Playing With Fire

“Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” (Pr 6:27 AV)

 

This question appears in the context of adultery.  The question is obvious.  Can someone commit such a sin and not expect consequences?  Yet, this question does not apply solely to immorality.  It applies to any sin.  There are consequences for the choices we make.  Good or bad.  There are rewards for wise choices that we make.  Conversely, there are negative consequences for the wrong choices we make.  The question above is not so much a warning as to point out, when tempted, of an obvious failure.  That failure is the failure to consider the after-effects of our choice.  What will be the result of the temporary pleasure I may enjoy?  What will others do to me or think of me?  What will God do?  What lingering consequences will there be that I may have to live with for the remainder of my life?  How much harm will I cause others?  What blessings have evaporated because I chose to entertain the flesh?  The question above is more of an accusation.  The one who is taking fire in his bosom thinks he will not get burned.  Sometimes there are exceptions.  However, for the vast majority of the time, consequences are absolute.

I have worked in environments where burns were a real possibility and probability.  For nine plus years I worked in a pizzeria.  For seven years I worked in a plastics factory.  I have the scars to prove it.  The factory had many procedures to minimize the risk of being burned.  This factory had a forming side and an extruding side.  When working on the forming side, the risk of burns came when the oven has to be cleaned.  The extruding side had far more risk.  The extruder was heated to 600+ degrees and there was no protective covering to keep one from the heat.  It was a sold piece of metal heated on the inside and out to over six-hundred degrees.  The material oozing from the opening was above six-hundred degrees.  When working on the extrusion side, we were required to wear heat resistant gloves that extended beyond our elbows.  We were also required to wear a heat-resistant apron that would protect us from some of the molten material spewed onto our clothes.  Safety glasses were not enough.  We wore a face shield over the glasses.  Our putty knives were of brass so they would not conduct static electricity and would also dissipate heat faster.  I can tell you, we were pretty well protected.  However, there were those employees who pushed the envelope.  Those long gloves were simply too cumbersome.  So, they used cut resistant gloves.  The apron was too cumbersome.  The face shield reflects light or would bump other equipment.  The problem was, without the maximum protection available, one opened oneself up to burns.  I stopped counting the times when someone would use cut resistant gloves and the molten material would stick to it.  The offender would fling off that glove so fast it became a blur.  There are consequences for our misjudgments.  They need to be planned into our actions before the choice is made.  When it came to working with pizza ovens, lazy arms were what caused the burns.  Not thinking about what we were doing before we did it is what caused the burns.  To this day I have scars inflicted because I didn’t pay attention to what I was doing.

What is a sad reality is we live in a generation that has become accustomed to consequences as if they are the normal situations of life.  We have become numb to pain.  We live with pain and think it is normal because the vast majority of others live with it, too.  We see those who are not suffering and think they are lucky.  Just fate.  We do not stop to consider they are not suffering as we are because they didn’t make the same choices we did.  Our clothes are burned and we simply think since most people have burned clothes, that is the way life is.  When we see someone with unscathed clothes, we think he must be new and hasn’t yet made the same inevitable choices, or he has and somehow got through it without being burned.  We cannot put two and two together.  The thing is, burns were totally avoidable.  The safety equipment was provided by the company and easily available.  We are walking around with holes in our clothes because we do not consider what sin touches, it destroys.  How foolish.