Seeds and secret ingredients: a life lesson from Mr. Ping and Jesus

Thank you, Mr. Ping

“We are noodle folk. Broth runs through our veins.” Mr. Ping in Kung Fu Panda

 “Listen. What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn’t put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled among the weeds and nothing came of it. Some fell on good earth and came up with a flourish, producing a harvest exceeding his wildest dreams.

“Are you listening to this? Really listening?”

Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in Mark 4:3-9

Since 2013 I have led a quarterly class at the Barron County Justice Center entitled Courageous Living. Based on the 2011 movie Courageous by the Kendrick brothers (the minds behind other faith-based movies like Facing the Giants, Fireproof, and War Room), this six-week class seeks to challenge men on the issues of what it means to be a dad and leading your family well. In Week 1, we watch the movie and then in the weeks that follow we look at four stories in the Book of Joshua which apply to God's call to each of us to be “strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:9). On the sixth and final week for those who choose to an opportunity is given to take “the Resolution” that the five main characters in the movie take. Most of the guys usually choose to stand and make this solemn vow.

Sometime during last fall's class I was asked by a member of “the Breakfast Club”, the weekly gathering of ministry leaders at Bob's Grill in Chetek, how successful I felt the curriculum was. i.e., was it working? Were guys emerging out of that class better dads and more attentive to the spiritual needs of themselves and their children?

I told him frankly, I don't know. For one thing, many of them are in process. That is, they took advantage of the class while they were an inmate at the BCJC and prior to being sent to prison. Or the final class corresponded with their release date from the Justice Center. Or half-way through the class the prison bus shows up carting them off to their next destination. Unless they request a one-on-one with me, after they complete Courageous I may not see them again. It's just the way it is with that population.

But ultimately, no curriculum, however well designed or well written is the “deal-breaker” with the human heart. There is no magic pill that can undo twenty-five or thirty-five years – or more! - of bad living. I've written about it in a post a few years ago but most of the big hills on our personal landscape got there by our own doing one truckload of dirt at a time. To un-do the hills and remake the landscape takes focus, persistence, time and, of course, the grace and power of God. I've yet to see it done else wise.

Just add the right ingredients and see what comes from the ground

So what I've come to do at the conclusion of Week 1 after we've watched the movie is pull out a pumpkin seed (simply because a pumpkin seed is fairly large seed as seeds go) and remind them that a seed is potential. I plant it in the ground and if I water it and make sure it gets plenty of sunlight and breathing room nine times out of ten something is going to grow. In this case, a pumpkin vine is going to grow and in time produce, naturally, pumpkins. But there is a lot of things that can impede that potential: too little water or too many weeds (at least in the initial stage as a mature pumpkin vine is a pretty hardy thing) can inhibit growth or kill it altogether. The question is, what kind of soil are you?

This is what Jesus says. In the story usually referred to as the Parable of the Sower there are three characters – the Sower, the Seed and the Soil. The Sower and the seed are constants – one sower, same seed. The only variable is the ground on which the seeds fall. And of those four different soils, only one kind promises to produce a bounty crop of pumpkins, the “good earth” that in time produces a harvest “exceeding his wildest dreams.” So the moral of the story seems to be two questions: What kind of soil am I and do I have what it takes to grow?

What kind of soil am I?

There are always people who play at religion, who parrot what they think people like myself want to hear. But if their soil is baked earth nothing of substance will ever come of it. A place like the Justice Center is replete with “jail-house religion” stories, guys who “come to Jesus” while they're waiting for sentencing. Thank God it is. Jail-house religion and fox-hole religion are, after all, close relatives. But if no real root is put down after the crisis passes, after probation is granted rather than prison, after the bullets no longer zing through the air, a lot of times the fever passes and the former inmate returns to doing life as they know it. And then there's the guy who's full of good intentions, who makes a profession of faith but slowly but surely gets caught up trying to catch up with the life he's been missing while he has been incarcerated. Soon, just like everybody else “outside” they're as “busy” as the rest of us, full of promises to “get back to church” when life settles back down. They mean it, of course, but it's a cheat – life is what it is and I don't know many people who purposely take a step back from the “rat race” once they're caught up in it. But for those who do the hard work, weeding and watering, in time something good starts to grow.

Good life lessons within

I'm a big fan of movie clips as a teaching device. Over the dozen or more classes I have led since 2013, I have used clips from movies like True Grit (the John Wayne version), The Patriot, Master and Commander, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams and more. Last week, I used Scene 19 from Kung Fu Panda. Tai Lung is on his way to the Jade Palace to confront Master Shifu and Po (aka The Dragon Warrior). In preparation for this horrific confrontation, the valley is evacuated. Dejectedly Po goes to help his dad, Mr. Ping, move their noodle cart. According to Grand Master Oogway, he was supposed to be the Dragon Warrior, the kung fu master capable of reading the Dragon Scroll and defeating Tai Lung. But his short stay at Shifu's academy is a bust. He is able to retrieve the Dragon Scroll but it is seemingly empty, there are no hidden secrets of overcoming an evil like Tai Lung. Mr. Ping, in attempting to encourage his son, Po, reveals a secret of his own – the secret of his secret ingredient noodle soup.

Mr. Ping: The secret ingredient is... nothing!

Po: Huh?

Mr. Ping: You heard me. Nothing! There is no secret ingredient.

A moment like that can be a catalyst to real change

Po: Wait, wait... it's just plain old noodle soup? You don't add some kind of special sauce or something?

Mr. Ping: Don't have to. To make something special you just have to believe it's special.

[Po looks at the scroll again, and sees his reflection in it]

Po: There is no secret ingredient...

I love that. I've used that line on my Cross Country kids, too. There is no secret ingredient to success or greatness. It's just you. You putting in the hard work. You turning your attention to the things that really matter. You believing that by the grace of God a man can actually change the landscape of his life.

As I've already alluded to, I don't believe any curriculum is the key

to bringing about real change in a person's life. Whenever I hear that line – as I do from time to time when some Christian marketer calls my office excited about a new program that promises to “change lives” - I smell something fishy. But when the grace of God is at work in a human heart which is demonstrating a desire to grow and change, anything is possible. Even a panda like Po can take on a scoundrel like Tai Lung and with a deft use of the Wuxi finger hold skadoosh his way into a life beyond his wildest dreams. I sincerely believe that and have it on good authority – Mr. Ping and Jesus, no less – that these things are so.

I think the word is "skadoosh"