On Coming Too Close…

We remember as youngsters that there was much magic in a magnet ⎯ as carefully we would push nails toward it, or other objects of iron, to see at just what point its pull would snap the approaching object to itself. But the moment we discovered that point, it was too late to pull back. We found that we had to stop somewhere short of the magnet’s effective field if we didn’t want the pull to be completed.

There are other things in life like that. Sometimes we make unsafe assumptions. We might assume that we are strong enough to come close to something and still pull away from it when we want to. We might assume that we are strong enough to swim against the undertow, that we are strong enough to free ourselves from the whirlpool.

Sometimes we seem to be even as the foolish child who pushes his finger toward the whirling fan blade. What makes him do it we do not always know ⎯ curiosity? ignorance? sheer foolishness? the spirit of adventure? Call it what we will, the fact remains that if a person proceeds too far in any dangerous direction he is going to find the point at which he is too close.

We might assume that we can sample forbidden things with safety, that we can expose ourselves to danger and not be in danger, that we can approach unsafe situations and draw away when we want to; but history and experience and a long list of disappointed people have proved that it simply isn’t so.

It simply isn’t safe to try to find the last point which a person can approach and still save himself. It isn’t safe to assume that we can play with an evil without paying a bitter price, or that we can live carelessly without being called to account.

The cliff we don’t want to fall over we shouldn’t approach the edge of, for we never know when the edge will crumble. We never know when an accident will happen, but we do know that it is less likely to happen if we don’t crowd danger too closely, if we “keep out of tight places.”

What should be avoided should be altogether avoided. What we don’t want to happen, we shouldn’t invite to happen. It simply isn’t safe to tempt temptation.