It’s hard to believe it’s almost time for another presidential election. Didn’t we just do this? I don’t even know what to say about that except, “Ugh.”
I hate all the verbal ugliness that rains down upon us during election season, but once in a while, something funny does happen. Last time around, in the midst of the heated 2016 Republican primaries, one little news nugget came out that still makes me chuckle.
It seems that someone on candidate Jeb Bush’s staff made a colossal booboo and failed to either register or renew the website domain name www.jebbush.com. That meant the web address was up for grabs—anyone could buy it—and guess who did? Yep, Donald Trump, or at least some smart cookie on his campaign staff. After that, everyone who typed in www.jebbush.com was automatically sent instead to Trump’s website.
Might have been a wee bit tacky, but it was perfectly legal and pretty clever.
The same thing happened to a friend of mine who’s a musician, songwriter and church worship leader. He had a website but forgot to renew his domain name when it expired. Someone else bought it (no, it wasn’t Donald Trump) and to my friend’s horror, that someone was a producer of pornography.
After that, all my friend’s friends who thought they were going to his website were instead subjected to something … uh … verrrrrry different and awful that reportedly made one want to bleach one’s brain.
These stories serve to illustrate my point du jour: It’s pretty easy in this fallen world to end up someplace you never intended or wanted to go. It happens on the internet, in life, and even in death.
The Bible says we have a very real enemy—Satan—who’s intent on killing, stealing and destroying everything God loves (John 10:10), including and especially us.
Unfortunately, Satan is smart and apart from the weapons God gives us (see Ephesians 6:10-17), we’re no match for him. One of the devil’s favorite tactics is very similar to the website bait-and-switch ploys I described above. He loves to make us think we’re getting one thing or going one place, only to give us something else or take us someplace very unexpected and awful.
We think we’re just going to have a little fun, a little excitement, a little pleasure, a little diversion … and we end up in a hot mess of guilt, pain, addiction, broken relationships, and all manner of chaos and destruction.
In one of my previous columns I included this line, so appropriate here: “Sin is a serial killer that comes to our door masquerading as the Prize Patrol.”
We’d never open that door if we really knew who was knocking. But the only way to recognize that serial killer is to use godly wisdom, understand our enemy’s tactics, and absolutely refuse to let him stick his toe across the threshold of our lives.
Don’t take that first illegal drug. Don’t entertain and feed that lustful thought about a man or woman who isn’t your spouse. Don’t covet that thing that isn’t yours. Don’t allow yourself to love anything God hates or hate anything God loves.
As Christian writer and speaker Ravi Zacharias wisely said, “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”
Satan has taken over many domain names in this fallen world and clicking on them always leads to some sort of death (James 1:15). There’s only one place to go for true and enduring fulfillment, joy, peace, love and life: to Jesus.
?“… I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” – Jesus Christ (John 10:10)