You will hear more about this in the near future. Toronto is at war. City council has just committed itself to forming a strategy to fight a dramatically increasing problem – rats. Yes, ugh! Rats! Within the last two years, the rat problem has made an evident impact in a growing number of neighbourhoods. Rats are walking across Bloor Street in broad daylight. Houses in East York are witnessing rats in their gardens, going through their garbage, biting at wires, living in parked cars and even tunnelling under their driveways so that cars are sinking into rat warrens in front of homes. The problem appears to be spreading across the GTA, with numerous complaints from Mississauga to Scarborough arriving at the doors of the city’s Public Health Department. Where did the problem come from? Apparently, rats have been in our environment all along, living deep underground out of sight in our city. But massive underground construction projects like the Crosstown LRT with Metrolinx, tunneling for new hydro lines with Hydro One, and numerous condominium construction projects have disturbed the habitat of these rats so that they are now spreading out throughout the city, finding new sources of food, and multiplying at an alarming rate. A problem that had been laid on the individual household to seal up cracks in walls or set out traps around a property is now in proportions too large for any one household to handle. An old problem unaddressed has now become a new problem that affects everyone.
The entire affair reminds me of our spiritual life. How many times do we deal with the underground affairs of our sinful habits by ignoring it or consigning it to a single instance of poor judgment or an occasional slip in morality? How often do we say to ourselves that our private sins are nobody’s business, and one person’s indiscretion or anger or abuse or addiction has nothing to do with other people. Then we are confronted with something that exposes it for all to see and we run further and dig deeper holes in an effort to ignore the obvious: that sins like rats multiply and will inevitably be seen sauntering in the open. Jesus said plainly, “Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops” (Luke 12:2-3). In the context, He was talking about the spreading nature of the sin of hypocrisy which He likened to yeast that starts small but affects the whole. I think of a pastor of a large church who responded to confrontation of his sins by threats and anger till the law finally caught up with him. That mega-church is now in the process of dissolution. I think of a woman who left church because she was asked to make changes to her lifestyle that she was unwilling to do. She has been drifting spiritually, and her children are the ones to suffer the most. As we read about the strategies that will be shared with us as a city about how to deal with the growing rat problem, I’d like us to react not just by saying, “Ugh, rats!” but saying, “Ugh! Sin!” Let’s live purely in God’s sight. Let’s speak about salvation in Jesus’ Name. Let’s be serious about sin. It will not live underground for long.
Just Church
Church is all about telling everyone about the deadly impact of sin, and the Greatest Solution of all ages – Jesus Christ, the Lover of our souls. “The vision of Just Church is to establish a church in just the way Christ called the church to be – true to His Word, loving Him, loving one another, and loving the lost.”
