Germs

About a month ago I ordered a book online. It was a free book written by a preacher. I remember finding it and being intrigued by the subject matter. I don’t remember what I thought of the author but it must not have been all bad because I ordered the book. And then forgot about it. Weeks passed and the book arrived in the mail. It took me a minute to even remember ordering it.

I started looking through it, reading the first pages. As I read those first pages I began to think…to feel…that this book wasn’t something I should be reading. With no memory of the beliefs of the author I looked him up online and discovered that my beliefs don’t line up with his. There was much truth in what I read in the book but there was plenty I didn’t agree with too. That book and I will be parting company.

But it and something I read this morning got me to thinking. As a Christian we are to discern everything. So much of what’s out there under the label of ‘Christian’ is far from being Biblical. Even if it holds some truth.

What I read this morning was an article about germs in Christianity. The author clearly isn’t reformed. From only a couple of paragraphs you get the impression that he or she is a name it and claim it kind of person. Despite that this person made me think. And I didn’t even read the entire article, only two or three paragraphs. This article spoke of the many things we encounter and how so many of them are spiritual germs.

Walk into just about any store and you can buy hand sanitizer. You see people carrying the stuff around, bottles of it sitting on desks and countertops, and sometimes hanging on walls. It’s pretty much everywhere. I well remember when I first discovered it and how I used to carry a little bottle of it connected to my keys. I also remember that I quit carrying it because my toddler liked to play with my keys and she would open the bottle with her teeth and drink the sanitizer. But…hand sanitizer is everywhere. It has become a part of our culture.

We went to a carnival type festival not too long ago and the workers there were insisting that people use hand sanitizer before entering or upon leaving the petting zoo. There was no choice, they caught everyone as they went through the gate, whether they were coming or going, and told them to use the sanitizer. It’s pretty much everywhere and it looks like it’s here to stay.

People put so much stock in it that they use it even in cases where soap and water are needed. Sanitizer might kill any bacteria picked up in a petting zoo but it does nothing for the dirt and hair…and other things. If you use it after running a chainsaw it will kill any germs on your hands but it will do nothing for the sawdust and gas. I’ve even seen hand sanitizer offered outside port-a-potties. That is definitely one case when a sink with soap and water is needed.  

That same hand sanitizer is relied heavily upon to prevent germs that make us sick. So much so that it is often seen as ‘the way’ to prevent illnesses. This belief fails to take into consideration that some illnesses are simply air born. Or that sometimes we pick up a germ even if we constantly clean our hands.

My husband is fond of quoting the following verse…

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28

I think of that now as I think of hand sanitizer and it’s much relied upon but sometimes failed ability to protect us from germs. It has its place and it does…as proven by science…kill germs but it is only a tool. A tool that people use to help ward off illnesses and a tool that the Lord allows us to use…one He may at times choose to overrule so that we may get sick to serve His purposes.

That book that I ordered online had the potential to be a germ. Because the author holds beliefs that I do not hold, the book had the ability to slip under my radar…it made it into my house…and influence what I believe.

I know someone that recently accused me of letting the beliefs of men affect what I see in Scripture. That wasn’t the case. My beliefs came straight from Scripture before I knew of any of the men I was accused of following. But…

What I was accused of doing…allowing men to influence my beliefs is something that is easily done. Many, many people base what they believe about the Lord on the teachings of men. Many of them go first to a preacher or a teacher instead of to their Bible. Some of them never go to their Bible. How easily the human mind can be influenced by what we hear and read.

Much the way our bodies are affected by germs. We may try our best to keep them out by using hand sanitizer but even in our most diligent efforts…despite them…we manage to pick up a germ…an illness…from time to time.

The Lord will never let those that are His get led astray…but we still encounter those things that would try and do just that. I bought a very old book at a thrift store not all that long ago. I knew nothing about the author but the list of chapters in the book were titled things like ‘the doctrine of election’ and ‘double predestination’. I read bits and pieces, here and there, in the book before I bought it. It sounded good so I figured it was worth the dollar I paid for it. I went home and started to read it. The first chapter or two was good. By about the third chapter I began to have a sort of odd feeling…kind of like a mental squirming…when I read it. Something didn’t seem quite right but I couldn’t figure out what that something was. In chapter five the author started talking about the free will of man and how God wants us to ‘choose’ him.

That was it. I knew what the problem was. When I was in the introduction chapters there was little or nothing to disagree with but as I got to the chapters that started to deal with those deeper issues the authors beliefs in free will were starting to show through even though they weren’t clearly written out yet. I stopped reading the book and got rid of it.

Those two books came into my home within a couple weeks of each other. Despite my best diligence to screen what I expose myself to…there they were…slipping in unnoticed.

Several years ago I picked up a book in a bookstore. The title…I think…was what caught my attention but the subject intrigued me. It was about keeping things that shouldn’t be in our ‘Christian’ homes out of our homes. One section even spoke of how we bring demon possessed things into our homes…thereby inviting those demons in. I flipped through the book and put it back. After leaving the store the book still had my attention so I looked it up online, read about the author. The thought had been there to go back and buy the book but after finding out about the author I no longer wanted it. I had discovered the author believed in things that I did not.

Back then I wasn’t as careful about what I read and I didn’t understand what I believed. Exposing myself to ‘germs’ happened a lot more often then. My hand sanitizer wasn’t as strong.

Because you see…we can look at all those things where people take Scripture and twist it as a ‘germ’. It’s a foreign idea…a false teaching…that is being taught to us in books, movies, sermons, and through people, that is wrong. They aren’t Biblical and they have the ability to put ideas into our heads…especially into the heads of those that are new in the faith…that can affect their growing deeper in their faith.

I still sometimes come up against things I was taught all my life and must weigh against what I know to be the Truth of Scripture. Most of those things…the things I was taught in ‘church’ buildings and by professing Christians…are wrong when compared to Scripture.

About a month ago my husband wanted to share one of my blog posts with a friend of his. We printed it off the internet and sent it to this friend. We got a letter in reply, thanking us for the post and asking for more. This friend of my husband’s doesn’t have internet so he can’t look at my blog. He did, however, speak of having been praying for a deeper Bible study than he had available to him and how I had written of deep Truths. And he wanted to read more.

We are all that way, whether we realize it or not. Our souls seek for what they don’t have. We want to understand more…even the unregenerate. Somewhere within everyone is a soul that wants more of…something.

We can feed our soul on the Truths of Scripture or we can feed it on twisted false teachings but feed it we will.

As we go through life, going to town, running errands, interacting with others, we are exposed to untold numbers of germs. Most of them either serve no danger to our bodies or our body wards them off without us ever having any clue we were exposed to something.

Several years ago two of my daughters came down with chicken pox. I had no idea they had been exposed until they started breaking out with what I thought at first was bug bites. It didn’t take too long before I figured out it was chicken pox. On that day we had driven to another town a couple of hours from our home. By the time I knew what my daughters had it was too late to not expose others to it. My young son had even been exposed by sharing a drink with one of his sisters. I was certain he would break out within a week or two.

He never did. Despite never having been exposed to chicken pox before…as far as I know…he never had so much as a spot. At the time I considered that odd because his sisters had been vaccinated against chicken pox when they got them and he had not been. Presumably my girls had been ‘sanitized’ against chicken pox and yet their ‘sanitizer’ failed and they caught the virus. My son, having never been ‘sanitized’ against it, didn’t catch it.

The germ that caused the chicken pox in my daughters was a germ we never saw. It slipped in without us being aware it had ever been there and had long since taken root and grown by the time we had any idea that it was there.

Those books that slipped under my radar and made it into my house…could have done the same thing. Now, the Lord didn’t allow that to happen. He gave me enough discernment to catch them at the beginning but what if I hadn’t had that discernment? What if I had read them assuming the author shared my beliefs, assuming he had written straight from Scripture as Scripture teaches? Or what if my faith had been weaker, my understanding not as deep? How easily those books could have…probably would have…become germs that not only slipped into my home…which they did…but took root and grew.

            Books could actually be one of the easier ‘germs’ to spot because we do have the option of looking up the subject matter and the authors beliefs. But what of all the other places where we can pick up ‘germs’ without knowing it? Movies and music both have a huge opportunity to ‘infect’ us with the message they send. But those, too, are a bit easier to spot.

            What of the advice given by others? What of the little things that are said here and there? Once we reach a certain level of maturity we have the ability…the discernment…to weed out the good from the bad. We may get drawn into something for a short time but the Lord won’t let us stay there.

            I recently shared a small portion of Sinners in the hands of an angry God by Jonathon Edwards with a relative. This relative seemed to have a love/hate reaction to it. I could tell immediately that they didn’t care for what they were hearing but they went on to say that ‘God wants more preachers to preach about hell.’ I told this relative that if God wanted more preachers to preach on hell, more preachers would preach on hell. I went further and asked this relative whether or not they thought a God that could create the entire world…the entire universe…and all that was in it couldn’t make a man preach on hell if he wanted to. And…that was the end of the conversation. I received a vague reply and the subject was dropped.

            This conversation was about Truth as laid out in Scripture but it was more Truth than this relative was ready for. I knew that when I said it. I didn’t go looking for that conversation, it came to me. But that conversation could just as easily have been about something that I didn’t agree with. It could have introduced me to ideas and beliefs that I didn’t hold instead of me being the one to do the introducing of ideas. And to that relative…they may think I introduced ‘germs’ to them with that conversation.

            Even little things that we encounter have the ability to affect us. For many they do get infected and they pick up ideas from so many different places. Scripture tells us…

so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Ephesians 4:14 esv

            Those ‘germs’ infect some and blow them this way and that way. They are tossed about like a balloon in a windstorm, bobbing along on whatever idea seems to have the most merit at the time.

            Even if we’ve long since passed that point…or were never there…in our faith. There are so many, many things that try to creep in. So many ‘germs’ that we are exposed to that try and take hold whether we realize them or not.

            We ‘sanitize’ ourselves everytime we read Scripture. The Lord will not let those that are His pick up too many ‘germs’ but He does let us be surrounded by those ‘germs’. They may find their way into our midst from time to time but He will not allow them to take root and blow us around like a balloon.

            We are His and He will keep us as His.

            He is our sanitizer.