"Rumortism"

Dr. H. C. Heffren, a distinguished author from Camrose, Alberta, Canada was a mutual friend to many on this blogsite. Before his death, he wrote a parable of young Doctor Get Well.

Dr. Get Well proudly graduated from one of the finest medical schools in the country. He achieved high honors in medicine, then took post-graduate work in treating allergies found frequently among church attendants. He found great happiness in his profession and hung out his shingle with joy. The marquee at the Get Well Clinic announced: CAREFUL DIAGNOSIS - HONEST PRESCRIPTIONS.

Dr. Get Well soon discovered some very strange maladies among his patients. His very first patient was a girl named Lotta Hearsay. Although she protected her ears with huge wads of cotton, she told the enquiring Dr. “I just don’t know what is wrong with me. I am bothered with a lot of noises in my head. I keep hearing strange things like reports that are either true or imaginary and I just repeat everything to the very best of my ability. Then when I meet the people concerned I feel stiff and it hurts to move too close to them.

She became so distressed she considered going to Doctor Killer Kure, but friends said “if he makes any mistakes he just buries them, and they thought Get Well could help me. I hope you can give me a prescription to cure me.”

The kindly doctor assured her “I know just what your trouble is.” He assured her it is quite common among people today, but suggested she had a bad case of ‘rumortism.’ The things you hear are rumors and you have a tendency to get a pain in the neck every time you meet the ones connected with the rumors. Some rumors are full of deadly poison and of course, this afflicts the carrier with painful rumortism.

He prescribed a bottle of absolutely pure True Facts and urged Lotta Hearsay to always test each rumor by comparing it with the contents of this bottle. If you are careful not to swallow anything but this prescription I am sure your rumortism will disappear.

Dr. Get Well was hardly knowledgeable about this information age with its multiple technologies developed via computers, cell phones, ad infinitum. He was even less acquainted with popular media pulp that feasts on gossip and energizes the very profitable rumor mills. He knew little about the political hacks--shock jocks that thrive on rumor, opinionation, and twisted half-truth’s. He did, however, understand the deadly disease,the painfulness and crippling effects of rumortism, and the value of Truth to integrity and character.

The one thing he did understand was that if people would stop feeding on media gossip, personal opinion, and the science of slanting half-truths, our culture would be a better place to live. It was Jesus that said Truth will make you free. Trace back as far as you need to and you will find that Jesus relied on the Time-Tested Truth’s of life that work for everybody.

There is but one solution for the rumortism that afflicts most of us today, and that is TRUTH. We need Truth in religion, Truth in politics, Truth in advertising--Truth in everyday living.
From Warner’s World,
Wayne