Poop in the Streets?
We don’t always give the Old Testament Law its due credit for the standard of cleanliness it required. As recently as the 1800s doctors performed surgeries without bothering to wash their hands. In Leviticus 15 we see the command for men and women to wash themselves after bodily discharges hinting at the importance of washing away filth.
Similarly Deuteronmy 23:13 gives the command to poop outside of the camp, to dig a hole and cover it up. This is a very important step to keep towns and cities free from the disease that can be spread through feces.
I remember as a child learning that hundreds of years ago people emptied their chamber pots into the streets and poop ran through the streets. Turns out that was a myth, and that generations of old understood that fecal matter spreads disease. They got rid of poop in as sanitary a manner as they could at the time.
Candy In the Streets?
Recently I had a dream that featured me going into a concession stand at a church after hours. During the dream I was tasked with cleaning the stand, and that had me digging the gunk out of a cotton candy machine. I filled up huge buckets of cotton candy sludge and went to the window and poured out the waste, just as I had imagined generations of old poured out their chamber pots. In the dream I could see that cotton candy now ran in the streets outside of the church.
When I was a kid I loved cotton candy. For a time it was my favorite treat. Today I won’t go near the stuff as there is no nutritional value to it. Candy in general is too sweet and causes all the healthy food that we eat to lose flavor.
Once I stopped eating sugar I found out that if you bake a Sweet Potato it is fine just as it is. You don’t have to cover it in sugar and marshmallow, it is flavorful enough. We just have to put unhealthy sugars into everything because we eat too much candy.
The Cotton Candy Gospel
In my dream I was able to connect to the concept of the “cotton candy gospel”. In this concept of the gospel Jesus is a treat that brings good feelings. It is nice to know that we have a God who loves us and will forgive our sins. As long as we say Jesus is our Savior then everything will be alright and we can go back to living lives whatever way we want.
That type of non-confrontational gospel will rot your soul just as cotton candy rots your teeth. A cotton candy gospel message takes the flavor out of the rest of the Bible. In the Bible we see a Holy God who demands His people to be Holy, and we see servants of God that recognize that there is nothing in this world that compares with their God.
Jesus died for us in the Bible, not so that we can hang a picture of Him on the wall, but because our sin is so evil we would otherwise go to Hell. Jesus recognized the evil all around us in the world and confronted and cast out demons. His apostles wouldn’t stop telling everybody about the transformational power of Jesu even if it led to their own deaths.
The apostles were on a mission to set people free from demons and see them filled with the Holy Spirit. There was no compromise with the gospel. Will today’s church find satisfaction with cotton candy? Comfortable Christianity will not satiate as many people in the days to come.
Listen to God’s Call
The question is when you hear the call to follow Jesus will you change your life and follow Him? Will you pray when He calls you to pray? Will you turn the TV or the phone off and listen to Messiah’s voice? Will you turn away from sin and encourage one another in real Christianity?
The world around us can see the candy flowing in the streets around our churches. They can see people go in and out without becoming transformed. Today I want to tell you Jesus is still there and ready to transform you. But you are going to have to pay the cost. Turn away from worldly things and fix your eyes on Jesus.
Photo by Emilio Guzman on Unsplash