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There was some old vandalism, the detritus of where someone had cleaned out a stolen purse, a few bits of drug paraphernalia and a whole lot of litter. A lot of this mess looked like it had been there for a while.
The context for this story is that I’ve been reflecting for a while on the value of beauty for its own sake. Beauty is good because it’s good. Beauty is good because it’s a characteristic of who God is and how he does things. Beauty is good because it communicates that there’s good in the world, and it’s within reach.
Back to the messy parking lot. I’ve been trying to clean it up some, just because it feels better when it’s cleaned up. It crossed my mind that with all the personnel cutbacks and all the drama (there sure has been a lot of drama in our society in the last couple of years), that there was nobody responsible for cleaning the place up. I confess, I grumbled a bit.
“That’s right, Son. Nobody is taking ownership for this.” And suddenly some lights came on, and I was in a very strange place. Suddenly I think I knew some things that I am absolutely certain I didn’t know before.
I’m still in the place of testing these new things, but when the lights came on, when those thoughts showed up, they showed up with scripture used in an unfamiliar way to support them.
I’m asking you to think these things through with me, test them with me. Don’t bother telling me “But that’s not traditional!” I already know that.
Hold on. This might get bumpy. A bunch of thoughts showed up all together. I’ll try to sort out some of the key thoughts.
• Yes, beauty represents God better than a mess. That in itself is enough reason to clean up the mess as I can.
• I already knew that wherever hell has its way, there’s a mess: pain, confusion, squalor, deception. The physical mess here reminded me of hell’s work.
• One thought that caught me off guard is that cleaning up the parking lot is a good way to make hell less comfortable, and to make the place inviting to the things of God. (Seriously? What?)
• And the big one: when a place has no ownership, it invites hell, it invites the demonic.
And as that thought dropped into my mind, this verse came with it:
“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.” [Luke 11:24-26]
We (correctly) use this passage to teach a number of good things. But one thing I think it teaches, or at least it was teaching me this afternoon, was that this person got into trouble the second time because they weren’t taking ownership for their soul.
Yes, God had set them free and cleaned them up. But there was no real opposition to the return of the impure spirit and its seven “more wicked” spirits, so they just moved in. There was nobody taking responsibility for the clean and tidy soul. Nobody was minding the store.
And I wonder if something like that has happened with this government office building? It was all clean and tidy when they finished the mess of construction and took down the fences. It was swept clean and put in order. But nobody took ownership of it; nobody made it their responsibility to keep the place looking nice, to keep the bad things out. Nobody was minding the store.
So normal things happened, and bad things happened. People began parking in the parking lot, teaching their kids to drive in it (it’s a big parking lot), folks took shortcuts through the lot, and kids began hanging out next to the dumpsters after (or during) school, vagrants set up camp back inside the landscaping and used for their latrine. It was like a handful of demons were settling into the territory.
To repeat: the principle that I’m working on sussing out here is this: when nobody takes ownership for a thing (a place, a soul, fill in the blank), then hell likes to waltz in and make themselves at home. Or so I suspect.
As I write this, I am feeling a nudge that this might have broader implications than a parking lot. In fact, it doesn’t seem insignificant that this is a parking lot for a government office building.
For a long time, it was religiously incorrect for believers to soil themselves by working for the government, or for big business. And so there was a lot less “minding the store,” as it were, by believers in the midst of the federal Government, in state and county government; there was a lot less “minding the store” in big business (like Signature Bank or Disney or Anheuser-Busch) new tech startups (like Google or Facebook or OpenAI or whatever).
Sure, there were bureaucrats on duty, business executives paying attention to business, but there was nobody taking any real measure of responsibility for the spirits working in these organizations.
So hell was comfortable waltzing in and making itself at home. And look where we are now.
So where do we go from here?
Sure, prayer is the easier part. Don’t get upset, I didn’t say it was easy; just easier than the alternative.
Part of the alternative is for believers to work – to work in positions of responsibility – in government or in business and on behalf of both the Kingdom and our employer to make decisions that are responsible.
The rest of that alternative is to roll up our sleeves and get involved, to take responsibility for places and organizations and regions and such. To clean up the parking lot, to report the shoplifting, to set policy in the place.
And when hell rolls up ready to get comfy, we get to say, “This is my turf; you’re trespassing. Out you go!”