Building on the Foundation

  B.O. What do you smell like to other people? Do you smell bad? We wear deodorant, perfume, cologne, and all kinds of other things to avoid the occurrence where someone might accidentally smell a bad odor emanating from our person. We want to smell good to others, especially in a world where the natural odor of the body is all but forgotten.  Just like animals, humans emit pheromones, and those natural odors contain information about us that other humans can interpret. Specific odors carry information about our physical health, our sexual readiness, and even about whether we are male or female.  We wear deodorant, perfume, and cologne to cover natural body odors—because in today’s world, even our God-designed scent is considered unpleasant.  But what if that effort to cover up applies not just physically, but spiritually?  What if, without realizing it, we are masking our spiritual scent in order to blend into the world? Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful fo...

The morality of man is a hard thing to come to terms with. Or shall I say the lack of morality, because our base nature is very lacking in morality. We are all wandering around doing what is right in our own eyes, more or less, and very few of the people in the world adhere to the proper standard. When we step back and look at things, the standard we are all aiming for goes beyond simple morality since morality is usually nothing more than not doing something. As Christians, our most basic pattern of morality is the Ten Commandments, and of those ten, only two tell us to do something. Only one of those two gives us a pattern of action, the other is simply remembering to do nothing.  Ninety percent of our moral code, in other words, is what not to do. Of course, if we read the rest of the Bible we find that there are a lot of things that we should be doing, especially where walking as Christ walked is concerned, but walking as Christ walked is not simple morals. Jesus was the most m...