¹⁴ Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? ¹⁵ What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? ¹⁶ And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said:

“I will live in them
    and walk among them.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.
¹⁷ Therefore, come out from among unbelievers,
    and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord.
Don’t touch their filthy things,
    and I will welcome you.
¹⁸ And I will be your Father,
    and you will be my sons and daughters,
    says the Lord Almighty.”

7 Because we have these promises, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that can defile our body or spirit. And let us work toward complete holiness because we fear God.

2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1

Dear God, it can be so hard to journal in chunks of scripture like this and get the full context. Much more so when we just look at one verse. For example, the verse of the day from Bible Gateway was just 2 Corinthians 7:1. But since it started with the word “because” I wanted to go back and see what the “because” referred to. And even going back to 6:14 isn’t really far enough because just before that Paul is complaining that they are withholding their love for him. The intimation is that they are more gladly partnering with the unholy than with those who are holy.

That’s when Paul goes into our bodies being temples and then brings it full circle in 7:1 when he says that we need to be about cleansing ourselves and not linking up with the unholy.

Defining the unholy in my current world can be tricky. For example, unholiness exists on any number of planes.

• There is weird spiritualism unholiness for people who are looking for you in weird ways. I need to be loving but careful in my relationships with them.
• There are people who are hostile towards you and ready to condemn anyone who believes in you. Again, I need to be your love to those people but also cautious in how much of myself I expose to them.
• There are those who just blatantly disregard any limits your laws put on us and are totally seeking self and self-pleasure at any given moment. I would argue that they are looking for peace from you and self-medicating because they don’t have it, but they are still people for me to love but certainly not join in their revelry.

Those first three are pretty easy for me to identify. They are easy examples to identify the people and figure out who I will allow into my influential orbit and who I won’t. And I feel good about the people I have in my life. If I am the average of the five people I spend the most time with, I am comfortable with that list.

But there are other areas in my life where figuring out the gate for unholiness getting in is trickier.

• The reaction videos I watch on YouTube. Young people watching old movies and enjoyed when I was younger or listening to music I grew up with. So yesterday I watched a young woman listen to Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” for the first time. I think this is a great song, but it’s not a holy song. It’s only about the singer hooking up with his girlfriend every chance he got in high school. Am I allowing past unholy memories back into my heart when I hear that song or reward her listening to it with my “click?”
• The show Ted Lasso could probably be my best example. I think this show is absolutely excellent, but I have a love/frustration relationship with it. Notice I said “frustration” and not “hate” because I simply have a hard time having any negative feelings about this show. My love for it is around the fact that the main character, Ted Lasso, almost always exhibits the purest form of the fruits of the Spirit I’ve ever seen anyone portray in film, literature, or even in life. He’s amazing in that way. He has love, joy, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. And his way of life is infectious and slowly spreads to the other characters in the show over the three seasons of the original run. And the world loves it. I watch reaction videos to it and everyone is enthralled with Ted. “I need this!” they say. By the way. Notice I left one fruit of the Spirit out of my list: peace. Ted doesn’t have peace. It’s his Achilles heel that drives his character development. And that leads me to my frustration with the show. They never show the piece he’s missing is you. It’s an incredibly worldly show. There is no reverence for you. So am I doing a bad thing by watching it multiple times and enjoying the relationships and the characters? Is this the kind of thing Paul was talking about? If Paul were visiting me would he want to watch Ted Lasso with me?

Father, in some ways I am careful about what I expose myself to and in some ways I’m not. I’ll be frank. I’m not sure I am capable of only exposing myself to Christian podcasts, writings, and other sorts of media. It’s too much and it takes me out of a world that I do love. Not as much as you, but I love it. So be with me today, Holy Spirit. Speak with me, guide me, teach me, convict me, and forgive me for my foolishness. I’m sure this prayer is full of foolishness and you are just shaking your head at me even in this moment. Well, I get it. I offer all of me to you, warts, foolishness, and all.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen