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Purity

         Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. (II Corinthians 7:1)

 

We’re still on my hobbyhorse of defensiveness, and today, my name comes into play. Did you know that Karen means pure? Don’t worry, I’m not going off the deep end. But I am going to play. To be Karen, I must be pure, meaning I must be Karen. But if I am defensive, I must hide and protect at least part of myself. If you saw me doing something,  you might think worse of me. Or, since I know someday you’ll catch me doing something, and you will think worse of me, so it’s better to just open the carnival freak show right now and save everyone time and misery. The problem is, if I must hide Karen, then I cannot be Karen, or at least I can’t be pure Karen

Jam is another way I can look at the idea of being pure. Some folks make pure strawberry jam. The only fruit in their jam is strawberries. There’s something in me that just has to make impure, adulterated strawberry jam. It might have orange, applesauce, rhubarb, pineapple or other berries in it. If I wanted pure strawberry jam, I can get that at the grocery store.

The problem is, we’re all impure, adulterated jams. There may be a lot of Christianity in there, we’re definitely a Christian jam, but we find that some idea sounds good, or something in Christianity doesn’t sit well with us, so we remove a little of the jam, which leads to something sneaking into the empty space whether we do it on purpose or not. In fact, one of the rules for canning jam is to make sure air gets removed because it’s the air that will cause the jam to mold.

There’s another problem with making impure jam. Once you start experimenting, you tend to keep experimenting. There’s a website that lists twenty-five flavors that go well with strawberries.[1] That might be fine if we’re talking about flavors that spend less than ten seconds on our tongues, but when discussing truth or ideas that may influence our lives for years, we need to be more careful.

And now, to get to what’s probably the most purely theological point with purity. According to Dallas Willard, the goal of spiritual renovation and, therefore, purity is for us to reach a point where we can do what we want without feeling defensive because we have come to want to do truly good things.

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