Fire

For the last 24 days, I have lived in a new house that I have never before lived in. This house has no central heat, and instead uses a wood-burning stove. This one stove actually keeps the house fairly warm--most of the time. The problem is, sometimes the fire goes out and is not noticed. So the house steadily loses its warmth, and house - heat = cold house.
But that has nothing to do with what I was actually planning to say. Actually I was going to talk about the fan on this stove.
About the fan on the stove: the wood-burning stove has a fan on it that blows heat out of the inside and into the outside. This means that the whole house is warm, not just the inside of the stove. Right in front of the stove, where the heat is constantly being blown out, it's really warm. So certain people (like me) enjoy standing a few feet in front of the stove, where heat is being poured out constantly.
But at some point, that person has to walk away from the stove to do something else. This person then becomes even colder than before, because he has been standing in a cloud of heat. So does that mean it's not good to stand in front of the stove? Because then I'm even worse than when I started.
My point is this: the stove in this picture represents God. The heat represents holiness, which is the thing I was talking about two days ago. Holiness is a good thing to have, just like heat. But like heat (in the house I live in), it can come from only one source. Holiness comes from God, heat comes from the stove.
I have two points I want to make. The first I mentioned already. When I step away from the stove and its warmth, I feel colder than I was before. I'm not really, but it certainly seems that way. Same with holiness. As soon as I step away from God, I seem to be worse than before, now that I've felt His glory.
So should I still strive for that holiness? I would say yes. If I had no warmth, I would eventually freeze to death. If I have no holiness, I'll eventually burn. Remember what I said about eternity? That's a long time to be sitting in Hell (whether the fire depicted throughout the Bible is literal or figurative, Hell will still not be fun by any stretch of the imagination.)
But that isn't the point that interests me the most. I might talk about that a little more later, but not now.
Here's what interests me: I can find warmth in other places. If I get in bed and pull the blanket over my head, it'll be warm. But it isn't nearly as warm as standing in front of the stove. And still, without the stove I'll eventually get cold again.
So the point is, we can find holiness elsewhere. But it isn't real holiness in that it's only a sort of morality. And again, it will eventually fade if the source isn't present. Cynicism is a powerful weapon against this fake holiness--people get jaded, and then decide that it isn't worth it to keep trying.
This is what's killing our planet. It isn't global warming or terrorism. It's false holiness. All religion is a failed attempt at creating holiness without God. Even Christianity, but only when it becomes so watered down that God is forgotten--sort of like our churches today. . . .
So what can we do about this? How do we turn the world around and start giving people real holiness?
Send them to the source. This could be rephrased with equal accuracy as "send them to Jesus."
That's all I have to say. I can't make you change, I can just make you aware that you need to. I hope that, if needed, you do change. I also hope that you can show others how to change.
Goodbye, valiant reader,
Mitchell