by Ray Wallace

(May 2023)

At thirteen years old I learned how amazingly camouflaged many things are. Even deer, who
are not “camo” colored, just a homogenous tan, are amazingly hard to spot in the forest. I’ve read

that elephants just vanish within a few yards in the trees. I’ve walked to within a few yards of
ptarmigan, fully exposed, and not seen them. Blue grouse in the high forest are incredible
masters of hide and seek, but some sea creatures are the undisputed champs. It is amazing that
both predators and prey can be so well camouflaged. One wonders how predators ever find
enough to eat. But they do. How? Primarily, they make themselves look like harmless
surroundings.
God, Himself, uses a predator analogy in I Peter 5 and we are the prey, all humans, Christian
or not. But just how do we become that prey? Humans are intelligent creatures—how could we
fail to see the dangers? We tend to think that our education or our alertness will be enough to see
every danger. So how could we fail? Let’s take an important but circuitous route to answer that
question.
In 1985, a dear preacher friend suggested I read Neil Postman’s then new book Amusing
Ourselves to Death. What a deep and important blessing that was. Postman recognized that our
culture is racing headlong toward entertainment as if it were an important life goal. In doing so,
we move away from education, maturity, vital success strategies, and, of course, God and His
plan for their lives and their joy. On average we in the west are becoming less educated and more
addicted to entertainment media—music, movies, internet, etc. Like a gazelle busy giving birth,
we fail to see the eminent danger of the lurking lion.
Postman compares Orwell’s book 1984 to Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World. He
correctly points out that Orwell predicted a harsh, surveillance totalitarian government which
burns books and controls every facet of the culture. Conversely, Huxley described a culture in
which books are abundant and leisurely amusements the goal of life. No books are burned, they
merely languish on the library shelves, ignored and even scorned. As Postman’s book describes,
the population was merely amusing itself to death. Any intelligent observation clearly shows that
Huxley has been far more correct in his predictions than Orwell. In the latter stages of ancient
Rome, the government was a total disaster, financially and practically. Caesar and company kept
the mostly free population entertained and that distracted them from the failures of their policies
and the failures of the leaders themselves. Orwell or Huxley? Dystopian, tyrannical control or
languishing leisure? Neither paints a pretty picture. Both are differing roads leading to perdition.
But Satan makes those roads look like harmless surroundings. That’s precisely how he
camouflages bad company and sinful choices.
But God, Himself, teaches us there is a third option, and it is obviously neither the tightness
of over-controlling tyranny nor looseness of irresponsible amusement, whether that amusement
be laziness and malaise or the frenetic folly of sports and parties. God’s option is this: simply but
genuinely follow in the footsteps of Jesus. We must remember He said, “I tell you these things
that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made full” (John 15:11). The Jesus path is both
joyful and fulfilling. God calls us to joyful self-discipline. The fruit of the Spirit begins with love
and joy, and ends with self-control (Galatians 5:22,23). From roots to roof, those nine items of
the fruit of the Spirit are the very house where joy and fulfillment live. But again, Satan uses our
current culture and its pleasures to camouflage the reality of where his road leads.
Peter tells us that the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (I
Peter 5:8). Before a lion can devour, he must catch. And the primary way we get caught is, let’s
say it again, by the culture. “Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts good morals (I
Corinthians 15:33). Those who think they can keep what Paul calls “bad company” and be
unaffected are, indeed, being quite deceived, even while denying it. Like a bird comes to the
hunter’s call, today’s culture shrieks the siren song sin.

Make no mistake, sin can be fun. Sin can bring pleasure. But the pleasures of sin kill true,
deep, biblical joy and instead deliver failure and sorrow. Moses clearly understood that suffering
affliction with the people of God is preferable to the serious consequences of the sins so common
in the culture. Pleasures? Certainly! Satan cannot deceive unless he makes sin pleasurable. The
writer of Hebrews reminds us that Moses would rather, “suffer affliction with the people of God,
than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25).
Believe it or not, true godliness, true biblical morality, true and deep commitment to Jesus
can lead to joy and peace that the world simply does not understand. Always remember Paul’s
words to the Philippians, “The peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard
your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:4-13). God has all the bases covered.
A major part of the equation of true, deep commitment that leads to joy is to “love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your
mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).
In his exquisite 1890 poem, The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson describes being
chased by a hound, at first a terrifying, relentless pursuer from whom he fled but could not
escape. Finally, he realizes that the pursing hound is not a predator, but God, Himself who
sought him, constantly, everywhere and every time—out of love and the desire to give
Thompson the precious gift of salvation which Jesus paid for on cross.
The culture will call to you a dozen different ways, from frat parties to politics; from board
rooms to bordellos; from the forced tyrannies of totalitarian governments to the lax and lazy
excesses of easy money and unenforced laws. But anything short of scriptural love, commitment,
and obedience will fail to bring the joy of which Jesus speaks in John 15:11, “that My joy may
be in you and your joy may be made full.”
Someone will catch you—the hound of heaven or the hound of hell. Satan, the stalking
unseen lion, dangles the glitz and glamor of a pleasure culture before your eyes to catch you
unaware, forever. But God lovingly allows us a glimpse into real love in I Corinthians 13 and
into heaven itself in Revelation 21 and 22. Someone will catch you, by your own choice,
conscious or not. Who will it be?
Don’t get caught by culture!
Further study: Psalm 1; Romans 6:13; 8:13; I Corinthians 6:9-11; 9:24-27

ray@rockymountainchristian.com