Is it possible to limit yourself to just one piece of chocolate?

I’ve never been able to.

I find that having the first piece simply whets my appetite for a second. And I deserve a treat, don’t I?

Then I reason that dark chocolate contains antioxidants, so I’d better have several more pieces, if only for medicinal purposes. After all, you wouldn’t want me to oxidate, would you? I should hope not.

Finally, I rationalize continuing my chocolate binge by referring to the nutritional information on the package of my favourite dark chocolate for support.

It states that 4 squares of the chocolate contain 25% of my daily recommended amount of iron. So if I ate 16 squares, I’d be getting 100% of my daily iron needs met, right? Well, it’s important to prevent anemia, so I then decide I’d better finish off the package completely.

Do you see how my excuses and justifications led from having one piece of chocolate to consuming an entire heap of the stuff in short order? And how easily this all happened?

It’s the same way with sin, isn’t it?

It starts out tiny and unnoticeable, but can soon grow into a mess of mammoth proportions.

That’s why it’s so important to nip sin in the bud, because we have no idea where a “small” sin will lead.

Look at Adam and Eve. Their sin of eating the forbidden fruit probably seemed rather small in their eyes. But their willingness to disobey God had far-reaching ramifications, even in their immediate family.

It was only one generation later that the first murder was committed, when Adam and Eve’s son Cain slew his brother Abel out of jealousy. How quickly sin proliferated in that family, like leaven through dough!

King David’s life is another example of the way sin can start out small but have unintended consequences. Let’s look at the process:

“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.” (2 Samuel 11:1)

So the first problem is that David, as king, should have been in the thick of battle with his soldiers. But he seems to be loafing around at home instead.

“It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.” (2 Samuel 11:2)

Second problem: With too much time on his hands, David’s eye starts roving, and it rests a little too long on a lovely lady named Bathsheba.

Verse 4 tells us his fateful next step:

“So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her.”

I suppose he thought that that was that: with Bathsheba’s husband Uriah away at war, David had gotten away with adultery. But the plot thickens.

“Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, ‘I am pregnant.’ ” (v. 5)

Uh-oh. David’s predicament is getting worse. How will he extricate himself?

First he calls Uriah back from the front lines, hoping the man would have relations with his wife and assume any child that was later born was his. But Uriah is too honourable to make merry while his comrades are still in the thick of battle. David even tried getting him drunk, but still Uriah didn’t sleep with his wife.

Frustrated, David took a final horrifying step to try to cover up his sin. He arranged for Uriah to be put at the front lines of the battle and for the rest of his company to draw back, leaving Uriah to face certain death.

And that is how King David’s “small” sins led to the biggest sin of all: premeditated murder.

He no doubt didn’t intend at the outset to commit murder by proxy, but by passing up many opportunities to halt his deepening progression into sin, he dug a deeper and deeper hole for himself.

As Sir Walter Scott wrote, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

So repent of your small sins and change course immediately; don’t give them the chance to snowball into bigger offences.

Make sure you nip sin in the bud!

© 2023 Lori J. Cartmell. All rights reserved.