"I like cooking my family and my pets." I saw that phrase framed on the wall in a Washington County school classroom. The next line read, "Use commas. Don't be a psycho!" Careless composition carries hilarious consequences.
Details matter. For example, in legal documents, the use of shall versus will can be critical. "The lawyer shall pay proceeds to..." "The prisoner shall be remanded to custody..." In matters of law, will can mean you may, while shall carries the force of law. You absolutely must do it. Big difference, right?
Boeing Airlines introduced an anti-stall system on their latest 737 jets, their MAX fleet. Purchasers liked the newer engines as they consumed much less fuel. Reports say the new design with bigger engines moved the center of gravity forward. Nose up, a plane can lose speed and stall. To counteract this, Boeing added a computerized anti-stall system that forced the nose of the plane downward. But apparently, not all the pilots around the world were alerted to this new feature nor were they trained in how to handle malfunctions or faulty wind-speed indicators.
Oops. This detail mattered. Two crashes later, and hundreds left dead in only five months. These were brand new airplanes! This is horrible for the people who died and for their families, and it is terrible for this great American company. Airbus may cut into their global sales as a result. Americans may lose jobs. I hope Boeing fixes it quickly and honestly.
Volkswagen (VW) had corporate leaders that cheated on diesel emission regulations, thus bilking thousands of automobile purchasers and violating EPA regulations regarding air pollution. They skated right past inspections until they got caught. They cheated, lied, got caught, and it has cost them about $31 billion. They are still facing SEC charges of lying to their investors. This is awful. They had a great public profile of good quality, but that's down the drain. They'll recover, but it will be costly for decades.
Walmart asked for anonymous feedback from their employees so they could find out what they could do to increase the satisfaction of store workers. Thousands of personnel sent in their thoughts. Do you know what the top concern was? You'd never guess! The store workers, by a huge margin, wanted the paper toilet seat covers for the bathroom stalls brought back. Management had had them all removed to save the cost of refills. If you've ever been to a Walmart store bathroom, you know it often seems filthy, despite the best efforts of sanitation. No sane person would drive across town just to visit a Walmart toilet, but apparently, a lot of careless people with questionable hygiene are happy to discover indoor plumbing. So, what do Walmart workers want for Christmas? Toilet seat protectors! A little detail that turned out to be an important item was affecting the morale of valuable employees.
What if we carried the discussion of small details into the area of the family? Modern media and culture has redefined the family as a group living in the same house. It no longer seems necessary that two parents be in that house, or that one parent ought to be masculine: a male, a man, a father, a husband. Any person will do, regardless of gender, marital status, level of adulthood, ability to hold a job, or being able to raise kids. The little detail that has been important for millennia is omitted, which says (shall, not will), "For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh..."
-- Ron Wood is a writer and minister. Email him at [email protected] or visit www.touchedbygrace.org. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 03/27/2019