We like to think it is different than that. Our stories and fables are replete with last minute deliverance from the peril of sin. That is how we want life to work. Sure, our hero has chosen poorly to follow the seductive spy down the darkened alleyway, but someone will come along and pull him out before her henchmen kill him.
That works in the movies, but it rarely works out like that in life. We have a few shining, beautiful stories of last-minute deliverance from addictions. We have some glorious moments in Gideon testimonies of the person in a hotel room, pistol in one hand, whiskey on the nightstand, and one last look at the Gideon Bible stops their suicide puts them right.
These stories are amazing, and we should never stop being used by God to make them happen. Let this be clear: we should keep placing Gideon Bibles. We should keep trying to intervene in addictions. We should try and break criminal intensification cycles where a misdemeanor leads to a felony and leads to more felonies and broken lives. We must, for the sake of ourselves, for the sake of showing love to our neighbor, for the sake of serving God.
What we must not do is assume that someone will intervene for us. I hate to be blunt to you, gentle reader, but you may find yourself in a hotel room without a Gideon Bible. Or in a bar where the barkeep just gives you your keys back, and off you go to kill and die on the highway.
You and I must take the action to walk in obedience to God, show the wisdom to live skillfully in fear and praise of YHWH, and not start on the path. Because just as the youth of Proverbs 7:22, there comes a point of no returning, where your steps are set.
And destruction follows.
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