How many of you remember the ShamWow guy? When I first saw that guy pour an entire two liters of soda on carpeting and demonstrate the power of that miraculous yellow cloth, I was wowed! Weren't you? Talk about revolutionary! The ShamWow could do what no roll of paper towels could ever do! You spill two liters of soda, you whip out your ShamWow, soak it up, ring it out into a cup, and sha-bam, ready to serve! People can barely taste the difference! Steeler's fans are totally obsessed with the ShamWow!
A while back the ShamWow guy's life took a pretty dark turn. Evidently, Vince Offer was an expert at cleaning up spilled soda, but was completely unable to clean up his life. He was arrested after going on a 12 hour drinking binge and beating up a prostitute. I don't want to add to his humiliation. His story got me thinking about how different a person's public persona can be from their private persona. His public persona was ShamWow. But his personal persona was ShameWow! His life was a total mess, out of control.
The ShameWow Lifestyle
A growing segment of our culture is living a ShameWow lifestyle. Every so often, I get linked up to the Daily Mail website. The Daily Mail chronicles the most unflattering side of American society; the violence, the greed, the pride, the corruption, the immorality, and the foolishness. Every headline is worse than the previous one. 2 Timothy 3:13 (ESV) describes how, "...evil people and imposters will flourish." Maybe we shouldn't be all that surprised by the depravity we see out in the world.
All of us have the potential to lead a ShameWow life. But there are some-- professed Christians even-- who are quite proud of living across the line, flaunting their freedom, and mocking everything that is good, moral, and decent. Peter addresses such individuals in 1 Peter 2:1 (ESV) when he says, "So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander." These five words capture the essence of a ShameWow life. Pencil these five words into your outline and let's talk about them for a moment. Malice. Deceit. Hypocrisy. Envy. Slander.
1. Malice is the Bible's word for our evil intent, wickedness, and cruelty. Malice is in the lyrics of our music, our laugh lines, and late-night status updates. Malice is the violent thrill which is packed into our top selling video games and our rated R movies. People can be rather overt about their malicious intentions. They verbalize what they want to do to their bosses, their exes, and their political opponents. I can't tell you how many times I've overheard a group of men express their malicious intentions shortly after an attractive woman passes by. Young women get on Twitter and unashamedly broadcast their overtly malicious desires, or dress accordingly. Malice is an unfettered, fully exposed, evil desire.
2. Usually, however, malice is cloaked in deceit. Things don't always bode well for you when you are overtly malicious. People usually run from overt signs of danger. So the malicious person learns to deceive and to hide his intentions. A deceptive person can seem extraordinarily kind, thoughtful, chivalrous, or generous on the surface. But peel back their sheep skin, and you'll see an entirely different reality. Adam and Eve probably thought the serpent was pretty nice. But then they were deceived. It wasn't until God revealed what had happened to them that they saw Satan for the liar, murderer, and deceiver he is.
3. Sometimes malice cloaks itself as hypocrisy. Although we're one thing, too often we pretend to be another. The Bible talks about how we can have a form of godliness while denying its power in our life. We can go through the motions of godliness while inwardly feeding our greed, our lust, our pride, our hatred, and our bitterness.
4. Sometimes malice cloaks itself as envy. Sometimes we can be filled with envy and resentment, and lack true joy. When we're filled with envy, we can't celebrate the good that is happening to other people's lives. Instead, we think we deserve it instead. So what do we do? We sit back and stew and covet and obstruct and sabotage other people's success as if their failures could somehow sooth our pain. This is shameful stuff.
5. Sometimes malice cloaks itself as slander. Sometimes we love to be critical and to impugn people's motives, find fault, and be judgmental. Later on, Peter will tell the Christians in 1 Peter 3:9 (ESV), "Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing." Slander is when you attack that which you cannot become. You cannot maintain your virginity, so you insult those who have. You cannot control your appetites, or your mouth, or your selfish impulses, or your money, so you demean those who can, by the power of God.
I want you to circle the element of a ShameWow life with which you most struggle. Is it an overtly malicious desire? Is it deceit? Hypocrisy? Envy? Slander? These are self-destructive impulses. They result in ever-escalating shame as a person grows from bad to worse. In 1 Peter 2:1 (ESV) Peter says, "So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocristy and envy and all slander."
The WordWow Life
There are many times when I sense these evil desires strengthening in my life. I think this also true of many people who don't know God. Sometimes we just get ugly. The malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander becomes just too much to bear. We can even start to hate who we're becoming. If you're ruled by malice, if you are living the ShameWow life, what do you do about it? Let me give you the five elements of a WordWow life, and then I'll tell you why I call it a WordWow life.
First, there is a new birth. In 1 Peter 1:23 (ESV) Peter reminds the Christians, "...you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God." There isn't any book like the Bible. The moment you begin reading the word of God, it's powerful to awaken desires in you that have laid dormant or dead for years. In 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (ESV) Paul says the Bible is, "...profitiable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." 1 John 3:9 (ESV) says, "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God." When you read the word, you're born all over again, you're given a clean slate, you get rewired inside, and you're enabled to live a whole new life, the life God intended for you.
Second, there is a new desire. In 1 Peter 2:2 (ESV) Peter says, "Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk..." Have you ever seen a new babe cry out for milk? Why does she do that? It's two in the morning and the baby is screaming! It's because the babe's very life is dependent upon milk for survival. And the same is true of a new babe in Christ. A new babe's life can only be sustained through the living and abiding word of God. If a desire for the word doesn't take hold, the new babe in Christ dies.
Third, there is a new trajectory of growth. In 1 Peter 2:2-3 (ESV) Peter says, "Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation-- if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good." We are born again through the living word of God. As infants, we crave pure spiritual milk. So do we ever outgrow our need for the word of God? Never. Once you taste that the word of good, you continue growing up into salvation. We're to relentlessly love and search God's word.
Fourth, there is a new purpose. In 1 Peter 2:4-5 (ESV) Peter says, "As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
We don't just grow for the sake of growing. No, God builds us up together as the Church to live holy lives, to make sacrifices and make investments in one another's lives that will matter for eternity! God gives you a new life, a new purpose, a new mission, and a new sense of calling.
Fifth, there is a new legacy. In 1 Peter 2:6-8 (ESV) Peter quotes the scripture. " 'Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.' So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,' and 'A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.' They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do."
Three Legacies
Let me describe our new legacy this way. In this life, you get to choose which of three legacies you will leave for the folks coming after you.
A certain percentage of you will leave people the ShameWow legacy. Throughout your life, you will stumble along and disobey God. And you will probably cause other people to stumble along and disobey God too. People will look at your life and they will say, "What wasted potential. What a shame. How sad."
A certain percentage of you will leave people a WordWow legacy. Your life will evidence the power of God's word to transform. Christians will say, "Wow, that's amazing. Praise God." They will say, "I want to live like that, invest like that, sacrifice like that, and serve with that intensity. I want my life to matter like that and I want God to use me like that." More important is what God will say to you. "Well done, good and faithful servant!"
What's interesting about both the ShameWow life and the WordWow life is that they are equally offensive, but for entirely different reasons. The ShameWow life is offensive because it accelerates depravity. When the world sees a ShameWow life, it laughs. The WordWow life is offensive because of its redemptive power. When the world sees a WordWow life, they often want to test it, attack it, discredit it, and slander it, in order to see if it's real and alive. But God also says, "I will honor this life. This kind of life will never be put to shame."
In the middle of these extremes is a third legacy, a NoWow legacy.
In the middle of these two extremes are the muddled masses of Christians who dabble in the world and who dabble just enough in the word to remain lukewarm. Those who live in the middle live unoffensive, and often ineffective lives for Christ. The world looks at the muddled masses and yawns, saying, "Oh, they're just like me."
What will your legacy be? I want to end with one of the famous prayers of the missionary Jim Elliot. He prayed, "Father, make me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another upon facing Christ in me."
What is your prayer? When people meet you, will they be wowed by the power of God's word at work in your life? Will their relationship with you bring them to a point where they either have to accept Christ in you or reject Christ in you, yet not remain neutral about either?