You ever been to 7-11 and bought one of those atomic fireballs? Man those things look good. They are precisely placed in the candy isle to tempt your eyes. Shiny crinkly wrapping paper and red paint, promising you a little piece of heaven. You plunk your change on the counter and and along with your slurpee waltz out the door. Sitting in your car you tear open the wrapping paper, and pop your little treat in your mouth. You get instant gratification as you slosh your little treat around your mouth, but wait what’s this? Suddenly your nose starts to run a little and you frantically search for the wrapping paper to spit the fireball into. You realize you have just eaten a miniature lawnmower for your tongue! You roll your eyes at your own silliness it’s not like the first time this has happened. Are you suffering from amnesia? For that matter, at the rate fireballs fly off the shelves has society at large forgotten how hot they really are? I know maybe we just like pain…. Or maybe it’s a multitude of variables coming together. Let’s delve into this. I want to talk about deceptive advertising. Oh I can hear you thinking out loud, “Oh lord, she’s gone from presidential candidates to marketing”… Well not quite. It’s a little deeper than that, you see I am reminded of a story in the bible, of a little fig tree that was in full leaf and looking “the part”. What I mean by that is, when fig tree’s are in full leaf or really leafy that means they have figs or fruit and are ripe for picking and are useful, well during this particular time, apparently it wasn’t the season for figs but their precursor type fruit that could satisfy hunger called “taqsh”. Jesus noticed this and when he came near, this particular fig tree had no taqsh. Jesus immediately rebuked the tree and walked on, the disciples probably at the time, elbowed each other and stifled a snicker or two but no one was laughing when that same tree, as the bible says “presently” withered, and died. The disciples were awe stricken. So what is the point of that story? The same as the fireball, both were guilty of deceptive advertising. The fireball brings promises of sweet heaven, when in actuality to the tongue and mouth it’s actually a little piece of hell. The fig tree advertised fruitfulness and usefulness when it was neither. Both were being deceptive and both are tales of caution and can be applied to an area that was at one time slowly decimating society but that time is gone. Society is now being swept away at a hurricanes pace by sexually transmitted disease and the largest group are African Americans. A lot of churches have stopped preaching abstinence in favor of “playing it safe”. This is the doctrine of devils, the only “safe” is inside of a God sanctioned marital monogamous relationship. I needed to add monogamous, because these days, that word has somehow gotten lost in translation and outside of marital vows. “I do” has turned into “I might”, “till death do us part” has turned into “till from work you return”. I live a celibate lifestyle and no it is not a cake walk but seeing the things I have seen and heard has helped. I will not soon forget a surgery that I witnessed at a hospital on a woman that had runaway cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is an STD caused by the Human papillomavirus . Since I was a Pre-Health Studies student I was “shadowing” as a “Red shirt” volunteer in the recovery room of the hospital. I was supposed to be there following an anesthesiologist around that day but he was busy doing something I couldn’t be a part of so they stuck me there. Since I had medical experience, I hung out and talked to some of the patients as they awoke from anesthesia. I tried to reassure them and hold their hands as they winced through what some probably thought were the worst moments of their lives. I was in my element, I had seen body fluids, blood, urine, all types of muckety muck you couldn’t gross me out. I had taken my splats when I started out in the medical field, from gross sights but I considered myself, and old hat at this point having an iron cast stomach. Nothing and I mean nothing prepared me for what I heard. Yah that’s right, I heard it first. And what I heard, in a matter of moments made me look like an idiot. One of the male nurses came over to me and asked was I ok with helping him with a female patient, he said it might be something I had never seen before. I chuckled thinking to myself, “something I’ve never seen before, me…former Army medic, EMT me? no way?” He said, “this young lady has had a recurrence of cervical cancer that had previously gone past her true pelvis”. I’m thinking, “yah so, bloody urine, maybe some type of ostomy bag this time so….” He casually smiled, (noticing the cavalier look on my face) ” you don’t understand this lady has had a pelvic exoneration.” I almost laughed out loud. “Exoneration, ok isn’t that something that happens in a court room? Like you get exonerated from like, some charges?” He smiled, “yah it’s not that type, it is surgical.” So I ask, “just what do they exonerate?” “Everything”, he says. “Everything as in what?” Then he holds out his hand and ticks off a list. Thats when I get that Oh (@#$%) feeling and I don’t even cuss! (uh anymore that is). My legs start to feel like they are losing a battle with gravity that they were winning up to that moment. I feel beads of sweat pop out on my forehead, my vision begins to fade and the room starts to tilt to the left. I look at him and begin to back up, feeling desperately with my hand for a chair or anything to land on. I find a chair. Boom! I unceremoniously plop down, and put my face in my hands. Then sit up and fan my face, he looks at me now with concern I would have laughed if I could, his eyebrow was nearly past hair line, he looked like a cheap Mr. Spock imitation. “Ms. W are you ok?” “Yah yah, I uh just uh, yah I’m fine.” I know you’re all wondering, “what the ham and cheese did this dude say?” Well this is the medical definition of pelvic exoneration (if you are squeamish just go straight to the ministry video at the bottom).

Pelvic Exoneration:

The uterus and cervix, vagina, bladder and rectum are removed. Sometimes a vagina can be reconstructed. If the rectum can be reattached then there will be no need for a colostomy. Sometimes a continent urinary reservoir can be constructed. Otherwise a bag will have to be placed for the urine to drain through an ostomy in the abdominal wall. This ultra-radical surgery is done if there is an extensive cancer involving the bladder or rectum. If cancer has spread beyond these structure the external genitalia including anus are removed as well (removal of external genitalia and anus are rare). Oh look see removal of external genitalia and anus are rare, oh happy day!

EEEEEEEuuuuuuuuwwwwwwwah!!!!! (uh that is in my uh professional opinion, of course)

So there you go ladies…. All it takes is one time and wham you could be facing the butcher and for what? Deceptive packaging, let me guess… Does he “Show you the money like leaves on a tree” or does he drive a shiny Red Hot car like that candy on the shelf. How much of your future are you willing to throw away for just one night of pleasure? Wow did I just say that, I meant 2 minutes of pleasure…..

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Note: Credit being given where credit is due…. Information about the fig tree was obtained from this study by F.F. Bruce

” Why did Jesus curse the fig tree, when figs weren’t in season?”

Some light is shed on this passage by an article in Hard Sayings of the Bible by F. F. Bruce:

Was it not unreasonable to curse the tree for being fruitless when, as Mark expressly says, “it was not the season for figs”? The problem is most satisfactorily cleared up in a discussion called “The Barren Fig Tree” published many years ago by W. M. Christie, a Church of Scotland minister in Palestine under the British mandatory regime. He pointed out first the time of year at which the incident is said to have occurred (if, as is probable, Jesus was crucified on April 6th, A.D. 30, the incident occurred during the first days of April). “Now,” wrote Christie, “the facts connected with the fig tree are these. Toward the end of March the leaves begin to appear, and in about a week the foliage coating is complete. Coincident with [this], and sometimes even before, there appears quite a crop of small knobs, not the real figs, but a kind of early forerunner. They grown to the size of green almonds, in which condition they are eaten by peasants and others when hungry. When they come to their own indefinite maturity they drop off.” These precursors of the true fig are called taqsh in Palestinian Arabic. Their appearance is a harbinger of the fully formed appearance of the true fig some six weeks later. So, as Mark says, the time for figs had not yet come. But if the leaves appear without any taqsh, that is a sign that there will be no figs. Since Jesus found “nothing but leaves” – leaves without any taqsh- he knew that “it was an absolutely hopeless, fruitless fig tree” and said as much.”