The Poop in the Brownies Part 2

The Holy Nature of God

There's a story I've told my kids for years about the poop in the brownies that has given them a great visual for how our choices, our sins, can affect ourselves and others.  Our sins separate us from God in the same way that our minds (and stomachs!) tell us that we want nothing to do with those poopy brownies.  It is only through Christ's sinless life given on the cross can we be cleansed from our sins.  Without that, we are still like the brownies:  filled with something unclean, unpleasant, and utterly undesirable.

But what about that?  How does a God who is supposed to love us more than anything decide that if we don't accept His Son, Jesus Christ, as the One Who cleanses us from our, sin then He isn't going to let us into heaven?  Here's another analogy I've used with my kids to explain the perspective of God.

Imagine we live on a farm.  There's a huge yard and a large barn.  There are horses and chickens and cows and sheep and pigs.  You are a little boy (or maybe a tomboy little girl) who loves to play outside.  You also love to play with the animals.  Especially the pigs.  They run and squeal and you chase them all over the pen.  You're having a great time.  Then it's time for dinner, and Dad is standing on the porch calling you to come inside.  You come running across the yard, ready to hurry to your seat.  And that's when Dad says, "STOP! You can't come inside!"

You freeze.  He's called your name and he's waiting on you, but now he won't let you in.  You're confused.

Dad says, "You are filthy.  You are covered in mud and muck and pig mess.  There's no way I'm letting you in here."  You look down and realize you are covered in everything he just said (and then some).  You were having so much fun playing and goofing off that you didn't realize the mess you were in.  And now you can't go inside looking (and smelling!) that way. You need cleaned from head to toe.

Now imagine that instead of playing with the pigs, you've only been jumping in mud puddles all day.  Rain has left your yard full of wonderful places to splash in and you've had a great day of fun.  Now it's time for dinner.  Again you run for the house.  But again Dad says, "You're not coming in here like that."  You look down and, although you aren't covered head to toe in muck, you are still pretty dirty from the waist down.  Mud and water and grass is matted in your jeans, all over your shoes, your socks are soaking wet.  All the fun you were having making a smaller mess still left you dirty.


Does your Dad not love you?  He won't let you in his house.
Does he not care about you?  He won't even come near you.

The truth is no parent wants all that mess in their house.  The spots on the floor, the tracks in the carpet, the ring around the tub, the smell of the laundry....there's no way you're coming in my house!

Just like the poop in the brownies, what if the mud and muck is sin?  It doesn't matter if you're covered head to toe in the most awful mess or only matted with some smaller mess - you are still dirty.

Many times, we are like children playing outside, carefree and without thought to the choices we are making, so long as we are having fun.  We tell ourselves, and each other, that as long as we aren't hurting anyone what we are doing is ok. So we play and we get a little mud on our shoes.  And we play some more and get some mud on our jeans.  And then we think, since I'm already a little dirty, what's the big deal if I go ahead and do that 'more fun' thing...and suddenly we are covered head to toe in muck.  We don't realize that the fun of chasing after the pigs puts us right in the center of the pig pen. We don't even notice right away that we are eventually eating slop, the whole while there is a meal waiting for us inside the house.  We forget that pigs love to be dirty, and by putting ourselves in their environment, we only go deeper into the mud and get more dirty and more filthy.

And what if the Dad is God the Father?  In His holiness, He cannot allow the filth of sin to come into His home (heaven).  He sees your mess, He sees your sins, and He loves you anyway - just as an earthly father does. But like an earthly father, God wants you to be cleansed.  He wants to wash away the muck and the mess and the sin. Through His Son, Jesus Christ, God has given each of us a way to be washed clean.

Upon the cross, Christ died as the final sacrifice for all sin - past, present, and future.  He took upon Himself every sin of every person who had or would ever live.  In this way, He paid the price for sin.  Although He Himself was sinless, He voluntarily chose to take the place of every sinner so that they could become clean and enter the kingdom of God.  1 John 1:7 says that "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin."  

It is only through being spiritually clean that we are able to come into the Father's house.  Although He loves us, enough to send Jesus in our place, He cannot let us into His home without being cleansed.  It is not because He is mean or unkind or lacking compassion.  It is not because we are worthless to Him or unimportant.  It is because He loves us so much that He doesn't want to leave us in the muck that we have covered ourselves with.  It is His greatest desire to see us come into His home and sit at His table and fellowship with us.  But we cannot cross into that threshold without being clean.

If you find yourself wanting to answer the call of the Father to His table, I encourage you to begin here.

*Acknowledge that you are covered in muck - a little or a lot, it doesn't matter.  I am a sinner in need of a Savior - this is to repent or turn away from sin

*Believe in your heart that God sent His perfect Son, Jesus, to die in your place and raised Him from the dead - this is to trust that Jesus paid the full penalty for each individual sin

*Confess Jesus as your Lord and your God - this is to surrender control of your life to Jesus, every facet, every aspect

*Receive Jesus as your Savior forever - this is to accept that God has done for me and in me what He promised     Article found here




For another analogy like this, see Why Won't Everyone Go to Heaven.

 There is a place for you at His table.

The Poop in the Brownies Part 1

The Sin Nature of Man

Years ago, I was talking to my girls about how our choices can affect our lives.  We were focusing on how even small, seemingly insignificant decisions can have major consequences in our lives and in the lives of others. I gave them the following analogy:

It's the end of the school day and you walk into the kitchen to find I've been making brownies.  The house smells of warm chocolate and the gooey goodness has just been removed from the oven.  You throw down your backpack and sit at the island to tell me about your day as we wait for the brownies to cool.  There's still a mess on the counter:  bowls, ingredients, a mixer with batter still on the beater.  You reach over and get a generous helping of batter on your finger.  As you go to lick it off, you notice a saucer of what looks like a small bit of soft chocolate.  Only it doesn't exactly look like chocolate.  You lean in closer and suddenly smell the total opposite of chocolate.  Your mind tells you that it can't possibly be what you think it is.  And then you realize you have almost licked your finger.  You look at me and ask, "Is that poop?!"  And I say, "Yes."  "You put it in the brownies?!?"  "Yes, but you'll hardly taste it.  They should be cooled now.  Do you want one?" I ask.  "No!!!!! That's disgusting!"

At this point, my kids were dry heaving and laughing at the silliness of the story.  I asked them if they would really turn down a brownie with poop in it, if it was mixed in really well.  They vehemently say yes.  I ask why and they tell me that even if they can't taste it, they know it's in there.  They think it's nasty and want nothing to do with it. 

So I go on to say what if you come home and there's still poop on the plate, but instead of being mostly gone, there's only a little bit missing. I only added a little. "Now do you want one?" I ask.  "No!!!!! That's still disgusting!"

I asked them if they would still turn down a brownie with only a little bit of poop.  Again, they agree that there's no way they are eating that brownie.  I ask why if it's only a little bit and not a lot.  Again, they say that it doesn't matter because even that little bit ruined the whole batch.

That is when we discussed that even small, tiny choices can have an impact.  Sometimes the impact isn't a big deal; sometimes you aren't even aware of the impact until much later.  But there is always a ripple effect to the decisions we make.  And then I told them to imagine that instead of the poop being a poor choice, what if it represented sin.

What if the poop in the brownies was a 'little white lie?'  What if it was sneaking the answer off your classmate's paper?  What if it was taking that dollar from mom's purse?  What if it was saying something mean and hateful to someone?  The poop in the brownies suddenly took on a whole new meaning.  Instead of just being a gross snack, now it was a picture of what we do in our hearts when we don't do the right thing.  The little sin that we convince ourselves isn't that big a deal sounds a whole lot worse when we think of it as poop in our food.  We would never voluntarily eat that poop brownie.  But we do that with our sin all the time.  We voluntarily make the choice to do the wrong thing because we think it's no big deal.  Except the more often we make the wrong choice, the more sin it leads to.  Pretty soon we're telling lies to cover our first lie. We're cheating on all our tests.  We're stealing from other people.  We're bullies and gossips.  And the portion of the poop in the brownies gets bigger and bigger.  And we just keep eating it.

There's a saying that says "one bad apple spoils the whole bunch."  We also talked about the scripture in Galatians (5:9) that references sin:  "A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough."  It means that no matter how much dough there is, even the tiniest bit of yeast will cause the dough to rise.  That's what sin does - it comes in small and grows and grows and grows.  The only way to keep the dough yeast-free is to not add any yeast.  Sounds simple enough, but how much bread do you eat that doesn't have yeast?  The same is true of our lives.  The only way to be sin free is to not add any sin.  But we aren't capable of that.  As fallen humans, we are born into sin.  We all fall and we all make choices that lead us away from a perfect and holy God.  But He has made a way for us through His Son Jesus Christ.  It is only through His sin free life and sacrifice that we are able to live our lives making better choices, turning away from our sin nature.

This is why I like the poop in the brownies analogy.  It's a great visual of our sin nature.  There's another analogy I tell my girls to share the holy nature of God.  See Part 2 here.