Guarding Our Souls – Proverbs 22:5

In the article, The 11 Prickliest Plants on the Planet, the author writes, “Spiny plants can be a hassle for maintenance and pruning, but when it comes to your personal home security, these masters of pain handily defend property lines and first-floor windows. As a bonus, most of the plants trick themselves out with delicate blossoms in spring and colorful berries in fall.”  So the plants look inviting but can draw blood.  So it is with sin.

Thorns and snares are in the way of the crooked; whoever guards his soul will keep far from them. (Proverbs 22:5, ESV)

There was much in the news lately of a Memphis pastor who in his early years as a youth pastor had gotten sexually involved with one of the girls his youth group.  It happened while taking her home in his car alone.  Finding ways to be alone with someone you are attracted to is putting yourself in a way covered with thorns and snares.  You are asking for a way to indulge your temptation.

The Jews had become masters at guarding themselves from potential sin.  Keeping Sabbath was protected by making stricter laws regarding it than God’s Word gave, in an attempt to put a hedge around it and avoid getting even close to breaking the Sabbath.  There is some wisdom in this.  But you cannot make enough laws to keep the community out of the way filled with thorns and snares.  And when you make into laws what God has not said is law you are in danger of viewing salvation as rule-keeping rather than a relationship with the rule-giver.  Jesus denounced this (Matthew 23, for example).

We can make rules against pastors and other workers in the church about not being alone with students or even adults of the opposite sex.  Children’s workers should have rules against being alone with children.  This can prevent abuse and also protect people from accusations of abuse.  But in the end one must guard one’s own soul from the way of the crooked.  One must choose to see the consequences of life lived on the crooked path and keep far from those thorns and snares.

As Paul said to Timothy, “Flee youthful passions” (2 Timothy 2:22).  Count the cost of putting yourself in sin’s way