Soul... Tickling the Tale of the Dragon?

One of the men who has been a great influence and mentor to me tells the story of a "game" some physicists used to "play" back in the early days of nuclear experimentation called "Tickling the Tale of the Dragon" (my mentor is a nuclear physicist himself). My understanding is that it involved placing two radioactive materials close enough to each other to start loosing free electrons (which would register as quickening clicks sounded by a Geiger counter), without getting them so close to one another that a full nuclear reaction began (which would register on the Geiger counter as well as on any human soft-tissue nearby!). Predictably, the "game" usually ended with just a few extra clicks of the Geiger-counter, but on a few rare occasions it ended in disaster for the participants -- at least one physicist died of radiation poisoning and burns from this experiment, and many students who witnessed "mistakes" during the "game" had long-term effects which would have been impossible for anyone to predict back then.

He uses this as an illustration of how we often make "mistakes" in dealing with sin. Things that are not sin in and of themselves become idols to us, or themselves have sinful elements that are easy to loose on ourselves before we even realize what we've done.

Biblically, this list includes drinking (not a sin in itself, but can lead to drunkenness, which is), comfort (which God's people are sometimes blessed with, but often leads to complacency), sensuality (sinless only within the context of Biblical marriage), self-pleasuring (which can theoretically be done without sinning, but which in practice takes the focus off of our spouse and replaces it, often with adulterous thoughts and/or images), and a host of other "traps".

"Be holy as I am holy." Wow -- what a huge command! Why in the world would God command such an impossible thing of His children? Peter implies that it is both for our own good ("girding up the loins of your mind") and for God's glory ("at the revelation of Jesus Christ") that God calls us to be holy in conduct, "not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance...".

In God's standard of holiness, ignorance is not bliss, it is sin, and in fact may be an indication that we are not who we think we are, for only by God's work to give us a new heart and make us a new creation can we claim the power of the Holy Spirit to help us strive for holiness.

By the way, this is the opposite of "self-righteousness" (though those striving for holiness will often be accused of self-righteousness by the world) -- only by dependence on God and knowledge of His grace in working to change us can we ever hope to keep moving toward holiness.

So do we stay completely away from anything that might cause us to sin? The admonition to flee from sin is not to be ignored, or justified away, and yet we have freedom in Christ to enjoy His creation. The question that I have to keep asking myself is, "Why?" Am I stepping out on faith, taking a risk for God's eternal glory, or just "Tickling the Tale of the Dragon" because it's something that (if I'm honest with myself) I selfishly want? If it doesn't glorify God on all four corners, it's likely I'll get burned -- and act shamefully before God in the process.

(1 Peter 1:10-21, Leviticus 11:44)