Mugshots
Mugshots
Judges 16:10-12
Then Delilah said to Samson, “Behold, you have mocked me and told me lies. Please tell me how you might be bound.” And he said to her, “If they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall become weak and be like any other man.” So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” … But he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread.
Delilah has just unsuccessfully tied Samson up with bowstrings and delivered him over to her Philistine compatriots, but somehow, he’s still there by her side, listening to her gripe about the way he foiled her treacherous plan. You can’t make this stuff up! What a picture of addiction, friend. Sin shrouds its lies with false advertisements and sugarcoats its poison with the juicy fruit our eyes desire most, but it still effectively shows us exactly what we’re getting. We know when we open that bottle of Bacardi on a lonely night what comes next. We know when placing that bet on the big game and then keeping the loss secret from our spouse the door we’re opening. We know the devastation we’re ushering into our marriage when we look at pornography. See, Samson is hooked here, but he isn’t hoodwinked. He knows what Delilah’s up to. He knows she literally just tried to capture him. He knows the goodnight kisses will lead to fresh new ropes by morning. But that’s just it: sin doesn’t con us into addiction, we con ourselves into thinking we aren’t addicted. We tell ourselves that we’re in control, that, at any moment, we can snap the ropes and be out of it. Oh, and it’s all fun and games as long as we’ve got the upper hand.
I’m sorry to end on a dour note, friend, but I’ll never forget seeing the mugshot in the local newspaper of one of my old high-school mentors who’d been caught with child pornography. That’s the truer picture of sin’s demise, friend. That’s Samson here. That’s us when we think we can beat the devil at his own game, day after day, click after click, bet after bet, drink after drink. It all looks like a glitzy magazine cover at first, till it ends in a mugshot we can’t erase.