Egg

GOD creates goodness in all things!

Tree of Life (Jorge Cocco)

There is a sort of philosophical question that asks, what came first?  The chicken, or the egg?

At first, it may be that you consider such a question a little silly, but upon closer examination, the question is a very important one.  What it acknowledges is that there are two things that are very heavily dependent on each other and it asks the question, which of those things is more important.

And the chicken and egg do not simply mean an actual bird and the actual egg.  Rather, it means, the present and the future potential (or it could mean the past and the present depending on whether you do actually consider the chicken to be first or the egg).  In other words, the question is really asking, does my current state affect the future?

It is an important question.  William Wordsworth, the Romantic poet of the 19^th century phrased it a little differently when he said, in his poem, “My Heart Leaps Up”…

“My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.”

One of my favourite lines in all of Wordsworth’s poetry, is that line, “The Child is father of the Man”…  This is because it suggests that our past affects our present, which is just another way of saying that our present affects our future.  This poem is basically a more elegant way of asking the question about the chicken and the egg.

And I have been thinking about that question in a spiritual sense today.  You see, C.S. Lewis, the great Christian writer and philosopher wrote in “Mere Christianity” at Book III, Chapter 11, “The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”

And I have been thinking about that phrase and how that could apply to the chicken and the egg.  You see, it is sort of saying the same thing, except it replaces the present and future (or past and present) with the power of God.  We are not born good.  We are born – conceived in fact – with sin already on our souls.  Nothing can be done about this.  This is the sin of Adam and Eve.  But we are born this way in any case…  The only souls not conceived with Original Sin are Christ and His Mother, the Blessed Virgin (and of course Adam and Eve, who sinned later).  Everyone else is stained with sin.  Baptism clears that stain away and invites the Holy Spirit – the Person of Love in the Holy Trinity, to reside in our soul.  And it is THAT invitation – THAT presence of Perfect Love within us – that causes us to have any chance at all of becoming good.

And so, as I consider the answer to the question about the chicken and the egg, it seems that though people might debate about whether it is the chicken or the egg that comes first, the real answer is that it is GOD – GOD who creates goodness in all things!

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.