Have you ever thought about soap? I mean, really stopped and thought about it? For some reason, it's one of those strange things I think about a lot.
First of all, what is it? Sure, now we can get it at Bath and Body Works and pump it out in liquid form from a dispenser that assures us of its antibacterial properties (which I feel confused about because I think I've read that if you use antibacterial soap too often, your body won't build up an immunity to germs and bacteria. Anybody medical know the real story behind this?) But what did it used to be made of? Animal fat or something? Honestly, I can't understand how rubbing a block of animal fat on your hands is supposed to make them clean. Maybe it wasn't animal fat - I may just be revealing my ignorance about all things "soap." I know glycerin is or was at one time a component in soap. But then again, I don't have a clue what glycerin is (apart from a Bush song that I've never really liked). No matter what it's made of, it leads me to my second big point about soap:
Why do we trust soap more than anything else in the world? Think about it. A mom changes a poopie diaper and only minutes later is cutting up the veggies for dinner. How can that be? Soap. A surgeon pumps gas in his car and then drives to work and holds someone's heart in his hands. Soap. (Yes, and latex gloves, but still...) A Papa John's employee takes a bathroom break and then returns to the kitchen to toss our dough in the air. Soap. (We can only hope.) We will do the most disgusting things and then touch things that we (or other people) will be putting into their mouths, and we never give it a second thought because of soap.
The level of trust we put in this stuff simply amazes me! We never go around worrying that the soap didn't get the job done (except for those of us that are OCD). We just scrub-a-dub-dub and go along our merry way. I can't think of anything we trust as much. And yet I don't know how it works. I don't know how God works, either, and yet I find that I often trust him less than a bar of soap. A brick of something with glycerin (perhaps) and who knows what else? How embarrassing, really. I guess one big difference is that soap is pretty predictable. It's always supposed to do the same thing (and if it's not doing it's job, none of us will really know the difference since bacteria are microscopic). So maybe that's why it's easier to trust soap than the Creator of the Universe.
I'll get off my soap box now...
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4 comments:
i'd love to put this in an issue of the aware sometime- I really liked your thoughts on soap!
seems what you say is true...after reading a few things.
whenever i write about something random, i tend to do some research on it. once i did a post about bananas. I learned a lot about how good bananas are for you.
sometimes the most random things can be so interesting.
Soap! Awesome.
May I vote for a favorite soap?
Mrs. Meyers is the cat's pajamas, I must say.
Soap is a surfactant used in conjunction with water for washing and cleaning that historically comes in solid bars but also in the form of a thick liquid, especially from soap dispensers in public washrooms.
Historically, soap has been composed of sodium (soda ash) or potassium (potash) salts of fatty acids derived by reacting fat with lye in a process known as saponification. The fats are hydrolyzed by the base, yielding glycerol and crude soap.
Many cleaning agents today are technically not soaps, but detergents, which are less expensive and easier to manufacture.
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