How To Boil a Frog
“Did you know that you can put a frog in a pot of cold water and set the pot on a slow fire and that frog will sit right there until he boils to death and never even attempt to jump out.”
I’m not sure just how old I was when I first heard that story. I couldn’t have even been in high school Biology class yet, because I remember it long before that. I’m sure, because I distinctly remember as a boy actually considering this little test every time I saw a frog! Since I was “all boy”, it’s surprising that I never did really try it, but I confess, I always wanted to. I just couldn’t believe that anything could be that stupid.
Now, these many years later, I’m certain it’s true. There’s just something about changes that occur ever so slowly. They seem to lull us to sleep while avoiding alarm. The poor frog, no doubt, adjusts and therefore ignores his changing environment.
That’s exactly what happens to us!
Satan doesn’t usually come along one day and slam us to the ground with some gross evil, some hideous violation of Holy Law. He usually just cunningly suggests some lesser thing – entertaining some lustful thought, participating in some “harmless” activity, or joining in some “harmless” conversation or tasteless joke. No harm there, right?
And the temperature in the pot slowly goes up.
Soon enough we’re carrying this evil thought a little further, enjoying it a little longer, becoming more boisterous in those conversations and getting more active in our “harmless” activities. And the temperature in the pot keeps going up. But we’re oblivious. We’re adjusted. There’s no sense of danger, …yet.
This is exactly the method the Enemy of our souls has used in the dismantling of our culture. Within my own lifetime, what a change has been accomplished, one degree at a time! We’ve moved, as the saying goes, “from the frying pan into the fire”. When I was in high school, chewing gum in class or being caught in the hall during class without a pass was a capital crime, punishable by paddling. I know. It happened to me as a senior! Now today, violent crimes, rape, murder and lethal drugs are the everyday norm in schools across America. In society, the things formerly forbidden by God’s law (and generally unthinkable) are now hailed by Hollywood as virtues! It wasn’t that long ago that if a man had some homosexual tendencies he’d better remain “in the closet” with them. Today, alas, the rest of us have been banished to the closet and the homosexuals have been given the streets!
And the temperature in the pot continues to rise!
I remember well when little girls were only allowed to wear dresses and were expected to act like little ladies. Today they’re allowed to wear nothing and expected to be vulgar and crass. And the temperature in the pot rises.
I could go on and on in these illustrations, but you get the point. I’m simply saying, sin has a progression. Like a tumorous cancer, it’s never inert. It grows, but usually at an imperceptible rate. And there is the danger.
So how did we get here? Well, time won’t permit me here to examine that question historically, but just let me say, we got here one small step at a time. Progressivism, Egalitarianism and a hundred other “isms” along with modern psychology have led us gently through the temperature changes until today we’re just about at a rolling boil!
This is why James warns us in chapter one verses fourteen through fifteen:
“But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
Yet, while we lament the moral decline in our own generation, let's not forget that this is neither new nor exclusive to us. Satan used this very same process to lure our first parents into sin and his success with this method in the garden bode well (or ill, depending upon your frame of reference) for its continued use throughout the ages. Perhaps James had in mind that very incident when he wrote the words quoted above - lust conceived sin in the garden and sin's inevitable, wretched, soul-destroying offspring was and ever is death since that day.
Every suggestion of the Tempter, eagerly embraced by the sinful heart, merely adds fuel to the fire beneath this pot in which we boil ourselves - individually and as a society! There is no fear of God before their eyes (Romans 3:18) is an apt description of every generation since the Fall, but seemingly never more so than in our own day. Surely in our day there is what can only be described as a mad rush to practice every kind of wickedness, openly and shamelessly. The Apostle Paul describes it with deadly accuracy when he says in Ephesians chapter four verse nineteen - Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness (gross sensuality), to work all uncleanness with greediness.
Temptation … lust …enticement … sin … death. There’s the progression. It is this, often imperceptible, progression that is lethal. Are we conscious of it? Do we “sample the water” daily to see where we are? Do we measure it by the thermometer of God’s Word or do we simply trust our senses like the frog? It is with great wisdom indeed that the wise man in Song of Solomon warns us, “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines; for our vines have tender grapes.”
Are we taking the “little foxes” out of our vineyards daily? If not, soon enough we too, like the poor little frog, will boil alive in the meltingpot of this Godless Society!
Dr. John Suttles |
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