A Rose By Any Other Name

Today’s title is part of a line from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. The full line says, “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”

Today we can no longer say that. The high price of roses may get you a beautiful bouquet, squeals of delight when given as a gift and/or many brownie points from the receiver of said gift; but it will not buy the fragrant aroma of a rose from the time of Shakespeare.

Sadly, in man’s infinite wisdom (she wrote, tongue in cheek) we have taken a glorious creation of God and developed a product we consider ‘improved’. It will last longer after being cut, it can be showy on a long thorn-less stem, it can come in any color we choose, and it can come any time of year you choose. No longer bound by nature, man has altered God’s handiwork to suit his own preferences.

In doing so, we have lost the once heady aroma of a rose that was its unique fingerprint in nature. A rose no longer smells as sweet as a rose.

There are still sweet smelling roses to be found but you have to look hard to find them. You won’t find them in the cooler of a florist shop. You have to dig around and find a nursery source that may carry a variety or two among the multitude of the ‘improved’ versions. Why do you think it is so hard to find an authentic rose bush? Rose gardens once spilled their fragrant petals on pathways, trellises, up porch columns, over fences and onto anything strong enough to hold them up. Man decided this was too untidy. We needed something more manageable, something we could control more easily without all the effort of the now dubbed ‘old fashioned’ roses. We needed something we could market to the general populous as an easy to grow, accessible to buy and readily available for the top dollar holidays. We took God’s awesome rose and prostituted it right out of its aroma….but, golly; she looks pretty from a distance, doesn’t she?

Sad as this is, it is very common. Man has done the same thing in many areas, including many of our churches and faiths. If Jesus were to walk into a church today I wonder if He would even recognize what we call worship. Man has added and taken away so much of what is written in the Bible, I dare say we have gone the way of the rose in many cases. It may look like a church from a distance but does it give off the sweet aroma of knowledge of Him; that fragrant offering that is mentioned in the Bible? Have we picked the qualities we like and discarded the ones that make us feel uncomfortable? Have we changed the very color of faith to suit our particular desires? Have we taken the freedom of growth in Christ and made it neat and tidy so we can control it better?

Man made religions, like man made roses have lost their sweet smell; they do not carry the soothing aroma of Christ to man or heaven.
2 Corinthians 2:14-15 (New American Standard Bible) But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;

I’ll take that messy, profuse, and sweet smelling old fashioned rose over the long stemmed any day. I’m holding tight to my old fashioned faith, too.