Crud War!
“Crrruuud waaaarrr!!” For those of us at camp, we know well this cry that rings out when the Maverick campers are in the dining hall. Someone shouts it out, then a hundred voices echo it. The anticipation for the camp-wide food fight on the front beach known as “Crud War” grows with each passing meal.
It’s a real battle! The different cabins line up facing each other, hands full of whatever mush or gooey substance each stage of the war offers. The campers get cruddier and stickier, oatmeal and noodles fly, hair and clothes and and faces are matted with syrup, before the final stage. The final battle lines are drawn just feet apart, battle-food spilling from overflowing cupped hands, faces blinking away the hanging debris from the previous face-offs. The signal is given, and the air explodes with plumes of flour, and like a smoke-engulfed battlefield, visibility is momentarily eclipsed. Barely recognizable campers and counselors are condensed to a community of running, throwing, and laughing specters. It’s an absolute blast to participate in or watch!
Gathering the sticky, messy group for the closing picture brings a brief sense of order and yet another opportunity for us to share the Gospel. A crud-covered member of our program staff proclaims into the microphone,
“Look at yourselves! You guys are a mess – a crud-covered picture of humanity in desperate need of cleansing.”
This is a desperate need! Oatmeal imbedded in the ears is rough! And no one wants cheap pancake syrup sticking their eyelashes together for very long. The appeal continues:
“This crud is like the sin in our lives! It starts out fun, but then it makes a sticky mess of everything and covers our God-made identities with crud until sometimes it’s hard to even tell who the real you is.”
The truth is that identity is a huge struggle for many young people. Ideas about where to find identity, belonging, and purpose are part of the avalanche of information and messages crashing into our kids’ minds every day. The confusion of values and relative “truths” coming from all kinds of sources and viewpoints leave many anxiously lost, yet unable to hear and see the truth of the Gospel, just like crud coating the eyes and ears.
To conclude Crud War, the campers run into the ocean and wash off, but not before they hear the final reminder:
“Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is God’s redeeming offer to de-crud our lives, our identities, our lost purpose and belonging. Our efforts to clean ourselves up can never work; his blood is the only thing that can wash us completely clean. We need simply to run to Jesus whose grace will wash all of our sins away.”
The cruddy delight of sin only briefly satisfies before a new and more exciting layer is sought, before a new stage is played, before a real solution for getting clean is more desperately needed. That solution is only ever found in the Gospel. While the ocean inevitably fails to clean all the crud off our campers (some find bits of oatmeal or pancake batter in their hair for days afterward), it serves as a good shadow to the One who is the true source of cleansing. Our hope and prayer at Echo Ranch is that as mess-engers, the craziness of Crud War earns us the right to be heard in the hearts of our campers, and leaves them with a very tangible and memorable illustration of the Gospel.
“Crrruuud waaaarrr!!”