Just a little bit

I've heard thousands sermons over the course of my life. Each one life-giving and spiritually fulfilling, but every now and again, a sermon will change my life--or at least my perspective on life, a behavior, or a mindset.  But in this particular instance, it took years for the message to fully saturate and for me to understand how truly wise it was.

Several years ago, probably over 5 years, I attended a sermon preached by Mike Haman of Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge. 

He was talking of his pre-teen daughter wanting to go to the movies with her girlfriends. The issue was not that she wanted to go to the movies but about the particular movie she wanted to see. When her father objected that the movie had foul language, violence, and racy material, her defense was that there was "only a little bit." There were only a few bad words, and a little bit of violence, and only a few racy scenes. Nothing to flip out about.

That's when Mike painted this picture:

Imagine I'm baking you cookies to enjoy when you get back from the movies. I spend a lot of time gathering the best ingredients: Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips, brown sugar, butter, flour, etc.. I'm stirring up my batter, but before I finish, I go to the backyard, scoop up a little bit of one our dog's turds, come back in, and mix it into the batter with the rest of the ingredients.

Now you and your girlfriends come back from the movies, and you smell the delicious, freshly baked cookies. Y'all are ready to eat, but before you dig in, I let you know all the care and delicious ingredients that went into making these cookies. I mention the chocolate chips, the sugar, and butter, and oh yea, a little bit of dog poo. 

You're disgusted. You refuse to eat these cookies. Even though they are made with choice ingredients, the dog poo has contaminated and ruined something that could have been so good. No matter how much I reassure you that I only put  A LITTLE TINY BIT of poo in them, you still refuse...

You see, this is how sin corrupts.  It only takes a little bit to contaminate the whole--in your marriage with lust or temptation, in your workspace with regard to ethics or honor, at your church with dissension and slander... Just a little bit, can ruin the whole.

Why did it take me so long to understand this message, I've no idea.