When Tanith Tyrr climbed into the king cobra’s exhibit at the Cape Fear Serpentarium in Wilmington, N.C., she was not the victim of a terrible sense of direction. She entered intentionally. Why? To prove snakes aren’t the aggressive murderers they are so often depicted to be in film and television.
Bob WeathersTyrr, a curator for the serpentarium’s reptile collection, had been a little miffed by Hollywood’s regular depiction of snakes as evil and dangerous. But it was the latest installment of this Hollywood myth, Snakes on a Plane, that spurred her to action.
In an effort to demonstrate that the reptiles were not so aggressive, she spent a couple of hot August days sitting in a comfortable chair, talking on her cell phone and leisurely reading while a 15-foot cobra lay coiled up a few feet away. Her experiment worked. Nothing ever happened. If the animal’s inactivity was an indication, the cobra barely noticed she was around.
You and I, however, are not so lucky when we recline in the cage of a cobra. Our version of this experiment, played out daily by well-meaning Christians, is to enter the den of temptation, where sin lounges inches away, coiled, waiting to bite. It isn’t that we do not know there is a serpent in the den. We just convince ourselves that there is no real danger. “It won’t really bite me,” we reason. Or, “I can handle it,” we rationalize.
So we don’t stumble in. We enter intentionally. Though we know better, we pull up a chair, breathe in the air, and flirt with destruction. And usually, in sin’s territory, we lose. Sin is never dormant, and always welcoming, when we choose to walk in.
So how do we avoid the bite of sin? Of course, we could enter its den with caution, watching its every move to be sure it doesn’t rise and strike when we are not looking. But wouldn’t it be easier just to stay out of its lair and away from temptation altogether?
We must admit that we tend to wander into the heart of danger, and then we relinquish control of our footsteps to God. “Direct my footsteps according to your word,” the psalmist prayed. “Let no sin rule over me” (Psalm 119:133).