New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

A few weeks ago, we cut down a large, dead tree in our back­yard. My friend Caleb and I stacked up a good amount of the wood for burn­ing and then we had the rest hauled off. A few days later, we started to notice that the new wood pile had a ton of insects all over it. In addi­tion to think­ing it was gross, we decided we had bet­ter have a pest con­trol ser­vice to come out and make sure there weren’t any ter­mites in the wood.

It turned out that the old tree did have some weird insects in it, but no ter­mites. Our house and wooden struc­tures in the back­yard were safe. At least for now.

The whole process got me think­ing that ter­mites actu­ally have quite a few things to teach us about sin:

First, ter­mites work from the inside-out.  They don’t start from the out­side and work their way in; they start on the inside and work their way out. Sim­i­larly, sin works inside of us long before its effects are observ­able on the out­side. A man strug­gles with the heart issue of lust long before he com­mits adul­tery; a woman strug­gles with the heart issue of con­tent­ment long before she maxes out the credit card at the mall.

Sec­ond, ter­mites don’t work alone. You never find one lit­tle ter­mite eat­ing away at your wood; you find a whole colony. Sin is like that. For exam­ple, some­one who lacks self-control in one area (like eat­ing) prob­a­bly strug­gles with self-control in many other areas, like spend­ing and leisure.

Third, ter­mites do not like to be exposed. Ter­mites can­not stand to be exposed to the air and heat of the out­doors, so they build tun­nels to get where they need to go. They like dark, quiet, cool places. In the same way, sin thrives in the dark. Once it is brought to the light through per­sonal con­fes­sion and prayer to God and con­fes­sion to other believ­ers and dealt with through Gospel-centered dis­ci­ple­ship, sin has trou­ble surviving.

Fourth and finally, when ter­mites and the dam­age they have caused are finally dis­cov­ered, it takes lots of work to get rid of them and to repair the dam­age they’ve caused. It’s not like you can spray a lit­tle bug spray on the ter­mites you see; you have to get an entire treat­ment for your home that costs thou­sands of dol­lars. You might also have to replace or repair key struc­tural com­po­nents of your home if the dam­age is sig­nif­i­cant. Sin, also, takes a lot of work to get rid of once it has taken root — and it is costly.

Ter­mites are gross. But they can also teach us many truths about sin. How can you learn from them?

Every one of us has a grow­ing edge, an area of our lives that God is doing the most work on us at any given time. My grow­ing edge can be summed up the best by quot­ing James 1:19–20: “Know this, my beloved broth­ers: let every per­son be quick to hear, slow to  speak, and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not pro­duce the right­eous­ness of God.”

I tend to be slow to hear, quick to speak, and quick to become angry. I’m not a good lis­tener, I speak quickly (and often for a long time), and I get angry eas­ily. As I seek to fight these sins by apply­ing the truth of the Gospel to my life, I’ve been search­ing the Scrip­tures and pray­ing for God to help me change by His grace. I’m work­ing to under­stand and apply truths such as:

• When I do not lis­ten well to oth­ers, I am not con­sid­er­ing them bet­ter than myself. Jesus, how­ever, took the form of a ser­vant and laid His life down for me (Phil. 2). Out of grat­i­tude for what He has done for me, I must ask for His help to lis­ten quickly and well.
• When I am not slow to speak, I am believ­ing the lie that what I have to say is most nec­es­sary for oth­ers to hear. But men do not live on the bread of Allen’s words; they live on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matt. 4). We are saved through faith in God and His Word; I can­not save anyone.
• When I am not slow to become angry, I am believ­ing the lie that my anger will achieve right­eous­ness. Unfor­tu­nately, I am almost always seek­ing to prove my own right­eous­ness in a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion, and the Bible says that no one is right­eous but God (Ps. 14; Rom. 3). Thank­fully, Jesus was right­eous, and died for my unrighteousness.

I share this with you to help you under­stand how one jus­ti­fied sin­ner seeks to apply the Gospel to His own life. In addi­tion to med­i­tat­ing on Scrip­ture and apply­ing it in ways sim­i­lar to what I’ve shared above, I also have peo­ple who love me and who are com­mit­ted to my spir­i­tual growth serve me by let­ting me know when I’m not liv­ing out the com­mand of James 1:19–20. Since my wife and chil­dren tend to expe­ri­ence my slow­ness to hear, my quick­ness to speak, and my quick­ness to become angry the most, they pro­vide great account­abil­ity for me in these areas. I would encour­age you to sim­i­larly enlist your spouse and chil­dren or your room­mates to help you with your grow­ing edge. Those we live with see us most often as we really are, and see and expe­ri­ence the over­flow of our hearts.

What is your grow­ing edge? How can you fight sin by apply­ing the truth of the Gospel to your own life? Do you have oth­ers engaged in your own strug­gle for holi­ness? I hope you know what your grow­ing edge is, that you are fight­ing sin by the power and grace of God, and that oth­ers are stand­ing with you. If not, let me encour­age you to get plugged into one of our Life Groups and to join our church or another healthy church in our com­mu­nity. You can’t grow in holi­ness alone.

Unless you are liv­ing under a rock, you are aware that the long-anticipated movie adap­ta­tion of The Hunger Games hit the­aters last week­end. (Even if you are liv­ing under a rock, this was hard to miss.) Peo­ple have flocked to see this movie in record num­bers. It took in $155 mil­lion last week­end, which made it #1 for a non-sequel, and placed it just behind Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows: Part 2 ($169.2 mil­lion) and The Dark Knight ($158.4 mil­lion) for the high­est open­ing weekend ever.

Some of the peo­ple who went to see the movie in droves were col­lege stu­dents who are mem­bers of our church. Ear­lier this week, I had a leader email me to express con­cern over the movie’s con­tent (you can read a review here if you are unfa­mil­iar with the sto­ry­line) and ask­ing how to advise peo­ple think­ing about going to see the movie.

I responded by let­ting this leader know that The Hunger Games are a huge deal, on the level with Harry Pot­ter or Lord of the Rings. The books and movies will be read or seen by most peo­ple inside and out­side the church.  As a result, I said, it is essen­tial that we think through how to shep­herd peo­ple who will engage with The Hunger Games in a help­ful, bib­li­cal manner.

Some Chris­tians have a prob­lem with the con­tent of The Hunger Games. The prob­lem, in my opin­ion, isn’t the con­tent of The Hunger Games (or most other movies). Rather, the prob­lem is twofold:

1) Many Chris­tians enter­tain them­selves to death. Though we claim that we don’t have enough time for Bible study, prayer, dis­ci­ple­ship, or evan­ge­lism, we have plenty of time and money to read fic­tional nov­els or to go to the movie theater.

2) Many Chris­tians uncrit­i­cally devour what­ever Hol­ly­wood puts out. Very few believ­ers thought­fully engage the enter­tain­ment they con­sume. If they crit­i­cize movies like The Hunger Games at all, they merely crit­i­cize its artis­tic mer­its, not its theological ones.

Some well-meaning Chris­tians argue, “The Hunger Games fea­tures a lot of bad stuff, so we shouldn’t read the books or see the movies.” I would respond to that argu­ment in this way:

1) The Pas­sion of the Christ had bad stuff in it, both in terms of gore (it was one of the blood­i­est movies I’ve ever seen) and in terms of bad the­ol­ogy (the theme of Mary as co-redemptrix with Jesus was pretty clear). But most Chris­tians didn’t com­plain about either the gore or the unbib­li­cal the­ol­ogy. This argu­ment is sim­ply a plea for us to be consistent.

2) The Bible has bad stuff in it, and if many pas­sages are under­stood cor­rectly, they are far worse than any­thing The Hunger Games seems to depict.  I’ve been read­ing through the Book of Ezekiel and read chap­ter 23 ear­lier this week; you would only find the lan­guage God uses there in a porno­graphic novel.

So I don’t find the argu­ment that Chris­tians shouldn’t see  movies that have “bad stuff” in them very com­pelling. Obvi­ously, there is a line with enter­tain­ment, and I can’t see any profit from movies that fea­ture nudity or lit­tle more than bad lan­guage and vio­lence. But I don’t think that’s all The Hunger Games has to offer.

I encour­aged this leader to speak to the hearts of those con­sid­er­ing going to see The Hunger Games, and to do so by ask­ing good questions like:

1) Why do you want to go see The Hunger Games?

2) What do you know about the movie’s plot, con­tent, main mes­sage, and worldview?

3) How do you think that movie will tempt you to think about God, man, sin, and the work of Jesus? Do you think it will pro­mote a bib­li­cal view or an unbiblical view?

4) Do you think you’ll be able to watch that movie and love Christ more and encour­age oth­ers to love Christ more?

A thought­less Chris­t­ian might respond to those ques­tions by say­ing, “I dunno. It looked awe­some.” I would encour­age that per­son to do some research, then prayer­fully eval­u­ate whether going to see the movie is a good choice.

But a thought­ful Chris­t­ian might respond by not­ing that the major­ity of her church and com­mu­nity will be going to see the movie, and see­ing it her­self will help her engage with them more thought­fully. Fur­ther, she might say that she does under­stand the movie’s plot, con­tent, main mes­sage, and world­view by read­ing crit­i­cal reviews. More­over, she might under­stand that she will be tempted by the movie to believe that while peo­ple do bad things, peo­ple are basi­cally good and can con­jure up good from within them if they’ll try.  She might say that she knows it will pro­mote an unbib­li­cal world­view, but with prayer and the help of the Holy Spirit, she hopes to see those errors and reject them for the truth of God’s Word. Finally, she might respond that by view­ing the movie, she will be com­pelled to love Christ more because humanity’s deprav­ity and our inabil­ity to save our­selves from our­selves is so clearly displayed.

I believe Chris­tians can watch cer­tain movies with God-centered motives — even movies whose world­view and con­tent don’t exalt God and His Gospel. But as with all things, God is most inter­ested in the heart behind our actions. We can watch The Hunger Games with God-centered motives or man-centered motives. We’ll need the Word and the Spirit to dis­cern the difference.