Trapping Monkeys

In the Amazon jungle monkeys have long been hunted as a source of food. One of the most interesting ways they are captured is by using their natural love for food-especially bananas- as the key to getting them to literally give up their own freedom and in the process lose their lives.

Here is how it works. A trap is designed that allows a hungry monkey to put its hand into a narrow opening where a ripe banana can be reached inside the trap. Inserting it’s hand into the narrow opening the monkey grasps the coveted prize in its fist and tries to withdraw banana and fist at the same time. The narrow opening that permitted the act of reaching in will not allow the act of withdrawing the hand filled with the prized banana. The hand alone can be withdrawn, but the banana must be released to do so. The monkey thinks releasing the banana is not an option.

The monkey will not even release the banana to escape the trap when the hunters arrive to take its life. Not even the fear of death will open the monkey’s hand. The instinct to never let go of a satisfying, temporary source for one’s hunger is greater than the monkey’s own desire to live.

With traps something temporary takes away the permanent. The monkey trap works based on temporary hunger that kills permanent life.

In the world in which we live there are traps set for humans that are life threatening. They, too, are built on the basis of human hunger. They, too, allow us to enter and grasp, but they keep us in our place until those who hunt our souls come. Even when we see our destruction coming we will not let go of the temporary to save the permanent.

Jesus said “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25 This is the only way we can be sure to avoid the traps that hold us for our own death in this world. We must not satisfy our hungers in grasping things in the visible world that seem so easy to reach and do not grow from a living source. We must satisfy our inner hunger with only that which grows naturally in God.

Read Matthew 5-7 and you will see that Jesus carefully tells what the traps are that are being set to hold us for our own spirtual death.

Here are just a few of the traps he tells us to avoid in Matthew 5: 38-42.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.”

Why in the world would Jesus ask us to do these things which will cost us so much temporary loss? Because those who seek our soul’s death want us to reach deeply into these traps with our hand thinking we have grasped life and satisfaction when we resist evil men, defend against personal human injustices, possess forever what is rightly ours and refuse to be generous toward others.

Jesus asks us to behave this way because He alone is the life and food that satisfies and He is where He is easily reached and always satisfies. He is within us. He is no trap. He is life and satisfaction.

Reach in and grasp his generous life as food. Let go of the bananas. Those who would have your soul for themselves still walk this world setting their traps. When you grasp what they have set for you, you die and they live. When you grasp the life of Christ within you find life and live.