inkling·sRadioactive to the soul
Radiation Therapy✦
Stories, scenes, and songs the Spirit uses to shrink the tumor — real moments of goodness, love, and God at work in the world.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable — if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
✦ The name is Tim Keller's, near enough to quote. In his Q&A How a Gospel Identity Grows, he says the Holy Spirit will take a passage of Scripture and make it “radioactive” to the tumor of our sin and false identity — “I could just feel it shrinking.” His favorite picture of the cure is a movie scene he names in his Identity sermon: the Iron Giant, when the giant sacrifices himself to save the town and is resurrected. This is a room for exactly that — the true things, from anywhere, that the Spirit turns radioactive against what is killing us. Why stories, then, and not arguments: a heart cannot be beaten into submission without breaking, but it can be melted by what was done for it. Keller again, loosely. So this room holds no instructions. Only true things — treatments, really — meant to melt a heart rather than break it.