HEY CRANKY REVEREND……

Cranky Reverend (CR) — “If you have nothing nice to say, then stuff a doughnut in your mouth and enjoy the calories.”

The Cranky Reverend blog is my attempt to address some of the more perplexing questions or comment upon the more frustrating situations that pastors encounter on a weekly basis. For example, CRANKY REVEREND was once asked, “Is this saying true: people produce evil like bees produce honey?” This is an interesting analogy — one CR had not considered before. It is true that the production of honey is the result of a complicated process involving bees, flowers, nectar, enzymes, regurgitation, and fanning. And evil, well the production of evil is also the result of a complicated process, involving many players: greed, envy, lust, anger, selfishness, revenge and egoism.

Bees begin the production of honey at the center of flowers and collect nectar, a sugary water. Plants produce nectar to attract pollinators like bees, and this nectar is the main food source for bees. The honey bees will collect a lot of nectar from flowers which begins the complicated process for making honey. They place the nectar in a special pouch called a honey pouch. When the pouch is full, it tells the bee that it’s time to go back to the hive. When they return to the hive, they regurgitate or spit back out the nectar into cells (called honeycombs) made especially for honey production. When the nectar’s in a bee’s mouth, it’s mixed with an enzyme called invertase that helps break down part of the sugar. It can take a bee many nectar-gathering trips to fill up a cell. Once a cell is full, a group of bees will fan it to help evaporate out the water and make the mixture more concentrated. Honey is about 75 percent thicker than nectar, so lots of water needs to be removed. When the bees are happy with it and it’s concentrated enough, they will cap the cell in which the honey is produced. That is a lot of effort for a small amount of honey.

Evil also begins at the center — in this case Evil begins at the center of each person. Evil produces particular kinds of nectar which attracts the individual or the ego (so to speak) of each person which becomes its main food source for thriving in a complicated world. While the nectar collected by bees mixes with an enzyme in their mouth called invertase that helps to break down the sugars in the nectar, Evil instead will mix with the enzymes (or better said) the emotions of the individual to break down their common sense and fill up their mouths with the bile of hate, racism and the destruction of the mind, soul and spirit. While it takes the bees many trips to fill up the individual cells of their honeycomb, the production of Evil within the soul takes many trips as well — trips to the never-ending well of selfish ideas and needs, continually filling the individual with thoughts that they lack what is due them: that they lack abundance, lack respect, lack opportunity, lack their fair share. Evil deceives, convincing those who have that they deserve more; convincing those who lack opportunities that they are overlooked; convincing those who have value that they are under valued; and convincing those who are loved that they are unloved and unwanted.

When bees are happy with their production and the cell is full, they will cap it off as part of the honey production. Evil, however, robs the soul of any happiness. Evil sucks the very life out of the individual like cancer sucks the life out of our individual cells. So while bees cap off the cell once they are happy with their production, evil will not stop production — it will simply seek more and more people and more and more ways to replicate itself, caping itself off from any hint of goodness and light.

So, as Cranky Reverend wraps up this sad and sticky post, it is partly true that people produce evil like bees produce honey — with one caveat: did evil exist before people, or does evil require people to ensure its existence?