A Mango Is Not Just a Mango
but a testament to the gospel
Anchor
[People] have been shown what God is like. Yes, God has made it clear to them. There are things about God that people cannot see—his eternal power and all that makes him God. But since the beginning of the world, those things have been clear for people to understand through the creation that God has made. So people have no excuse.
People knew God, but they did not honor him as God, and they did not thank him. Their ideas became useless and pointless and their foolish hearts abandoned all reason. They said they were wise, but they became fools. Instead of honoring the divine greatness of God, who lives forever, they traded it for the worship of idols—things made to look like humans who get sick and die, or like birds, animals, and snakes. — Romans 1:19-23
Sea
The greatest illustration of Romans 1:19-20 that I’ve ever seen is a Tik-Tok video.
If you don’t watch the video, this post won’t make sense. In it, a shirtless man utters a detailed litany of the splendor of the natural world. At the crescendo, he shouts, "A mango is like telling me…When I have a mango, like, I am loved by somebody!" I imagine Jesus looking at this man and remarking, "No greater faith have I found in all of the Caribbean," or Brooklyn, or wherever he's at—you get the point.
This man believes the gospel based on the testimony of a mango!
Ok. Perhaps it is not the John 3:16 version of the gospel, but it’s aligned. God so loved me that he gave me a mango is very much in keeping with him giving me his only beloved Son. This is not meant to be irreverent towards Jesus’ sacrifice. It’s just that if this man believes God loves him based on the sweetness of a piece of fruit, then how much more will he rejoice knowing God also gave him His Son as a savior, His Spirit as power, His Kingdom as his eternal home, and His church as his family. Maybe he already knows.
Abraham didn't have the gospel, and neither did Moses. David came close, but still not. Yet they are all part of the great cloud of witnesses who believe God's love for them is real. Tangible as a promised land, unalienable as an eternal throne, precious as a first-born son, delicious as a mango. The love of God was the very material that held their lives and their world together.
How did they get this knowledge of God? Well, kind of by looking around. Moses saw a burning bush and decided to investigate. David watched his sheep graze peacefully in a meadow and penned, “The Lord is my shepherd.” This man studied the breath in the wind, the mirth of the birds, the suffering of dogs, and the sweetness of fruit and deduced God’s Great Compassion.
Romans 1:19 says that the nature of God—namely his power, his eternality, and his — can be known via creation. All you have to do is look at what has been made (the stars above, the power of the sea, and the delicate beauty of a tulip) to know that a God exists and He is divinely powerful. But my man on the TikTok goes a step further. He contends that nature can also reveal the love of God. In receiving a mango, he perceives the generosity of God and His satisfying goodness.
He does not fall into the trap of the Gentiles of Paul's day by deifying the mango Those who turn a created thing into an ultimate thing deserving of worship, Paul says they become futile in their thinking and foolish in their hearts. Could our observant friend understand that the mango, the wind, the birds, the dogs all point to One? Someone more remarkable than a mango, than all of creation itself. By paying close mind to nature, the man concludes that the Great Someone can be known by Their intimate care and attention for Their creation. Jesus names that Someone as Our Father. Our Father is great because He regards the suffering of dogs (or the deaths of sparrows, as Jesus put it in Matthew 10:29). Our Father's exuberant grace puts all that juicy goodness into a mango just to delight his hungry kids.
If our friend with the love of mangos was in the Garden of Eden, he probably would have told the Serpent a thing or two. Considering all the delectable beauty of all the fruit that God had already provided for him, I think he wouldn't have been so easily seduced by Satan's suggestion that eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil would make him wise. Instead, He would saunter up to a mango tree, pluck a ripe one off its branches, and say, "What need have I to be wise when the One who gave me this loves me so? This right here is enough for me. I am satisfied."
It is never wise to ignore the generosity of God. "Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights," says the Apostle James. When we lose sight of God as The Source of all good things, we begin to think God is holding back on us. As a result of abandoning our source of satisfaction, we become blind to the beauty that is and hellbent on getting what we need for ourselves. This leads to dissatisfaction, envy, anxiety, hurry, and greed. But we won't fall for that trick when we take seriously what Jesus says in Luke 12:30-32, that Our Father knows what we need, and His good pleasure is to give us the Kingdom. We'll be less likely to obsess about what we don't have and more likely to focus on Who we do have. We possess more than enough because God loves and cares for us.
Godly gratitude is a proper response to God's generosity. And it is true wisdom, even in the midst of lack.
Verily,
Alysia
Sail
This week the sail is a response to my man in the video. It’s called “Natural Litany of Compassion.”
About the wind blowing, Our Father cares. About the noise of the birds singing, Our Father cares. About the suffering of the dogs in the streets, Our Father cares. About the smell of freshness, Our Father cares. About how sweet a mango is, Our Father cares. A mango is not just a mango. When He gives us a mango, It is like telling us, we are loved by Him
I will go to the grocery store to get some mango's!
Thank you babe, this was wonderful.
There are so many levels to this. Thank you, Alysia.