Useless Information

Do you ever wonder why we say the things we say?

I sure do. I don't mean to say, "why do we say mean things or hurtful things or weird things". I'm talking about those cliche idioms that we say.

"By the skin of your teeth"

"It's all Greek to me"

"Cross your fingers"

Where the heck did all of this come from?

I'm a fan of useless knowledge. A BIG fan. I love going to Barnes and Noble and planting myself in the Trivia section that can usually be found by the fake Starbucks in the store or near the Local travel section. I don't know why I am so very fond of it - my brain is full of useless information, mainly of the pop culture nature. I think that's why I like the History Channel so much, and the show "How It's Made" and stuff like that. I'd like to say that it's a gift from God (because everything is, right?) but I haven't quite figured out how it's supposed to glorify Him or the Kingdom. I don't think I need to know, but I have a feeling it might just make Him laugh with me some times.

Anyway, back to the point...

"I'm here for ya bro. I got a lifetime of knowledge." (That's from She's The Man - see, pointless, but funny.)

I did some research on these idioms, and for your enjoyment, here are some highlights:

"By the skin of your teeth"
That actually is reference from Job...that's right, the Bible. "My bones cleave to my skin, and I have escaped with my flesh between my teeth." (Job 19:20) Job was stripped of everything by God, who loved him, and still remained faithful. To show Satan that Job was a man of faith, he allowed for everything to be taken from him. Job was utterly broken, as I'm sure most of us have felt from time to time, but God proved faithful himself and never let Job escape his love despite all the crummy circumstances with not much beyond "the skin of his teeth". Boom.

"It's Greek to me"
Surprise surprise. Also has to do with the faith. In the Middle Ages, monk scribes who were copying manuscripts in libraries had a hard time...Greek wasn't as popular as it was, say, in the time of actually writing the Bible and other popular manuscripts. A lot of the time, they didn't really know what they may have been copying meant, but copy they did. It was all "Greek" to them.  "Graecum est; non legitur" ("it is Greek, [therefore] it cannot be read"). It's also referenced in Julius Caesar by good ol' Billy Shakespeare in reference to Casca not understanding what was going down.

"Cross your fingers"
Also from the faith. In the Middle Ages, there were many occult practices of witchcraft and superstitions of ghosts and whatnot. In order to protect themselves, Christians would make the sign of the cross in a form of prayer. However, there were instances where there wasn't enough time to make the sign of the cross, so a practice developed of making a cross with the middle and index finger (kind of similar to the practice of kissing one's thumb cross over the index finger after making the sign of the cross today). Nowadays, people cross their fingers for good fortune. Ta-da.


There are many many more. Look them up for yourselves. It's so funny where some of this stuff comes from. The fact that a lot of our phrase come form a piece of history and our faith...that's pretty cool too. Maybe I'm just a nerd (it's true, I am), but my brain feels bigger from knowing all this useless information. I'm sure God will use it all, someday.