Pop Culture Corner: Christian Udders?
08-23-2006
by Johann Snyder

Do boy cows have udders? No seriously, I want to know because I recently saw Barnyard and that's the one question that continually popped into my head, "Do boy cows have udders? And if they do, how do you tell boy cows apart from girl cows?" Now obviously this gender confusion isn't what the movie Barnyard is about, but no matter how hard I tried to focus on other aspects of the film, I kept getting distracted by the udders, so I decided to resolve the situation as soon as I left the theatre.

Of course any time one has a question of this nature, like do male cows have udders, the best place to go is the all-knowing Internet, which is exactly what I did. I logged on and asked Jeeves my question, and I discovered what I suspected all along; only female cows have udders. I felt quite relieved after confirming that I wasn't quite as clueless on cow anatomy as Barnyard led me to believe, but now I was left with another question; why do the male cows have udders in the movie?

Unfortunately, getting an answer to this question is a bit more problematic. Apart from calling the director of the film and asking (and since I don't know him personally, I didn't really feel comfortable calling a complete stranger to ask about cow udders), I'm therefore left with pure speculation. We all know that cows are funny. Gary Larson showed us in The Far Side that cows that stand on their hind legs are even funnier. This, I believe, was the inspiration for Barnyard, although it seems the makers of the movie figured that if having some of the standing cows with udders is funny, it would be even funnier for all of them to have udders. I admit it did look kinda silly, but it was still pretty confusing, and therein lays the danger of wanting everything to be the same; a lesson we as Christians would be wise to heed.

Denominational strife has fractured the church and disillusioned people seeking spiritual answers for years, which is very unfortunate. If we were honest about it, we'd realize that all of this strife really comes from the fact that we want everyone else to be the same as us. In our subconscious, I think there's a desire in all of us for the people we convert to be just like us. We think they should believe the way we do, worship the way we do, pray the way we do and so on. That, we may think, is a successful conversion. But that isn't a conversion, that's a cloning, and who does that really benefit? No one. It just gratifies our own sense of self-importance. Perhaps we've confused being imitators of Christ as being imitate-me-in-the-way-I-imitate-Christ. The fact of the matter is, Jesus called us to be imitators of Him and at the same time He called us to be quite diverse; to be different. The New Testament is full of encouraging statements of how we are to be one in Christ and yet different from each other as we carry out our own unique and specific roles.

Denominational strife has made out differences to be a negative thing, but the fact is it wouldn't help for us to all be the same. In fact, that might be kind of confusing, because who wants to lose their identity and become just like everyone else. God didn't create us that way. He created us to be unique, to be different, to be totally unlike anyone else in all of creation. At the same time, He's also called us to work for one unified purpose; to spread the good news of the gospel. If we can bring our differences to bear on that one goal, they will no longer be a detriment that divides, but a strength that will conquer. Best of all, people won't be distracted by the fact that we all look the same and ask questions like, "Are they all supposed to have udders? That's a little weird."

I guess the moral of the story of Barnyard for me was this; all cows don't need to have udders to be funny, and all Christians don't need to be exactly the same to be effective ministers of the gospel. Instead of trying to get new Christians to be like me, I need to make sure they're just like Christ, and then help them find ways to use their unique differences from me and the rest of the church to help strengthen me and the rest of the church. So celebrate and utilize the differences you see in the church, and be glad that we don't all have udders.

Johann "Yo" Snyder is the host of the Mid-day show at M88 radio, 88.3FM in Albuquerque, NM. He writes a monthly blog that takes some elements of current events and pop culture to illustrate spiritual points. The archives for these articles can be found at: http://www.m88.org/yo-duh.asp