Your Mom Stinks of Hope

I like poetic prose. Rhyme and rhythm. (Or rhythm and rhyme.) I dig similes. I also enjoy metaphors. Yes, in general, I like playful, spirited, energetic and creative language that bends things around a bit. By Jove, I even like slang. I simply say this so that the poets around the world will know that I am not biased against them from the start. Poets, I love you. (Make that roughly twenty-five percent of you. Let’s be honest: the rest of you are more or less rubbish.)

Here’s my beef. This Sunday in church, there was a short inspirational video shown after the sermon about hope. And at one point, the phrase “may you stink of hope” was used. I think the intent was to inspire people to allow their hope to be felt by others around them, so that those people too would be inspired. A wonderful sentiment. But let’s call this what it is: a badly botched metaphor. I don’t want to blow things out of proportion, but “stink of hope?” Unacceptable. I’m putting my foot down.

Now, to be fair, I suppose I can admit that it was an effective choice of language in the sense that I still remember it. But the imagery this conjures up is only negative, and of course that is because “stink” is never used in a positive sense. “Dude, it stinks in here.” Or, “Dude, your girlfriend kind of stinks.” There is not a scenario in which this could be taken positively. Even if I try to get creative and say “Dude, your girlfriend stinks of perfume” or “money” or “beauty” it is still quite clearly negative (not to mention confusing).

I imagine “hope stinking Christians” as these obnoxious sales people who run around smacking people in the face with their happiness. And God help us, we have all known people like that. They do stink. (Again, not in a positive way.)

“May your joy be as contagious as syphilis.”

“May God fill you up with so much love that you puke it all over your friends.”

It just doesn’t work for me.

Alright, devil’s advocate: What about slang? Didn’t the 1980’s teach us that “bad” can be “good?” The same for “wicked,” “nasty,” and even “stupid.” “Yo, dawg, that girl is straight up nasty hot.” And yet “nasty” is traditionally negative! Madness! But it works! Fine. So I’m a hypocrite. But I stand by my statement: “stink” is negative. Only. It should be used to describe farts and dead people. If that makes me a crotchety old man who hates poetry, then so be it. Jedi.