Tyrades! by Danny Tyree

I suspect a lot of people are now smacking their foreheads and sputtering, “That’s what I should have given up for Lent – listening to experts!”

Yes, regardless of what CNN or the New York Times thinks, we all deserve a break from the roving packs of self-proclaimed, self-aggrandizing, utterly indispensable “authorities” on topics such as economics, health, environment, law, Bigfoot’s assessment of Kierkegaard, etc.

But the Easter season inevitably finds a whole different basket of experts hopping down the trail.

Some are skeptics. Some are backsliders. Some are sanctimonious busybodies. But the overarching reality is that it’s difficult to concentrate on Jesus Christ coming out of the tomb when the experts are coming out of the woodwork.

Jesus was given to announcing, “Verily, verily, I say unto you”; but “surely” is more the speed of these pontificators.

“Surely it was only a nefarious conspiracy that kept the perfectly legitimate Gospel of My Cousin Who Couldn’t Find the Middle East Even If You Pinned It To His Shirt out of the official Bible canon.”

“Surely the God who invented La-Z-Boys and online sports betting wouldn’t mind if I waited until Christmas to mingle with the rest of the faithful.”

“Surely if Jesus was really coming back, he would have returned before that arbitrary date I circled on the refrigerator calendar.”

“Surely the savior who was nailed to the cross could understand the absolute torture I would feel sitting eight rows back from where those hypocrites will be sitting (during the second service).”

“Surely if God wanted us to think of ourselves as something more than the byproducts of a primordial soup, He would have provided each newborn with a laminated, signed, numbered manual hand-written by Jesus.”

“Surely that half-hearted prayer I tossed off for what’s-his-name with the vaguely remembered ailment will go down in history with Jesus’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.”

“Surely I can go through the ‘10 spiritualities or less’ lane, even though I’m sincerely juggling 11 – no, make that 12 – spiritualities at the moment.”

“Surely there’s a special corner of hell reserved for any heretic who has a different estimate for the gross domestic product of first-century Capernaum than I do.”

Yes, people with finite human brains and narrow frames of reference definitely love to throw around the word “surely.”

They might think ventriloquists are corny, but they have no problem trying to put words in God’s mouth.

They might demand, “No excuses!” from those around them; but they have honed their own rationalizing to an art form.

They may not see the incongruity of pairing “in my humble opinion” with the wildest, most self-serving of conjectures; but they demand to be taken seriously!

They may casually dismiss the hope of an afterlife as a “wishful thinking” delusion, but they are oblivious to the flip side that “not being responsible to a Higher Power” could also be wishful thinking.

This should be a season for reverence, renewal and rededication, but too often it is an occasion for academic smugness, frantic loophole-seeking, deep-seated prejudices, “gotcha!” documentaries and self-righteous scolding.

“Be not wise in your own conceits,” Saint Paul wrote nearly two milllenia ago.

Humility does not require high-powered experts. Little children can be humble.

Be like a little child, and surely (!) goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.

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Copyright 2025 Danny Tyree, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”