Chickens, Earworms and the Good Life

Here's my article for August:

In my article for August 2013 I wrote about holidays saying “it's very hard not to hear that word without thinking of the song by Madonna (and 'The Chicken Song' by Spitting Image – but that's a different article!)”  Well, it's almost ten years on and so I suppose the article on “The Chicken Song” is well overdue!

“The Chicken Song” is a novelty song that topped the charts in 1986.  It is a parody of the summer hits with actions like “Agadoo” and “Do the Conga”, and though the lyrics are mostly nonsensical, they do talk about the all-pervading nature of these types of songs.  Not only will you hear them wherever you go (even Mars!) but as the last chorus says “Now you've heard it once, your brain will spring a leak, and though you hate this song you'll be humming it for weeks.”

This is a trivial example of the ways our 'nature' can be at odds with our 'wills'.  The Apostle Paul wrote “When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway” (Romans 7:19 The Living Bible), or as Jesus put it “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).  As Paul thought about this paradox he saw that no matter how hard we try “there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me” (Romans 7:23 TLB.)  Try as we might we can never live the good life that we want to and that we know we should.

This leaves us with two options.  We could just shrug our shoulders and say that as failure is inevitable we might as well give up and just do the best we can.  We can then absolve ourselves of blame, saying “it may be wrong but it's just the way I am”, or we could even turn the fault into a virtue or source of pride or part of our identity:“I am a short-tempered person, and if you don't like it, that's your problem!”  But this option is ultimately unsatisfactory because it involves constantly suppressing that inner voice of conscience, the voice of God within us, that is telling us what we ought to be doing.

Paul has an alternative option: cry out “Oh, what a terrible predicament I’m in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature?” (Romans 7:24 TLB).  But this is not a cry of despair, because Paul already knows the answer - “Thank God! It has been done by Jesus Christ our Lord. He has set me free” (Romans 7:25 TLB) and “destroyed sin’s control over us by giving himself as a sacrifice for our sins. So now we can obey God’s laws if we follow after the Holy Spirit and no longer obey the old evil nature within us.” Romans 8:3-4 TLB.)  That doesn't mean that we will never sin again, but that by belonging to Jesus “the power of the life-giving Spirit...has freed me from the vicious circle of sin and death” (Romans 8:2 TLB).

So if, like an annoying but catchy tune, you seem to be stuck in a loop of bad choices and actions call out to Jesus for freedom and life.