Bouncing A Spell Check

Spell check is to computers as napkins are to a person eating ribs. It’s a necessity. A wonderful convience. For the non-computer literate, Spell Check works like this. You type a word, a sentence, or novel into your computer. When you are finished, you simply hit a key, and computer checks all of your words to see if they are spelled correctly. If they are not, it will offer you a few choices for you to choose from. It works well…most of the time.
The problem with Spell Check, is that if you misspell a word and your misspelling makes another word, the spell checker won’t spot it. Hence, you need to proofread the document even after Spell Check it.
Let me introduce you to an old computer game. It is called “Spell Check Suicide.” It’s easy to play. Simply forget to proofread a document after you run Spell Check. There are entire volumes of “bulletin bloopers,” that are the results of not checking after Spell Check.
For example, if you leave the “g” out of the word, “sing” you could end up with a printed announcement on a poster like one we had in my first ministry; “Come for a great time, of fun, games and group sinning.” I had a number of people call me and ask me how they can be a part of group sinning. We had a famous blooper a few years ago here, when a “Pantry Shower” turned into a “Panty Shower.” It’s frightening to think about what a few misplaced letters can do.
Let’s go back in time together to a week ago. Joni and I were getting our Christmas letter done. We had proof read it several times. I went back and even made a number of corrections. But I forgot to proofread it after running Spell Check for one last time. One line in our Christmas letter was supposed to read as follows: “Randy turned 20 this year, which made dear old Dad grab the Geritol.” It was a cute line, but not particularly funny. So you can imagine my surprise when a couple of days ago, at a brunch at our house, my mother in law was reading our Christmas letter and started laughing hysterically. She was reading the line above. Because young children may read this, I won’t say exactly what the new version said. If you really want to know, type the word “Geritol” on your computer and then run Spell Check. The first word on the list is what appeared in our Christmas letter. Did I mention we had already mailed out 120 of these to friends and family around Oregon, the United States, and even a foreign missionary? The emails are starting to come in. I have the feeling I’ll still be teased about this in the nursing home in 40 years.
Proof reading is critical. It’s important for the printed word and more important for our lives. In 2 Corinthians 13:5, we are told to proofread our own lives. Are there typos in our temper? Are there misspellings in our morals? Are there errors in our ethics or integrity? When we let the Bible and the Holy Spirit proofread our lives through prayer, study and accountably to other Christians, ours is a life that can be read, free from error.
And remember to use your smell chick.