Show The Dirt

When I was growing up, there were times when my family and I had to choose a new carpet color or a car color or something along those lines. I remember my mom saying, “I just want a color that won’t show the dirt.” Now, from a practical standpoint, I understand that, although I have always wondered how you know where it needs to be cleaned.

I have a theory that how we think about everyday things (like choosing a color that won’t show the dirt), transfers over to how we think about spiritual things too. For example, one might tend to view God in a similar fashion to how she views her dad. So while we might tend to want to hide the visibility of dirt in our flooring, we shouldn’t necessarily be hiding it when it comes to our spiritual lives.

Over the years, I’ve had a couple of people say to me, “Suzie, you’re just too perfect.” I was completely astounded. “Have we met? Do you know me?” I am far from perfect. But in retrospect, I realized the reason they thought that is because I probably hadn’t been transparent enough with them. I hadn’t been vulnerable enough to show them the “dirt” in my life — the times I had made mistakes, sinned, let people down.

As I was studying this idea in Scripture, I couldn’t help but go to 1 John, which talks all about light. 1 John 1: 5-8 says, “God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Verse 9, which is a great one to memorize, goes on to say, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

I appreciate the sharp contrast in this text between the light and the darkness. First of all, John is very emphatic that there is no darkness in God, at all. Clearly light and darkness do not co-exist in Him.

When we think of light, we see it as something that shines in the darkness, exposing it. Isn’t that what we want? If we have sin in our lives and we can’t see it, we need God, who is not “a light” or “the light,” but “light itself,” according to Barnes’ Notes on the Bible, to shine on it so we can identify it and He can cleanse us from it.

MacLaren notes that, “In all languages, light is the natural symbol for three things: knowledge, joy and purity.” What a powerful statement. In contrast, when we are in the dark or as the text says, “walking in the darkness,” we can’t see anything clearly. We are blinded by it.

In our Christian life, we don’t want to be surrounded by darkness, we want to be living in the light and growing in our relationship with God. “As all material life and growth depends on light, so all spiritual life and growth depends on God.” (Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary). I think one way that we can grow spiritually is to eliminate sin in our lives.

As I thought about these things, I felt motivated to want God to shine His light on any “dirt” so that it can be exposed and cleansed. I believe that will help not only in our relationship with God, but also in our relationship with others.

Brene Brown is one of today’s leading experts on the topic of vulnerability and she says, “Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.” I couldn’t agree more. The more vulnerable we are with others, the deeper the connection we can have with them. When we show the dirt, we actually allow ourselves to be relatable to others. It helps others identify with us and what we are going through. 

Something I learned in my last job is that I tend to underreport the negative or minimize how bad things really are. I’m not intentionally trying to be deceptive, it’s more that I generally tend to look at things optimistically and I have faith that I’ll get through whatever it is I’m experiencing. However, I know that it’s an area where I need to grow.

Sometimes, as Christians, we can kind of put on a face that everything is okay, when it’s really not. I think we need to get comfortable with the idea that it’s perfectly acceptable for things not to be okay sometimes. That’s where the honesty and vulnerability come in. But I believe there is safety in that, when God is the One shining His light on the situation.

So, the challenge for myself and us this week is to think about how we can “show the dirt” in our lives to trusted people around us and be a little more vulnerable as we depend on God, our Light.