Plastic

A few weeks ago, I accidentally ended up with a different kind of dish soap than what I usually get.  I’m a big fan of Palmolive Original, with all those shiny bubbles and squeaky-clean rinse, but I ended up with this oily, “soft-hand”, flowery stuff.  Within a few days, everyone was complaining that our water tasted odd.  Kaitlyn finally realized our problem:  Our plastic drinking cups were absorbing the flavor of the flowery-scented dish soap.  Our water tasted like roses.  Ick.  

 

As Christians, we like to think that we are made of glass—or at least ceramic.  We don’t absorb; we deflect.  We rinse well.  Nothing sticks.  But the Bible says differently:  We are plastic—and over time, we humans absorb what we are exposed to, until eventually we are characterized by it. 

 

It is hypocritical to suggest that our lives are changed by a 30-minute sermon on Sunday, but not affected by 13 hours of television the rest of the week; that we are affected by 12 minutes of Bible reading in the morning, but not by 8 hours of country music for the rest of the day. 

 

God is the One Who created us to be “plastic.”  It is this quality that allows God’s Word to transform us through constant exposure.  It’s what allows parents to influence their children for God, and enables godly Christians to disciple new believers.  But in the wrong hands, our “plastic” nature can harm us.  God warns us of this characteristic by admonishing us to “make no friendship with an angry man, lest thou learn his ways.”  He reminds us that “evil communications corrupt good manners.”    

 

When the Allied forces stormed through Germany at the end of World War II and liberated concentration camps, their grisly discoveries shocked the world.  LIFE magazine photographers caught images that still make us shudder—living skeletons blanketed in prison garb, staring out from barracks.  Even General Eisenhower famously reacted upon his discovery of those awful camps and the real story of the Third Reich that had lain hidden under Hitler’s deceptions and his vigorous handshakes with cowards who had fallen under his spell. 

 

Yet, beyond the skeletons was a story of how real people learned how to live among monsters.  They came back from Warsaw, Auschwitz, and Ravensbruck with their stories of survival—how they sat on straw in the lice-ridden barracks of Auschwitz, exchanging detailed recipes and stories, and playing card games with pieces of rubbish they found.  Similarly, the POW’s of Vietnam came back home thirty years later, after severe torture and isolation, and told how they named ants and rats, how they played checkers with bits of gravel, and how they created intricate knocking codes that went undetected by the cruel captors who guarded their cells.  They adjusted.  In the face of horror, they eventually shed their shock and learned how to live among demons.

 

The coping mechanism that God created in us to help us survive life on this sinful planet is part of our “plastic,” our ability to stop being shocked at what we see so that we can proceed to make rational decisions that can save our lives. 

 

I remember one of our kids coming home one summer and telling me how an adult had shown “concern” that we homeschool our children.  This man told our daughter, “It’s too bad your parents have sheltered you so much, because someday you will really be shocked at what’s out in the world.”  

 

The Bible tells us that when Paul discovered an entire city given over to idolatry, “his spirit was stirred in him.”  (Acts 17:16).  When he discovered what was “out in the world,” he didn’t shrug his shoulders in wise, all-knowing indifference.  He was moved.   

 

I hope I never stop being stirred.  Numbness is a coping mechanism for those who are victimized, not a practice of those who are living in liberty.  Anesthesia is not a gift for healthy people.  The emaciated prisoners who stared back from bunkers, dull emptiness glazing over their eyes, were no longer shocked by murder, rape, torture, profanity, abuse, and starvation.  General Eisenhower was.  I’m with Ike. 

 

Desensitization tears down our inhibitions, making us more accommodating of sin.  It is a method used on kidnapping victims and prisoners of war.  It is what happened to the precious Indian girls who were sold into debauchery in Indian temples a hundred years ago.  The more we watch and listen to sin, the less we can be moved by it.  We cannot be used to sin and stirred by it at the same time. 

 

The Bible says that Lot—a “righteous” man, by the apostle Peter’s assessment—was “vexed” from living in Sodom.  His years of surviving in a world where wrong seemed right, where gross sin was glorified, took their toll.  And like my plastic drinking cups that now add a sickening floral scent to water, Lot’s life and family were eventually characterized by the sin that probably had shocked him at one time. 

 

We are commanded to be “simple concerning evil,” and not even to “ask of those things done . . . in secret.”   While God does not want us to be taken advantage of, we are not to make ourselves students of sin.  Anyone who has read the Bible in its entirely will not be surprised by what man can do.  The Book of Judges?   Enough said.  But only God is able to convey sin in a way that does not corrupt the reader. 

 

Our society is regularly plagued by people who admit to killing and attacking others because of the influence of violent video games.  Many studies have proven over and over again that those games make killing machines out of kids.  Yet, when was the last time you heard of someone who beat his brother to death because he read Genesis 4?  Likewise, God gives us a glimpse into the sins Pharaoh, Ahab, Judas Iscariot, Herod, and Jezebel without drawing us into their sin and thus making sinners of us.  The Bible can discreetly educate us on sin in ways that the world cannot. 

 

David wrote, “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.”  (Psalm 101:3).  When making entertainment and music choices, our question ought to be, “Do I want this to become a part of who I am?” 

 

We are plastic.  We will become what we listen to, read, and watch.   To choose what you allow into your mind is to choose who you will become.  Choose well. 

 

“That thou mayest walk in the way of good men,

and keep the paths of the righteous.”  (Proverbs 2:20)