As I was riding my bike this morning, navigating a roundabout, a small, pug-nosed dog suddenly jumped out of the open back window of a passing SUV. She hit the pavement, rolled a few times, and then got up, seemingly uninjured. The dog did not bark, whine, or make any sound. The SUV driver stopped her car in the middle of the lane, jumped out, and exclaimed, “Oh my!” The car following was able to stop without hitting the dog or the SUV. Fortunately, all three of us were obeying the 25 MPH speed limit (me, on the bike, especially).
For the rest of my bike ride, I pondered the question of why a dog would jump out the window of a moving car. Was it feeling car sick? Was it the lure of the open road? Was it the juicy bare leg of the bicyclist pumping up and down? Had it done this before and thought it was fun? Who can know the mind of a dog? I take cheer in the fact that no human would do anything so stupid. Then I remember my friend who works as a 911 dispatcher telling me that the “call of the day” was about a girl who had jumped out of the window of a school bus so that she could go to a friend’s house instead of being taken home. Are human urges really that much different than those of a dog? How far will we go to satisfy them?
James describes the process of our urges when he writes, “Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:14-15 NIV)
We are living in a society that claims every urge should be satisfied, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. This morning, the dog’s antics hurt no one. So, using society’s definition of morality, the dog did nothing wrong. However, the outcome could have been much different. The car following could have hit the dog or the SUV. The child sitting beside the dog could have struggled with the guilt of opening the window, thus allowing his dog to jump and be killed. As James describes it, temptation is a process that leads to increasingly dangerous and stupid behavior.
Should every urge be satisfied as our culture claims? Are there some temptations that are wrong? Who can say what those temptations are? Despite our claims that “we can handle this,” “we know our limits,” and “we would never let this go too far,” fallen societies eventually end up jumping out of car windows and rolling around on the street.