The evil bunny is gone. He disappeared the other day, given to a worthy cause. I guess I should explain. The evil bunny was just a stuffed toy. I called him the evil bunny because his round plastic eyes appeared to stare with an evil look. Since he resided on a shelf opposite my bed I often tried to outstare the evil bunny. I never succeeded. His plastic eyes never closed. But even if I could not outstare him, I could just tell myself to ignore him and his evil stare would not bother me.
The devil is kind of like the evil bunny. If you let him get to you, you can’t win. But if you tell him to go away, he has to do so. (James 4:7) He becomes like the evil bunny, powerless to do any harm.
The evil bunny may be gone, but the memory of him lingers on. The evil bunny was not really evil, he just looked that way. I called him that because of his appearance, not because of any actual evil in him. He was, after all, merely white cloth, plastic eyes, and stuffing. It seems to me, though, that we often try to call things evil that may not be so. If I don't like what someone is doing, what better way to get them to stop than call it a sin? It doesn't matter that the Bible doesn't call it a sin. God may not say anything about it, but if I can call it a sin I can justify telling someone to stop doing it. After all, they probably wouldn't stop if I just said I didn't like it.
I've seen this all my life, and apparently I am not the only one. Among the most consistently popular questions at What Does the Bible Say About..? are questions about whether certain activities are really sin. I think it is wrong to smoke, but what does the Bible say about it? I don't drink, but is it a sin to take an occasional drink of alcohol? And what about dancing? When we tell a child, or a new convert, that something is a sin, we had better be able to back it up with clear scriptures. Otherwise we alienate the listener. Otherwise we are making an evil bunny out of a stuffed animal.
The evil bunny left quickly. One day he was there. I looked up a couple of days later and he was gone. I didn't know when he was given away. I just suddenly realized he was not there.
How like our lives that is. "For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away" (James 4:14) We have probably all known people whose diseases were such that they lingered for a long time. But we have also known of people who died in an instant. I remember, when I was teaching at Boles Home near Dallas, a student of mine got married soon after she graduated. On their wedding day, within ten miles of home, on their way to their honeymoon, this couple was in a car accident and the husband died instantly. Teenagers don't expect to die, but it happens. Here was a beautiful young lady on what should have been the happiest day of her life, mourning a husband of only two hours.
If our lives are like the evil bunny, here today and gone tomorrow, what does that mean to us? We have to be ready, as one rabbi put it, to repent one day before your death. Instead of trying to justify our disobedience by asking "what about those who never heard the gospel" we need to remember that we have, and may not have much time to respond. The evil bunny disappeared, and so will you.
Copyright 2007 from a blog I wrote. The blog, like the evil bunny, is gone, but I can still use what I wrote as material for an article.