Advice You Don’t Want To Hear But Need To: #12

I get it now, sin stinks.

The other day I had a revelation that might come across as a bit gross. So if you have a sensitive stomach and can’t handle jokes or talk about bowels… this is probably a post you’d want to skip.

I finally came to realized what sin is to God and why He hates it. Imagine, if you will, that you are in an elevator and someone lets one rip. I mean, this guy has just eaten a log of garlic stuffed cheddar cheese and a gallon of chili and has bowel problems. It’s hot, it stinks, and it won’t go away. That is what sin smells like to God.

Have you ever smelled a rotting corpse? I have. It smells worse than rotting eggs sitting out in the sun. It’s a pungent smell that’s really hard to describe unless you’ve smelled it. It smells like rotten butt farts. No joke. It stinks. That is what sin smells like to God.

But do you know the crazy thing about sin? We ALL do it.

“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” ~Romans 3:23

So anyone feeling all high and mighty about their own righteousness should take note. If you’re judging someone by the level of funk they let out, you probably stink just as bad if not worse. The thing about our own stank is that you’re used to it. When you let one rip you probably don’t notice because you’ve smelled that nastiness all your life. A stranger or a friend, will notice, because they aren’t used to your butt reek.

I grew up in a town that supposedly has a particularly rancid smell to it. I never noticed it because I grew up there. The place sucks all around so I’m not totally surprised to find out it stinks. However, I can’t smell it. To me, there is no oder to that place. The one time I took my wife there though, she gagged… on the air… outside. Like I said. I didn’t notice, because I’m used to it.

This realization of the smell of sin led me to a couple of other realizations about God.

Some people like to think that God back in the days of the Old Testament was a grumpy  bully on a hill looking down on us with contempt. He had the magnifying glass ready to burn us, would smite on a moments notice, threw plagues at us just for fun and killed entire nations because He’s a jerk. Well, I’m willing to guess He did that because He got tired of the stink.

Cities, countries, nations, peoples that sin and do so on purpose (i.e. willingly, blatantly, in spite of God or if their felling really saucy, because of God) smell like an infection. Now, this next part is gross, but I think it is a proper analogy.

Have you ever smelled an infection? I mean like infected flesh in a wound? It’s a horrible smell. It smells like wet feet mixed with rotten fish guts. Infections are slimy, pus filled rots that don’t do anything but hurt and stink. When you have an infection all you want to do is cleanse yourself of the infection. Often there is pain involved–surgery, medicine, etc. It comes to a point where the infected flesh has to be removed or else the infection will linger or spread. Now, if sin is an infection, and you find someone who is a willing carrier of that infection, what do you do? What if the infection is contagious… highly contagious? What if the infection presents itself as something fun or desirable? Would you consider it dangerous?

God did what He had to do to cleanse the world of infection, of a horrible stink, of the worst case of butt-rot you can imagine. That doesn’t make Him a bad guy. If anything you should be thanking Him for that. It might be hard to see how the destruction of a people could be anything to be thankful for. Human history is full of war, hatred and genocide. It’s never a good thing and it’s never fun or funny. I’m willing to bet it broke God’s heart to have to do what He did… up to a point.

Imagine you’re back in the elevator. You finally figured out who has been eating kielbasa and sauerkraut for the past three months and have talked to the guy about not gassing everyone in the elevator. At first, the guy is cool. He lays off, there’s peace in the elevator. A week later, dude comes back blastin’ away. You ask him to stop and he says he will… as he blasts one in your face. For months you go back and forth asking him to stop, him saying he will, him blasting gas in your face. Eventually, patience has to wear thin and when it does bad things happen, right? You and everybody else in the office gave the guy fair warning and he said “screw you, I’ma do me.” If dude gets fired, his fault, right?

So what do you do when you inadvertently let one rip? You say excuse me (in the Old Testament they called these “sacrifices”). However, depending on the degree of stink you’ve let forth, “excuse me” will only get you so far. Eventually, you just need to take a bath.

That bath is Jesus. When we become covered with the blood of Jesus, God covers the stank of death with the pleasingly sweet aroma of His Son.

“For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.” ~2 Corinthians 2:15

We all make the same stinks whether we like to think so or not. Your butt stinks just as bad as the guy next to you so you have no right to judge the smells he makes until you get your act together. Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do for yourself to better your condition. Nothing. Your only option, your only reprieve from the smell of death that oozes from your dying flesh, is salvation through Jesus. And since that salvation is offered to all and it’s something you haven’t earned, something you could never earn, it’d be in your best interest to lay off the other guy.

“For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.” ~Matthew 7:2

So go take a bath, stink-butt and share the soap if you don’t like the stink.