By Reverend Laurie DeMott

The Bible, we must remember, contains stories and sayings that were for the most part originally heard by listeners rather than read by readers, and so it is full of passages that qualify as memorable soundbites. We can rattle a dozen off the top of our heads: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” “The first will be last and the last will be first,” “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." Today, however, I want to begin not with one of these more familiar soundbites but with a soundbite that is a lot less known and yet is my absolute favorite in the entire Bible. I should warn you, however, that what makes this particular soundbite so powerful for me is not only because I think it rings true to our experience but also because it’s pretty disgusting. The image that it paints is repulsive enough that it will stick in your head for sometime. With that warning, here is my favorite soundbite in the Bible: Proverbs 26:11.

“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats their folly.”

I love this Proverb because as a dog owner I can laugh at the realization that dogs have not changed a whole lot in the 2500 years since some wit first uttered those words. For those of you who are not dog owners, I’m going to help you understand the power of this Proverb’s illustration by telling you an equally disgusting story from my own experience along these lines. Those of you with weak stomachs have my permission to plug your ears.

Because I live out in the country, my friends always bring their dogs with them when they come to visit. One of these friends has a wonderful beautifully-tempered dog named Rex (and let the record show that I have changed his name to protect the innocent). Rex’ only flaw is that he is a chow hound who is always cruising for food – he thinks through his stomach. During one visit, as my friend and I were chatting in my living room, Rex poked about my house searching for dribbles of dog food that Zack may have missed or stale crumbs of chips swept into corners left from youth overnights. I am proud to say that my house was clean enough that he didn’t actually turn up much in his search until he reached the kitchen where, to his delight, his nose told him there was something delicious sitting on the counter. In one quick leap, Rex grabbed for the goodie and swept it to the floor causing enough of a thump that I came running in to see what he had stolen. There, clutched between his paws, was a large expensive chocolate bar that I had bought to share with my friend over coffee, and in the few seconds it had taken me to cross between my living room and kitchen, Rex had already shred the wrapper and was about to sink his teeth into his prey. I plunged toward him to grab the bar away, but realizing my intent, Rex ran out of the kitchen and before I could tackle him again, he inhaled the entire bar in one gulp, and then grinned at me as if to say, “Chocolate? What chocolate?”

Now, losing an expensive bar of chocolate you had planned on having for an afternoon treat is bad enough but the situation was actually potentially much more serious. Chocolate contains a chemical called theobromine which in large doses can wreak havoc on a dog’s body: it can cause seizures, cardio-vascular damage, and even lead to death. The bar that Rex had consumed was a bar of specialty dark chocolate which had an especially high concentration of theobromine and I knew that if I did not get that chocolate out of his system immediately, Rex would be in real trouble. There was only one thing to do – I had to make him throw that chocolate back up.

“Grab the salt shaker,” I said to my worried friend. “I can make him vomit with the salt.” She handed it over and then quickly backed out of the line of fire. Unscrewing the top of the salt shaker, I wrenched open Rex’s mouth and poured about a teaspoon of salt into the back of his throat. Rex blinked in surprise but then sat down and waited to see what other treat I might want to shove into his mouth.

“This usually works,” I said, puzzled. “Maybe I didn’t use enough salt.” I headed into the study to get my book on Home Veterinary Care but before I could reach the door I heard a sudden gulping from Rex. Drool dripped down the sides of his mouth, his eyes glazed over, and his stomach began to heave.

“C’mon, Rex,” I called. “Let’s go outside!” The poor dog stumbled to the door and out to the yard just in time for within seconds he had retched up a large pile of that morning’s dog food covered with a slimy thick gravy of chocolate. Several eruptions more and his stomach was finally empty. The crisis had passed, Rex would live, and for the moment he looked sufficiently cowed to do nothing more than hunker down quietly under the table.

An hour later, my friend said her goodbyes and called to Rex.

“Time to go,” she said to him as she headed out the door to her car. Rex jumped up and ran after her but before he could reach the car, his nose caught a most intriguing scent.

“Chocolate!” it proclaimed and before we could stop him, Rex had made a beeline to that disgusting pile of half-digested dogfood and chocolate and gobbled it up again like it was Thanksgiving dinner. My friend grabbed Rex, I grabbed the salt, and a few minutes later, the chocolate was once again on my lawn, and poor Rex had dragged himself meekly into the back of the car happy to leave this alternating heaven and hell.

“As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats their folly.”

In its choice of this graphic metaphor, Proverbs 26:11 captures our disbelief and our disgust at the stubborn repetition of foolishness. It would be bewildering enough to us if Rex had eaten a second chocolate bar one hour after suffering through the “cure” for the first; we might be astounded at the inability of our dog to connect the unpleasant results with the momentary pleasure he received from the chocolate, but we know that sometimes it takes dogs, and people, a long time to figure out that what they think is giving them pleasure is actually hurting them. The emphasis of this Proverb, however, is not on our slow learning curve; it is concerned more about the foolish behaviors that we engage in deliberately and with full foreknowledge. The dog in the Proverb isn’t eating a second fresh candy bar – it is eating its already partially digested candy bar now steeped in a stew of regurgitated dog food and stomach acid. That any dog would find that tempting is as incredible to us as it is incredible to watch a person repeat behaviors that they know are unhealthy or hurting the ones they love.

And yet, as unbelievable as it is, we also realize how true this Proverb is because we see in our own lives that it not usually the unknown temptations that ensnare us but the known ones that lure us into repeating our folly over and over again. We crumble the pack of cigarettes and throw them away in a fit of resolution one moment only to fish them back out of the trash can the next. We swear that we will not lose our tempers again with our teenager knowing that the battle of wills resolves nothing and yet before 24 hours have passed we are blowing up again, pushing one another’s buttons. We make resolutions and break them, we succumb to anxieties we swore we would put aside, we travel down the same paths of temptation time and time again knowing full well where they lead and yet unable to turn aside.

In the image of the dog returning to its vomit, we have a vivid description of the stubborn persistence of our own sin.

But as much as this Proverb is one of my favorite Biblical soundbites, I must admit that there is not much hope in its words. Perhaps it is a little helpful to remind ourselves that repeating our foolishness is as disgusting as a dog eating what it just puked up – maybe you would have a little better luck sticking to your diet if you thought of Rex and his chocoate bar every time you were tempted to buy a bag of M&Ms – but the Proverb can also leave us feeling powerless to overcome our sin. Watching Rex’s brain turn off the moment the scent of chocolate hit his nose is just too much like my own experience of the temptations I face. No matter how hard we try to will ourselves out of sin, our baser instincts too often take over and we find ourselves right back in the thick of it. In the words of the apostle Paul, “I can will what is right, but I cannot [seem] do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

If sin has as powerful a hold on us as the Proverb would suggest, then how are we ever to overcome it?

Paul’s response to that dilemma was the proclamation of God’s grace. Paul knew the powerful temptation of sin and the weakness of the human will but he said that this is only one half of the equation. Paul set the weakness of the flesh against the power of the spirit; he set the condemnation of sin against the salvation of God’s forgiveness; he set the helplessness of the person all on their own against the strength of a life lived in relationship to God.

Sin condemns us, he said, but grace forgives us.

Sin brings us to our knees but grace stands us back up so that we can try again.

Sin enslaves us to the frailty of the human flesh but grace binds us to the power of God. What is impossible for human beings, Jesus said, is not impossible for God, for “all things are possible with God.”

And there is the most important part of the gospel’s teaching on grace. Paul said that grace means we are no longer slaves to sin but instead we are slaves to the law of God. In essence, God through grace is inviting you inviting you to shift your allegiance and recreate your entire identity so that you see yourself as no longer responsible to only your own desires but as responsible instead to the desires of God. You are no longer your own person; you are God’s person, and every act you do, every choice you make, is a choice for or against God to whom you belong.

My brother-in-law attended three different undergraduate schools, getting kicked out or dropping out, before he eventually settled down to earn a degree from Geneseo. I asked him once what turned him around, what motivated him to finally get serious about studying, and he said, “I met your sister and knew I wanted to marry her.” The more we are able to recognize that our lives do not in the final accounting belong only to ourselves, the more we will be able to have the strength to turn away from sin and toward wholeness. And the more we are able to recognize that our lives belong to others and not ourselves alone, the more we are able to turn to those other people and to turn to God admitting our weakness so that we can find the help we need to loosen the bonds of our sin.

While the Proverb just leaves us condemned, Paul leaves us with the hope that all things are possible with God and that God will be infinitely patient with as we work to become a new person shaped by God’s grace. Should we, like a dog, return to our vomit seven times seventy times, God will not beat us but will clean us up and help us to put the chocolate a little higher out of reach. Teilhard de Chardin said, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are all, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay... and yet it is the law of all progress that [it] may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you.... Give our Lord the benefit of believing that God’s hand is leading you....”

The lure of sin is great, but God’s love for you and God’s belief in you is even greater. Believe that you are no longer a slave to your sin but you belong to God and in God, all things – even you – are made new.