Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I was recently sick (or Why Vomiting Reminded Me of Jesus)

During the earlier part of this week I had a stomach bug. In other words, I got sick and threw up a lot.

At about 10pm on Sunday I was feeling pretty queasy and I suspected that I may have caught the same bug that my visiting family had experienced a few days earlier. By midnight I was sitting next to the toilet making the observation that the stomach does not quickly digest carrots.

After the first visit to the bathroom, as I was lying in bed trying to figure out if it was easier to sleep curled up or on my back, I started thinking. And, oh man, I was doing some thinking.

I thought about how very violent the act of throwing up is. It’s terrible. It’s disgusting, uncomfortable, unsightly, and exhausting. And you can hardly control it. It will turn your skin white and can make you break out in a sweat.

So then I got to wondering about why we vomit. I figured that in the case of a stomach bug, the answer had to do with my body’s health. I think there was something bad in me that my body was trying to get out. That was, as best as I could tell, the medical explanation. However, I figured that, at best, this was a secondary reason.

The primary reason must be related to Christ.

If we are made in the image of God, and I think we are, then I think it is legitimate to see aspects of who we are as pointers to who God is.

Even before Jesus became a man, Scripture sometimes talked about God in ways that made Him sound kind of humanesque. I used to think of these instances in Scripture as anthropomorphisms. So, I thought that Scripture would reference the hand of the Lord doing this…, or His eyes searching…, or the face of the Lord… because we really do not have a better way of describing God. Because He is so incomprehensible we are left to comparing him to us and using the same terminology that we use for ourselves in our discussions about him. But I am now more inclined to think that such thinking is backwards.

I think the reason we have eyes is because it reveals something to us about the way that the Lord sees.

I think that the reason that we speak with a mouth is because it reflects the way that the Lord speaks.

The reason we have two hands is because two-handedness communicates something about the Lord.

The reason that we throw up is because the action reveals something about our God.

As I settled on the conclusion that it felt better to try to sleep curled up, I remembered that Jesus had once warned a church that He would vomit them out of His body.

So there I had it. The reason we vomit is because it teaches us something about how Jesus reacts to a group of apathetic people who profess His name but do not reflect it in their actions.

Effective and violent expulsion of that which is detrimental and harmful from the body.

I need to be more like Christ.


Note: I think the part of the evangelical community that comes up with cheesy Christian catchphrases has a real opportunity to gain something if more people realize the connection between vomit and Jesus. Think about it…

“Got a Problem? Throw it up to the Lord.”

“Would you rather be thrown up or taken up to the throne? – Revelation 3:16, 21”

“W.W.J.V.”

Yeah, I’m not going to waste time thinking about any others.

2 comments:

caroline said...

Luke, I think this should be the theme for next summer

Lucas Newton said...

ohh man, I don't know how well that would go over.

it would maybe be a good opportunity to have some burnt orange, or off-yellow theme shirts though...