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.