From the Inside Out

Take a time machine back 25 years, to a moment in glory in 1997. You just bought the last of the 993-generation Porsche 911s, brand new. Its paint is flawless. Its wheels have never known brake dust. Its interior is mint. 

So you take it home, park it in the garage, and let it sit for awhile. Here’s a question for all the car detailing folks out there: does the car remain clean?

According to the experts, no. In an “Excellence” magazine article prescribing general maintenance for Porsches, venerated Porsche guru Jim Pasha once described a cleaning regimen for the most conscientious Porsche owner. After acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of vinyl, he recommended cleaning the inside of the windshield – yes, the inside – every time the car is washed because the “vinyl emissions” from the “natural leeching of the polymers that make up vinyl” can eventually pollute the glass.

A car, by nature, is dirty. Even sitting still, it becomes contaminated. If you think about it, it is never truly 100 percent clean.

Maybe you’ve never felt 100 percent clean. You may have tried to keep yourself from doing or saying things that make you feel dirty. In a conversation with religious leaders about ceremonial (or superficial) cleaning, Jesus addresses the very nature of contamination that pollutes every human:

“Then the Lord said to him, ‘Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside [the dish] to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.’” (Luke 11:39-41)

If you’ve ever practiced some sort of abstinence and failed, or given up something for Lent and struggled, or fasted during a period of time and felt miserable, or tried to take a “digital Sabbath” (no internet one day a week) and given up on it, the truth Jesus speaks hits pretty close to home. Yes, the filth you try to keep yourself away from actually lives inside you, all the time, and is with you everywhere you go. The natural, sinful, human condition eventually makes everything dirty, and acts like those leeching polymers in cars with new vinyl dashboards that contaminate the windshield and distort a person’s view of everything – even themselves. Maybe this phenomenon kept the religious leaders from seeing the filth living in their hearts.

There’s a solution to this, and at first it doesn’t sound particularly helpful. Jesus suggests giving what is inside your heart to the poor (or, as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, “first clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”). Jesus isn’t saying “Clean harder,” “fast longer,” or “be miserable without your iPhone for two days a week instead of one.” He’s describing a total heart change. The Bible doesn’t say much about the Pharisees’ charitable giving, so recommending this would have been radical to them. It’s radical for you too: Ask God to change your heart so your first waking thought, primary motivation during your day, and evening yearnings center around something other than your personal needs. It’s hard to act selfishly when your heart is trained to think unselfishly.

Even with this change of heart, you won’t be perfect. God offers you total forgiveness – a clean slate – and a new life, yet sin and filth are waiting like a bird in the shade tree you just parked beneath. So God encourages a regular heart-scrubbing, while promising you a future that truly is completely and totally clean.

A new 911 in 1997 would set you back a minimum of $67,000. With that money, you could buy three Mazda 626 sedans, almost two Chevrolet Corvette coupes, or a healthy down payment on a $217,000 Ferrari 550 Maranello. Any of those would give you that nice, new car feeling. Or you could support the work of ministries that provide clean drinking water to communities that lack it, and save the lives of thousands of people who would otherwise die from contaminated water. Imagine that: they could have clean water for drinking and bathing, and hear about the Living Water, Jesus, while you clean yourself of the desire to only satisfy yourself. That’s God’s grace at work.