Dirty Laundry

I’m going to use a washing machine analogy for this Blog Post. 

It’s not that I have any particular affinity to washing machines but our recent experience with the machine in our kitchen, fits a familiar pattern of life that we all travel. The convenience of washing our clothes in an automatic machine that fills and heats the water, dispenses with the soiled water before spinning out the excess water and rinsing it with a softener is something that we take for granted in the western world. 

When washing machines first arrived on the scene in post-war America and Europe, they were so well made that it caused the manufacturers a problem. Once all the middle class households had got a machine, the market quickly became saturated and the reliability of the early machines meant that they did not need to be replaced.

The manufacturers began to deliberately engineer faults into their equipment so that after a period of use, the appliance would develop faults that would warrant a repair or replacement. This term was called ‘built in obsolescence’ engineered to last for 10 years… 

Today, this trick is continued with making small technical improvements and minor cosmetic changes designed to woo customers to upgrade. My daughter has an iPhone 4 running on iOS7 and has no problems with it except for the desire for more memory. However, the new shapes of the 5s and 5c mean that she is keen to upgrade because of the concept of market push, where the company tries to make the product more desirable through regular evolution (See Audi or Porsche).

If only life could be as simple as trading in our current life experience for a new model. By upgrading our memory like Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in 'Total Recall' the number of skills we could perform would be enhanced as we adapt to life in our post-modern experience. Sci-fi is awash with memory engrams and downloadable information to make the hero appear more adaptable. Whilst all of this technology is working, we are content for a season. When we look around ourselves and see something better, we can feel underwhelmed by what we already have. The opposite is also true, we can look at new technology and wash our hands of it, preferring to do things in our own way which has served us so well over the years.

We can either be at the head of the pack with what marketers call, ‘Early Adopters’ or we can wait until what we have wears out. I still have a CRT television from 2002 because I see no need to upgrade when my picture quality seems great and it works. When we apply this mentality to our spiritual and emotional lives, we can express the same cycle of want and need. Some of our expectations are met in the routine of what we have whereas there are those of us who are always looking for something more. 

"I suppose when we have a strong sense of purpose and we are making a difference in the situations we encounter, we thrive. Being a good parent, friend, colleague… winning the deal, healing the hurt, bandaging the wounded, keeping law and order, even in being a great entertainer, all help us to glimpse the different facets of our lives that make us truly human."

So back to the washing machine. Whilst it obediently goes about its business of ‘washing,’ we are happy to continue with our lives with the confidence that we have a bit more free time to be involved in other activities that might be more engaging. We had noticed however that our washing machine had gotten a bit louder, contrary to the large sticker on the side proclaiming ‘silent spin.’ It was a subtle intrusion into our peacefulness at first, ‘Hmm, the washing machine seems louder today honey, I wonder if it has moved on a spin?’ We unconsciously push the lounge door 'too' during the spin cycle, to soften the intrusion of the noise.

Then all of a sudden, the machine started to sound like a jet engine. I have been around engineering all my life and could estimate that the noise the machine was producing was about 100db, about the loudness of a rock concert. My attention now primed, a Google search revealed that I couldn’t replace the bearings, rather a whole new drum at over £200 was needed. 

This made for an uneconomic repair really so we waited and waited until the washing machine finally failed. We were lucky that we got some warning, but life is not so clear cut. For example, we can suffer from hidden illnesses or encounter dangers that might put us at immediate risk of harm. Would we be ready for such an event? Would we be at peace with ourselves with what has befallen us, or would we internalise our emotions and look for blame somewhere else?

In our local newspaper, a coroner’s report concerning the death of a young man on a motor bike, found him to be over the alcohol and speed limit whilst riding. Unfortunately, he was in a collision with another biker and ended up being impaled on a lamp post. The coroner’s report gave the details of the amount of alcohol and the type of impact the young man had but as is often heard in these extremely sad circumstances, the reports of the man’s character proclaimed him to be a wonderful man with so much potential and he would be terribly missed. His father is quoted as saying, “If he had missed the post by as much as 1 inch, he would still have been with us today.”

It is always interesting to hear this type of appeal because it reveals the thinking and reasoning being used to deal with grief. As an outsider with no emotional attachment to the young man, our culture makes a judgement about the amount of alcohol that was consumed, the recklessness of young people, and the dangers of excessive speed. There is a lot of propaganda about excessive speed, young people and the high risk of accident they are exposed to through peer pressure and the kind of rash decision making that can often arise whilst in control of a motor vehicle. It would be easy to dispassionately agree with the verdict that the young man’s death was caused by misadventure.

We don’t like to say, ‘It’s your own fault’ it seems inappropriate, even though the facts would suggest that this was so. Somehow our humanity is more than simply cause and effect, otherwise we would dismiss all kinds of accidental death through circumstance. The homeless guy in the street contracting hypothermia through long exposure to the winter weather, could be looked at with pity because we are aware of his circumstances. We may be resigned to state, ‘well, it’s inevitable.’ It may be that the man’s circumstance dictates a kind of predisposition to the type of health concerns described but it is still not acceptable. We can all live like this as though we are all strangers, passing by each other without making any connection with our environment and the people in it.

I don’t often travel the tube in London, but when I do, it always seems to be an inhuman experience, herded like cattle into carriages without space to move your elbows. Certainly, we avoid making eye contact and are thankful that the speed and length of the journey make you anonymous in the crowd. I went to a football match at Wembley Stadium with my son and we adopted the same posture as the commuters do, even though we were excited about going to watch the match.

What transformed our journey were some football fans from York in the North of England. Here, the culture is the opposite of Londoners, where everyone you don’t know is called ‘love’ and conversation with strangers is common. Sitting in the carriage, it was amazing to watch the interaction between the different travellers as these Yorkshire men conversed with them, where the travellers tried to overcome their shyness in the light of their enthusiasm. Such was there personality, that they could have been visiting from another culture, with the atmosphere in the carriage visibly lifting with their warmth and generosity of spirit.

My work colleague tells of a similar story. Her father was visiting from Wales. On the journey over through London, he casually chatted with the fellow passengers, telling them about his life and family, particularly about his son who is a Premier League footballer with West Ham and a Welsh international. 



One of the commuters left the train and said, “It was great meeting you, I have travelled with these other men for 10 years, sitting in the same carriage in the same seats and I don’t even know their names. Yet I have spoken with you for 40 minutes and feel that I have known you forever. So thank you, have a safe journey and I hope that you have a great time with your family.”

The same could be said of our everyday lives like the washing machine which we expect to get on with its job, with no questions asked; we just get on and do our own thing without contemplating the wider world. It's like the ability to throw a load of mixed colours and fabrics into the washing machine and pressing the normal button to start it. 

However, there is something more to our humanity than simply existing in a functional, stimulus and response lifestyle, whose sole purpose is to acquire material wealth as a reward for our hard work. We look for beauty in art or have the desire to perform to others. Some seek to help the poor and treat the infirm, or conduct scientific research aimed at harnessing the natural resources of the world. 

"We seek relationship and connection within our culture and enjoy the praise of a job well done. However, it is also known that such is the transient nature of our desire,  that satisfaction with what we achieve can be as fleeting as the flavour of our favourite food on our pallet. There is nothing except a relationship with our creator that can fulfill the deepest chambers of our heart."

Our humanity requires much more than the acquisition of ‘things’ such as wealth or experiences. Even the most successful of careers or the most joyous of family lives, cannot fully isolate us from the loneliness and separation we sometimes feel when left with our own thoughts. We all have to live for something, don’t we? We can make the objects of our dreams or even our efforts, the king of our existence, yet still feel empty. For a while, we can derive pleasure and a degree of contentment from our material wealth, but as we grow older, the strivings of our youthful determination fade. Our health and our perceptions of beauty, conspire to rob us of the life we treasure. Some spend a lifetime trying to delay the ravages of time, while others try to enjoy each moment because they know that they will never come again.

I came home from Alpha the other evening and a Johnny Cash song titled, ‘Hurt’ was on the radio. It wasn't originally written by Cash, but it was his insight into his life that inspired him to change a few lines and record it as a cover. It is considered by many to be his eulogy; a fitting tribute to a man who wrestled his whole life to find happiness through fame and fortune, whilst trying to uphold values such as love, commitment, responsibility. Cash battled with addictions, denial, emotional turmoil, heartache. Much of it his own doing, some of it a response to the lifestyle he lived and the expectations that people had of him… here’s the song.

I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel 
I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything

What have I become, my sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away, in the end
And you could have it all, my empire of dirt
I will let you down, I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns, upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts, I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time, the feelings disappear
You are someone else, I am still right here 

If I could start again, a million miles away
I would keep myself, I would find a way

This song is so graphic and so raw that I was captivated by the haunting lyric. I immediately found the song on YouTube and must have listened to it 5 times in a row before getting out of the car. There is so much that hurts us in life, where we each devise strategies to medicate away the pain, but in the end, well. Cash describes a heroin fix and self-harming as his weapons of choice before recognising that he had an old familiar friend which he makes reference to in the chorus. 



The identity of his sweetest friend is found in the second verse where he describes sitting on the liar’s chair, wearing a crown of thorns. The reference he makes is to Jesus, whom he had known all his life, yet on reflection, he had been lying to himself about his need of him in his life.

Cash makes a reference to having gathered together an ‘empire of dirt’ making reference to the spiritual and philosophical idea that we are mere mortals who exist for a season where all that we have become, returns to the dust of the earth. The humility of the last line, ‘I will let you down, I will make you hurt’ is so laced with emotion that I can’t help but feel the hairs on the back of my head stand on end. The recognition here, is that we are limited in our understanding of life and we are unable to have the answers for all that might go before us. Tentatively, we accept that we might make mistakes. Recognising those errors and having the honesty to profess them shows what Cash had learned of himself.

Then we get to the triumphant bridge that leads back to the chorus, ‘If I could start again, a million miles away…’ It is triumphant because there is another way. There is a way to keep ourselves safe from the reality of the mistakes we make. Cash calls these mistakes ‘the stains of time’ which we all tend to hold onto as a feeling of regret. Cash reflects in the first verse, that whatever we use to ‘Try to kill it all away,’ that the memory of it does not get lost with time, even if those we love are gone. Cash sings these sentiments; ‘I remember everything’ and ‘I am still right here’ drawing the attention of the listener to the thought that all that he had tried to do to forget the emotions he had experienced, hadn’t worked. He was still the same person but for now, he was filled with regret.

So why triumphant? Cash knew from his childhood and throughout his life that God was an ever present hope. He may have tried to deny it to himself, certainly if you have watched the autobiographical movie, ‘Walk the Line’ from 2005, you would have seen a glimpse of the life that Cash lived, even if the remaining 20 years of the ‘man in black’ were left untouched. The sentiment of this song remains testament to the struggle that we each have, whether we have plunged the depths of our own personal hell or just spent a lifetime trying to deny the reality of the little esteem we have of ourselves. What Christians do know, is that Jesus is the only truth that we can hold to. Jesus has the authority to dispel our fears, quash our doubts completely and forgive our wrong doings eternally.

We can all make peace with ourselves when we recognise that the source of our strength doesn't lie in our ability to deal with what life throws at us or how we handle situations, rather it is found in our ability to let go. I’m not talking about self-help theories or in suppressing our emotions with medicine, narcotics, alcohol, sex… the world we live in has many distractions to help us medicate away our fears including knowledge, intelligence and our ingenuity simply to survive.  We find ourselves asking,  ‘Is this all that life is? Is this all that we are? Have we grown so old that we have outlived our usefulness? And what are we to become…? Yet we need to lay all of these fears down at the foot of the cross, where Jesus was put to death by the very people he came to save.

Jesus’ death on the cross was not a final act of desperation but the path to a new beginning that Cash makes reference to. The grave could not hold Jesus. Yes his human body died that day when history was changed forever. All of the evidence provided the biblical accounts points to medical proof that Jesus was indeed dead. But something miraculous also happened. Jesus becomes the way to a new life and better life; a new beginning. Jesus took the hit that we are all destined for, death. However, God did not destine our lives to end this way. We were created to be in relationship with God eternally but chose to reject his love for us by going our own way. Jesus' death and resurrection to new life secures for us the same eternal hope of new life.

I like the artist Will.i.am. However, the way that he separates out his name symbolically reveals the character of our own humanity really clearly. We follow our own will; doing what we feel is right; living to our own code that suits our sensibilities even if it is at the expense of others. There is a poster you see in management training facilities: There is no ‘i’ in team… However, humanity does have an ‘i’ in it. 

No brand has celebrated the ‘i’ culture more than Apple. The queues outside the store would suggest that for each new product we still have a ‘must have’ mentality… They need to sell in this way to maintain market share and generate the revenue their shareholders have become accustomed to, or they will become a victim of the type of consumerism that they have helped to cultivate. The purchase of ‘Beats by Dr Dre’ is testimony to this.

Jesus states on many occasions that he is the ‘I am.’  It contrasts with the Will.i.am analogy as Jesus directly references himself with the divinity of God who met with Moses from within the burning bush:

God replied to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you.” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations. (Exodus 3:14-15, NLT)

Jesus refers to himself as being the bread of life, as being the living water, of being the door, of being the way, the truth and the life, of being the light of the world, the true vine, the good shepherd and the resurrection and the life. There are more 'I am's' attributed to Jesus but these mentioned above are the classic statements that reflect the human condition and man’s need for salvation. For each I am statement, Jesus fulfills it completely; he came to complete the work that God began through Moses. The bread of life is a reference to the word of God, and to truth and justice. In Jesus, all of our needs are met including the living water which is a reference to the sustaining work of the Holy Spirit. At Jesus’ death, he promises his disciples that he will give them the source of his authority, the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit in the world, reveals Gods power and sovereignty in the way that he sustains us throughout the ups and downs of our lives.

Jesus is the only teacher among those of other religions such as Mohammed (Islam) or Siddhartha Gautama (Buddhism) or the Dalai Lamar, who has done more than simply teach, he is the Messiah. Jesus sacrifices his own life for the sake of those he came to save. There is nothing that we can do to attain perfection within Christianity, it is all about the Grace that we receive through Jesus’ death, ‘I am the resurrection and the life…’ (John 11:25-26, NLT). To attain nirvana, jannah, or karma, it is about the individual being able to attain a sense of perfection or selflessness. There can always be an air of desperation in this quest for perfection. We can look around us at others and become judgemental about the way they live their lives and even puff-ourselves-up with pride, believing we are better than those around us.

This type of moralistic living is not what God intended at all. The Gospel of Jesus does not depend on our ability to comply with the rules of religion. It is much greater than that. We are born again into a new life; with Jesus going before us and guarding us from behind. Jesus completes us because we were designed to be in this relationship at the beginning. 


Like the Yorkshire lads whose infectious conversation and sense of identity lifted the whole carriage on the way to Wembley, negating the closed personality of the travellers who journeyed with them, Jesus journeys with us by extending his grace towards us and in return he joins us in our suffering.

When we are in relationship with another who we love, we are willing to sacrifice our own needs, wants and desires because their need transcends our own. What if the life we are so desperate to nurture is even stronger and more satisfying than what we are giving up? This is where we will find Jesus. When we look at the cross that Jesus hung on, we recognise in him a transcendent grace that extends to all men and women who meet with him there. He takes on himself our sin and our inequities, and through his righteousness, he transforms us into a right relationship with the creator of the universe. Isn't this a cause to die for?

"This is pure joy for those that are willing to accept his sacrifice in place of our own, because it is Jesus that has suffered on our behalf. Jesus conquered the grave and was resurrected to new life. Jesus was willing to forgive us and all humanity, for following our own will and forsaking the will of God. For that, we are worthy of divine justice but instead, we receive divine grace."

On the cross, the human Jesus absorbs the pain, violence and evil of this world in return for our love. Through his death, the divine Jesus honours the necessity of moral justice to destroy all traces of evil in this world through offering to each one of us, his love. We spend a lifetime substituting God for all manner of earthly things, whereas God substitutes himself for us. Jesus knows what it is like to be us. 

"Jesus didn't simply suffer for us; he suffers with us through each encounter of our lives that brings suffering." 

Jesus has already paid the price for the injustice we witness in this world. It is through the giving of our whole self to his grace, that we can be truly free; knowing that everything is in God’s hands.  

Cancer is an evil disease that is no respecter of age or status and is symbolic of how sin invades our character. Cancer is in effect, our own body turning against itself through the mutation of previously healthy cells. There may be a family history of cancer which could point to a genetic link for the cause of our own condition or it could be one of the many triggers of cancer that we are made familiar with through the media. Our body’s immune system is overpowered by the mutation of our cells into cancerous tissue that grows into tumours that invade our organs and limit our lifespan.

There are so many triggers attributed to cancer, that we must avoid certain foods and drink, avoid the sun at the height of the day, monitor our general health habits, and check our environment; all so that we can avoid the potential threat of the disease. With all of these competing strands conspiring together to determine our prognosis, there seems to be little space for remaining cancer free, and a real sense that we might experience a form of cancer at some point in our lives. 

"Our sinfulness is exactly like a cancer: We must seek to put aside from ourselves, thoughts and actions that lead us down pathways that destroys our emotional balance and harms us physically, psychologically and spiritually."

The treatment for cancer could be a minor procedure such as the removal of a melanoma, cyst or tumour, or it could be combined with some radio therapy. The ultimate treatment being the stripping from our bodies of its entire immune system through slowly poisoning it, in the hope that the process clears out our unhealthy cells to allow the healthy cells to re-group. This is also true of our human nature... sin slowly poisons it; once we are aware of it, we are compelled to do something about it.

As a heterosexual man exposed to the sexualised lifestyle of our culture, I am constantly under attack from what I perceive as threats to my self-control, with regard to how women are portrayed in summer through the media and the fashions that you see around us on the street. I have to vow to not look twice; to avoid lingering looks and to keep at a distance, any mindfulness that could long for a sexual encounter that is outside of my marriage. This is the type of cancer that could ruin my soul and is a sure-fire route to infidelity... I am sure you have your own indiscretions to deal with. 

In my head, I have the words of Jesus:

“You have heard the commandment that says, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:27-28, NLT)

There is no higher call to personal holiness than this… it can be applied to all aspects of our lives… lust, desire, greed, covetousness, lying. These are the secret sins that we tell ourselves are o.k. as long as we don’t act on them, but there is always a risk that it could return… We can try to manage this sin as best we can, perhaps even fooling ourselves that we have indeed conquered our emotions and that nothing else can surprise us now that we have endured.

Yet it is my experience that when my will falters, that desire can over-ride my ambition. I would never act on these fleeting thoughts but I do know that each time I feel this way, I break Jesus’ commandment. This fills me with remorse and places heavily on my mind, a sense of guilt that plays on my conscience. Denying my sin overwhelms my self-esteem and evaporates my ability to control my actions and I hate myself for it. However, recognising my sin and believing that I can give my struggle to God, is where I can find peace. I hold myself to this truth: ‘So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.’ (Romans 8:1, NLT) We need Jesus to clean out the poison in our lives so that we can become the people we were destined to be. Putting Jesus at the centre of my marriage, gives it a level of protection that only God can bring.

It’s a bit like when we go to the movies, and watch the central character enduring great sacrifice to ensure s/he receives their reward. It can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride but at the end of the movie the emotional sentiment at what they have lived through, helps us give a cheer. Sometimes in the sentiment of the movie, our emotions get the better of us and we resolve to make changes in our lives in our own strength, in the vain hope that we might control our demons this time. However, these altruistic ideals can seem quite fleeting when normal life resumes because we cannot manage these kinds of life transformations without the ever present help of the Holy Spirit.

Cancer can consume us just as our sin consumes us at each moment of our lives. Is there any more meaning to life than the inevitable waiting for death? When I pulled our faulty washing machine out of its slot in the kitchen, it was clear the fault was terminal because apart from the flashing lights and error messages, there was a small mound of debris on the floor. As I stroked my fingers through it, I realised that the material was indeed, a mound of rusty metal filings that revealed the nature of the problem with the machine. The internals that did all of the work had actually been decaying from within, hence the increasing noise which we ignored. How much of our own lives is like this? 

"We can look good on the outside, even declaring, like the sticker on our washing machine that its inherent qualities were far greater than what you might expect. Yet in reality, the machine performed adequately. As so often with life, we make such a big deal of our accomplishments that we usually overestimate our effectiveness by a factor of ten."

This type of behaviour starts in the school playground where our imagination and our reality somehow get blurred in the pursuit of friendships and status with our peers. We carry with us into our adult life, the narrative of our lives, using increasingly sophisticated ways to convince ourselves that all is well, when in effect we have lost faith in ourselves, somewhere along the line. 

Sweeping up the rusty metal fragments under our broken washing machine, I realised that something else had been at work. The floor underneath had somehow become scorched. Further investigation revealed that there had actually been a fire in the floor caused by the friction in the overheating bearing. I spoke to my wife and we remembered how on some occasions we had smelt what we thought was smoke, but couldn’t find a source. Then the realisation of what could have happened kicks into our reasoning and we recognise how lucky we were, not to have had experienced a major fire.

Life can be like that. We take for granted that our lives should function as they should; that we have our own place; we try not to draw attention to ourselves and we prefer to avoid upsetting the status quo. However, life is not as simple as this and we can find ourselves with all sorts of obstacles. Knowing that God is for us and not against us, is a good starting point for faith because it is in these types of circumstances that we recognise that our situation is out of our control but it is not out of his control. God desires that we use our free will to choose to be obedient to him because this best demonstrates our faith in his ability, as creator of the universe, to take care of us.

When we recognise that God is with us, we can approach cancer, redundancy, abuse, poverty, sexual exploitation and the whole host of negative human experiences that reveals the true nature of our humanity, with an assurance that whatever happens, and however dark it becomes, Jesus is the light shining brightly in the darkness and that the darkness cannot overwhelm him. This is truth, that God so loves his world that he gave his only son, Jesus, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have an eternal life. God sent Jesus into the world not to judge it but to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17, NLT)

In the end, I suppose we could launder our lives in public the hard way, by ourselves, or the easy way, with God. For Jesus, he was hoisted into the air on a cross on a hill to publicly demonstrate his love for us. All of our sin is revealed by Jesus on the cross.  We can publicly join him at the foot of his cross and declare our faith in his saving grace complete with our dirty laundry or we can chose to try and hide it. Jesus has enough righteousness for all of us to be covered by his mercy. When we are wearing his clothes of righteousness, we will have an inheritance far greater than anything we could achieve in this world. It really is up to you whether you want to follow your own will or to choose his, but I urge you to choose life.