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Shortly after the Enron story broke last year, Jay Leno quipped, "Enron is now officially out of the energy business. They are now in a new business: manufacturing confetti." The paper shredders at Enron weren’t the only ones cranking out confetti in 2002. The Arthur Andersen accounting firm as well as WorldCom were at it 24/7 until the courts told them to stop. There is no denying that human beings have laid waste to a great many things in the course of time: cities, species and a vast amount of cultural, religious and linguistic heritage. Much has been lost through intentional eradication. What seems more remarkable, though, writes Cullen Murphy in The Atlantic Monthly, is how often our attempts at destruction go awry. There are times in our personal lives when what we want most is to hide something we did or said or wrote. This isn’t easily done. The Bible tells us in Mark 4:22: Nothing remains hidden in darkness, all is revealed. Murphy cites another case in point: During the controversy over the Iran-contra affair, in 1986, Oliver North attempted to erase all the relevant e-mail messages on his computer; he repeatedly pressed the DELETE button, thinking that he was eliminating the messages. North didn’t know that pressing DELETE doesn’t result in complete deletion. He also didn’t know about the existence of a backup data-storage system. Oops. Try as he did to hide what happened, much, if not all, was eventually revealed at the congressional hearings. Now we learn that some of the shredded documents from Enron may also be recovered - a task made easier by the fact that pages were sometimes put through the shredding machines sideways, leaving individual lines of type intact. Enron employees had a zealous corporate directive, but they lacked morals, time, patience, and apparently, simple shredding know-how. As it is, their greed, and the greed of those like them, has become their undoing. Personally, I don’t understand what’s so destructive about a paper shredder. I have one here that we use in the office. When I put a document in here, it comes out here in little strips that can easily be read by putting them together. What’s so destructive about this? Historically, fire has been an effective and successful means of destruction. When that sinful or sensitive information in your hard drive or in your file cabinet needs complete deletion, try the old-fashioned method. Acquire a local burn permit. Build a big hardwood bonfire in your backyard, toss on your paper files, then top it off with your PC hard drive. That ought to do it. Maybe. History shows a good hot fire doesn’t always work well for data demolition. The Assyrian empire was brought down in the seventh century B.C. by an invading force of Babylonians, Scythians and Medes. The conquerors put the great library of Ashurbanipal to the torch, but they hadn’t thought it through. The library’s contents were written on clay tablets, and the consequence was to fire the archives, as if they were so much pottery. Some 20,000 cuneiform tablets survived in the form of accidental ceramic records, much to the delight of modern researchers. To completely delete, destroy and demolish is difficult. Have you watched either of the two CSI TV shows? No matter how thorough the criminal attempts to clean a crime scene, there is always some microscopic piece of evidence remaining for the team to find. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking crime scene evidence, files, records, books, art, people, cultures, languages or sins. It doesn’t matter if it’s hard data, digitalized information or personal folly. It remains difficult to erase mistakes, or crimes, or sins, leaving behind no trace. There is a way to avoid the problems of greed or something less or more sinister. We can live perfectly pure and peaceful lives in the first place. Do no wrong. Say nothing wrong. Never lie. Never hurt with words the ones we love. Never speak before thinking. Perhaps never speak at all. Keep the slate clean. Keep the hard drive empty. Be perfect like your Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). Like that’s going to happen. Even if we haven’t lied about the existence of billions of dollars or tried to cover up details of decades of espionage, we all sin - big ones or little ones - and do so nearly every day. It’s a given. It’s the way it is; it’s the way we are. It’s as if our souls themselves are assembled with a divinely digitized hard drive recording all of our thoughts and actions over a lifetime, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly for permanent playback to God. There just isn’t anywhere to hide. There isn’t any deletion program on earth capable of that kind of obliteration. Human beings, all of us, are born with a natural capacity to mess up, to hurt each other and to fall victim to our own desires. We tend to buy into whatever supports our false self-image. We adore our desires, addictions and jealousies. In short, we readily fall into temptations and simply love those seven deadly sins in all their glorious forms: gluttony, lust, envy, pride, wrath, greed and sloth. On our own we can’t undo the sinful events of our lives. Alone we can’t reformat our souls effectively making them blank and sparkling new. We can’t erase, delete or destroy our life’s record. The data is never lost. The facts are never destroyed. The statistics of our lives are embedded in the essence of our souls. God sees all hears all and knows all. No sin, public or private, is missed. A drunk husband snuck up the stairs quietly. He looked in the bathroom mirror and bandaged the bumps and bruises he'd received in a fight earlier that night. He then proceeded to climb into bed, smiling at the thought that he'd pulled one over on his wife. When morning came, he opened his eyes and there stood his wife. "You were drunk last night weren't you!" "No, honey." "Well, if you weren't, then who put all the band-aids on the bathroom mirror?" Nothing…the bad, the good, the ugly or the beautiful… is ever hidden from God. What’s done is done. The record is made. The information is in there. Sin and its consequences can’t be covered up or ignored. Even Paul, the best of the brightest of his time, had his own struggles. In his letters he tells us that his spirit is willing but his flesh, like ours, is weak. He had his troubles that led him to sin. He had that thorn in his side which he took time to mention. Paul knew how he should behave. He knew how to live the good and holy life, but he found himself doing the opposite. Just like us. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41). You can accept in your heart this offering of God’s forgiveness, this gift, no matter your personal history of damaged relationships. No matter deeds done, or deeds left undone. No matter words said, or left unsaid. No matter the wounding of hearts, or minds, or bodies, or souls - your own or others. Christ is the hope for the hopeless. This promise is given in Ephesians(1:7): Our sins will be forgiven by God, by love of our Creator through Christ. In the hit movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Everett, Pete and Delmar are hiding out in the woods, running from the law, when they encounter a church congregation going down to the lake to be baptized. Delmar, overwhelmed at the sight, runs into the water and is baptized by the preacher. As he returns to his companions, he declares that he is now saved and "neither God nor man’s got nothing on me now." And then he utters the phrase, "Come on in, boys, the water’s fine!" Today…right now…God is inviting you to be forgiven…to come into the waters of forgiveness. God through Christ has this power to completely, absolutely delete and destroy our sins and forgive us our trespasses. We can’t do it alone. So, people of God, have hope in your hearts. No matter what you have done. No matter what you have said, or thought, or written. Have hope in Christ. He is our sin-shredder. |
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01.12.03 - Shredding the Past (Ephesians 1:3-14)
