I attended a men's breakfast on Sunday at a church pastored by a friend
I have known since elementary school. The fellowship was great and my friend
spoke of the time he spent as the pastor of a church in Goose Bay, Labrador.
It was a delight to hear some of the stories he shared about the local people
and their customs and some of his experiences with them. One of his stories
reminded me of an activity that was a real treat for me as I was growing up.
Every now and then, on a sunny summer Saturday evening, the family
would all pile in the car. We'd join many other families from town at our
mutual destination the town dump. Although it might seem like an unlikely
venue, most evenings from late spring through fall, the town dump would host
the local entertainment.
We went to watch the bears come to feed. Black bears; brown bears;
mother bears with cubs and cranky old males would show up over the course of
the evening. The dump seemed to be a place where the bears had an uneasy
truce. There was plenty of food to go around. The antics of the cubs in
particular were a source of great laughter for us.
We stayed in the car, although some people would get out and throw food
to the bears. The prevailing "wisdom" was that if you didn't get between a
mother and her cubs or a bear and the food you were safe. Every year, in some
community in the province one or more people found out the hard way that it
wasn't as safe as they thought and the bears weren't as friendly as they
appeared. Someone, somewhere got mauled by a bear every year, often it
happened to several people over the course of a summer.
The prevailing "wisdom" that you could take liberties with the bears
proved to be not very wise and often down right dangerous. When you think
about it, it only makes sense to give large hungry animals their space
especially when those animals have huge claws, big teeth and no fear of
people. Yet the bears always "seemed" so friendly and harmless.
Today you don't have to be at the dump to see danger masquerading as
harmless fun. Simply turn on a television set, pick up a newspaper or
magazine, turn on the radio, go to a movie or go sit and listen to people
talking. The bears are all around us.
The world bombards us with messages that sexual sin, greed, substance
abuse and more are perfectly safe and perfectly acceptable. How much harm can
a drink, a smoke, a trip to the casino, a brief sexual fling or a little self
serving greed do? After all, everyone else seems to be doing it.
The reality is that there is no such thing as a harmless sin. Sin is
rebellion against God and it distances us from Him. All sin has a price tag
attached, it's just that it is often a sin now and pay later kind of deal.
Sodom and Gomorrah thought they could get away with their sin and for a
long time it must have seemed as if they did. Eventually though God's
patience with them ran out. The result? Only Lot and his two daughters were
left alive to tell the story.
Sin isn't harmless fun; it is a dangerous place to be. It isn't by
coincidence that Peter writes:
Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the
devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8 NIV
He knew as well as anyone the dangers of pride and sin. He had fallen
himself many times and knew how dangerous sin could be.
In today's society, it is often viewed as old fashioned, prudish or
even "quaint" to talk of sin. The world continues to deceive itself that
there is no harm in flaunting God. They're wrong, God doesn't think of sin as
an old fashioned or "quaint" concept. God is holy and sin brings God's wrath.
