Chicken Soup

When our daughters were little we found lots of great kids’ music at the library. Joe Scruggs, Charlotte Diamond, Fred Penner, and Alan Root were some of our favourites. We spent many hours listening to and singing along with these great songs. Many of them were quite educational and certainly contributed to our girls’ present love for music.

One of the songs on an Alan Root recording caused a great deal of discussion around the dinner table. Alan Root is a Christian minister and children’s performer and subscribes to a young earth, seven day understanding of the creation of the universe. Here are the lyrics to his song, “Chicken Soup.”

Chicken Soup (words and music by Alan Root)*

In the beginning so the scientists say
The planet was covered with soup
According unto them it started up when
The seas were sort of like slimy green goop
That became DNA so the storybooks say
Nobody really knows how
Single cell creatures kept finding new features
Til your great-grandfather climbed out

But you can’t make a chicken from soup
Chickens didn’t come from any slimy green goop
You can make soup from any chicken in the coop
But you cannot make a chicken from soup

Atheists say long ago and far away
Everybody used to be fish
Then we landed on the land and – ala ka zaam
Promoted to potatoes with a satellite dish
The Bible says the foolish man doesn’t fear God
Time to look around and get a clue
It takes more resolution to believe in evolution
Than the seven day story that’s true

But you can’t make a chicken from soup
Chickens didn’t come from any slimy green goop
You can make soup from any chicken in the coop
But you cannot make a chicken from soup

In the history of science and a civilized world
No new critters have advanced
No matter what you think we’re missing missing links
Chromosomal language couldn’t happen by chance
Einstein said God doesn’t role dice
Your future is determined by your past
Either you’re the masterpiece of a master-mind
Or the accident of hydrogen gas

But you can’t make a chicken from soup
Chickens didn’t come from any slimy green goop
You can make soup from any chicken in the coop
But you cannot make a chicken from soup

In our household, I was a proponent of theistic evolution as a means of creation. In other words, I believe that God did create the universe and He used evolution to accomplish this. I agree with many scientists who would say that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is about 13.75 billion years old. So we had conversations at the dinner table which discussed why this song was written, what it was talking about, and various theories and ideas of how our universe came to be. The statement with which we would often conclude was, “How the world was created is not as important as the fact that the Bible tells us who created the world. In the beginning, God created.”

I like much of the song-writing of Alan Root and even his “Chicken Soup” song is clever and humorous. It was a great discussion starter in our family. However, I would encourage us all to look at the songs we are singing with our kids and investigate what they are really teaching. Are they encouraging our kids to think for themselves and search after the truth of God? We want children to grow into adults who are self-feeders who will search for truth themselves rather than simply agree with whatever the person at the front of the church, university class, concert-hall, or the person on the You-Tube video says to them.

*Lyrics transcribed from www.alanroot.com audio. Listen to it here.