Pure...

           The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. (I Timothy 1:5)

 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:15-16)

I’m probably cheating - or mishandling the Bible, but earlier I was thinking about love being pure and purifying. And hatred being pure and purifying. And anger…joy…patience… fear… jealousy… courage…lust… and other strongly felt feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. Today’s verse brings purity and love together, so it’s the verse of the day, but it’s not really the focus. That means my motive for sharing it with you probably isn’t pure.

As you read through my list, you   probably thought, “Yeah” about some, and “What’s she on?” about others. But consider how much hatred, anger, fear, jealousy, and lust can crowd out everything else. This is like my belief that I can trust both God and the Devil to be purely what they are, to act according to their natures. It doesn’t mean that I think the Devil is concerned about my well-being or about goodness. In the same way, the purity of hatred, anger, fear, jealousy, and lust is an evil purity. It is not the sort of purity we should seek (though we tend to) but there is a sort of purity to it.

In the passage in Revelation, Jesus tells the church at Laodicea that He wishes they were either hot or cold. Instead, they were lukewarm. They lacked the purity of either extreme. And, since Jesus had to explain this to them, I suspect they considered themselves quite pure enough in all the ways that mattered. It sounds strange, but Jesus said it. He wished that they were hot or cold. How could it be that lukewarm could be wors than the coldness of evil? I don’t know, but that’s what He said. Perhaps it’s the idea that at either extreme, we’re likely to be honest with ourselves.

I’ve often shared this quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, but it seems appropriate here:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was describing.