We think of home as a safe place to relax and rest. But imagine taking a deep breath in your own house and inhaling poison.
In the early 1800s, a vibrant new green wallpaper ignited a frenzy. It was beautiful, fashionable, and gracing the walls of thousands of bedrooms and nurseries.
The catch? It was laced with arsenic.
When exposed to normal household dampness, a fungus reacted with the dye, releasing odorless, toxic gas into the air. Families became mysteriously ill with chronic fatigue and painful coughs. Doctors noticed patients miraculously recovered on vacation (the “Holiday Cure”), only to develop symptoms again upon returning home.
It’s jarring to realize that something so ordinary, familiar, and beautiful could be quietly putting lives at risk.
Are we inhaling a different kind of poison today?
The ideas, values, and mindsets we absorb through the media and culture can be just as toxic to our spiritual health. We can easily adopt worldly positions simply because they are constantly around us, beautifully packaged, and familiar.
Instead of mindlessly absorbing the culture, let’s test everything against Scripture.
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” —Philippians 1:9-10
