Dog on a Chain

I'm sitting here listening to Issues, Etc. while grading papers and just had to stop and share this analogy with you. (If you want to listen to it yourself, listen HERE. It's from Tuesday's show.)

He made a wonderful analogy (I think he credited Luther for it) of the devil being a dog on a chain, barking and snarling and lunging toward people that he wants to tear apart. But a mother, whose child is scared to walk past of the dog, comforts her and tells her that the dog can go no further than the chain will allow it. As long as her child stays well outside of the length of the chain, the dog can't hurt her. The child listens and is safe.

Then a priest walks by. He sees the dog and walks outside the range of the chain. Then the dog changes into a beautiful prostitute. She motions to him and he's tempted by her. He walks toward her and as soon as he's inside the range of the chain, she changes back into the dog again and tears him apart.

How many things out there sound so good? Look so good? Words that are well-dressed and well-spoken and go down so smoothly? Speak to our own personal sense of morality? Our own worldly sense of morality. Of course murder is wrong. Of course it's even worse to kill children.

But Satan has convinced people that murder is not wrong. That there are times when murder can actually be approved of. Satan has fooled people into the murder of over 50 million babies. He's convinced others that killing a baby who survives its attempted murder is OK. A perfectly healthy baby killed because his mother "made a mistake". What a horrible price to pay for someone else's mistake.

OK, this was going to be a short post on the broadcast I'm listening to and I ended up jumping on my soapbox. I'm to jump down now and get back to my papers.