Someone Else Has To Take Care Of Our Toxic Mess

July 30, 2018 § Leave a comment

Last weekend we visited and hiked to the top of a 75 foot high, 45 acre pile of rocks at a place called the Weldon Spring Site near Saint Louis. You won’t find it very high on the list of area attractions, maybe because it’s a dump site for nuclear waste.

The property is surrounded by wild flowers and features a small museum in front of a massive dome of rocks that entombs 1.5 million cubic yards of radioactive material left over from a uranium ore production plant closed in 1966.

The toxic waste sat on the property for decades, sickening area residents, poisoning the water, and producing some pretty strange looking frogs. The EPA finally decided to clean the site in the 80s, which took two more decades, resulting in this gigantic hill of stones you can practically see from space. It’s been deemed safe (though some have claimed otherwise), but the structure is nonetheless a reminder of our toxic past.

We often attempt to cover our own messes, but find it doesn’t happen without coming to terms with what we’ve done to get ourselves in the mess. And even then, our own covering is inadequate. The EPA has hidden the mess, but you can’t miss the much larger 7-story rock pile in its place.

The same Bible that tells us “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered” (Psalm 32:1) also proclaims that “He who covers his transgressions shall not prosper…” (Proverbs 28:13). This isn’t a contradiction. The difference is who is doing the covering. Only the blood of Christ can be an adequate covering for sin, when the sin is removed “as far as the east is from the west.” (Psalm 103:12).

Our own attempts to cover our sin might change its shape or appearance, but the mess is still there. When Adam and Eve’s feeble attempt to cover their nakedness with fig leaves failed, God provided animal skin as an adequate covering (Genesis 3:21). In order to do that, a blood sacrifice had to be made.

Sin is our mess. It’s toxic if we don’t do anything about it, and we can never really get rid of it by our own efforts. God is the only one who can accomplish this, and He’s done it through the sacrifice of His own Son Jesus.

God&Neighbor