Clean Enough?

By John Grant
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“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.� Psalm 51:7-10.

According to a recent poll, it seems that many women who work outside the home, including those with helpful kids and husbands, have come up with a new housekeeping standard, according to sociologists and family relations experts. It’s called “clean enough.”

No crumbs visible around the toaster, it stipulates; just don’t look under the toaster. The tub isn’t grimy, but it doesn’t gleam either, which is why God invented shower curtains. And you could knit a scarf with what’s behind the refrigerator. “Clean enough to be healthy, dirty enough to be happy.” That’s enough!

“Clean enough” is the inevitable compromise in a country where couples who spent 26.5 hours a week on housekeeping in 1965 now spend just 17 hours. Something had to give — and it was standards.

It occurs to me that there is a spiritual parallel in this age of throw away ethics and selective morality. It’s sort of like the student who says that a “C� average is okay since it is enough to graduate. God doesn’t judge on a plurality. Psalm 51 says: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions, and wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.� It doesn’t say to blot out enough of my transgressions or most of my sins. All is all.

God doesn’t grade on the curve, but rather by a strict standard. There are not different grades of salvation or higher or lower stations of heaven. Either you are in or you are out. When the Titanic went down and rescue ships were picking up survivors, they telegraphed back to New York the identities of the passengers and crew. In the office of the steamship company there were two lists on the wall…. Saved and lost.

Our eternal destiny is like that… a “C� average is not good enough and we can’t cut it by confessing a selected portion of our sins. The Bible in 1 John 1:9 says: If we confess (all) our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us (all) our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. There’s nothing selective about it.
(a thought on life from John Grant )

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