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Swimming in the shark tank |
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First published in the Baptist Times - OUTSIDE EDGE column - 30 April 2010
I love visiting the aquarium.
The shark tank includes stingrays, conger eels and assorted other health and safety hazards all swimming amazingly close to the viewer. With a nice thick glass panel between us, it’s thrilling to come nose to nose with such awesomely graceful examples of divine engineering. And to witness them turn into weapons of mass destruction at feeding time.
It’s easy to imagine the glass wall removed and finding yourself swimming in the shark tank, frantically trying to follow the ribbon of light leading up to the water’s surface and avoid the predators’ search-and-destroy instinct.
Not too different from trying to survive in the world as a Christian, with the ever-present possibility of spiritual attack and the need to keep heading for the light.
It’s fascinating at feeding time to see how quickly the sharks move from soporific mode, routinely circling the tank, to attack mode as they identify their prey, while other species, immune to the attraction of shark bait, continue circling harmlessly till their own type of food is thrown in. It requires the specific prey to tempt a particular predator.
I don’t know about you but I have great immunity to temptation - providing it’s other people’s temptations. It’s only my own I struggle with.
Alcohol? No problem. Drugs - uppers, downers, inside-outers? Ditto.
My refusal of exotic cocktails may appear as heroically righteous as my neighbour’s rejection of the third Irish Malt or free tab of happy-chemical he craves, but mine has more to do with blood-sugar imbalance than with virtue. When the whole hazy, swaying, word-slurring, vision-blurring experience signals not pleasant intoxication but the prelude to hypoglycaemic coma, you are less inclined to crave the sensation. And if I did, I could achieve it more quickly by eating a Mars bar than by drugs or drink.
Two middle-aged ladies in a previous prayer group were having one of those ‘all meant in Christian love, of course’ conversations about a younger woman who had children by different men. Overhearing the phrase ‘sex mad’ I asked them if they liked sex. One said not really and the other said she couldn’t be doing with that kind of thing. I asked where the virtue was in resisting a temptation that didn’t tempt them, and left them enjoying a ‘loving’ conversation about my character too.
Like it or not, we’re all swimming in the shark tank and trying to avoid attack by whichever particular predator likes our taste. And occasionally a species that would normally be indifferent will get inspired by the feeding frenzy to take a bite in passing. It’s dangerous to assume any category of temptation is outside my repertoire.
I was at the supermarket checkout trying to insert bulky items into stubbornly stuck-together plastic bags while Sarah screamed uncontrollably. A beautiful child, lively, loving and sensitive, Sarah lived in the nearby children’s home and for seven years spent regular time with us: a lovely and privileged period. She had multiple disabilities and, when overwhelmed, would wail like a banshee in labour. She was bored with queuing, and tired. And loud.
A woman at the next checkout remarked to her friend, over the din, ‘Children like that shouldn’t be allowed to live.’
Homicide is not one of my regular sins. But, while my hands continued filling shopping bags, my spirit had leapt the counter and wrenched the lady’s head off. It was suddenly shockingly easy to identify with Jesus’ statement that hating your brother is murder.
At the Last Supper every disciple asked Jesus the same question: ‘Who is about to betray you? Is it I?’
The last one to admit he might be in danger from shark attack was the very one prey to it.
‘Could I be the one who succumbs to unprecedented temptation, breaks through the glass tunnel keeping me out of the shark tank and becomes part of the feeding frenzy of evil? Is it I, Lord?’
But for the grace of God, yes.
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