And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years. Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went in to her. Judges 15:20-16:1
I once saw my faith as a supernatural insulation against life-wrecking failure. I thought that since I believed in God, I simply couldn’t tear my life apart with something like a drug addiction. Additionally, as an Emergency Room physician, I saw myself as too important to be fired. Even if my addiction came to light, they needed me. So, despite my drug use, I had this blind confidence that God would protect me from consequences and that even if my secret was discovered, that I was too big to fall. I was, of course, terribly mistaken. When my addiction came to light, it did tear my life apart. Though I believed in God, and though I did have an important job, I was terribly flawed, and my flaws consumed me.
No one is failure-proof. That’s the lesson of today’s passage. In it, we’re told of Samson, who vowed never to cut his hair or to drink alcohol and was thus blessed by God with superhuman strength. He’s the superhero of the Bible whom God used to judge Israel and to be a thorn in the side of their enemies, the Philistines. Samson though, was fatally flawed and his appetite for women was his downfall. He saw a woman, he lusted after her, and he followed his appetite. This pattern repeated itself several times until he met Delilah, who begged him to tell her the secret of this strength. Eventually, Samson told Delilah about his vow never to cut his hair. She betrayed Samson, and as he slept, the Philistines shaved his head. Weakened, Samson was overpowered by his enemies who gouged out his eyes and made him a prisoner. Though Samson was chosen by God to lead Israel, the lust of his eyes betrayed him to his enemies, who, ironically, robbed him of the source of his lust, assuring that he’d never again look upon a woman with desire.
I’m still not failure proof. Though I’ve been sober for 10 years and though I’ve written a blog and a book on recovery, that doesn’t mean I cannot fail. If I stopped getting up early to point my life at God, and if I gradually returned to following my appetite, I could easily find some way to self-destruct, whether it involved drugs or not. I don’t live in fear of failure, but I don’t ever want to go back to the disaster of 10 years ago. So, daily, if I desire to continue to experience the new life, I must remain aware of my flaws, daily abandoning them to follow God.