Dirty Jobs: Christian Edition

Mike Rowe has a TV show called Dirty Jobs. He dives into the messy, muddy and mucky jobs of everyday people, and from garbage men to sewage workers to shark taxidermists and maggot farmers, Rowe covers the dirtiest of the dirtiness.

But what if there was a Christian Edition?

Christians aren't perfect, the dirtiness of sin still remains, the difference in a true believer's life is their response (brokenness, grief and repentance) to the dirt. Our filth often includes (but is definitely not limited to) the "respectable sins" of pride and lust, gossiping and jealousy, anger and ungratefulness.

The dirty job isn't that we have those sins and struggle with them, no, that's the easy and natural part. The job comes in dealing with the root of the sin and breaking free of the bondage it enslaves us with.

It's hard to kill the flesh. It hurts. It's uncomfortable. And it isn't instantly gratifying. Besides, my mom has always told me God doesn't command things of us that come naturally. If it came natural for us, He wouldn't have to command it.

The dirty job of killing sin is pretty much a straightforward command:

"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." -Romans 6:12-14

It is our job as the church--the Body of Christ-- to come alongside each other and help each other continually present ourselves as slaves to righteousness. We don't need to be the TV host who just tells the viewers what the gross wild goose swabber or hot tar roofer is doing, but a host who actually gets his hands dirty and helps do the job. We should differ from Mike Rowe, however, in that we don't just stop after a few minutes of helping in order to check that off our "Christian To-Do List" but continually get our hands dirty in bearing the burdens of our brothers and sisters in Christ and helping them fight the battles in all its gory, disgusting, nastiness, always keeping in mind that we have those same gory, disgusting, nasty sins, too.

"But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." -1 Timothy 6:11-12