Where's My Hand Sanitizer?

"Don't touch that!"  "Do you have any idea where that's been?"  "Go wash your hands!"  I'm not a germaphobe… I just have a four-year-old son!  So lines like that are fairly common in my family.

Too bad it doesn't work the other way.  "Hey, you just washed your hands.  Go grab that slice of pizza out of the trash so it's clean to eat."  Yeah, I know… sounds ludicrous… and a little gross.  But it proves the same point Haggai was making to the when he asked the priests of his day, "'If a person carries consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, oil or other food, does it become consecrated?'' The priests answered, 'No.'  Then Haggai said, 'If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?' 'Yes,' the priests replied, 'it becomes defiled'." (Haggai 2:12-13)

As much as we'd like to be able to sanitize the world around us with a touch, it's just doesn't work that way.  So we carry our little bottles of antibacterial gel and try to keep our kids away from the yucky stuff.  The same is true in the spiritual realm.  While the sanctified life of a believer can certainly have a positive impact on the world, we can't eradicate all the sin in a room just by walking in.  To the contrary, it's much more likely that the "dirt" of our surroundings will rub off on us.  It's not as much a matter of proximity (Jesus Himself ate in homes of "tax collectors & sinners") as it is a matter of proclivity.  Can we walk in the midst of temptation and avoid our natural tendency to stick our hands in the dirt?  Or, as the old saying goes, can we be "in the world but not of it"?

For the people to whom Haggai spoke, the consequences went even further than personal pollution.  As they allowed the world around them to infect them, they discovered that, like a contagious disease, their own defilement continued to be passed along.  "'So it is with this people and this nation in my sight,' declares the LORD. 'Whatever they do and whatever they offer there is defiled… I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail'." (Haggai 2:14, 17)

That's a scary thought… that God Himself may oppose the work I try to do, even in His name, if my life is not "clean" before Him.  "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress AND to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27)   So I'm going to pause and, as Haggai advised, "give careful thought to my ways" as I seek to serve the Lord… and perhaps apply a little "spiritual hand sanitizer" of confession and repentance as necessary.