Throwing the baby out with the bathwater would be a terrible thing to do. This is an idiom that we use quite often but, like most idioms, do not slow down to think about the meaning all that often. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is the epitome of throwing out the good just because it is related to the bad. The bathwater is no longer needed after the bath is over, it should be thrown out, but the baby is created in the image of God and should be cherished. Likewise, I do not throw my pots away even when the spaghetti they hold has become rotten. The pots still hold true value for future meals.
I believe developed societies baby is spiritual truth and the bathwater is the abuses and falsehoods within religion that we really enjoy to point our finger at. Sure there have been and continue to be wars fought under the name of religion. Sure leaders have abused power "in the name of God". Sure primitive people attribute too many things to spirits. We highly educated people know that rain comes from weather systems and are not purely the tears of the gods. We are very good at determining whether things are true. We have computer programs for analyzing minute relationships between huge data sets. We have scientists that spend careers understanding the workings of a handful of molecules. We are not okay with fairy tales, and rightfully so. If religion is purely fairy tale then we should throw it out, or at the most be entertained by it, but we better not throw it out if it is true.
This is what we must consider: is there really a God? We must consider whether Jesus really was who He said He was. We cannot point to the destruction done by religion and deem it all false. My family had friends over for dinner this week from Ghana. The wife is a doctor there and referenced how the traditional belief systems of the people there would lead them to abandon one of the children when twins are born. "People do not come in doubles," she said. It would be very easy to take a look at religion in that context and cast it all aside as false, but this would not be astute at all. If we are willing to spend careers building and analyzing data sets, should we not spend a portion of our time sifting through the truth about the divine? I encourage everyone to explore the historical proof of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection--Christians and non-Christians. Christians because your life depends on it. Non-Christians because your life depends on it. I do not believe in Jesus Christ because He makes me feel good (I have made this mistake before). Even when I do not feel so good I rest in the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; He has existed for all of eternity and He lived a life I can emulate, died a death that I find all of my peace in, and overcame death ensuring me that I will fully overcome death as well. This is no fairy tale, it is rooted in history, and Jesus does not teach me to play with poisonous snakes, do rain dances, or kill people that do not believe like I do. All of that is the bathwater, the truth of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection are the truth that we must cherish.
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