The Danger is the Subtlety
A neighborhood in Pennsylvania had a bad morning a few days ago. A small herd of deer came through the neighborhood–which is not that unusual. What was unusual was that a couple of the deer decided to just crash through doors and windows and run around houses for a little while!
Multiple doors were damaged and a couple of houses were broken into as the deer ran into and around the houses before going back outside. Other neighbors reported other damage to their property. As of now, no one is all that sure what caused the deer to do this.
I want us to use that weird event to think about the safety of our homes. Now I’m not talking about locking our doors or having shatter-proof glass or an alarm system. Instead, I want us to think of more subtle ways our homes are often in danger.
You see, there was no way to miss the danger those large animals posed. They crashed through glass doors and windows and it would have been really hard to miss their presence! The danger was obvious and couldn’t be missed. But also, it wasn’t welcome. It just crashed through a door or window with no regard for being subtle.
Spiritually, we would never let some sin just waltz through our front door. We wouldn’t let the neighborhood drug dealer walk in with his wares on full display. We wouldn’t allow someone into our home who walked in spouting off foul language. We would require someone to wear clothing into our house that is decent and not walk in wearing something overtly sexual (or nothing at all).
Yet how often do we allow those things into our house in more subtle ways? We laugh when someone famous tells a crude joke on a sitcom. We watch half-dressed (or less) actresses in movies on Netflix or Hulu. We stream music with coarse themes as we get ready for work in the morning. We play overtly violent video games in our living room.
The subtlety is the danger. Sin doesn’t have to break through our front door and shout its presence. We’d never let it do that anyway. Instead, we let it in through our own choices in far less overt ways…and then we allow it to spend the night…and take up residence.
Soon, unless we take charge, it is a resident we don’t even mind having around, and we even defend it as just part of the way we do things. It’s time to evict it and put up some better defenses if we want to save ourselves and our families.
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AUTHOR: Adam Faughn
