No doubt about it, I can’t deny it: sin is alluring. Yes, it is. And parents, teachers, jailers, and preachers know first-hand that the more we cry, “Don’t!” the more attractive the temptations become.
And none of us are immune from the “danger in the air,” for the “cry of the Sirens,” like they did to those ancient Greek sailors, still beckon us today with their enchanting music and alluring voices.
One of the best fathers I have ever known, at least in fiction, had to deal with it. In the Andy Griffith episode, “Opie’s Hobo Friend,” a character by the name of David Browne, played by the late Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett), contradicts just about everything Andy has been trying to teach his son, Opie. Andy’s parental values included a disciplined work ethic: daily chores, school work, and table manners. David Browne’s lifestyle undermined all of that. But, the larger problem was that David’s manner of life was immensely attractive to a young and undiscerning, Opie, who idolized the vagabond drifter. So, like a good father, Andy talks to David, and tells him to stay away from Opie, for it seemed that he had caused Opie to get “his thinking twisted.”
During the conversation, David asks Andy why he doesn’t let Opie decide for himself what he wants to choose. And Andy explains that with children, a parent can’t simply let them choose, for they would pick the first thing that comes alone in shiny ribbons. “Then when he finds there’s a hook in it, it’s too late.”
Of course, the trouble for those in positions of responsibility is to make the better life look more attractive than the more tempting alternative.
In the Garden, Satan had that devilish knack of making the forbidden fruit seem more alluring than what God had already provided. We never read about how that fruit actually tasted, only that as a result of eating it, Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened and with that, the sense of shame at the awareness of their own nakedness.
The forbidden fruit appeals because it’s forbidden, leading us to a place we know we aren’t supposed to be, but which itself feels frisky, if for no other reason than because we know we aren’t supposed to be there. Then, once we take the bite, as soon as we chomp down, even while our teeth are cuspid deep in the fruit, our eyes at once grow large, and we find ourselves for the first time free-floating in in our own emptiness, lost in the hollowness of our naked selves, alienated from God.
This we know and feel, and yet, we go to the well again and again, all the while imagining that we are the actors who run the whole show, masters of our own drama, even though we remain addicted to ourselves, flying as close as we can to the flame, chasing that feeling, flirting with disaster, until we are singed, crashing and burning, belching the putrid smell rotten fruit from our lips as we wallow in our own demise.
Or as Lynyrd Skynyrd sang it, “The smell of death surrounds you.”
It there a way out?
David, in the Hebrew Bible, the David who was a man after God’s own heart, yet the same David who flew too close to the flame more than once, wrote that his chief desire was spending his days “in the house of the Lord,” seeking Him, “gazing on the beauty of the Lord.”
Therein lies our hope: the beauty of the Lord has to grow more attractive than the false life the Tempter offers.
When David Browne agrees to Andy’s demand to stay away from Opie, the drifter suggests to Andy that his problem is solved. And Andy replies, “No, Mr. Browne. That boy thinks about everything you do is perfect. So my problem is just beginning.”
So it is for those who are trying—even while they themselves are not by any stretch of the imagination free from the machinations of the Tempter— to guide others in a more sane lifestyle, for the forbidden fruit is always advertised as mighty tasty, even though we know its bitter aftertaste leaves us ultimately alone, and naked, and ashamed.