Flee

My son, do not go along with them,
   do not set foot on their paths.

-Proverbs 1:15

“But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness.”  

-1 Timothy 6:11

Like most of us, I hate sin.  I know sin is the root of all evil, sin causes sorrow, sin destroys innocence… the list goes on and on.  I know I’m supposed to flee from sin, and run from evil.  And yet, each and every day, I find myself sinning again.  What’s worse is that, for as much as I hate sin, I hate thinking about my own sin even more.  I’d rather interpret the verse about “fleeing from sin” as a free ticket for me to forget about my sins each time I commit them, instead of internalizing those words and actually fleeing before sin occurs.

I took a leaf out of my dear friend and English major Rachel’s book today and actually looked a word up in the good old Merriam-Webster dictionary.   According to MW, the word “flee” means:

(1)    To run away, often from danger or evil

(2)    To hurry toward a place of security

When I was about 8 years old, my best friend Kerry and I sneaked into an elderly neighbor’s back yard and hid among her overgrown azalea bushes.   She was a scary woman, and there was a sense of danger in being able to get so close to her house.  At the same time, we had to be stealthy about avoiding these neighborhood boys (who were sometimes our friends but more often our sworn enemies) playing in the yard next door.  Our 8 year old selves were hardly as sneaky as we thought, and the boys soon spotted something rustling in the azaleas that immediately grabbed their attention.  Pretending that they thought there was a possum in the bushes (I know they secretly knew it was girls, slightly more appealing than possums), they started hurling big sticks into the bushes to try to scare us out.  Suddenly the back door of our neighbor’s house swung open and she stormed angrily towards us screaming, “GET OFF MY PROPERTY!” 

The threat of this woman and the boys throwing sticks at us certainly worked.  I can’t remember another time when I have fled from danger with such unbelievable speed.  Absolutely petrified, Kerry and I sprinted, and I mean sprinted, out of there, leaping over other neighbors’ flower beds and bushes, and not even stopping to look back until we had arrived safely at her house, our “place of security.”

Had we stayed in those bushes, we most definitely would have faced danger, either from the boys or the wrath of our angry neighbor.  In the face of danger, we ran away.  We fled.  To this day, I have never been back to that backyard.  I know that danger lives there and I have no desire to come face to face with it again. 

Yet I’ve realized that the danger I face daily in temptation and sin should cause the same reaction.  The Lord tells us again and again that His people should flee from sin, but there’s something about it that is just so enticing to us.  We want to be children of God, sinless and pure, but we also want to be in touch with the world.  We like gossiping, we like trashy TV shows, we like popular music… but if we are truly to turn our backs on the ways of this world, Proverbs 1 tells us we must not even set foot on the path of the world. 

I admit that I don’t know how to do that.  I’ve been a part of this broken world so long that sin seems “not so bad” or even normal.  But I know that the first step in turning my back on sin is to be aware.  When I am aware of temptation, when I begin to recognize sin or situations that lead me to sin, I must turn and run from it.  But I do not run blindly away.  Instead, I will run into the loving arms of my Father, “my Rock, my Fortress, my Deliver.” (Psalm 18:2)  Without Him, I am powerless, but with Him, I have no fear.  He has already defeated sin.

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

-John 16:33