Forget, “Don’t be grouchy like a rooster!” These days, we are singing, “Don’t be broody like a hen!” In our flock of Easter-Eggers, as Spring gives way to Summer, we have had one of our female fowl think she’s hatching little ones. While this maternal instinct is God-given, our girl is experiencing these urges because of hormones. She is convinced she’s going to incubate chicks, even though they aren’t fertilized. A brooding hen will remain in such a state to her own detriment, neglecting herself to “hatch” what will never hatch. Weight loss and dehydration are common in hens allowed to stay broody. She will growl and even peck when you try to break her of this behavior. The behavior will even spread to other members of the flock. While she is sure she is hatching chicks, she is totally wrong!
I wonder if God gives us such natural illustrations to paint a picture of greater truths He wants us to understand. Concerning some who did not receive the love of the truth in order to be saved, Paul explains, “For this reason, God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false” (2 Th. 2:10-11). In that context, he is writing about those who are persuading people to believe untruths about the Second Coming of Christ. Those who didn’t love the truth made their minds vulnerable to false ideas. The fruit of exchanging truth for a lie is being given over to impurity, degrading passions, and depraved minds to do improper things, “being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boasters, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful” (Rom. 1:18-31).
We can be totally convinced that wrong is right, right is wrong, up is down, and day is night. Just because we are sincere and totally committed to that idea does not make it right. We may convince others of it. We may fight passionately for that conviction, yet still be dead wrong! This is true whether the matter has to do with God’s plan of salvation, sexual orientation or identity, acceptable worship, or really anything God has clearly revealed in His Word. A world full of people may be persuaded that something is acceptable or unacceptable despite what God has said. Persisting in such a mindset is self-destructive.
When a hen is brooding, it’s incumbent upon the owners to exercise their superior reasoning and strength to help remedy the situation. They must break the brooding, culling them out of the flock and putting them somewhere (a separate pen) away from the dark and exposed to direct sunlight to snap them out of it. This will take time, but it is the most effective and compassionate way to resolve the problem.
Spiritually, the same is true. Personal attention and exposure to the Son is what corrects those with a good and honest heart from fatal ideas. The process may be unpleasant both for the one experiencing the delusion and those trying to help them. We cannot force anyone to give up destructive beliefs. The omnipotent God does not even do that. But, compassion and concern will cause us to do what we can to help those who “oppose themselves” (2 Tim. 2:25, KJV).
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