Ophidiophobia 06/15/2011
 
Have you heard about the family in Idaho that moved out of their house because the property was invested with hundreds and hundreds of snakes?  The family thought they had gotten a great deal on the house when they bought it well under the market price.  After they moved in, they found the reason for the low price...
Now to be fair, we are talking about garter snakes.  They aren’t very big and they aren’t poisonous.  But there were hundreds of them outside and some were getting inside.  At night the snakes would get behind the vinyl siding and the family could hear them slithering around in the walls.  In the morning, the husband would go clear the house of snakes before his wife and two small children would get out of bed.  At times the grass in the yard seemed to move with so many snakes in it. The well water was contaminated with the musky smell that these snakes give off to ward off predators.  The previous owner defaulted on their mortgage and left town.  The whole town knew that the house had problems and would have warned any potential buyers off; but they didn’t know about this family until they moved in—and then it was too late.  The family lasted three months before they couldn’t take it anymore and move out.  The husband is suffering from a snake-related post-traumatic stress disorder.  The real estate company hired to resell the house had it listed at over $60,000 below market value until this story broke—then they took it off the market.

As I read this story, I remember playing with garter snakes on occasion as a boy.  I was a little creeped out by snakes in general; my dad was wacked out crazy scared of any snake—but garter snakes were pretty mild and kind of fascinating to me.  But I cannot in any fashion image living in a place where hundreds or thousands of them were crawling around—that would unhinge me!

Snakes are usually portrayed as evil, sneaky, deadly and something to be avoided.  In movies and in books, snakes usually are not presented as loveable characters. Ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes or snake phobia is fairly common, but most people are not in regular contact with snakes so it isn’t well known.  “Wait…what just slithered past your leg?!?!”

The thought popped into my mind as I thought about this story that snakes are like sin in our lives.  A few little sins scattered here and there in our lives don’t tend to bother us too much.  For the most part, they stay out of sight.  We might know that they are there—but they aren’t too public, so it’s okay. However, we all know that we cannot let an anaconda-sized sin loose in our lives.  But a few garter snake-sized sins—well nobody is perfect are they? But even garter-snake-sized are too much when they infest our lives and hundreds or thousands of them add up to a BIG problem.  
 
As I read the story, I wonder how did that home become so infested?  Did it happen slowly over time?  What makes that place preferable to the snakes?  Why not move on and spread out?  How do you get rid of snakes once you have a problem like this?  
 
In our own lives I know that typically one sin leads to another.  If we don’t take care of a sin problem when it is small, it can grow to an unmanageable size.  One sin can lead to another.  We become accustomed to those small sins and that leads us to other sins.  How do we deal with a sin problem?  First, we confess our sin to the Lord.  1 John 1:9 reminds us that if we confess our sins, God will forgive us for them.  Secondly, we need to turn away from our sins.  We determine that we don’t want to continue in our sinfulness.  Third, we turn to the Lord for strength, wisdom and a change of heart so that we can avoid the sin in the future.  Through our own effort, sometimes we can manage to avoid sin for a short time—but eventually we will give in to temptation.  The ability to say “No!” to sin time after time only comes as we learn to rely upon Jesus and turn to God for help.  The Bible says that if we have accepted Christ as our Savior, the power of sin over our lives is already broken—but it doesn’t feel like that.  It often feels like we have no choice and must give into sin.  That is a lie.  But we must stand our ground, cry to the Lord for help, and take positive steps to remove ourselves from the temptation.  Sometimes it is as simple as changing our focus from the temptation itself to praying to the Lord and asking for His help.  
 
If my sins were as visible to me as snakes slithering around my feet—you better believe that I’d take care of that.  That would freak me out!  So let’s ask the Lord to make our sins as obvious and repulsive to us as they are to Him. Let’s begin to eradicate the snake problem in our lives.  
 


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