Meandering Monday - Fatal Attraction - Martin Wiles

Welcome to Meandering Monday, where we take a trip back to an earlier post and enjoy it again.

So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas. Your strength comes from God’s grace, not from rules about food, which don’t help those who follow them. Hebrews 13:9 NLT

The attraction almost always ends in death.

Native to the wetlands of North and South Carolina is the Venus Flytrap. What makes the plant odd is that it’s a carnivorous plant, which means it eats meat—mainly insects and arachnids. The plant’s leaves are bright red, but tiny hairs also decorate the leaves. If an insect brushes two hairs within twenty seconds, the leaf closes, trapping its prey.

The trapping mechanism is so sophisticated it can distinguish between a drop of rain and the prey that will provide sustenance. The meshwork of hairs allows smaller prey to escape while encasing larger and more nutritious prey—subjects of a fatal attraction. 

The early church preached a simple message: Jesus Christ was the Messiah, he died for the sins of humanity, and God raised him to life. Unfortunately, fatal attractions lingered. Jewish legalists preached the main one. A person must observe Jewish ceremonies and customs for salvation. Believing this distorted the pure gospel.

I’ve witnessed quite a few fatal attractions in my lifetime—beginning with the hippie movement. Some of their religious ideas were unbiblical and proved fatal. Mixed in was the Hare Krishna cult, along with several other attractive cults. Also in the mix were Christian legalists who weren’t much unlike the Jewish legalists of the first century—just with a different list of do’s and don’ts.

Fatal attractions still attract. They’re embodied in anything that attempts to draw our attention away from the pure gospel of faith in Jesus Christ. Only two commands comprise the uncontaminated gospel: love God with our entire being and love others as ourselves.

Our strength to avoid the fatal attractions—or distractions—comes from God alone. 

We can’t muster it, nor can any person or substance deliver it. God’s grace, however, is always sufficient.

What fatal attractions attract you?

Prayer: Father, turn our eyes away from the fatal attractions that would distract us from serving You. 

Tweetable: What fatally attracts you? 

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