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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