The Sky is Falling: Buy Toilet Paper!
/“There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.”
- 1 Corinthians 15:44
Every age in history has those moments when it seems the sky is falling and destruction is upon us. What is to be our response?
Buy toilet paper!
The first great run on toilet paper came in Japan in December 1973. The world-wide oil shortage led to all out panic. In Japan, consumers were buying as much as a year’s supply of the white sheets of cleansing. Johnny Carson made a joke about it on “The Tonight Show” and the panic spread to the United States.
We have had several runs on toilet paper since. Most recently, under the looming shadow of COVID. We once again saw empty shelves almost as blank as the masked faces of the needy consumers standing before them. I could detail many more instances, but I’m already on my second sheet, and you never know when you will run out.
But why toilet paper? You don’t have to have toilet paper to survive. It doesn’t save a life. It doesn’t feed a family. It is not even very good for treating a wound. All it is really good for is blowing your nose or cleaning your derriere! And there are other ways to do both!
However, I think it speaks to a higher calling. In the same way young children (and adults) find so much humor in passing gas, belching, body parts and sexuality. It comes from embarrassment that we are dependent on all of these for life. Let’s be honest, we are embarrassed by the fact we have a temporal body that requires crude processes. And we will make a run on the grocery store to try and avoid any further degradation we might have to suffer.
C. S. Lewis wrote in Reflections on the Psalms (1964) about how humanity is regularly surprised by the circumstances we find ourselves in, “It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the very wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed: unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.”
His point was that we ARE meant for something more. We find ourselves surprised by our circumstances because we were meant for more than this temporal world. We are embarrassed by our own bodily functions because we were meant for more than this temporal body. We are humiliated by our weaknesses, failures, ineptness, neediness and limitations because we were meant for an eternal perfect world. We were never meant to find satisfaction in this world, because we have a greater destiny before us.
No amount of toilet paper will clean up the mess and make a world where humanity can find satisfaction. It might give us comfort for the moment. It might make things easier. It might play to our sensitivities and help hide our embarrassment, but it won’t solve the conundrum of humanity: satisfaction can not be found in this mortal vessel. It can only be found outside this temporal world in Christ. Because, at some level, we all know that, we are embarrassed of the frailty of mortality.
When the sky falls, we can make a run on toilet paper. Or we can focus on who we are in Christ. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:44, “There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” We get to chose which one we will live for this day. Flesh or Spirit. Only when we live for the Spirit will we find satisfaction in our lives. It is in the Spirit we are a “chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people.” (1 Peter 2:9)
© 2026 Warren Martin. All rights Reserved.
