Shark Week Always Starts on Sunday

If you are younger than 30 years old, you have never known a summer without Shark Week.  It has become a summertime rite of passage on the Discovery Channel and most of us have grabbed the TV remote to check in on those sandpaper-skinned denizens of the deep.  What you may not realize is that the number one location IN THE WORLD for shark attacks is Volusia County, Florida.  Not the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, or the Cape of Africa, or Nantucket – but the sun-drenched beaches just south of Daytona Beach.  Why do 15% of all shark attacks worldwide occur here?  Lots of people are in the water and most attacks are “test bites” by baby bull sharks.  These non-lethal attacks occur when these small sharks nibble on surfers and swimmers who have been mistaken for normal prey.  Once the shark realizes your foot dangling from your surfboard isn’t the fish it sought, it will release its toothy grip.  Oh, pardon me! 

Is there a spiritual application to Shark Week?  You know there is.  Paul writes in Galatians:

For the entire law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.   ¹⁵ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out, or you will be consumed by one another.   Galatians 5:14-15

You likely recall that when Jesus was asked:

“Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?”  He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and most important command.  The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.   Matthew 22:36-39

You may be surprised to learn that the command to “Love your neighbor” was first given in Leviticus 19.  Then it was repeated three times by Jesus in Matthew; followed by Paul’s reminder in both Romans and Galatians; and finally urged by James, the half-brother of Jesus, in the book he penned.  Once should have been enough, but apparently all the urging fell on deaf ears in the early church, as it still does today!  Why so many reminders?  Because – as Paul said in Galatians 5 – we continue to “bite and devour one another” rather than loving one another.  It seems it’s ALWAYS Shark Week in the Church!

Why do we do that?  Why do we choose to inflict non-lethal damage on others in the church or our families by taking a “bite”?  I didn’t say the bites don’t hurt, but they usually don’t destroy our fellow believers.  But after every test bite, someone who cares about our victim (apparently more than we do) must administer first aid to repair the damage we’ve done.  Someone did something to you this week and now you see them at church – CHOMP.  The Pastor didn’t do as well on his message as you thought he should – CHOMP.  That mother of five really has lots of trouble controlling her children in public – CHOMP. 

Let me make this clear.  Your fellow Christ-followers are not your prey.  Your family members are not intended to be dinner.  Taking a bite out of them, no matter what you might think at the time, will not satisfy you, nor will it leave them unharmed.  Paul was so worried about the bad habits of his fellow Christians that he lamented they would “consume” one another.  What a shame that an admonition that belongs more appropriately in a Peter Benchley novel would have to be penned by an apostle to those who say they love one another! 

John 13:35 says, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Can we agree that it’s a good idea to live in such a way that you make sure your relatives and church family know you love them?  And if you’re too disobedient to do that, at least leave them off the menu!

Jacob