Bug Eyes

Read

1 John 2:15-17 "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever."

Think

You know those bug zappers people put on their back patio? The ones you plug in and they glow blue and mosquitoes and moths and every other insect in the neighborhood fly straight toward the light and get zapped? I have always wondered something about those bugs. Why do the smarter ones not take a step back and assess the situation? Their friends fly toward the blue light. Their friends do not come back. Maybe, just maybe, the blue light is not a good idea. But they keep flying. They keep getting zapped. And when it comes to lust, we are not much smarter.

Lust is the third pig. And unlike pride, which sneaks in wearing a disguise, and unlike envy, which shows up miserable and stays miserable, lust comes with a promise. It promises excitement. It promises pleasure. It promises satisfaction. It glows bright and beautiful, like that blue light on the patio. And it delivers on the promise just long enough to get you close. Then it zaps you.

I was sitting in a coffee shop early one morning, doing some studying. I watched a man walk across the parking lot. He stopped, did a double-take at a woman getting into her car. Then he kept walking. Twenty feet later, another woman came out of the coffee shop, and the man did the exact same double-take. Same motion. Same look. Same pause. If I had a video camera and showed that man the footage, he would be embarrassed. "Look at me!" he would say. Bug eyes. He did not even realize he was doing it. The double-take had become so automatic, so reflexive, that he was flying toward the blue light without a conscious thought.

John lays out the taxonomy of temptation in this passage: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Notice something. Two of the three are connected to what we see. The lust of the flesh. The lust of the eyes. God designed attraction. He created beauty. He gave us eyes that notice and appreciate the world he made. But lust is a God-given desire gone haywire. It takes the engine God built and removes the governor. The desire itself is not the sin. The attraction is not the sin. The sin happens when the attraction moves into illicit action, whether mental, emotional, or physical. It is the difference between noticing the blue light and flying into it.

Technology has made the blue light brighter and more accessible than it has ever been in human history. It is on every screen, in every pocket, available at every hour. The average person checks their phone around two hundred times a day. That is two hundred opportunities for the blue light to draw you in. Two hundred moments where the glow on the screen could lead somewhere you never intended to go. And the algorithms are designed to learn what attracts you and serve up more of it. The blue light gets more personalized the longer you fly near it.

John writes, "The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever." The blue light does not last. The zap is real, but the promise is a lie. Every person who has ever given in to lust knows this. The excitement fades. The pleasure evaporates. The satisfaction turns to shame. And you are left standing in the aftermath wondering why you flew toward the light when you knew exactly what it was.

The enemy works the same way the bug zapper works. He exploits something you cannot fully control: your attraction to beauty, your desire for intimacy, your craving for connection. He takes what God designed to be good and beautiful and twists it. He does not create anything new. He corrupts what already exists. And he counts on you being just like the bugs: too drawn to the glow to assess the danger.

But here is the difference between you and the bugs: you can assess the situation. You can look at the blue light and make a choice. You can build guardrails. You can make covenants with your eyes, the way Job did in Job 31:1 when he said, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman." Job was not pretending the attraction did not exist. He was acknowledging it and building a fence around it. He knew which situations to avoid, which hours he was most susceptible, and he made preemptive decisions. Not out of perfection, but out of the desire to walk in purity.

The bugs cannot assess the situation. They are wired to fly toward light, and no amount of evidence will change their behavior. But you are not a bug. You have the Holy Spirit. You have the Word of God. You have the ability to recognize the glow for what it is and choose a different direction. The question is whether you will.

Apply

Build a guardrail – Identify your most vulnerable moment of the day for digital temptation. Whether it is late at night, first thing in the morning, or during a lunch break, put a specific guardrail in place: a time limit, an accountability partner, or a physical boundary like leaving your phone in another room.

Pray

Father, I do not want to keep flying toward the blue light. I know the attraction is there, and I know the enemy exploits it. Give me the wisdom to build guardrails and the strength to keep them. Help me walk in purity, not in perfection, but in honesty before you. Thank you that you always provide a way of escape. In Jesus’ name. Amen.