The "You Will Not Die" Lie
In Deuteronomy 29:18-20, Moses warned the Israelites - "lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the Lord our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that produces bitter poison; and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, 'I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart,' so that the drunken and the sober are destroyed together. The Lord will not pardon him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book shall lie on him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under the sky." This is a clear warning against an individual's harboring an idea that he can calmly and peacefully violate the laws of God, nature, or society, and nobody will know the difference. Instead, Moses said this notion is unforgivable and will bring calamity both on that person or persons and on those around them. Even our most private actions have repercussions on society!
Moses concluded his admonition to the Israelites thusly - "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your descendants; to love the Lord your God, to obey His voice, and to cling to him; for He is your life, and the length of your days; that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them" {Deuteronomy 30:19-20). Don't fool yourself by thinking that you can outsmart God: the results can be fatal, both for you and for those around you!
Even just a casual, careless action such as leaving a door open can invite bees, mosquitos or other bugs inside that might sting or bite you or others. Yielding to the urge to fill our stomachs every mealtime very easily leads to obesity ("He who indulges... bulges!"), which in turn can lead to diabetes and amputation, cancer, heart attack or stroke, hip or knee failure, etc. This is why the Church encourages fasting - especially during Lent - to tame the stomach's passions. The sensation of a full stomach reaches the brain only after the stomach is full, so the secret is to stop eating while you're still hungry: you won't die: our society has such a great surplus of food that we have to throw away even some of what's donated to charity. So don't worry about dying of starvation! And close the doors!
In chapters 6 and 7 of the book of Joshua, we read about the Israelites marching around Jericho for seven days and capturing the city when its walls collapsed. They were warned not to take any plunder for themselves, but to destroy everything except to consecrate any gold or silver they found to the Sanctuary. Achan, however, cleverly decided he could hide some plunder from God and the Israelites: "when I saw among the plunder a beautiful Babylonian robe, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it" (Joshua 7:21). This caused the tribes of Israel to suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of an inferior military force. It should be a warning for us not to think that our superior military will protect us even while we violate the laws of God, nature, and civilized society.
The Lord doesn't issue His commandments and laws because He's some kind of spoilsport that doesn't want us to have any fun: the psalmist David wrote about Him - "Who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies; Who satisfies your desire with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's" (Psalm 103:5). He knows what's best for us, and He will satisfy our desire with things that are good for us.
But people persist in yielding to the serpent's temptation of Eve: "You will not die! Go ahead and indulge in illicit sex! Have another drink... and another! You can steal that item while nobody's looking! You can get away with speeding 50 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone! You can park next to that fire hydrant, or in some other no-parking zone... just this once, you won't get caught!" And then the results "just happen" - AIDS, a conviction or loss of a job for theft, a car accident, a speeding or parking ticket. Those old laws of God, nature, and society just seem to be so persistent, don't they?
The story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 is another example of people trying to fool God. It didn't work: they dropped dead in front of Saint Peter. Sometimes we have to say hard things to people who are faking their Christianity: Saint Paul had to confront the Christians in Corinth because of incest taking place among them: "For though I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it. For I see that my letter made you sorry, though just for a while. I now rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that you were made sorry to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly way, that you might suffer loss by us in nothing. For godly sorrow works repentance to salvation, which brings no regret. But the sorrow of the world works death" (2 Corinthians 7:8-10).
Note in the above Scripture that St. Paul differentiates between two kinds of "I'm sorry." A person can feel sorry for being caught: it's a form of shame for one's bad deeds being made public. But the good kind of feeling sorry is being "made sorry to repentance." This kind is "godly sorrow [that] works repentance to salvation" - and that's a good thing! We can't fool God by just saying, "I'm sorry," and expect to be forgiven, even when we fully intend to keep on doing the same old thing. Real, godly sorrow is repentance, which means turning away from sinnong and toward doing what is good and right.
Lent is a time not only for contolling the passions of the stomach, but all of the passions of the flesh and the spirit, especially the temptation that "You will not die! - you can get away with it just this one time (and maybe the next... and the next). Let us really and truly repent of yielding to those urges, and turn away from them, not just feel sorry about being caught!
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