Most countries have national anthems. Those anthems are usually one-sided, expressing ideas like, “Rah rah! Our country is great! We’ll persevere!” You’re not really supposed to think about their words too much, because their meaning is entirely on the surface, with little nuance or depth.
Sacred scripture isn’t like that. It’s meant to be read. To be reflected upon. You can read the same Bible story at different points in your life, and come away with different insights into yourself, the human condition, or our relationship with the divine. You can read a single line of scripture — buried in an otherwise seemingly straightforward bit of text — and have it leap off the page. Sometimes this is an interesting turn of phrase, or a way of thinking. (One of my favorites in this regard is, “[Y]ou yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night,” from 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and referring back to Matthew 24:43. (Thinking of our Lord like a thief is enough to shake the cobwebs out of a Sunday-morning reading!)
I had a similar experience today with one line in today’s readings; it’s one I don’t recall seeing before in this regard, from the First Letter of Peter: “Your opponent the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” And I’m sure the previous half-dozen times I’ve encountered this sentence, I skimmed over its implications because I thought I had eked all the nuance out of it I could get: “Yeah, yeah, the Devil and sin want to eat me like a lion. Got it.”
But — if that’s your superficial reading — re-read closely. Did you spot the interesting bit there?
My dictionary defines prowling as: “of a person or animal) move around restlessly and stealthily, especially in search of or as if in search of prey.” That definition feels right to me; in particular, “prowling” carries with it an element of stealth. We even embody that word as a person; my dictionary notes that a prowler is “a person who moves stealthily around . . . a place with a view to committing a crime, especially burglary.”
So, “prowl” equals “sneaky.” But what does the rest of the line of Scripture say? “. . . like a roaring lion.”
Wait. Roaring. “Making or uttering a loud, deep, or harsh prolonged sound.” How can you sneak when you’re roaring?
If the line of scripture had said, “The Devil is prowling around like a lion,” I wouldn’t have given it a second thought: Sin wants to sneak up on us. Or if it had said, “The Devil is like a roaring lion,” I would’ve nodded and said that, yep, the Devil is scary.
But two conflicting ideas — stealthiness and roaring — are side by side . . . and that’s really interesting. It made me consider the idea of sin in a way I hadn’t before.
Most of us think of the Devil as acting like the Serpent in the Book of Genesis: You’re minding your own business, sin sidles up to you to tempt you, you’re lulled into it because you didn’t recognize it as wrong, and before you know it, the foul deceiver has grappled you into his clutches. And, yeah, sometimes it works that way.
But most of the time, I think, sin is like a “roaring lion.” If I think of the sins in my own life, they’re almost invariably things that I knew — explicitly — were in front of me. I thought I could out-run them, or tame them to my will, or discount their danger. I nodded to the roaring lion of my own temptations . . . and I gave into sin.
Sure, I may well have good reason for that. I need to work to provide for my family; that’s good. But if I overwork and neglect my family, that’s bad. The lion was there the whole time, my office partner roaring at me, “Work just a couple more hours. Pick up that new project. It’ll all be worth it. Trust me.”
Or the lion bellows at me, “Go ahead and unleash the full brunt of your sarcasm and wit at this person. He deserves it.” And, indeed, my wit is something I’ve honed over decades; I know it can be used to hurt others, which is why I try to be careful . . . but, even though the lion is right there in front of me, he “snuck up” on me in plain sight.
Violence. Pornography. Over-reliance on alcohol. Gambling. Drug abuse. Promiscuity.
These didn’t skulk in from the shadows, slithering like a snake and completely unknown until it had you in its clutches.
These are roaring all around you, hour after hour, on primetime television, in movie theaters, in bookstores, on the Internet.
And yet, they still manage to sink their teeth into people and drag them away from God.
We all like to think of the Devil as being this insanely clever mastermind. But, for the most part, he doesn’t need to be. He can roar in front of our faces, and we still wander up and put our hand in the lion’s cage . . . then act surprised when the inevitable happens.
The good news is that this is all stuff we can do something about. With the sins I mentioned, we’re not dealing with a mastermind adversary; we’re up against someone who puts up a sign at a sin buffet that says, “Take what you want.” So if you know what’s sinful — and you do, if you’ve been taking the Church’s teachings to heart — then pay attention. Avoid that which you need to avoid entirely, and do in moderation that which can be abused. And if you find yourself concerned about some elements of moderation — say, a family history of alcohol abuse — then perhaps abstain entirely.
I don’t mean to imply that resisting sin is easy. It’s not. The omnipresence of sin in our world makes it difficult to avoid even a whiff of. But — in many cases — sin roars . . . even as it prowls around you. You can listen for that. You wouldn’t keep walking through a forest if you heard a lion’s roar up the way; you’d go some other direction. So, too, can you structure your life to avoid many kinds of sin. You can warn others of the roaring that may surround them. And if you find yourself having been bitten by the lion of sin, your situation is not hopeless. Get your spirit to a “doctor” — to confession — and do what you can to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
If you’re looking for something to do to when you’re avoiding the Devil’s roar, might I suggest reading Sacred Scripture? As I reminded myself today, this ancient text is a great way to find new insight.
Today’s readings: 1 Pt 5:5B-14; Ps 89:2-3,6-7,16-17; Mk 16:15-20
