You Cannibal, You Ogre, Your Majesty
April 28, 2008
By Scott Harrup
A friend recently gave me a desk calendar of random
historical events. The February 26 entry listed a series of newspaper blurbs
from France in 1815. Journalists of the day were following Napoleon’s escape
from exile on the Island of Elba and his renewed attempts at European conquest.
On March 9: “The Cannibal has escaped from his den.” March
10: “The Corsican ogre has just landed at Cape Juan.” The slurs continue for
the next week and a half until March 21: “His imperial and royal majesty last
evening made his entrance into his Palace of the Tuileries, amidst the joyous
acclamations of an adoring and faithful people.”
Thanks to a growing number of ever-popular Shrek
installations, Napoleon might get by with “ogre” today. But how do you shed the
odium of “cannibal” and receive “the joyous acclamations of an adoring and
faithful people”?
Most of us take media pronouncements of the famous with a
grain of salt. Mark Twain, in his speech “License of the Press” observed, “That
awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde
of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking
and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.”
If we look with a jaded eye at the constant shift in public
opinion, how many of us allow a similar fickleness to filter into our
relationships? Ask yourself if your perception of a spouse, sibling, parent or
friend dramatically morphed the last time that person pleased you or
disappointed you.
Lately I’ve been reflecting on 1 Corinthians 13 and its list
of love’s characteristics. I see there a passion for valuing others and
building them up, regardless of the mistakes they make. I like being valued and
built up—and I make more than my share of mistakes—so I’m thinking
life will improve for all us individually and collectively in proportion to how
seriously we live by that little manifesto.
— Scott Harrup is senior associate editor of Today’s
Pentecostal Evangel and blogs at Out There (sharrup.agblogger.org).
