CHARLO, New Brunswick, December 8, 2023 – A few years ago, I rented a furnished condo for a month through airbnb. The pictures on the website showed what appeared to be a sparkling clean unit, neat and tidy, with good furniture and attractive décor. I was looking forward to my stay.

When I arrived, I was not prepared for the smell that greeted me. It was that smell that accumulates over time and is the telltale sign of unwashed floors and a dirty bathroom. You typically get that smell in gas station bathrooms, not in an Airbnb rental. But the best was yet to come.

As per the pics, the place was indeed neat and tidy, so neat and tidy I was afraid even to put down my luggage lest it disturb the neatness. My bedroom was neat and tidy, too, but upon closer inspection, I found that the comforter, which appeared clean in the photos, was covered in cat fur (ditto the pillows and sheets), and the mattress, when I went to change the bedding, looked like a crack-house reject, the kind of mattress that when you see it on the street, you alert public health authorities to remove as a biohazard. It was covered in what looked like blood stains from a series of axe murders but which my offended host shrilly insisted was spilled red wine. In either case, I had no intention of putting my body anywhere near those stains, so I went out and bought several drop sheets to encase the mattress and then covered it over with a new bedding set.

The bathroom I refused to use at all until it was cleaned from top to bottom, which the host, to his credit, immediately did, but which I immediately afterwards had to redo, since he clearly had no idea how to clean. He was very good at doing neat and tidy, but the underlying principle of cleanliness eluded him, probably because he’d never been taught how to clean.

The less said about the kitchen and the complimentary but expired (R.I.P.) contents of the fridge and cupboards, the better.

My purpose in mentioning this unfortunate Airbnb experience is to demonstrate that “neat and tidy” and “clean” are two different though sometimes related concepts. When something is genuinely clean, it shows its cleanliness by its neat and tidy appearance, but something can still be neat and tidy without being clean, as I’d experienced firsthand at that furnished rental.

Our souls can likewise appear to be clean without actually being clean. We can have the “neat and tidy” appearance of a soul in good order – attending church regularly, going to confession, giving to charities, being outwardly nice, wearing the Christian bling and speaking the Christian lingo – even heading a ministry. The majority of Christians are like this. I’m not saying it as a criticism but as a fact, just as it’s a fact that some people are very good at neat and tidy but have no idea how to clean. These “good Christians” have been taught that having a neat and tidy soul by doing “good Christian things” is the same as having a clean soul, though nothing could be farther from the truth.

As born-again believers, we know that our souls were cleaned by God himself during the process of our spiritual rebirth. Were this not true, we wouldn’t have God’s Holy Spirit with us, informing us and enabling us to have a relationship with God and Jesus, as God’s Spirit will not go into a soul that is not clean. We did not do the cleaning of our soul; God did. In fact, we can’t clean our own soul; we can only dirty it and then cover over the filth with neat and tidy “good Christian” deeds. It takes a supernatural act of God to clean a soul, which is done initially through spiritual rebirth and subsequently by sincere repentance. Note that our act of repentance doesn’t clean us; God cleans us when we come to him in sincere repentance.

So, how’s YOUR soul? Is it clean like Jesus said his disciples’ souls were, or is it the spiritual equivalent of a crack-house reject mattress, stained by the blood of a thousand axe wounds? If you’re reading this blog, I’m guessing your soul is clean, though a clean soul can still get dirty again, which is why we need to repent when God gives us the signal. We don’t want to put off repenting or we might end up like the poor man who was cleansed of a demon, only to be later invaded by the same demon, along with seven worse ones. This can happen to us as born-again believers; if it couldn’t, the scripture would be false.

I believe that most neat and tidy but unclean Christians have no idea of their state of uncleanliness or their need to sincerely repent and be genuinely born-again. I also believe that there are genuinely born-again Christians who are either unaware of their need to maintain their spiritual cleanliness through repentance, or are convinced that they are “once saved, always saved”. In all of these cases, the outward appearance may belie what’s underneath.

Followers of Jesus understand that if the soul is clean, the outward show will naturally be neat and tidy. It won’t be an affectation or something learned that we consciously have to put into practice; the neat and tidy will simply flow as a consequence of spiritual cleanliness. So, for instance, we’ll want to spend time with God and Jesus (not feel obligated to); we’ll want to read the Bible (not feel obligated to); we’ll want to follow the Commandments (not feel obligated to); we’ll want to help people (not feel obligated to); we’ll want to be kind to the unkind (not feel obligated to); and we’ll want to do “only that which pleases the Father” (not feel obligated to).

This is the state we should strive to be in at all times, as it is proof that our soul is not merely neat and tidy, but clean.

(Oh, and by the way, I gave the host of that airbnb rental an excellent review, because he honestly didn’t know the difference between “neat and tidy” and “clean”, and he did his best to rectify the problems when I pointed them out. You have to give someone credit for that. I can only hope, now that he knows “neat and tidy” is not necessarily “clean”, that he’ll genuinely clean his condo for his guests, not just tidy it. But that choice is his.)