“Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals, and his feet not be seared? So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife; whoever touches her shall not be innocent.”
Proverbs 6:27-29
Alaska Airlines flight 751 from New Orleans to Seattle was at cruise altitude when a passenger’s Samsung Galaxy A21 phone overheated and began sparking. The flight crew used fire extinguishers to quench the flames. The pilot diverted immediately to the nearest airport. And the passengers and crew evacuated the aircraft on slides because the interior of the cabin was hazy from smoke.
Wouldn’t it be handy if your phone caught fire every time you looked at porn on the device? That would be a guaranteed deterrent, wouldn’t it, a sparking, smoldering, overheating hunk of metal and plastic in your hand whenever you viewed pornographic images and videos? But that’s the problem with porn. You can view it freely and anonymously any time you want and there are no obvious consequences. Your phone doesn’t catch fire. No one notices your sin. And you don’t get punished in any obvious way for your sexual immorality.
But sin has consequences, doesn’t it? Sin pays wages. As Solomon notes, a man who has sex with his neighbor’s wife will suffer consequences, guaranteed. After all, asks, Solomon, “Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?” The answer is obvious. No, he cannot. That’s impossible. A man who commits adultery will suffer the consequences for his actions, just as he will if he places fire next to his chest. He may suffer the consequences of his adultery in this life (his wife divorces him, he loses custody of his kids, he gets fired from his job). Or he may face the ultimate consequence upon his death, when God casts him into the lake of fire with the other adulterers (Revelation 21:8).
After the Alaska Airlines scare, plenty of folks who owned the same model of phone walked into their local cellphone store the next day and demanded a safer handset. They didn’t want to take the risk of carrying anything in their pocket that might burn them unexpectedly. If your phone causes you to sin by helping you look at porn, trade it in for a model that can’t access the internet. You’ll avoid fire in this life, and fire in the life to come.
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