You Can’t Catch Sin Like a Cold- by Barnabas Piper

It’s my favorite time of year. That time when we send our children off to slap five, share books, and suck on the same water fountains as hundreds of other little germ carriers at the Petri dish we call “school.” Every time one of my daughters comes home and says a classmate went home sick or missed school my wife wants to boil her in bleach, wrap her in Clorox wipes, and lock her in a hyperbaric chamber. If only we could quarantine them to keep them safe from all those nasty germs.

Sadly school is a necessary evil so we have to expose them to the ills and ailments. This is much the way many Christians think of “the world” – that necessary evil that we must be exposed to full of evil and vices and insidious temptations. If only we could quarantine ourselves from that too.

And many Christians do live in cultural quarantine, shutting themselves off from what they see as sinful influences. They avoid “bad” people and even places. They talk about those people and places like they are disease carriers – “We can’t have them around” or “We couldn’t go there.” They act like someone can sneeze sin onto them, that they will catch the bad decisions and guilt of another through physical proximity. What does his shunning communicate to those we have labeled “unclean”? Exactly that, Christians think they are unclean. Not the ideal way to draw people to Jesus. But sin is not an infectious disease

We don’t “catch” sin. It’s in us from birth. We are sin carriers. It’s only by the grace of God that we can become immune to the virus that lives in us, that we can live a life without its symptoms oozing and coughing and exhaling out of us onto others. Because of the work of Christ we are able to choose whether or not to sin. It is a decision, one that we often have a very hard time making, but a decision nonetheless. Sin is a theology too. It is a belief, or lack thereof, in the goodness and work of Jesus. It is this theology, this belief that informs our decision and drives us.

So, when we are around obvious sin, those people and places, we can’t catch their sin. We can choose their sin, but that is a matter of decision, of belief, of theology. If we hold fast to Jesus there is no risk of that sin invisibly taking hold of us like a flu bug might. How freeing! We no longer have to keep our distance or live in cultural quarantine. We can engage those people with grace and freedom without fear. Because we are near Jesus we can be near to anyone without fear that they will make us more like them than like Him.

But it would be nice if they used Purel and covered their mouths when they sneeze.

So what makes a good story

The Boring Stuff Makes The Story-Barnabas Piper

What makes a story good? What makes it move? Action, conflict, suspense, character development, plot twists – absolutely, all of the above. And also all the stuff that we can’t see: the mundane, the rote, the grunt work, the daily tasks and habitual actions. A great story isn’t made of people brushing teeth, showering, packing a lunch and heading to work to create pivot tables. World-class novels are not composed of email responses and traffic jams and grocery shopping. But without such things the characters would never get where they needed to go and be who they need to be.

It is the mundane that allows the excitement to happen. Normalcy is the network of bridges which connects the islands of excitement. Without the boring we could never get to the good parts.

And it is the same with our stories. Much has been written about living a good story and about how we are part of a grand narrative. God is the author and we are characters. My story intersects with others to make a massive, intricate, incomprehensible plot line which only an omnipotent author could understand and direct. And so we are encouraged to “live a better story” and to “make the most out of our stories.”

But what is it that makes my story good? Describing a good story in general is easy enough, but when it’s my story it becomes complicated. For some it’s making memories. For others it is strong relationships with God and man. Or it could be acts of nobility and service. Or maybe it’s risk and thrills – living for the “experience.” Likely it is the unique combination of these which leads to peace and happiness for each individual.

An ingredient is missing from that combination, though: all the boring stuff. Without the mundane there are no “experiences” or relationships or nobility. So we must do the commonplace well. Work hard. Excel at details. Invest our minds and energy in our commutes, our cleaning, the forms we fill out, the children we bathe and feed, the meals we prepare, the teeth we brush, and correspondence we send. For, if you look close, this is really the stuff that makes the story good.