WACKY WEDNESDAY WISDOM- Pigs Get a Bad Rap if You Ask Me

     Pigs get picked on too much. “Let’s have a Pig Pickin’,” people say when they’re hungry and want to congregate with other people in a social setting. After a pig is picked out and picked apart, he is then laid out for human beings to pick through and pick over. And occasionally somebody picks up an apple and stuffs it in his mouth to pick on and humiliate the poor fella even more. When it’s done he’s been picked to pieces at a Pic Pickin'.
     Human beings also sell Boston Butts when they want to raise money for various sorts of things humans need money for. And the poor pig is usually the victim in that instance as well. Despite the Butt, the meat doesn’t come from his hind quarters. (It's actually his shoulder). Says the pig, “If I’m sacrificing my future in this deal, at least get your facts straight.” No respect.  
     We pick on pigs when we utter ridiculous statements like, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” True enough I suppose, but why not substitute a donkey’s ear or some other barnyard animal. Nope, it’s almost always the pig bearing the brunt of the insults. Humans get mad at other humans sometimes when they think they’re being lied to and they holler out, “Hogwash!” or “Baloney!”, both of which are offensive to a pig. It’s bad enough he’s sacrificed for bacon, sausage, ham, etc.- now he’s a replacement curse word as well.
      Less than respectful types of human beings refer to our fine officers of the law as pigs, and it’s not a compliment. Pork is a bad word in politics that keeps representatives from getting reelected (or at least it should) and people who take up too much of the street when driving are called Road Hogs.
     The poor pig even has a dreaded disease named after him. Swine flu made a comeback a few years ago and everybody had to get shots again like they did in the 70s. Kids who don’t keep their rooms picked up hear things from their mother like, “You’re worse than a pig” or the dreaded, “This place is a pig sty.” I never knew growing up what a sty was but I suspected it was untidy.
     But I think the most audacious statement ever invented about our swine friends is the one I heard my wife utter recently- "You can't put lipstick on a pig." There's also a version of that saying that goes, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." To solve the dilemma, I searched some images on the internet and I have concluded the former expression is more accurate than the latter. It seems to me there's no real location on a pig's face to adequately place lipstick that would look anything like it's designed to.
     What exactly does it mean when we try to put lipstick on pigs? It means something to the effect of not being able to cover up what somebody or some thing really is at its core, no matter how much you try to disguise it. Which is in essence a contradiction to the saying, "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck." Not so much with a pig in lipstick.
     The Bible tell us in 1 Samuel 6:17 that "The Lord does not see as man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord sees the heart."
     I think I am guilty of putting lipstick on my pig self at times. Like most of us, I try to put my best foot forward and present myself in the most positive manner possible. I hide my deepest secrets and I think thoughts about people that aren't good at times, even though my face is smiling. Maybe we've all done that. That doesn't excuse it. God sees straight into my heart and sometimes I'm not so proud of what is going on in there.
     But God doesn't reject me, you, or anyone else for the gunky goop junk inside our hearts. He sent Jesus as a custodian to collect our garbage and recycle it into something beautiful. I still don't fully understand how or why but I think it has something to do with how much God has loved us from the beginning of time.
     I encountered a pig a few years ago at a local high school football game. While heading to my parked car after the game, I glanced to my left and a few feet from a containment fence, amongst several goats, lay an enormous pig. “She’s pregnant,” said one of the teens in our group who attended the school. I stopped and stared at the Mom-to-be. For a few brief moments, our eyes met. And for the first time in my life, I truly felt sorry for a pig. It was bad enough that a pregnant pig mom had to endure the loud and obnoxious sounds of the crowd cheering, the band playing, and the lights glaring- but now, most every human exiting the premises would be passing by and hurling an insult or two her direction. “It could be worse,” said one of the baby goats as I stared, “She could be one of us.” Knowing the chap had a valid point considering what people were calling the poor kid who dropped the pass that would have been the winning touchdown that night, I whispered to the baby goat, “Hang in there, Kid. And go easy on the lipstick."