Oh Really?

Egg-Catching Strangeness
Mar 14:22 And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body. Mar 14:23 And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. 1Ti 4:4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: 1Ti 4:5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. It came as a strange sensation to me. I had just started work as school principal and now we had a market day. The market day aimed to raise funds for Christian education, but also to have fun by means of various games for children and adults alike. Many of the activities were thoroughly enjoyable and participation was vigorous and good-humoured. The vigour and good humour dimmed somewhat when the new principal came upon a particular game that caused him to frown. People noticed and they knew that the cause was not an oncoming migraine. Soon the cause for the frown became clear: The Principal took issue with the game! It was a game that had been on the programme for a good number of years and the children, especially the teenagers, took great delight in it. The man with the Arnold Schwarzenegger accent became tha phartyphooper; he actually stepped in, stopped the game, and engaged in a theological address: We give thanks for our food, we pray for the hungry in other parts of the world; we give money to alleviate needs all over the place. We express a real concern that, firstly our own bellies are suitably filled and, secondly, that the Lord through us and others may slake the needs of the hungry in various countries. The Lord tells us that every good gift is from above, from the Father (James 1:17). Jesus gives thanks for food and drink received. The Apostle Paul tells his protg Titus that food is (to be) sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. Gods gifts to us are to be taken seriously and are to be treated with the respect and thankfulness which are Gods due. Phew! Heavy stuff! What was the game that evoked such a monologue? Well, it is really quite simple: Two people face each other at a certain distance. One person has a raw egg and tosses this carefully to the other person who is to catch it without causing it to break. If successful, the throwing distance is increased. This continues until the egg actually breaks and falls to the ground. The winning couple is the one

that has managed the furthest throwing and catching distance. To the ethical conscience this game is bizarre. It appears to fly in the face of the prayers we bring privately and collectively. In the Lords Prayer we even confess our dependence on the generous hand of Almighty God, to provide us with daily food. Harmless fun? I do not think so. To me (and this is borne out by many years of observing children subsequent to this event) it teaches children a cavalier attitude toward Gods blessings. Sure, we pray for food, but once received we can spoil it and fool around with it. This is not to say that I expect every one to eat mouldy bread or fungus pie. I would reasonably expect from people who pray to God to give thanks for food, to ask for food, that they would treat that food with the holy respect it deserves, not because of that food itself, but because of the generosity it represents on the part of a benevolent God to people entitled to nothing. It is all part of redeeming the times (Ephesians 4:16; Colossians 4:5), that is: making holy and dedicated to God the Creator what is otherwise under the curse of God and spell of Satan. The true event illustration above is only a mere part of what is, I daresay, endemic in the Christian Church of the West, this marked lack of awareness that everything a person is involved in becomes by that very fact either a holy or an unholy involvement. All that is handled, touched, and looked at is designed and perceived either to glorify God or insult Him. This is because people all are ethical beings, created in Gods image and called upon to honour Him by acting out His ethical standards in creation. For parents this brings about a serious responsibility. Reverend Piper from the Baptist Church in Tauranga, New Zealand, had a good grasp of this. Make no mistake about this, you parents, he told his congregation in a sermon, You will always be witnessing to your children about Jesus: either how much He means to you, or how little. But witness you will! For some of my students it became a bit of a standard joke, but I kept on telling them anyway. Every time that I walk along the school buildings and I see a piece of rubbish lying on the ground, that piece of rubbish calls out to me very loudly: Pick me up! Pick me up! It does this (metaphorically, of course) because it knows that it is a blemish on the holy creation of the Holy God. A Christian walking past and ignoring it thereby witnesses to the fact that blemishes are an acceptable part of the Christian life (remember the words of Piper). Not so, says God, you shall be holy for I am holy (1 Peter 1:16).

Too heavy, too big a deal made of the egg catching game, of the little piece of rubbish? In terms of the message it projects in conflict with our sincerest prayers and in terms of what it teaches children as normative the risk of imparting a cavalier approach to life in Gods world is very real indeed. G.K. Chesterton (British author, passed away in 1934) makes some remarkable statements that are worth pondering in our context here. He says: Education is

simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. If you can buy into this statement, then the question remains: What is the soul that you as Christian parent and other congregational role models pass on to the next generation? Is it a soul marked by a striving for holiness, or is it a soul marked by a striving for self-indulgence? On that score the same man rightly says: It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. The parents and students whom I addressed regarding the egg catching knew easily what to do to solve the blemish. The students whom I addressed regarding the piece of paper, knew easily what could be done to solve the blemish. The issue with many of them was that they could not fathom the problem. What is the big deal? Strangely, those same students will choose a clean table to sit at when visiting McDonalds and avoid the smutty one. They will look for the clean BBQ in the park and avoid the grease-smeared one. What is the big deal? Well, what is it?

Dr Herm Zandman 04/07/2011