This Guest post is written by Cheryl Petersen, author of 21st Century Science and Health.
If you would like to write a guest post for this blog, check out the guidelines here.
My first house was immaculate. I was so methodical it’s a wonder it didn’t make me sick. No dust bunnies. Clean and pressed clothes. Bills paid. Car oil changed. I could eat off the bathroom floor. I was a purist.
This devotion to purity carried over into my religious thinking and behavior as well. I read and recited the same pure religious words every day. I believed that these words were the approved words of God for speaking, reading, and praying.
But eventually I began to wonder about this entire concept. Are there really special words and special languages which makes a person more acceptable to God? Is there such a thing as a pure textual tradition which can be aspired to or returned to? When people claim this is the case, how do we know that they are capable of making decisions of which is pure and which is not?
Loving Others in the Dirt
My tendency for physical and spiritual purity was challenged the most when I volunteered at an orphanage in Thailand. While there, I used squat toilets. There was no toilet paper. There was no hot water. There often was no place to wash your hands. One quickly learns that certain standards of purity are not as necessary as we might think.
This is a guest post by Craig Kuhn. His goal is to help people draw closer to God by causing them to ponder, however profoundly or fleetingly, the eternal; with the hope that they come to a fuller knowledge of Jesus Christ. He is a husband and father of two boys. He graduated from the University of Oregon, and is slowly pursuing a seminary graduate degree. He lives and works in Oregon.
Three cups of coffee, several electronic devices, and adrenaline are the modus operandi of my career these days.
Until recently, I always had a nagging suspicion that the more explicitly “Christian” one’s work is, such as being a pastor or working for a Christian organization, the more pleasing to God it would be.
Previously, I wrote about the 
This is a Guest Post by Patti Blount. She is a writer, speaker, artist, and evangelist. She wrote a column, “The Farmer’s Wife” for the Sower publication, the newsletter for Adopt A Farm Family. She has led workshops at Rural Restoration Conferences for the same ministry. Patti has also spoken for women’s groups, prison ministries, and in many churches in India with her husband, Tom. Patti can be contacted through her blog, 
