One of our grandchildren had a T-shirt when he was about four or five years old that said, “I Make Dirt Look Good,” and at times, he did. It brought back memories from my summertime days on the farm, about 90% of which were spent outdoors and barefooted. My brother and I particularly loved the after dinner time when my grandma would “slop the hogs” and check on the chickens one more time before the dimming twilight finally forced us back inside. I dreaded the ordeal that invariably came next.

A Principle is Born ~
Once inside, “Ma,” as everyone in the family called her, would say, “Okay, boys, let’s get those faces cleaned up and do something about those rusty looking hands and feet.” I didn’t think about it at the time, but I guess running around barefoot all day on the Virginia red clay soil did make our feet look pretty rusty. In any case, she’d call us to the kitchen and begin to go to work on us with a pail of water, a rough washcloth, and a bar of Ivory soap. From my point of view, her reasoning seemed to be that if she could rub off a couple of layers of skin, the dirt would go with it. Whatever her rationale, Ma’s technique gave birth to a fundamental principle about life for me . . . “Getting dirty is fun, but getting clean can be painful.” 

That bit of philosophical enlightenment from long ago might be debatable, but it does provide an invitation both to consider a subject close to the heart of God and to highlight a simple point that I think is relevant. But before moving on, since we began this discussion by talking about dirt, we should mention an obvious distinction. Dirt has more than one definition. In some cases, dirt refers to the stuff we plant things in, but the same term can have a plethora of metaphorical adaptations and applications. We apply it in reference to various kinds of human activities, behaviors, language, relational practices, and some forms of  “artistic” expression. In those cases, the term dirty refers to the capacity of some things to negatively influence those who are exposed to them.  

Dirt Has an Opposite ~
But having said all that about dirt, it’s time to shift gears and consider dirt’s opposite, which is a condition that both God and the rest of us refer to as clean. In the beginning, everything God made, including those incredible creatures He designed as physical expressions of Himself, were declared to be good. There were no imperfections to be found in God’s new world, no flaws, no malfunctioning organisms, and nothing that was incomplete or unsatisfactory. Everything was acceptable, everything was beneficial, and everything worked in perfect unison with everything else. It was a thriving garden of life existing in a state that God called shalom; i.e., a place where peace, prosperity, abundant provision, productivity, and satisfaction were a shared reality… until the serpent entered.

Until Satan’s seductive deception was embraced by Adam and Eve, everything was perfect and pure; everything was clean. When they accepted his lie, shalom was shattered and everything was immediately polluted. Peace and harmony gave way to fear and anxiety. Trust was replaced by self-centered paranoia. The Garden was forced to subject its beauty to the dry brownness of encroaching death, and abundant life surrendered its joy to the dread of ultimate judgment. The power of sin to pollute, defile, infect, and dismantle every good thing the living God created for our benefit cannot be overstated. But the God who loves like no other set out immediately to counteract the awful plague sin unleashed and to devise a way to remove its toxic presence and free those infected and defiled by it. In an act of love and grace beyond expression, God chose to offer an innocent substitute to bear the consequence of the sins committed by others, or as He would describe it, the clean for the unclean. 

God Made A Way ~
Throughout their history, God has been calling His beloved people to come to Him, but the polluting nature of sin necessitated meeting certain conditions before approaching Him. God ordained numerous methods of cleansing to be performed relating to a variety of circumstances and situations. Ultimately all of those rituals and requirements would be fulfilled when God became one of us and in the person of Jesus Christ, took upon Himself the cumulative impact of sin’s defiling, polluting, and deadly effects. It was the eternally efficacious exchange of the clean for the unclean.

We Western Christians don’t think much about cleansing. We simply accept it as one of the things our faith in Jesus has secured for us, but throughout their history, the Jews have been conscious of the issue of clean vs. unclean things. As a result, Orthodox Jews continue to perform cleansing rituals in response to a variety of situations and circumstances. But one of the archeological excavations my wife and I visited during our recent time in Israel arrested our attention about the issue of cleansing. 

A New Discovery ~
We were exploring a section of Jerusalem very close to the Southern Steps of the Temple where a ritual cleansing facility had been discovered.  As Diane and I stood looking down at the small pool area hewn from solid rock, and which is called a mikveh, one of the teaching team leading us described the procedure it represented. 

Those who wanted to go into the Temple, which, to the Jews, represented the very presence of God, had to first be made clean. That involved approaching the appropriate mikveh for one’s gender, completely disrobing, then totally immersing himself or herself in the water, and exiting out the other side. Then they would re-dress and continue to the Temple. As I listened, some incredibly simple, but profound, realizations hit me. Those Jews were demonstrating physically something we would do well to practice spiritually.

• • First, God considers the sins we commit as contaminating obstacles that forbid intimate contact. Close, personal contact with our holy God requires being free of the polluting and defiling presence of sin – or as He describes it, we must be clean.
  • God loves us and wants an intimate relationship with us – and sacrificed everything to cleanse us and make us acceptable. 
  • We cannot be made clean unless we’re willing to go ‘all in’ – and become naked before Him first.

Misdirected Worship ~
And on that related topic (nakedness), bodies are virtually worshipped in the popular culture that surrounds us today, aren’t they? Nudity is flaunted, sex seems to be paramount in nearly every form of “entertainment,” and millions of children have been trafficked into our land and enslaved in the “sex trade.” The sexual boundaries God established are rarely mentioned in Sunday sermons, Bible studies, or devotional materials. Sadly, rampant sexual promiscuity has ultimately led to the killing of unwanted babies in the womb a “human right” and allowed abortion to become a thriving industry. Interestingly, throwing off clothing, along with throwing off inhibitions, personal dignity, and sexual restraint, reveals a fascinating paradox about self-exposure. 

God’s directives regarding sexual involvement were presented in the context of His design for establishing secure, fulfilling, fruitful, and enduring families. In God’s plan, getting naked together was one of the very last steps in the process. What preceded that experience was a rather lengthy courtship intended to allow a couple to get to know each other on a deeper level first. We might say that they were expected to reveal who they were on the ‘inside’ before ever displaying what they looked like on the ‘outside’. God wanted a couples’ desire for each other to be based on more than a fleeting, transient orgasmic moment. 

Emphasizing A Simple Point ~
The point we want to emphasize is simple, but so important. God wants an intimate, interactive partnership with every one of us. But to have that, we must first be willing to throw off every covering that allows us to ‘hide’ those things we dare not expose to the light, to reveal every hidden secret, to discard every lie we tell ourselves, and to abandon every excuse. The Jews knew that no one was allowed into God’s holy presence who hadn’t first gone through the mikveh. We don’t have to immerse ourselves in a pool or climb stairs to a Temple to approach God, but the principle is the same. The writer of Hebrews said it to his Jewish brethren this way: 

let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:22 NKJV)

Jesus gave His sinless life – and rose back to ‘life over death’ – to cleanse us from our defiling sins, and to work in intimate partnership with us to change the world, but He can’t do that unless we first apply spiritually what the Jewish people demonstrated physically. We must remove every covering and stand before God totally exposed and open to Him.

“TWEETABLES” ~ Click to tweet and share from the pull quotes below.  Each one links directly back to this article through Twitter . . .

• • Trust was replaced by self-centered paranoia. The Garden was forced to subject its beauty to the dry brownness of encroaching death, and abundant life surrendered its joy to the dread of ultimate judgment. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
  • In an act of love and grace beyond expression, God chose to offer an innocent substitute to bear the consequence of the sins committed by others, or as He would describe it, the clean for the unclean. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet) 
  • In the person of Jesus Christ, He took upon Himself the cumulative impact of sin’s defiling, polluting, and deadly effects. It was the eternally efficacious exchange of the clean for the unclean. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)  
  • God considers the sins we commit as contaminating obstacles that forbid intimate contact. Close, personal contact with our holy God requires being free of the polluting and defiling presence of sin, or as He describes it, we must be clean. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet) 
  • The Jews knew that no one was allowed into God’s holy presence who hadn’t first gone through the mikveh. We don’t have to immerse ourselves in a pool or climb stairs to a Temple to approach God, but the principle is the same. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)

To follow this blog for more “Right Side Up Thinking ~ In an Upside Down World” …
Sign up just below the Search box in the upper right sidebar for regular email notifications of new posts.

And to “Share Your Thoughts,” continue to scroll down …

Check out Ron’s book, “Right Side Up Thinking in an Upside Down World ~ Looking at the World through the Lens of Biblical Truth” 

 The Kindle e-version is just $1.99. No Kindle device is needed. E-book readers are included on most computers, tablets, and smartphones. If you don’t have one, the free Kindle app can be easily downloaded directly from the Amazon site on almost any device.

Click here for a “Look Inside” preview at Amazon.

© 2025 Gallagher’s Pen, Ronald L. Gallagher, Ed.S.  All rights reserved.