I made chicken soup yesterday. No, I’m not sick, although my knees have been staging a revolt since Monday. I just wanted chicken soup.Don’t you love it? There is something so comforting and warm and generally wonderful about chicken soup. I suspect that is why we have those strange little “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books that I can never quite figure out, but are nevertheless immensely popular. The title of the book implies that something universally soothing happens when we have chicken soup and we have come to believe it promotes well-being.
I was thinking all these things as I had a bowl yesterday afternoon. As I swallowed each spoonful, I could feel the warmth flowing down my throat, imagining it heading straight to my knees to ease and reassure them too. I was amazed at how good I felt, even if it was simply the placebo effect.
I want to be like chicken soup to people. I suspect if I was comforting and warm and generally wonderful all the time, people would feel soothed around me. Unfortunately, I am often soup impaired, and I act more like liver and onions that have to be choked down.
At the risk of stretching this idea so far it may break, I think the chicken soup thing is a great way to understand how we are made different by God. The more of God that I take in – through prayer and the Scriptures and serving others and living in community – the more I am filled up with the right stuff, the God stuff, the comforting, warm and wonderful stuff. Being right inside leads to doing right outside. It’s called having the fullness of Christ (Colossians 2:9-11).
I have a friend, who I love a lot, who keeps intimating that my faith is the result of a gene that scientists have successfully identified. Some people apparently have a propensity to need a god and dear Bill Maher investigates it in his new movie, Religulous. Kind of like the placebo effect, I guess.
Feedback like that is like having someone standing in the grass telling me how wet the pool is. Until you dip your own toe in, it’s pretty hard to understand the reality of it all.
I am not unaware of the issues, however. The practice of religion has screwed up the world significantly and I can clearly see why we long to explain it away as a biological anomaly. It has messed up people, but mostly because of messed up people. I saw a great bumper sticker last week that simply said, “SCREW GUILT.” I laughed out loud and thought of how twisted our view of God is and how we choose to live with so much unnecessary baggage.
Maybe if we understand that it’s far more like chicken soup. God wants to comfort the wo
rld by warming people from the inside. So, imagine something universally soothing, and once it enters and fills you up, you are truly different. Jesus the soup. And just think, without liver and onions, things sure would smell better too.
4 comments:
Maybe it's not what you are saying here, but I think a good dose of well-deserved guilt is not necessarily a bad thing. Our God is a God of love and forgiveness, but he is also a God who expects much from us in the way of obedience. I think ultimately it's a balance between the two.
Maureen, interesting idea. I agree that there is a sense of guilt that can help us recognize our weaknesses and sin. However, it has been my experience (quite overwhelmingly) that believers live with an unhealthy sense of guilt that creates an inertia not only in their lives, but also in the church. I do not think we have a handle on what it truly means to LIVE FORGIVEN and I think the world senses it. Certainly doesn't make Christianity the enviable life that it truly is. Not all, but many who read this blog are Christians, and I suspect that we struggle far more with living with unnecessary guilt and unrealistic expectations than with ignoring guilt altogether. But perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe others will weigh in with other opinions.
"I suspect that we struggle far more with living with unnecessary guilt and unrealistic expectations than with ignoring guilt altogether."
I'm gonna get me some of your friends! ... or maybe I've just been hanging around with too many narcissists (and that's just my family:)
I guess it's all in your perspective.
Good Post.
Wow - my impact was a polar opposite. I think I was experiencing the fullness of Christ when I was reading the blog. Sorry my story was so long or I would have posted it here instead of emailing it to you. God warmed my heart to the point of tears today and it was while I was reading the blog, that is soup for the soul and divine timing. We all take something different from it. If i did not live forgiven, I would be a train wreck. Good stuff.
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