One of the Rabbi’s my husband listens to told this story:

Two men went out to soak in the mudflats. They arrive slip into the soothing mud when one man realizes it’s a cesspool. You know sewage? He jumps out runs for the showers, scrubs, scrubs again and vows not to eat for weeks he is thoroughly disgusted with himself, with the pool, he remembers his friend.

Holding his nose he goes back and is shocked to find him still luxuriating in the cesspool. He calls out,”You’re swimming in a cesspool! Get out!”

The man looks lazily towards his friend and says, “I know it’s so good for your skin though and the muscles in my back have never felt so good.

“But you are swimming in a cesspool. It’s foul and disgusting and you are bound to get sick maybe even die!” He’s incredulous that his friend would choose to stay in such filth and so he walks away.

Maybe I didn’t tell it exactly but this is the point: Anything that is not of God is filth.

Let me repeat anything that is not of God is filth.

Are you swimming in a cesspool? Saying things like but God understands, the pay is so good, their are no other options, etc.

Are you sending your children off to a cesspool? Justifying it by, it’s a good education, they need the exercise, I want them to have the opportunities that I did, etc. Don’t be surprised if they hang out with little turds or worse yet become one.

How do you know if you are in the cesspool?

Study. He wrote it all down for us. The Torah is a handbook for interacting with God and man. Does your life line up with the Scriptures or with the dime store novel the world is peddling?

Pray. Ask Him should I be doing this, is this your plan or mine, am I out of Your will. Listen to His response. Knowing you shouldn’t do something is only step one. You must get out of the cesspool! You must rescue your children! You must rinse off the filth and live righteously.

We are to live set apart lives and be a peculiar people. If your life, if your family looks just like everyone else out there, you gotta ask yourself, “Am I swimming in a cesspool?”