As our children
were growing up, there was a hard and
fast rule that applied as we were traveling. Nothing, absolutely
nothing, was
ever to be thrown from the car onto the roadway. Punishment would have
been
rather immediate and severe if there was disobedience.
When we moved
back to the United States from our first
missionary tour of three years in Russia, we brought a Russian lady
with us for
a two week visit, as a gift of appreciation for the many ways in which
she had
been helpful to us. She saw sights that astounded her. On one occasion
she went
into hyperventilation when we went into a supermarket. Now, in Russia
when you
go to buy something, you first point out to a clerk the item(s) you
want. The
clerk then gives you a handwritten slip of paper of the amount of the
items.
This then is taken to the cashier where you pay that amount. The
cashier gives
you a paid receipt with which you then go back to the line (yes,
everything has
a line, usually a long one) and when it comes your turn again the clerk
gathers
the items you have paid for, puts them on the counter, and you put them
in a
bag that you have brought with you. When this lady saw this supermarket
with it
aisles and aisles of products, and such a large variety of each
product, she
just couldn’t comprehend it. She became so weak that I had to literally
help
her leave the store. Yet, as she was about to depart back to her native
land, I
asked her what had impressed her the most in our land. She first stated
that
the members of the Lord’s church, and the love shown to her, was the
most
impressive thing she had ever known. Then, she stated, “Your roads—they
are so
beautiful, so smooth and so clean.” Of course, compared to most of the
roads in
Russia that we had experienced, driving in our ditches would have been
an
improvement. I did not wonder that she was favorably impressed with our
interstate highways, as well as lesser roads. However, even as nice as
they
are, we all know how disgusting it is to see all kinds of litter and
actual household
garbage lining our roads and highways.
However, as
repulsive as such litter is, there is a
“litter” that is much more contemptible, and that is the “litter” of
false
teaching wherein men and women spew their religious garbage (false
doctrines)
over the airways, in the newspaper, on the television and in the church
buildings on the streets and roads of our nation and our town. Although
the
litter on our highways is offensive, religious litter is much more so.
Those
who do the littering, and those who ingest such “spiritual garbage”
into their
hearts and souls, letting it guide their lives, will surely be lost
eternally.
Jesus warned
about such litter. He said, “In vain they
worship Me, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men” (Matthew
15:8). In this
same discussion he pointed out that it isn’t what one eats that
defiles, but
that which comes out of the mouth—those false doctrines of men—is that
which
defiles. Such religious litter not only defiles the one from whom it
emanates,
it also defiles and destroys those who hear and follow. Jesus further
stated,
“They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind,
both
will fall into a ditch” (Matthew 15:14).
The apostle Peter spoke of
those
false prophets who
would bring in destructive heresies (false doctrines—spiritual litter)
and
would make merchandise of the many who would follow such prophets (cf.
2 Peter
2:1-3). Jude, likewise, did not make any “bones” about it as he
described such
teachers, be they male or female. He said of them that they are “marked
out for
condemnation, ungodly men…spots in your love feasts…clouds without
water…raging
waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame…these are grumblers,
complainers,
walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling
words,
flattering people to gain advantage” (excerpts from Jude 4-16).
When the Lord and his apostles so
described the false teachers of that day, and when one can see this
same kind
of malodorous religious teaching being done in the 21st
century, can
we call the message of those false teachers anything but spiritual
litter and
garbage? I think not.
