The Prevalence of Bull Excrement

Don’t worry, I’ll keep it G-Rated for the kids

Do you remember those essay assignments from high school? You were expected to pontificate about a subject in which you had little to no interest yet achieved a required minimum word count.

Surely you would do your best to write an introduction, body, and conclusion with the relevant facts, maybe add a little humor or quips for flair, only to realize you have not reached the required length. If all pertinent information was already communicated, you had to employ the skill every student is guaranteed to learn:

You added some fluff.

That may be the most benign description, but we all know what we’re talking about. Balderdash, malarkey, poppycock, or even twaddle. All synonyms for BS.

We all became professional employers of this technique to muddle our way through essays, test questions with multiple blank lines, and, yes, even now, in adulthood. If you work with other human beings in your occupation, you have surely seen literal tons of malarkey.

You will witness balderdash when someone tries to explain why a project is late. A coworker attempts to inflate their achievements for a raise, or one of the most common scenarios: someone must speak at length about a topic they know very little about.

All these are recipes for BS. And the church is not immune to its prevalence.