Shrek’s Onion
(Leia este post em português.)
Of course, it’s not really Shrek’s onion. The multilayered quality of the onion has been used before, in sociology, psychology, self-help guides, and even computer programming. It only makes sense: an onion is layered, therefore can be used to describe something that is multilayered or complex. I call it Shrek’s onion because Shrek made it memorable to me. Perhaps you remember the scene. The ever-talkative Donkey keeps prodding Shrek about why he doesn’t just “lay some of that ogre stuff” on his rival and attack him directly. And so Shrek explains the complexity of being an ogre:
Shrek: For your information, there’s a lot more to ogres than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example… uh… ogres are like onions!
[holds up an onion, which Donkey sniffs]
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes… No!
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
Shrek: No!
Donkey: Oh, you leave ‘em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs…
Shrek: [peels the onion] NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
That did it. From the time I watched this, any time I think of a complex situation that can must be examined layer by layer, I think, “It’s Shrek’s Onion.” And naturally, I hear Donkey piping up in the background, “Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake!” And, even more classic: “You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits!”
It’s the strange way my mind works.
So why am I writing about Shrek’s Onion?
Recently at our church we have been talking about the sufficiency of the Scriptures, and the study has uncovered all kinds of interesting and very revealing information about people and their understanding of the Bible. The message to the sermon series was simple, yet fundamental: God gave us truth in His Word which is sufficient for “life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3), and it is God-breathed, therefore profitable for “doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness” for the purpose of making a believer complete and completely equipped for all good works (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Clearly, this should be a core belief of any Christian. God didn’t just create us and leave us hanging, but gave us sufficient instructions in His authoritative Word so that we could understand and operate in this world we live in.
Let me stop for a moment and explain something about myself. This point is essential to me; it is the fundamental presupposition upon which I operate: either the Bible is God’s absolute, authoritative Word, or I just have another great collection of human literature, as valuable as any other thing man has written. Yes, I realize I am putting all my eggs in one basket, and I take the “risk” gladly. I always think of what C.S. Lewis said so wonderfully, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else” (quoted online, apparently from ”Is Theology Poetry?”, 1945). He spoke of Christianity as a whole, but it clearly, even more aptly, could be said of Scripture. The Bible is our spiritual sun, not only because we see it, but because by it we see everything else.
So when I passionately share this truth that is to me so basic and necessary, and am answered with complete ignorance of even the most basic things about the Bible (i.e., where to find the Gospels), or stories of personal experiences with God (that go contrary to God’s Word), or Chicken Soup for the Soul quotes, or what Paul Tripp calls “cut and paste” reading of Scripture (Instruments, 24), I am faced with Shrek’s Onion: I realize that there are lots and lots of layers to peel before I can apply this truth to the heart of their belief system.
I’m going to be using the word “ignorance” quite a bit in this post, so let me explain something about the word. I don’t mean it in a condescending or insulting way. I remember being offended once in a high school chemistry class when I made a very obvious mistake and said, “Yeah, that was stupid.” The teacher said to me, “You’re not stupid; you’re ignorant.” Ouch! He was right, of course. My ignorance–absence of knowledge concerning whatever it was (I remember, but I’m not going to tell you)–led to a miscalculation, which fortunately for a chem class, didn’t go boom! Discovering you are ignorant in a subject shouldn’t offend you, it should motivate you to knowledge.
So let’s say we start with the layer of general biblical ignorance–people who just don’t know the first thing about God’s Word. I am not talking about new Christians, but complacent ones. People who hopped on board for God knows what reason (I mean that literally, not flippantly), and now attend and participate in church functions with absolutely no real basis for doing so. Their spiritual diet of God’s Word consists of soundbites and tweets; of the crumbs that get thrown to them as they pass through life. They are indiscriminate in their diet, and so their spiritual constitution is wrecked. They can’t be protected by the shepherds of their flock because they regularly visit the wolves themselves. To this ignorance you present knowledge of God’s Word. You stress the importance of reading God’s Word.
That layer peels away to reveal another layer of ignorance: people don’t know how to read God’s Word. Let me quote Tripp a little more extensively here:
“Many Christians simply don’t understand what the Bible is. Many think of it as a spiritual encyclopedia: God’s complete catalog of human problems, coupled with a complete list of divine answers. If you turn to the right page, you can find answers for any struggle. A more sophisticated variation views the Bible as a systematic theology text-book, an outline of essential topics you must master to think and live God’s way. In either case, we tend to offer each other isolated pieces of Scripture (a command, a principle, a promise) that seem to fit the need of the moment. What we think of as ministering the Word is little more than a spiritual cut-and-paste system” (Instruments, 24).
He goes on to explain that we need a complete view of Scripture, one that understands the whole redemptive history of God and puts individual passages and verses in that context. People stuck at the first layer, just wondering where to start, will get blown away with this information. “What? I have to read the whole thing?” Baby steps, baby steps. But yes, eventually, you do. The beauty of Scripture should not be condensed down to tourist trap art–a collection of pet phrases on doilies, plaques and in chain emails that help us survive the day. It should be seen in its marvelous, cohesive entirety, with all its interconnected parts, like Monet at work on a much grander scale. At close range, we see dots and colors of God’s truth, but as we learn more and step back, we see the hand of an infinite, all-wise, all-powerful, loving God, bringing all those apparently random things together into a master plan of epic, eternal proportions that should just blow our minds. Forget 3D. Put on some omni-dimensional glasses and soak in the mastery of it all.
I could on, but won’t. There are layers of personal experience valued above God’s truth; layers of false information from well-meaning people or straight-up deceivers; layers of personal perspectives and self-absorption and self-focus that choke out whatever God has to say; layers of laziness and lack of discipline. They are there, in your life and mine, and they all must be peeled away, to get to the heart–the core of our beliefs.
The good thing is that this works the same way salvation does. In salvation, we see that no amount of peeling is going to get through all the layers of what keeps us from God. It is God that has to penetrate all of that, and transform us from within, to change the heart. The result is that some layers just fall away, and others become easier to peel. When it comes to knowing God’s Word, the change is no different. God is again aiming for our heart. Yes, there is much to learn about how to read and understand the Bible, but you can’t go wrong by starting here: read it. Approach it willing to learn what God has to say to you, and not what you want to hear God saying. What better way to cut away the onion’s layers than a two-edged sword? (Heb. 4:12)
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Paul David Tripp: Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change. P & R Publishing, Philipsburg, NJ: 2002.
