What Can A Pig Teach Us?

This is Pork Chop. She is a 6 month old Bluebutt pig (Yorkshire/Hampshire cross) and is destined for the butcher in about a month. She is our first pig and has taught us a lot about pigs. Firstly, pigs do stink and are dirty, but that's not really their fault. They're made to want to wallow in mud. Pigs, like most animals, don't care where they go to the bathroom. They don't go where they sleep, but will go in their wallow, and then wallow in it. So a wallow is not just mud, and subsequently they stink, as do the pigs that wallow in them.

Pig's don't just wallow in the mud to get dirty. They do it to keep cool. It's simply in their nature. They were born that way.

There's an allusion to people here that Peter made in 2 Peter 2:22:

"Of them the proverbs are true: 'A dog returns to its vomit,' and, 'A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.'"

Pigs are born with a nature that makes them want to wallow in mud and excrement, just as man is born with a nature to wallow in sin and depravity. That is why man can not stand against sin without God. He may try to change his habits, but he can not change his nature anymore than a pig can change it's nature. No matter how many times we try to wash her off with water and make her look nice again, her nature is left unchanged, and she runs right back to the wallow to soak.

But like I said earlier, a pig does not get dirty for the sake of getting dirty. She gets dirty to cool her flesh. In the heat of the day, pigs have few options for cooling off, and will get sunburned and bug bitten. Her only chance for relief is to wallow in mud. It gives her pleasure and comfort, but also makes her absolutely filthy.

The comparison is the same. Tempatation causes a person to burn with desire for whatever sin tempts them. It may be a compunction for gossip, a desire for something they don't have (envy and discontent), anger and grumbling, food (gluttony), laziness (sloth), or sex (lust). The only way to cool their flesh is to dive into that sin. It feels good but leaves them filthy and stinky.

The only way to change our nature is to undergo a dramatic change, as dramatic as a pig changing into another animal. We can not make that change ourselves. It requires the power of the Creator, and the sacrifice of a Savior. Only through repentance, forgiveness, and the power of the Holy Spirit in us, can we ever be saved from the sinful nature with which we were born, and begin to desire something else: a closer relationship with God and His righteousness.