Clean it Up!

"Again Jesus called the crowd to him. He said, 'Listen to me, everyone. Understand this. Nothing outside of a person can make them "unclean" by going into them. It is what comes out of them that makes them "unclean."'"

~Mark 7:14-16, New International Reader's Version

Watch what you eat. Watch what you breathe. Watch what's in your mattress. Mandates to clean up our diets, environment, and homes are everywhere. We have websites devoted to clean eating, expensive air purifiers to keep smog out of our homes, and lots of people tout the benefits of organic, chemical-free bedding. These things aren't bad, per se, but I think we can hyper focus on these things.

As I've bopped in and out of the news scene these past few weeks (I purposely try not to consume much news because it all seems biased), I've seen a lot of hate. We hate because of race. We hate because of ethnicity. We hate because of sexual orientation. We hate because of mental illness. We hate because of stigma. We hate because of religion. There's a lot of ugly, yucky, unclean stuff.

So what if we put as much focus on cleaning up outflow as we put on cleaning up our intake? What if we listened more and spoke less? What if we gave more freely and took more sparingly? What if we empathized instead of criticizing? What if we did more perspective-taking instead of perspective-making? What if we loved more? 

I think love would do more to clean up our society than any amount of "clean" living could.

This post was inspired by my friends at Joni Perry, PLPC and A Reasonable Adventurer.