You stare at the huge, thick, black gloves I extend to you.
To you, I sound like Darth Vader, breathing through a huge ventilation mask. As of this moment you would rather call me Big Bird than anything else, because I’m plastic looking and larger-than-life yellow. You swallow, grip your clip-board, and sort of slink back a millimeter of a step.
“But…what for?” You squeak.
I look at you through my suit and jerk my gloved thumb behind me. “You signed up for this, right? We’re working with some bio-chemical toxins today. If you’d rather your insides melt out through your eyes, you can leave the gloves.”
You pale; then reach for the gloves, unwilling to compromise.
What have you gotten yourself into?
If this didn’t refresh your memory, I’ll remind you that we’re focusing on contamination for the next few blogs.
A big issue, insomuch that it requires constant surveillance and precaution by trained professionals—chemists, mind you. Spiritually, contamination is just as dangerous. Just as a water supply can be ruined by contaminating invaders, so can your spirit. Last time we talked about contaminates and the forms they take, spiritual and physical. Recap:
Contaminates = Sin.
Sin = BAD.
Contaminates + you = DANGER ZONE.
Do the math. Today I want to look at how contaminates harm our lives once we are exposed to them. The Newhall neighborhood of Hamden composed a page on newhallinfo.org. The article there states that: “For a chemical exposure to occur there has to be a place where the chemical comes from.” Well, we know where chemicals come from physically; industries, companies, labs, and the sort. Well, I want to look at a more spiritual approach to where contaminates come from.
The “additions” to life; like Facebook, movies, cell phones, video games, the internet, drugs, sex, are not what they seem. In and of itself, life is great. We got along peachy-keen without these additions.
Think about water. In and of itself, water is good for you alone. But, if you add, oh, let’s say—the liquid form of Nicotine (Contact with the liquid pure form can cause death within hours), you’d be dead within an hour or two. Liquid nicotine is an addition—it can be easily added into water, into your body and bloodstream, but does that mean it’s good for us? Just because there are additions, they aren’t necessarily good.
How do we tell if something is a contaminate? The Bible gives us a little hint as to what isn’t a contaminate: “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” (Philippians 4:8). So, basically…if anything in our life isn’t this stuff mentioned—it’s probably a contaminate.
Isaiah 64:6, reads: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” Through sin in the Garden of Eden, we automatically inherit contaminates (it sucks, I know). Our righteous acts—like hiding our “explosive anger” behind a façade at church on Sunday—are filthy, worthless rags—rags that have been eroded by contaminate acids. Contaminates make us “shrivel up like a leaf and be swept away”—weak. Contaminates make us weak and unable to fight the Deceiver, who constantly is standing over our wellspring with a little bottle of contaminate chemicals.
Contaminates kill our spirits. Eventually, they will deafen us to God’s voice, and guide us off the “straight and narrow”. They become so huge that they begin to choke the life out of us in forms of depression, suicide, and illness. Satan’s goal is rob, kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10). That tells me, since he’s the Contaminator, eventually his contaminates will kill us off.
Now, since we’ve looked at how contaminates harm us and the forms they take, we’ll look at compromise again. The Contaminator would love for us to compromise our gloves, so our spirits can melt out through our eyes. He would love it if we compromised our faith—everything we know and believe about Christ that’s truth—and let it hang in the balance. He’d love for us to say: “Oh, I’ll just do this once, it won’t hurt…” and then being a frequenter where that sin knows you by name, age, and appearance. Compromising contaminates say “just this once I’ll drink that liquid nicotine” and by then it’s too late.
But, thankfully, we have Christ who can reverse the effects of compromise, contaminates, at that “one time stand”. He can set the clock back, and we even get to learn from our mistakes and not make the same decision again blindly.
Well, now that we’ve examined some of those toxins, let’s prepare ourselves for suiting up and kicking those contaminates to the curb.
