“Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy—dwell on these things. Do what you have learned and received and heard from me, and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Jesus once said that it is not what goes into the body that corrupts it, but what comes out of it. He was talking about food because the Pharisees had been fussing at Him about what the disciples were eating and over their not doing all the proper washings before eating. His point was that they were focused on external matters of symbolic righteousness that didn’t ultimately matter very much while neglecting the much more significant matters of internal righteousness. But when He said that it is not what goes into the body that corrupts it, He wasn’t entirely correct. Let’s talk about why.

Let’s start with this: I’m not contradicting Jesus. The things that come out of us are a reflection of what is already inside of us. That is, they reflect the corruption that is already there. When you say something ugly to another person, that is far worse for your overall health than not washing your hands properly. Eating the wrong food in the wrong way is not nearly as detrimental to your standing with God as lying about another person’s actions or character in such a way that advances your own perceived interests. Jesus was right.

Jesus was also right about the fact that the sin that comes out of us is already inside of us. As Paul wrote about in his letter to the Roman believers, we are sinners by nature. We don’t have to work to come up with evil. It flows out of us all by itself. On our own, we are going to sin. We are addicted to sin. We are enslaved to sin, in fact. We can’t not sin even when we want to. I know this about you because it’s true about me too: You have some patterns of sin in your life that you would really like to be rid of but which you keep going back to in spite of all your promises to yourself that the last time was absolutely the last time.

So, all of that is absolutely correct—not that Jesus needed any affirmation from me. What we see here as we near the end of Paul’s letter to the Philippian believers is a different way to look at what Jesus said. Jesus was talking only about food and religious rituals. Those things don’t corrupt the body. But the corruption that comes out of the body, even though it rises up in us all on its own, can be fed.

All of our ideas to sin are not entirely original to us. That is, we don’t come up with all of the ways we sin on our own. We do just fine without any external input, but we get plenty of external input all the same. The basic principle here is one we understand pretty well. If you eat junk food all the time and never exercise, your body is not going to feel good. You won’t have much energy. You’ll be more likely to injure yourself when you do participate in physical activities. You’ll set yourself up for bigger health issues down the road. It’s a bad cycle. The expression here is one I’m sure you have heard before: Garbage in; garbage out.

The same thing goes with our minds and hearts. The same thing goes with our spirits. If we feed ourselves on a steady diet of garbage, eventually garbage is what will start to come back out of us. If you watch shows and movies with lots and lots of bad language all the time, that will eventually start to affect the way you talk. If you play exceedingly violent video games or watch graphically violent movies and shows all the time, it will gradually desensitize you to violence in a way that won’t be healthy at some point. It will mute your compassion and mercy.

If you consume highly sexualized material on a regular basis—whether that is actual pornography or the kind of so-called soft pornography that gets featured on far too many shows on various major streaming platforms—your thinking will reflect that. It may be that your doing will reflect that. You’ll start to look at the people around you through a sexualized lens rather than one that respects and honors their being a fellow image bearer of God with you. If you consume content that celebrates infidelity or fornication, the natural moral blocks the Holy Spirit helps us have will be weakened over time in ways that won’t play out to your benefit in the long term.

If you are regularly seeing things like dishonesty or unfaithfulness or vengeance glamorized or otherwise treated as if they are no big deal, eventually your willingness to participate in such things yourself will grow. You’ll be more willing to be callous toward others rather than caring. You’ll be more willing to use others to your advantage rather than working humbly to advance their interests, trusting that God will take care of your own. When all you consume is the world, the world is what is going to come back out of you. And given the fact that we are sinners on our own, we really don’t need the help adding to the noise of sin in the world around us, let alone in our own hearts and minds.

So, what do we do instead? We take Paul’s counsel here seriously. To the extent of our ability, we make sure that the primary information inputs we are receiving are things that uphold and reinforce the kingdom of God. The things we dwell on are those that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, morally excellent, and praiseworthy. We intentionally put ourselves in a place where we can watch and observe the lives and character of trusted saints so we can pattern our own lives after theirs.

Do a bit of self-evaluation here. How much content do you consume on a regular basis that falls within these guidelines from Paul? It doesn’t necessarily have to check every single box, but if it is hitting one, it is probably hitting several others at the same time. How much content do you consume on a regular basis that doesn’t manage to hit any of these things? How much of your daily diet of media is celebrating sin and downplaying righteousness? How much of it encourages you to think about and treat other people as little more than objects to be used for your convenience rather than as unique individuals created by God, bearing His image, and in need of receiving His Gospel, a need you are in the position of helping them receive?

In other words, just how much garbage are you putting into your heart and mind on a regular basis? If it is more than just a little bit—and that much is getting heavily filtered through the lens of the Christian worldview so that you are actively filtering out what isn’t good so that you can better receive what is—then you really shouldn’t be surprised if you are struggling in some way to walk according to the righteousness of Christ. And even if you have pretty good righteousness filters in place as you engage with various media content, if you overwhelm those filters, they will eventually do you less and less good. You have to keep those filters clean. How? By refreshing them with things that check all of Paul’s boxes here.

As followers of Jesus we cannot simply isolate ourselves away from all of the sin and garbage of the world. That’s not a good option. But we can make sure we are staying in the driver’s seat and choosing wisely the kind of things we give access to our soul. If we just let an unending stream of garbage in, that’s all we should expect to come back out. Let’s make sure we are intentionally feeding our mind and heart and spirit the kinds of things that will reinforce our faith and trust in the Lord and call us intentionally to the kind of character that properly reflects the goodness and righteousness of our God.