Unshackled Moments ~ February 22, 2017 ~ Horny Toads And Secret Sin

I hate fire ants. Hate. I believe they are a reminder of the curse. I hate fire ants. I seriously can't stress that enough. If I were God, all fire ants would be obliterated about a second ahead of the mosquitoes, and I'd create something that didn't sting, bite or suck blood for the other critters that feed on those two evil species to live on. And you know what? That's not even on the top 100 list of why it's a good thing I'm not God. I'd have the ecosystem way more out of whack than humanity has done it. But there is something related that I hate more than fire ants. Nope, it's not wasps or leeches or any creepy crawly stinging biting thing. What I hate more than fire ants is fire ant poison.

That may not make sense, since I hate fire ants so much. Believe me, I have no problem with killing fire ants. But I love the Texas Horned Lizard, or as we always called them, horny toads. I can't tell you how many of these cute little dinosaurs my brothers and I caught as children. In the 70's they were everywhere in Nacogdoches, or at least it seemed so. But I don't even remember the last time I saw one that wasn't in a zoo or herp center of some sort. It's heartbreaking to me to see these official state reptiles disappearing, so I guess really it's not seeing them that breaks my heart. Something cool and wonderful has been destroyed.

One of the main reasons that these lizards became a thing of the past rather than a common sight is fire ant poison. Fire ants are a problem in Texas. It's a sure sign of spring as the mounds begin to appear and spread across yards. And it's not simply a matter of not liking the mounds that make ants an issue. I remember a police officer in the DFW area being killed by a floating mass of the ants in a flash flood in the early 90's. They are horrible, and people want them gone from their manicured lawns. So they poisoned. And the horny toad began to disappear. The messed up thing is the fire ants are still all over the place.

What's the point? The point is that poison rarely only affects one species or one animal. Sin is a poison. As sin entered the world it brought death and destruction to all of creation. And when we allow sin in our life, it brings death and destruction to us and to those in our life. There is no such thing as benign, secret sin. It is easy to become deceived and complacent at times because we buy the lie that we aren't hurting anyone but ourselves. This isn't really an issue. This doesn't affect anyone else. As long as no one knows then no one can be hurt. But none of that is true.

Just as no species of animal is isolated and all are a part of an interactive system, we are not isolated. We are created for relationship with others. When we sow seeds of death and destruction in ourselves we can not prevent also spreading that death and destruction to the people we are relationship with. It is a common saying in the rooms of recovery that we are only as sick as our secrets, and we may think that it doesn't really matter if we allow sickness to remain and fester because we don't want to deal with certain things. But our sickness hinders our ability to function as we are supposed to. It gets in the way of our ability to consistently love God and love others. And when we can't love as we should, as Jesus loves, we fail those we are called to serve. We are not feeding others the pure bread of life. Instead, what we give others is tainted with poison.

I don't mean this to be condemning. The truth is that we are all sick. Some more than others, and how sick we are depends solely on how submitted our will and life is to the will and love of God. None of us can completely eliminate sin in our life, to love purely and without any selfishness or conflict of motive, or be a perfect reflection of the serving and loving spirit of Christ. But the more we access the grace of the Spirit to do that, the more life we give others and the less poison we spread.

It's about progress not perfection, but we can't progress while being comfortable with  sin in our life just because no one knows. Jesus made it clear when dealing with the Pharisees that the heart and what's inside matters to God as much as what people can see and easily detect about our attitudes and motives and thoughts. As much as we may try to keep our inner unloving poison from showing, it will bleed into our actions and reactions with others.

If we want to be an instrument of love and life, we have to be diligent to submit even our secret selves to the Spirit and become ready to allow God to change us and remove even the things outside of His will that we may excuse because no one knows. Our conduct can not be kept in our own little isolated bubble. What we allow in our private life will affect our public life as well, regardless of what we do to try to prevent that. We must weed the garden of our hearts and submit to God's process of removing the poisonous growths that choke out the desired life of love and the fruits of the Spirit. Only by constantly working to love within as well as showing love without can we access the grace to have our lives be an expression of the life giving love of Jesus and not the poison of our old cursed nature.



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