Isn’t it a shame when certain things that really should not have been gone out of vogue ended up being doing so on account of a few snivellers? It seems as though it is always a handful of crybabies that end up squawking the loudest, and ruining it for the rest of us who were just minding our own business and not harming anybody. It is amazing how many words have become politically incorrect because somebody out there took offense and demanded that the word be stricken from our every day vocabulary even if the word was perfectly applicable and useful in many practical ways. I know I am going to get my gums wrapped for this, but the word ‘retarded’ stands out in my opinion as one of several very useful words which have gone the way of the dodo. Just because the odd person uses the word in a derogatory way does not mean that it should be considered a dirty word in and of itself.
When I was a kid, there was a boy in my grade one class who was severely mentally challenged. Instead of being forced to resort to some cerebral sounding term in order to distinguish him from the rest of the kids, we simply referred to him as “Retarded Micheal”. Everybody loved Micheal. Sounds a little like a sitcom, eh? Basically all he could do was sit there with a big smile on his face and say “Hiiii” in a loud voice over and over again. No one would have ever called Micheal retarded in a mean spirited way. He was just a retarded guy, period. Nothing more, nothing less. I suppose if someone wanted to use the term “Mentally Challenged” in a hostile way they could do it easily enough. It just takes an extra word to get the point across.
Has anyone ever wondered if all of us are ‘slightly retarded’ in our own rights? It’s just that some of us are just more retarded than others. Maybe, in reality, those that are considered the most retarded in the eyes of men are in fact the closest to God in reality. After all, wouldn’t God let someone who is essentially a child mentally off the hook, since they really don’t have an evil bone in their body? In reality, aren’t those that cannot understand the difference between right and wrong, be in fact, innocent of sin? After all, Jesus DID say that we must become like little children before we can enter the kingdom of heaven. After all, did he not say that that the Kingdom belonged to the little children and those like them? Aren’t we, the so called ‘normal ones’, or ‘grown ups’ in fact, the only ones who truly need to repent?
Most people seem to fall into the category of what would be considered normal. Then again, just who are these people that decide what ‘normal’ really is? I have personally known a lot of devout ‘Church goers’ who in my humble estimation seem to be a tad ‘Socially Retarded’. Due to years of living inside protective bubbles these individuals may appear normal within their insular little church groups when compared to one another, but when compared to everyone else on the outside of the bubble looking in, their glaring social deficiencies become painfully apparent. There have been numerous times that when in the presence of these folks, I’m sure they thought I was a little ‘Retarded’ myself. The fact that I was able to laugh out loud and be rather exuberant about my relationship with the Lord and my friends seemed to garner some critical stares and comments that indicated that they thought that I was an immature buffoon or possibly even somewhat of an ‘idiot’. A certain dour faced old ‘Christian Reformed’ codger named John Vander – ‘Blechhh’ (not his real name) used to patrol the foyer of his precious church building after the formal service ended, searching for anyone apparently having a little too much fun. Upon spotting you, he would glare witheringly in your general direction and scornfully rebuke you for daring to exhibit far too much joy while standing on such ‘hallowed ground’. Hopefully John’s joy has since been paroled, since at some point way back whenever, it had obviously been arrested and put to death by the Calvinist ‘Khmer Rouge’, at the behest of the spirit of John Calvin and his band of ’Not so merry henchmen’. Father forgive him for acting out in such a way since it was apparently ‘all he had ever known’.
One cold winter’s night in February of 2006 me and a real cool guy named Herman were returning from a business trip to Waterloo Wisconsin, where we had been visiting the ‘Trek’ bicycle factory for educational purposes. Upon our arrival at the Buffalo airport, we proceeded to locate my pickup truck which I had parked in the vast airport parking lot. Upon finding it, it was obvious that some snow had fallen over the last few days and the windshield was covered with the white stuff. I proceeded to open the door and began searching for a snow brush inside, but to no avail. Herman, who was a former member of the Canadian military and an ex paratrooper, wryly commented that the fact I did not have a brush/scraper combo in my truck as standard equipment was just plain ‘Retarded’. Ouwwwch! Perhaps the fact that he was a first generation child to Dutch immigrants may have played a role in his ‘Brutal Honesty’. One way or another, he WAS right, and that’s probably why it stung the way it did, and I am now sharing this with you for your benefit. By the way, I really liked Herman. I’m not so sure the feeling was mutual, but there was something about him that I found somewhat refreshing. Actually, it kind of reminded me of an episode from the original Star Trek series titled ‘Mirror Mirror’ where the infamous ’Transporter’ device once again malfunctioned, this time catapulting Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, and Chekov into a parallel universe that was much more brutal than the one they normally resided in. The cool thing was that the Enterprise and its crew existed there as well, somewhat like a ‘mirror image’, but a much harsher and unforgiving version. In a nutshell, our intrepid crew of travelers had to figure out a way to get back to their proper place, but faced a few obstacles, one of which was a colder, harder Mr. Spock who sported a black ‘Van Dyke Goatee’ as opposed to the ‘Good Spock’s’ clean shaven, babyface look. As much as he was a little bit nastier than good Spock, the bad Spock apparently wasn’t so bad after all. Upon realizing that there had been some weird ‘Switcheroo’ and his ‘Bad’ captain and crew were in a similar predicament on the flip side of the universe, he assisted in sending the good guys back to where they belonged by personally operating the Good ole’ unreliable transporter as a favor. In an impassioned plea prior to his departure, ‘Good Kirk’ challenged ‘Mean Spock’ to ‘Think outside of the box’ and take a good hard look at the illogical policies of the brutal empire he was part of. It worked! Spock’s last words to Kirk before he ‘hit the switch’ were “Captain Kirk, I shall consider it”. I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it.
There is another ‘R’ word that comes to mind as I write my ‘impassioned plea’ to all whosoever may read this. That word is ‘Resurrection’. It is the resurrection of Jesus Christ that is the ‘Linchpin’ of the whole structure of teachings we as Christians believe to be true.
In the dazed and confused world of North American ‘Christian’ denominations, the facts concerning the resurrection of our Lord have been sadly understated and poorly represented by most avid ‘Churchgoers’ to the detriment of the furtherance of the ‘Good News’. How can we hope to convince anyone in their ‘right mind’ that they need to dramatically change their lives when we do such a ‘piss poor’ job of convincing them that Jesus was raised from the dead? I’m ‘dead serious’ about this. Over the years I’ve seen and heard many professed ‘Believers in Christ’ squabble over a multitude of controversies within their own ranks, much to the delight of those that oppose our message. Basically, the world has been watching what they consider to be a bunch of hypocritical clowns hurling crap at each other in an attempt to prove who is right to the gratification of their own egos. Meanwhile, the ‘Empty Tomb’ remains unguarded, and attacked repeatedly as nothing but a fallacy and a colorful figment of the ‘Christian Imagination’. I confess, I am extremely guilty of failing my Lord in this crucial area of trying to convince ‘unbelievers’ as to the truth about whether or not he really was raised after all. Yes, in my heart I may know it to be true, but for those that don’t believe, I’m afraid that just aint good enough, and rightly so. We need to step up our game in this particular area, and shouldn’t be surprised when we ramble on and on about why people should become christians, and hope that when we tell them about the resurrection they will buy it, no questions asked. Is it any wonder that people look at us as though we are, and I hate to say it, ‘Retarded’.
Dear Lord, please help us to appreciate why people think we are retarded when we talk about how your Son Jesus was raised from the dead. Please help us to look deep inside and examine ourselves and whether we actually believe in the resurrection ourselves, for if we really don’t, people are going to see right through us and laugh their heads off at us for being so arrogant for actually believing THEY are the retarded ones for not listening to us.
To God be the glory, and to the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen!
Wednesday October 8th, 2025
Written by
Lucien Alexander Delean, aka, Looch