Garbage Day
Jun 17th, 2009 by ljkim
There’s nothing like garbage day in NY! And since my regular household chore is to take out the trash, I’m often surprised at how much we create. Sometimes I’m just lazy and don’t take it out for a day (or two!). Even though we don’t eat or cook at home, and we don’t often buy things, I wind up having to make a couple of trips to the trash chute. What if this is true in a spiritual sense too? What if we regularly produce a good bit of spiritual trash? A little resentment, selfishness, a scrap of bitterness, a wad of jealousy, a cap full of lust… What would happen to this trash after a few days? A week? A month?
Eventually your “heart” (or psyche, or whatever you want to call it) will be busting through with garbage. You’ll have an outburst or a breakdown or fall into despair… At which point you’ll have no choice but to roll up your sleeves and clean house. for some people that means a period of soul searching. Others get counseling. Or spend some time in prayer, and get support from friends… Afterward you might feel like “I’m glad I’m past that!” And just go on with how you used to live. The problem is that the garbage will pile up again…at which point you might say things like “I thought I was past all that!”
The reformer, Martin Luther, said that “all of life is repentance.” I think he was talking about this… Most people think they are “good.” But the truth is – we’re made in God’s image, like little “gods” (at our best) – but unlike God we also make garbage… LOTS of garbage. Garbage is when we take good things and use them in a way that makes it no-good (for us or anyone else). Lust, pride, bitterness, envy, are all examples of that…good inclinations that get twisted somehow. And the sad fact is even though this is only a small percentage of what goes through our minds, it tends to add up. There will never be a time in your life in which you completely cease to make some (spiritual) garbage. Which brings us to the question
Then HOW in the world are we ever to get free of bitterness, greed, anger, frustration…all the garbage?!?!
Simple: learn to take out the trash.
Clean house before the your place gets trashed. Repent of your sins before they overrun your life… Deal with things like anger, pride, selfishness, greed, etc…quickly before they leak out onto clean things and stain it. Normal people need to do a little bit of house-cleaning, heart-cleaning, every day – or every couple of days before it begins to add up. The problem is ‘thinking you don’t have garbage to get rid of…’ You can live free of garbage – simply by taking out the trash.
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