An Element of Truth

God is in charge of human life, watching and examining us inside and out. 
Proverbs 20:27 The Message

It's the law now that every food item has to have a nutrition label for the consumer, listing calories and fat grams, carbs and sugars, etc, so we can make informed choices about what we put in our bodies.

Both cranberry and pomegranate juices are supposed to be very good for the body, so Cranberry-Pomegranate is one of the latest juice combos. Have you ever bought a bottle? The front label reads, "100% Juice, Cranberry-Pomegranate" leading one to believe that the bottle is some mixture, possibly 50-50 or maybe 60-40, of cranberry and pomegranate juices. Not so. With ingredients listed by the greatest measure to the least, grape juice was first. In fact, cranberry didn't fall into the list until about 5th place and pomegranate was after that. Technically, it could have been called any one of the combinations of juice, I suppose. Grape-apple. Apple-plum. Plum-cranberry, etc, but the marketing department chose Cranberry-Pomegranate because that's what sells. 

As you can see, there are many ways to present information that contains an element of truth but is ultimately misleading.

Jesus is not interested in an element of truth. He was much more specific about it in Matthew 15:10-12, Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “Listen,” he said, “and try to understand. It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth.” Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you realize you offended the Pharisees by what you just said?” Jesus was not worried about offending Pharisees. Jesus has NEVER been politically correct. He never has claimed to be anything He wasn't. No New and Improved. No substitutions. No shortcuts to Heaven. No marketing spin.

Further down in Matthew 15:17-20, Jesus continued, “Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer. But the words you speak come from the heart—that’s what defiles you. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile you."

I suppose that the juice bottle label is more truthful in advertising than those packages that have the pop-out text  - Real Cheese - and underneath it is the reality - flavored. Not real cheese at all, but an imitation. Like imitation crab meat. And if we aren't careful, we accept the imitation as good enough and never seek the real. That is absolutely deadly if we choose an imitation of Christianity... which leads us to the question of the day.

If God were to put a label on us of all the parts that make up our whole, what would be on the list? And in order of greatest measure to the least, where would Jesus be? Do we have Jesus as our main ingredient or as the 98% inert one? Are we Spirit-flavored or Spirit-filled?

Prayer:

Father,
           Strip us of everything that is not OF You and is not pleasing TO You in our lives. Let it be that if You were to label us, by Your Grace, we would be found to be 100% pure and approved by You. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen