Forgetting to Blush
By Grant Gaines
Blushing is as natural as breathing, blinking, and bleeding. It’s actually an involuntary reaction that your body naturally begins to incorporate into daily life as early as the age of two. Anger, fear, joy, love, and embarrassment are some of the chief triggers of this rosy cheeked reaction.
Over time, however, as you are exposed more often to those situations that cause you to blush, you are less and less likely to blush. Physically, mentally, and emotionally your body becomes adapted to that situation and it no longer has the same sensation. For example, the sight of your loved one coming home with a beautiful bouquet of flowers is more likely to cause your cheeks to become rosy in the first year of marriage than the fiftieth year of marriage.
It is simply basic human instinct to become comfortable with even the most frightening or flattering situations the more we are exposed to them. And while losing the blush in the physical realm is not necessarily a bad thing, in the spiritual realm it’s the difference between an animated and anemic relationship with God.
You see, just as we can become accustom to embarrassing, awkward, romantic, or exciting situations, we have the tendency to do the same when it comes to our sins. Something that used to be completely unthinkable can quickly become the norm if we’re not careful. Just take a look at television and you can see exactly what I’m talking about.
The popular 1950’s television show I Love Lucy showed a couple who were actually married in real life as well as on the show sleeping in separate beds because they didn’t want to infer any sexual activity. Now if you fast forward to today, sex seems to be the advertised theme of every popular show that the networks are rolling out. And all of this didn’t happen overnight; it was a slow and gentle fade as society become more and more accustomed and calloused to increased levels of sexuality until eventually the viewing audience as a whole doesn’t even blush when TV programs show what used to be considered explicit material.
The same thing is prone to happen in our lives—we may start out with a zero tolerance policy towards certain sins but as we allow “little” sins into our lives we have a tendency to become more accepting towards what used to be unthinkable. How else could a husband cheat on his wife? It’s not like they woke up one day and just decided to become unfaithful. Rather, it was a slow fade—a glance at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit addition turned into a few glances at porn which then led them down a road that was completely unfathomable on the day they said “I do”.
It’s the same exact pattern that the Israelites fell into in the Old Testament. First they forsook the Sabbath, then they began offering sacrifices to God in unbiblical ways, and the next thing you know they were bending their knees to foreign gods and rejecting the Lord. It was a slow fade that led to their spiritual demise.
At the heart of their downfall was a calloused acceptance of sin. Or as God described it—“Are [the Israelites] ashamed of these disgusting actions? Not at all—they don’t even know how to blush!” (Jeremiah 8:12, NLT).
Right there in Jeremiah 8:12 God correlates the idea of spiritually blushing with tenderness towards guilt and conviction. And what’s interesting about physical blushing is that studies have shown that, “…the red-faced response is inherited, establishing that there’s such a thing as ‘having a predisposition to blushing.’[1]” And just as we have a “predisposition” (or natural inclination) to physically blush, we as Christians also have the same inherit tendency to “blush” spiritually because of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives.
You see, John 16:8 says that one of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of our sin. This means that the Spirit of God within us inherently shoots up red warning flags the moment temptation and sin enters our lives—thus causing us to “blush”. But just as we can become calloused to certain situations and lose our blush in a physical sense, if we grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30) for a prolonged period of time by hardening our hearts and not listening to His promptings (Hebrews 3:7-8), we will quench the Holy Spirit’s power and voice (1 Thessalonians 5:19) in our lives and become numb, or blush-less, towards sin.
At the heart of every major downfall is an initial acceptance of minor sin. It happens with an unfaithful spouse, it happens with an unfaithful people, and it could happen to you as well. Every sin that you allow into your life is one more brick laid down in the road which leads to the unthinkable. Sinning leads to callousness which leads to more sinning.
If you want to break this pattern in your life, even “little” sins such as white lies, gossip, and worry must be earnestly fought against every single day. It is the only way we can keep our blush, avoid the breakdown, and blossom with God.
Have you blushed today?
Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
©Grant Gaines 2013
