I remember as a kid hearing the story of a frog and boiling water. Perhaps you know it. If not, the story goes that if you were to drop a frog into hot, boiling water, it will freak out and instantly hop to safety. But if you place the frog into cool water and slowly increase the temperature, the frog won’t notice and will eventually boil to death. It’s a pretty gruesome picture, really. I mean, that frog had to be completely mental to stay in an increasingly dangerous hot tub and not even realize that it was being cooked alive. How stupid. Yet, I’ve been like the frog.
“Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.” Baltasar Gracián
People don’t generally wake up one morning and decide, “I want to be enslaved by something difficult to manage and seemingly impossible to escape, because that sounds like fun.” No, the road to depravity is a long one. It’s one traveled with many deliberate steps—steps that become easier and easier to take. Call it a moral compromise, an addiction, a weakness, or a sin—the destination in which we find ourselves in poverty is one found by slowly compromising our moral values while dancing with the devil.
There’s a certain allure found in doing things we know that we shouldn’t do. We try to self-medicate as we binge on food; we seek stress relief with alcohol or cigarettes; we spiral downward in our addiction to drugs or sex or pornography, always in search of the ever-elusive higher high; we allow frustration to morph into anger and eventually into bitterness and rage; we let one little exaggeration of the truth snowball into an unwieldy maze of lies; we become depressed and complacent as we stop engaging in life and pursuing healthy relationships or activities. We know full well the peril that comes with certain choices, yet once we dip our toes into that water, it becomes easier and easier to stay.
And even though we can clearly see from the onset just how disastrous our destination will be, once we take certain actions, it becomes seemingly easier to pursue a little more and a little more and a little more… The downhill trip to despair is much more effortlessly travelled than the difficult climb back up to higher ground. It’s better to avoid a pushy door-to-door salesman by refusing to open the door in the first place than it is trying to get him to leave once you’ve invited him in.
It’s so important to avoid compromise. So when thoughts come that try to seduce you toward disaster, immediately put them out of your mind—give them no attention. Get out of the pot. If you have a rogue thought, take it captive and don’t dwell upon it. Get out of the pot. Avoid unhealthy situations or people or temptations that will exploit your weaknesses—even if you have to run in haste. Get out of the pot.
It isn’t always easy to make change or avoid temptation, but the devil’s playground is an idle mind. So, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Fill your mind with things that are good. When you are about to do something that you know isn’t healthy or wise, stop—make the choice to, instead, do something healthy and constructive. Put your energies into things that are of worth, which will keep you out of trouble.
If you’ve started down a certain road, choose this day to stop, turn around, and begin the trip back up to good ground. It’s often very difficult to climb back up, so find someone in whom you can confide and confess your struggle. Having someone there to encourage and support you—an outside voice of reason—makes the journey much less wearisome. It’s probably not going to be easy, but it’s better than being boiled in a pot of your own choosing. When the Do-it-yourself Frog Boiling Kit salesman comes knocking at your door, say with great boldness, “Go away!”
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