And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. Deuteronomy 24:4
It’s not uncommon, in my line of work, to encounter those who desperately try to convince me that they’re not intoxicated while they obviously are intoxicated. They want to hide it, but they can’t because they’ve allowed something into their lives that is difficult to keep secret.
I’ve been there. One of the worst lies I told myself in my addiction was that it wouldn’t affect those around me. I thought that if I could keep it concealed, my drug use couldn’t hurt anyone. Of course, drugs eventually tore my life apart, affecting everyone around me, but long before my addiction was dragged into the light, it had a profound impact on those closest to me – even if they didn’t realize what was happening. Once I invited that cancer into my life, I told myself I could contain it, but I couldn’t. It metastasized throughout everything, affecting my personality, thoughts, words, and actions. Others could see the changes, even if they didn’t know what was driving those changes. My addiction didn’t just make me sick, but spread, sickening everything and everyone around me.
This is the lesson of today’s passage. In it, God instructed his people not to tolerate sin in their lives. About to inherit the promised land, God commanded the Israelites not to invite destruction upon the land as they entered it. It almost sounds as if their sin would contaminate the very ground upon which they lived and walked. And this isn’t far from the truth. If they indulged in and tolerated sin, it would corrupt everything. Turning them from God, their sin would poison their minds, their interpersonal relationships, and their entire society. Sin was a cancer that would metastasize, ruining everything.
We often make this mistake. We know something is self-destructive, but we lie to ourselves, insisting we can contain it. Pornography can’t hurt my wife if she doesn’t know. Our spouses may never know, but indulging in toxic behavior will inevitably corrupt our minds, affecting how we interact with them. We can’t drink poison, expecting that it has no effect on us or those closest to us.
Not every life trial is caused by some personal failure. When we’re struggling with anything though, we must always take that struggle to God, asking what he wants us to do with it. We must be honest enough to at least ask if we’re responsible for some self-inflicted injury. If we see that we’re inviting poison into our lives, then we must do whatever it takes to cut that poison out, before it spreads, ruining everything.