Less is more

I confess I’d never heard of the Meat Industry Hall of Fame until I read the obituary of meat-shaping pioneer Roger Mandigo.

Mandigo (pronounced MAN-di-go), who died in January at age 85, was a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor “known for his expertise in restructured meat,” The Wall Street Journal’s James R. Hagerty wrote, “produced by making odd bits of flesh adhere into convenient shapes with palate-pleasing textures.”

My opinion on that can be summed up in a word: Ew.

But, hey, fans of chicken nuggets and McDonald’s McRib may disagree, and it was Mandigo’s technology that gave us both.

Mandigo was inducted into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame in 2010, alongside the likes of McDonald’s Ray Kroc and Kentucky Fried Chicken magnate Harland Sanders. (True story: After my grandfather passed away in 1959, my grandmother vowed to remain single—unless and until Colonel Sanders came a-courtin’. She really liked that groomed goatee and Southern bow tie.)

After I learned that the meat industry enshrines its heroes, I wondered what other little-known or offbeat fame halls existed. I turned up several, including one that gave me the creeps: the Cockroach Hall of Fame in Plano, Texas.

This now-defunct hall featured dioramas with little cockroach corpses dressed in costume and posed in scenes: roaches in tutus, a blingy “Liberoachi” perched at a piano, roaches wearing sunglasses enjoying a day at the beach.

The Cockroach Hall of Fame closed in 2012 when its owner, Michael Bohdan, retired to Phoenix. To which I say, Praise the Lord! One of my childhood homes in Hawaii backed up against a jungle from which armor-plated, 3-inch roaches regularly invaded our house. I once whacked one full-force with a sturdy metal dustpan. Unfazed, the roach turned around, pinned me with a buggy glare, and said, “You talkin’ to me?”

I ran.

I found other offbeat halls of fame: the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame in Chattanooga, Tenn.; the Polka Hall of Fame in Ohio; and the Insurance Hall of Fame in Alabama.

I suppose it’s human nature to celebrate and memorialize those who make outstanding contributions to an endeavor we care about, no matter how quirky.

The Bible’s Hall of Fame is quirky, too. Not cockroach-­quirky—unless you count Haman and Herod, who seem to have crawled out from under rocks—and the locust plague God unleashed upon Egypt. Speaking of locusts, consider John the Baptist:

“He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? … Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’” (Luke 3:7, 9).

Safe to say John wasn’t getting invites to all the best dinner parties. Or capitalizing on his fame with a lucrative book deal. Or rubbing elbows with editors at the New Jordan Times. And yet, Jesus said of the Baptist, “Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater.” Yet, John was a loner dressed in camel skin, stomping around the wilderness, eating bugs and raving about repentance.

Are we too buttoned-down? As Christians, are we blandly and blindly brand-loyal? I sometimes worry that we put too much stock in the opinions of what I’ll call “public Christians” (PCs), of which you could argue I am one. Those with big platforms, plenteous followers, and lots of guest appearances on TV. I’m not saying having a big audience is a bad thing. But pride goes before a fall (Proverbs 16:18), and the trouble is, some public Christians begin to “believe their own press.” Result: the catastrophe of a witness destroyed.

Many PCs spend too much time infighting instead of kingdom-building, one-upping each other online or on-air, for unbelievers to witness. It’s embarrassing. Too often, Christians even try to ruin each other publicly. Why would anyone want to join such a club?

Heaven’s Hall of Fame is not associated with climbing to significance over the backs of our brethren, but with obscurity (Jabez), sacrifice (Stephen), and servanthood (Ruth). The principle that those who are first in the world shall be last in the kingdom is central to Jesus’ teachings on humility and the worldly trappings of success.

“He must increase,” John the Baptist said of Jesus, “and I must decrease.” Perhaps we PCs should spend more time figuring out how to be less.