Write it on the Ice

Back in the 1870’s Tom Davenport worked a large outfit of cowboys on his ranch in Brown’s Hole, Wyoming. One of them, Edwin Howell, earned the nickname “Buckskin Ed” because of his preference for pants made from that material. On a trip to town, cleaned out in a local gambling den and needing a new pair of trousers, Buckskin Ed sauntered into the local haberdashery, ordered and received a complete new outfit, then strolled toward the door without paying. When the shopkeeper protested, Buckskin Ed drawled, “Write it on the ice, and if it don’t melt off I’ll pay you sometime maybe.” Dissatisfied with this method of bookkeeping, the merchant peppered the retreating cowboy with double-barrels of buckshot and regained his property. “Write it on ice” became a local proverb meaning, “Forget about it.”[1]

While “write it on the ice” might be a poor fiscal policy, it provides a pretty good motto for Christian forgiveness.

Too often we keep Job-accounts of sins against us, “Oh that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever,” (Job 19.24); yet we expect our own faults to find no longer life than a finger-traced scrawl on a fogged car window. We yearn to crack open the canon and add one more imprecatory prayer to the psalter and call down curses on those who wrong us; yet assume that our own trespasses will find a transitory testimony scratched into an ice cube under a blazing summer sun.

Our Teacher, by contrast, tells us that while we get to pick the pen and parchment of personal moral accounting, we can keep only one set of books: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Mt 6.14-15) The blood of Christ expunges the record of my wrongs but slops over the entire scroll to blot out the crimes committed against me as well. We have access to the Sharpee of justice or the erasable marker of grace but must hand the same instrument to our creditors as well as our debtors.

If someone has harmed you, write it on the ice. Otherwise, you may find that the buckshot of bitterness blasts holes in your own buckskin breeches and leaves you standing more holey than holy before the Great White Throne.

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[1]Charles Kelly, The Outlaw Trail: A History of Butch Cassidy and His Wild Bunch, 2 ed. (New York: Bonanza, 1959), 79-80.

They Call Him the Streak

But he left his garment in her hand, and fled and ran outside. - Genesis 39.12

As a kid catching lizards in my backyard, I learned the hard way that those wily reptiles have detachable tails. The fish-scale gecko of northern Madagascar goes that trick one better: It shucks its entire scaly skin and slithers to freedom. Predators clutch at a miniature Godzilla only to wind up with a mouthful of cellophane while their plump prey scampers pinkly into hiding. The gecko regrows its outer crust in a matter of weeks and goes on about its business with no ill effects.

If, as Falstaff claims in Shakespeare's Henry IV, "the better part of valor is discretion," perhaps it is also true that sometimes vulnerability is the best defense. Sometimes we need to leave without taking account of what we leave behind.

Joseph fled with his wardrobe diminished but his integrity in tact. As a swarthy-skinned member of a minority race he couldn't dodge hard time after a trumped-up trial, but he clothed himself in honor all the same. Lot's wife left Sodom but lingered for a longing look; her desire to hang on left her with a fatal sodium count. David shed Saul's armor because he fought better unencumbered by all that kingly bling. Elisha's servant Gehazi traded the truth for two new suits that must've made him the best-dressed denizen of the local leper colony. The unidentified youngster in the Garden of Gethsemane wound up minus a bed sheet but fled in his own whole hide. Paul left his cloak in Troas but arrived in Rome with an unsoiled soul.

"Naked I came from my mother's womb," observes Job, "and naked I shall return." Jesus points out that God lavishes red carpet-level tailoring on weeds and wildflowers that outstrip Solomon's sartorial splendor. What superficial scales leave handholds for sin as we scamper through life? "The secret to survival," says Kenny Rogers' famous gambler, "is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep." May God grant us grace today to be loving losers of the Lord who will one day clothe us in the white garments of his own eternal righteousness, which no man can take from us.

Cannibal Christianity

If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. – Galatians 5.15

        In 1874 a prospector named Alferd Packer headed across the Rocky Mountains for the California gold fields along with five companions. When the winter snows stranded them and supplies ran out, Packer killed and ate his companions. The University of Colorado now boasts an Alferd Packer Memorial Grill in its student union. They also celebrate an annual Alferd Packer day with a raw meat-eating contest.

        Polite human society frowns on cannibalism; the animal kingdom seems to get into it. Under certain conditions, chickens engage in a “pick-out,” where the dominant birds devour their lower-cast cousins. It is the rare species of fish that doesn’t devour the eggs or larvae of its own kind. Sand tiger sharks snack on their siblings in the womb. Polar bears, lions, vultures: all belly up to the intra-species smorgasbord. Gary Polis, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis says that many invertebrates don’t recognize their own kind as anything other than a food source.

        Animals eat their own kind; human beings don’t. Well, at least not for the most part. Turns out the practice, in addition to being really icky, has consequences. The Fore tribe of New Guinea used to eat ritual portions of their deceased relatives, a practice which led to the spread of the Kuru virus, a sort of mad cow disease for primates, that had killed off their kinfolk in the first place.

        Paul gets at this idea when he warns the Galatians against Christian cannibalism. His verbs – bite, devour, consume – carry the idea of National Geographic-style chow-downs replete with the crack of bones and rip of tendons. Galatian gossip took on the overtones of a feeding frenzy as they chummed the living water of the gospel with chunks of shredded reputations.

        We should watch how we talk about one another. The psalmist laments those whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. Such verbal switchblades are the un-Christian cutlery of a diseased fellowship that threatens to bring about its own doom. May God grant us grace to speak life, that our speech might always feed, and never feed on, our own spiritual flesh.