The Lie That You Can Handle It

Can a man scoop fire into his lap, and his clothes not be burned? (Proverbs 6:27, WEB)

The proverb asks, can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? It is a question with only one answer, and the writer knows it. He is speaking about a man tangled with another man's wife, but the principle reaches straight into our fight. We tell ourselves we can get close to the thing without being harmed by it, that we know our limits, that this time will be different.

We can watch just to the edge, browse right up to the line, keep the tempting thing nearby and trust ourselves to stop before it costs us anything. We treat proximity as safe as long as we do not cross some final line we have drawn in our own heads. The proverb calls this what it is, a physical impossibility. Fire held against the body burns the body; that is what fire does, regardless of our intentions or our confidence or how many times we have gotten away with it before. The burn is not a punishment for going too far. It is what contact with fire simply does.

The pride in us insists we are the exception, that we have enough control to play near the flame, and that pride has cost many good men more than they ever meant to pay. It is not the weak men who get burned this way so much as the confident ones, the men sure they can manage what they are holding. Every man who has ever said afterward that he never thought it would go this far was, at some point, carrying fire and trusting himself.

There is real humility in admitting you cannot handle it, and that humility is a kind of safety that cleverness can never give you. You do not have to test how close you can get. You do not owe yourself the experiment. Ask God for the honesty to stop pretending you are fireproof, and for the plain good sense to keep the fire out of your hands in the first place, before you are standing there wondering how your clothes caught.