What Fig Leaves?

For my birthday, my parents took Chris and I to a very nice steakhouse. We had a great time of visiting and laughing. We also had a very chatty waiter. As the meal went on, he kept referring to his “significant other” and “his better half.” Now I will admit here that I am not always the sharpest tool in the shed, so along about dessert I began to think,

“Why does he keep phrasing it that way? It is so awkward. Why not just say ‘my wife’? It would be so much easier, oh wait, maybe they're not married. Of course, he could just say fiancé or girlfriend. No, he is wearing a wedding ring. So why not just say ‘wife’ unless she is not…Oh."

Then I began to think about how much we as humans want our sin to be socially acceptable. We rename and repackage it, trying desperately to surround ourselves with others who will join in this charade with us. So we say we have “self-control issues” instead of just admitting we have rage. We say she is a "talker" rather than a gossip. Whatever our bully sin is, there is a way to present it in a more positive light. This desire is what makes it so easy for me to see a splinter in my brother’s eye and miss the plank in my own. It is what makes me able to “strain out a gnat, yet gulp down a camel!” (Matthew 23:24)
How this must break the heart of God to see His children still running around grabbing leaves to cover what they don’t want everyone to see and trying to hide from Him. God wants a real relationship with me, and He wants me to have real relationships with others. But this is not possible as long as I am covering, repackaging and hiding. Only through Jesus is this possible. Even now, God’s call echoes through Scripture to each of us, calling us to lay down our false coverings and be cleansed, for real. “Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18