Filter the Incoming

I'm sure you've had one of those moments... the kind when you know you're getting a talking to. Sometimes the person doing the talking doesn't really know that they're speaking such a direct and sharp word into your life, but you know it and once the fact is realized there is no escaping the conviction that grips your heart in the hearing.

On Sunday morning my pastor was preaching at me - right between the eyes. I've had this experience before, especially with pastors, where their message is so applicable that it's not even funny. It's like God sat him down and they went over exactly what I needed to hear and then together they delivered the blow.

Usually my pride takes a hit in such heavenly ambushes. I am a terribly proud woman - of my skills, of my thoughts and sometimes of my actions - and the vast majority of the right-at-me lessons I take in from church follow this simple yet poignant pattern: "Hey girl. You need to step back and remember who you are and who I AM. You are a girl, a small, weak, limited little thing. You are no better than that person or that person. Child, I am God. Now, I love you, but you had better check that attitude of yours mighty quick or there's gonna be trouble." (In my mind, God has the voice and vocabulary of a black man, rumbling and deep, like that of James Earl Jones, right to the point, no side stepping the matter at hand, just laying it all out in the open in a gentle, friendly sort of way.) That's my Father for you - and so I respond, bite my tongue, say I'm sorry and temper my ego. But today's lesson was not about pride. Today was about the filter... or lack there of.

Allow me to briefly summarize and paraphrase part of Pastor Tim's lesson: "Consider airport security. Why do they check you on the way in? You go through metal detectors and x-ray machines, they root through your luggage, they give you "the look" and you run the gauntlet of precautionary measures. If there's a threat, it's met on the way into the plane and immediately eliminated, blocked out, guarded against. But when you get off the plane, you're free to go - you can walk right into a giant crowd of people and disappear without so much as a once-over. There is no check-out checking. Why? Well, the answer is, perhaps, obvious: by the time you're on the plane, it's too late to check for problems and threats. By the time you get off, the damage you could have inflicted to the passengers of the plane would already be done and so there is no need to re-scan and re-secure the exiting passengers. Whatever has gone into the plane has come off again, and as long as the security was tight upon entrance then you don't need to worry about what comes out again - it is clean, bomb-free, secure, good. And it's the same thing with the heart."

So, the old adage of "garbage in, garbage out" proves true even in the practical circumstances of life. Jesus says it this way: "The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45). Your heart (mind and emotion) feeds your action. How healthy is your heart?

I thought my heart was healthy, but God has shown me otherwise.

I think I can compare my metaphorical heart to the physical heart of an athlete who trains regularly and eats well and does much to care for himself, but also has a drinking problem. The athlete looks really good until you discover his one weakness and when you get an eye-full of that, you start to realize just how much it affects the rest of his lives. My parallel runner is healthy... except for his booze. I am healthy too... except for my lust: mental, sexual and emotional.

Feel free to take a moment and knock down that pedestal you've put me atop. I am not the spiritually righteous person you have believed me to be. And please don't excuse my behaviour and my failure because I will tell you openly that much of my sin has been absolutely, deliberately defiant. I have seen the escape from temptation that God promised and I have slammed the door in his face so many times. I have given the devil a hold in my life that I very much want to shake him from and part of that process starts with confession... even if it's the awkward blog kind.

Let's jump back to the airport imagery. What I've been doing in my life is scanning the exit. I carefully control every thought that leaves my mind, every action that is performed, every word that escapes my lips and when I find something that I know shouldn't get out I thrown it back onto the plane by the collar... where it does who-knows-what to the other thoughts, potential actions and yet unspoken words that are waiting to get out and do some good. On the entrance side of things I'm pretty welcoming to all sorts and kinds of input. Without questioning I let in the good stuff - the Bible lessons, the sermons, the love, the friendships, the prayer, the school (sometimes), but with them I'm also saving seats for their opposites: the supersexual music videos, the violent television shows, the angry music, the cursing, the perversion of our culture... all of those things that I hypocritically criticize and then secretly indulge in, the things that are slowly poisoning the clean thoughts and the pure ideas and the godly influences of my life. It seems inescapable and easily justifiable, but is it really? Is sex so unavoidable? Is it truly impossible to block it out?

I don't think so. I think it is going to be stinking hard to fix my filtering system and it might take some very dramatic measures to move my security guards back to the in-cues without letting the filth I've been collecting in my heart and my mind to get off the plane. I have this mental image of my burly body-guards pushing their way between the seats, dragging the crap with them as they go while giving the good thoughts a brush-off and a straighten-up. Then my guards will chuck the slimy, lusty, disgusting and shameful memories out of my heart, over the barricades and back to the cue on the outside of the airport. It doesn't mean they will go away... but it might give me the time I need to get my feet under me again, to re-organize my filtering systems and to mop up the plane, as it were. Unfortunately I do not have microscopic security guards who are going to do this for me... it's just me in my mind and so the plan has to be something I can do on my own.

I am going to fast Secular Media.

I don't know if this is going to work, but I think it's worth a try. With the exception of anything directly assigned for a class, I am locking out all television, all explorations of YouTube and all music that does not honour and glorify Jesus. Sadly, this will include girly, "harmless" pop. More sadly, this includes country.

I don't know how long I need to detox my spirit. I'm going to start with a month and see how I feel and how I think after that. Maybe this needs to be permanent, I don't know, but I do know that I need some pretty dramatic change in my life and this is step one for me.

What is step one for you? What are you letting sit on the plane that should be locked out of the port? You don't have to expose your heart to the world and confess your vice in the open, but open your eyes to your own downfalls. Acknowledge your weaknesses and stop giving in to them. Choose to fight. Choose to guard. Choose to filter the incoming.