Theology Thursday 02 - Clean the Bowl

I do a lot of cooking at home and most of my meals can be contained within a single bowl. I like the convenience of everything fitting in one bowl so I make a lot of pasta, chicken and rice, eggs and rice, sausage and rice; basically anything with rice. There is one bowl in particular out of which I enjoy eating; the bowl is bigger than a normal bowl so everything stays in the bowl without spilling over the sides and it’s blue and manly. I frequently use this bowl, sometimes twice in one day, so I’m always washing it by hand. I was washing the bowl the other day and I realized I was spending a lot of time cleaning the outside of the bowl. I thought how stupid it was to clean the outside of the bowl since most of the time should be spent cleaning the inside of the bowl, where the food actually goes. Then I thought about what Jesus had to say about cleaning the inside and not just the outside. I know that whole story sounds contrived and made up, like a comedian saying, “So I was at the mall…” just to set up a joke. It’s not a contrived story; I really was washing the bowl and then thought about Jesus. I’m such a church nerd.

The problem with being a church nerd or a leader in the church is that Jesus saved most of his harshest criticism for those people, for the ones on the inside, for the religious ones. Here is some of what Jesus had to say.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” – Matthew 23:25-26

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were far more concerned with their outer appearance than their inner lives; just like I was more concerned about the outside of my bowl than the inside. Jesus’ words push me to examine whether or not I really care about my inner life or if I just want people to see the outside and think that I’ve got it all together. It’s easy to fall into that trap, to focus on our outer appearance instead of our inner life. We want people to like us. We want people to think we’re good. We want people to think we’re admirable. If we’re just cleaning the outside, though, it’s a façade; it’s just a mask. Jesus calls people like that whitewashed tombs: clean on the outside but full of death on the inside. If we really want to live admirable lives, Jesus says to clean the inside first and then the outside will be clean as well.

Our inner lives need to be changed to really influence our outer lives. We need to examine our inner lives and those places that need to be deep cleaned. Addictions, anger, unforgiveness, habitual patters of sin; these are the things that need to be cleaned. Cleaning the outside does nothing to address these deeper issues. If they go unaddressed, eventually the façade will falter, the mask will crack and our unchanged inner lives will match our unchanged outer lives. We need to be honest with ourselves and honest with a trusted friend about the dirt on the inside. Acknowledging that something is dirty is the first step to getting it clean.

Most everyone wants to look good. I want people to like me. I want people to think I’m good. I want people to think I’m admirable. However, having a pristine outer appearance with a decaying inner life isn’t admirable and perhaps, more importantly, it isn’t healthy. God created us to be whole, complete people without any fractures and dissonance between our inner and outer lives. God wants to do an amazing work within us, transforming us on the inside so we can go outside and transform the world.

When have you cleaned something in your inner life and how did affect your outer life?