Those Subtle Snakes

One day many years ago, my father-in-law and I were out in a field directly behind his farmhouse looking for morel mushrooms. I was bent over at the waist with my eyes focused on the ground when suddenly my father-in-law let out a gentle but drawn-out, "Shh, don't move." Slowly and gingerly I raised myself up to a rigid standing position and locked my knees. "There's a rattler by your right foot," he said. When anyone in Missouri uses the term "rattler" as opposed to just saying the word snake, they mean a venomous RATTLESNAKE. In general, I'm not one that fears snakes. However, when it comes to the poisonous ones, let's just say I respect them! Refusing to even exhale my father-in-law unholstered the pistol he always carried on his hip. With one precise shot, that 7-foot snake was dead.

He was quite the outdoorsman, my father-in-law. I always enjoyed listening to the many hunting and fishing stories he shared because there was always something to laugh about in each and every one. He told me when he was a boy growing up on a farm, he and his grandad killed ten rattlesnakes in one day. He said a rattler can easily be killed if you know where it is and how far it can reach when it strikes. He never worried about the rattlesnakes he could see, but he was genuinely concerned about stepping on a subtle one he couldn’t see. I'm sure glad he saw that one by my right foot or I might have stepped backward on it and things would have turned out differently.

Sometimes we don't realize there are subtle, "spiritual" snakes ready to strike us all the time. We are, of course, aware of obvious serpents and we avoid them. Serpents such as adultery, murder, sexual perversion, and drunkenness. We basically know by instinct these are wrong and avoid them since they do not replicate the character of Christ. But what about the little serpents, the poisonous "snakes" that aren't so obvious? Things we don't consider like pride, self-reliance, selfishness, buying into worldly fads, hatred, judgment, materialism, lust, or secular music whose lyrics exceed the realm of decency. As an example, in the Old Testament, King Hezekiah was subtly “bitten” by a hidden temptation — NOT seduced by an obvious evil. He allowed a measure of pride and self-reliance to blight his career. He should have put his full trust in the Lord for protection from his enemies, but instead sought safety through an alliance with idolatrous men (2 Kings 20:12-13; 2 Chronicles 32:25; 2 Chronicles 32:31). It’s sad to realize that this otherwise good king marred his reign by this sin. We need to be on guard lest we allow pride to build up in our hearts until, like Hezekiah, we succumb to the wiles of the enemy.

Scripture tells us: "A man's pride will bring him low, but the humble in spirit will retain honor" (Proverbs 29:23). We may be prepared to stand against obvious temptations that would bring dishonor to our name, but we may not be ready for life’s “subtle” temptations. We need to beware of those “hidden rattlers” — they are the most dangerous of all! Jesus taught that evil originates in the heart. It is not the product of a bad environment or a dysfunctional family or a below-poverty rating or the construction of one’s genes or an inferior education. Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander”(Matthew 15:19). His words affirm what the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed to the nation Judah, “The heart is deceitful above all things . . . .” (Jeremiah 17:9). His teaching also recalls the Lord’s indictment of the human race in the time of Noah: “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). Clearly, God knows our thoughts and emotions, and if they offend Him, we need to regard them as sin. They may be subtle, but they are as odious to God as murder and adultery. Struggles with our subtle, wayward desires arise chiefly because we have kept Christ outside the door. The best way to protect our souls, then, is to keep Christ in.

Until next time,
-Pat-