Photo and Commentary ©2025 by Maylan Schurch
Friday, March 14, 2025
Let me hastily assure you of three things. First, my initial career was as a teacher of English, and even in my youthful ignorance I still realized how incredibly crazy my native language is.
Second, I have never dared to try to translate anything from English to any other language. That’s because I cannot speak any language besides English.
Third, I’ve always made it a practice not to defame the brand name of anything I portray in these photo parables.
That’s why I’m glad I don’t know the brand name, nor the sponsoring company, of the device which was attached to the opposite side of the instruction card you see in the photo above. Shelley had given me these children’s chopsticks as a “just kidding” gift – she knows very well how klutzily I handle the real variety, and how I make sure that a fork is provided me at all Asian restaurants. I’d already removed the plastic chopstick set from the other side, but hadn’t focused on the instructions. Earlier this week, she suddenly appeared beside me with this card. “Read this,” she said.
Do me a favor. Take a couple of minutes to read those instructions, aloud if possible. Scroll back down here when you’re done.
Okay, what did you think?
Want to know what I thought? I thought, Who on earth was the person who translated this? I mean, it’s like someone hastily gave that person a paperback English-Chinese (or whatever the original language was) dictionary, and said, “Translate this. I need it in ten minutes.” Either the translator believed you could do this by simple word-to-word matching, or there wasn’t time to track down an English-speaking person to let them edit it.
I think my favorite part is the alarming item in #1, under “Use”: “which one chopstick in the jaws of death.” My second favorite part is the two-word boxed instruction, “Decomposition method.”
Okay. How does this become a Daily Photo Parable?
Back in Genesis 9:1 – 11, the human race was heading in a bad direction, and God deliberately confused their languages, so that a worker on Babel Tower Level Three couldn’t understand the materials supplier on Tower Level One, and vice versa. Everybody gave up the project in disgust, and scattered, which was God’s desired outcome.
But in Acts chapter 2, the exact opposite happened. A month and a half after Jesus’ death on the cross, Jerusalem was filled with Feast of Pentecost pilgrims from many language groups, and through the Holy Spirit’s miracle, everyone heard the gospel in his or her mother tongue — which was also God’s desired outcome!
Maybe you’re not faced with a Mandarin-to-English translation task at the moment, but God has a surprising supply of power that can help you if what you’re doing accords with His will. Check out some of what the Bible says about this, at the link just below: