. And what was a comic about a smart-alecky cat, providing a chuckle, becomes positively disturbing.

Yes, leaving stuff out changes ideas. And not just the small ideas, or the ideas that are, in the big picture, insignificant, like comics (sorry, Brett).

It’s also true of Christianity.

Matthew 23:23

23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. (ESV)

You see, Jesus here is lamenting the religion of the scribes and Pharisees. They are very meticulous in the smallest detail of their practice. They even give 10% of the very herbs they grow back to the Temple (“tithe mint and dill and cumin”), in the strictest observance of God’s Law.

But still, they neglected the larger, weightier matters: justice and mercy and faithfulness.

Micah 6:8

8 He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (ESV)

Note that Jesus is not criticizing them for their adherence to the details (“without neglecting the others”). But he is making it very clear that leaving out the bigger things, is a woe unto them.

And to us if we do likewise.