Company for the Innocents

For our six month anniversary, my wife gave me a copy of "Praise Habit", by David Crowder (which I highly recommend, even though I've only gotten through a few chapters). Several chapters into the book, he starts going into Psalms, and he uses the New Living Translation. Today, as I was reading Psalms 1 in that translation, a phrase jumped out at me (I've emphasized it below by bolding the text).

"Instead you thrill to God's word, you chew on Scripture day and night.
You're a tree replanted in Eden, bearing fresh fruit every month,
Never dropping a leaf, always in blossom.

You're not at all like the wicked, who are mere windblown dust -
Without defense in court, unfit company for innocent people."

That last little phrase just stuck out to me: "unfit company for innocent people." Here's the question: What would qualify someone as being unfit company for an innocent person? Obviously, the unfit individual would probably steal the persons innocence, or at least violate it. That definitely enters rapists, murderers, sadists, racists, etc. into the the "unfit" category. But what about you and me? Do we fit into the same category as those same rapists, murderers, sadists, racists, etc.? Probably not, but still the question remains, would the person - the man or woman that you and I are -violate the innocence of an innocent person?

What is an 'innocent'? Note that innocence is different than naiveté - that has to do more with knowledge and understanding. No, innocence has to do with purity. One could be naive about sex (not understanding or knowing about certain aspects of it), but to be 'innocent' when it comes to sex requires something completely different: not only a mind, but a spirit that approaches and thinks about sex in a pure way - God's way. "Is there actually anyone who is truly 'innocent'?" you may ask. I don't really know - I do know that children are largely innocent until this world scars and shapes them. But that's not the point of this exploration.

Bring it back to you and I - how would we affect an innocent person? After departing our presence, would their innocence still be intact, or would it have been attacked or threatened or scarred? And that begs the question - where is our innocence? Because in an exchange - a conversation, an encounter - both parties are affected by the character of the other. Can true innocence be maintained if one of the parties involved is not innocent? For us to be worthy of being in the presence of an innocent, then we ourselves must possess innocence.

The world assaults and mocks innocence, almost to the point of portraying it as weakness. With this daily attack on our innocence, where can we renew ourselves, renew our innocence? It's actually pretty easy. Look into the first few verses of Romans 12, where Paul instructs us to "renew our minds". How do we do that? The most simple of all things: Christ. He is the one that has a Holy Innocence, an innocence that cannot be changed. As we continually renew ourselves - wash ourselves - in his presence (through prayer, reading of the word, and praise and worship), our innocence is not only renewed, but it is maintained and even cultivated to new levels.

My challenge to you is this: could the psalmist have written this of you, that you were fit for the company of the innocent?