Nibblers.
July 17, 2007
On my way out the door this morning my wife Jackie said it suddenly – “I just can’t believe it could happen to him.”
She was speaking of the bad news we had received hours before about a prominent person. He had for years represented some of the best in strength, joy and service to the Lord and His Church. He had blessed our lives as well. Now it seems to be all ashes.
Does it make you sad?
Does it make you mad?
How does a person of great strength end up in a very sinful place?
My hunch:
Gradually.
Bit by bit.
As that person gives way to the nibblers.
It all starts up at an “innocuous” level…with stuff that “doesn’t really matter.” And when the big sin happens, and they are exposed, so often they end up saying “I don’t know what made me do it.” (In other words, there is a wide cognitive gap going on in them between mental process and behavior.)
My guess: All along it has been a process of what people who study human behavior call systematic desensitization. This is a label put to the process of change in human behavior bit by bit, repetition by repetition until something entirely “other” appears as normal behavior.
So, wisdom suggests that when reports of another who has fallen appear on our screen we are wise to self-examine and look for nibblers in ourselves, rather than draw up in self-righteousness and say “I would never.” Indeed it should alert us to the fact that unless we identify the nibblers and do something about them we too might end up doing something utterly shocking to ourselves.
And what are the nibblers?
The nibblers are things which while “not really that bad,” are on the perimeter of enemy territory…things that dull convictions and preoccupy the soul with what does not really count in God’s kingdom.
When I evaluate, I suspect that a big nibbler for many – including myself - is television. The fare on TV is getting worse now and quickly so. The portrayal of immoral behavior and thinking by the “cool” people of this world (who are paid immensely to smile coyly while being destroyed morally) can easily set me up to smile at sin and ease my conscience from abhorrence and fear to “everyone’s doing it” frames of reference.
The humor of the marketplace can draw me similarly into first a passive then perhaps even an accepting stance towards what scripture defines as deserving of the wrath of God.
Focus on things, the stuff I must own to be ok, can produce in me covetousness, greed and bring me to eternity only to spend it in virtual bankruptcy.
Nibblers, nibblers….stuff that (like rodents) gnaws on the edges of my soul and renders me powerless and concerned mostly for myself and blind to the realities God sees about me..
The answer is action.
“Turn away from” …. ”cast off”…. “have nothing to do with” …. “avoid every appearance of”…. “don’t even speak about” …are the action steps in many places in scripture. (How about soaking yourself in I Peter 3, II Timothy 2, Hebrews 12, I Thessalonians 4, Ephesians 5, I John 1&2)
Do that and God will give you wisdom…
.and “I can’t believe it could happen to him”
will never happen to you.
God be with you my friend!