The Gospel According to Monk

I love Monk. I love St. Francis, St. Benedict, and Thomas a Kempis. But my current love of Monk is a character played by Tony Shalhoub. Tony plays a person who has obsessive compulsive disorder, and he has outstanding powers of observation. The result: a phenomenal detective on the show "Monk." Adrian Monk has a large list of phobias and compulsions. Included in Monk's phobias is a fear of milk. Some of his fears make sense, some don't. But somewhere along the line we can find spiritual applications to Mr. Monk's approach to life.

1. Fear of germs -- keep a pure life.

2. Fear of snakes -- while we only fear God, we should avoid that old serpent. Adam and Eve could have learned a lot from Monk.

3. Fear of frogs -- do anything to avoid plagues.

4. Fear of Crowds -- don't follow the crowd; follow the Master.

5. Loves multiples of 10 -- keep the Ten Commandments.

6. After Monk shakes hands with someone, he cleans his hands with a wipe --

Ps 24:3 Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?
Ps 24:4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.

7. Fear of hailstones -- yup...that's an obvious one. See the frogs.

8. Monk avoids stepping on cracks -- avoid stumbling blocks.

9. Fear of darkness -- nice reminder to us to walk in the light.

10. Monk likes everything to be perfect -- we are called to be perfect like our heavenly Father is perfect.

That makes ten...seems like a nice place to stop.