Snuffed Out: A parable

“Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord.  He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.”

The minister paused after reading the passage and looked around at the young people gathered in the room. One by one, he asked them to reflect on this passage of Genesis. A lanky boy piped up immediately, “I think it’s saying God snuffs out the wicked.” This comical way of putting it caused a little laughter in the room. 

The protagonist of this story, the story I am telling, did not laugh at the boy though in his heart he was indeed laughing at God’s word. Throughout, I will simply refer to him as the protagonist. He goes nameless because he stands for the many sinners in this world who like him do not have ears to hear the word of God nor eyes to see it. As Ezekiel says “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, which has eyes to see but does not see, and ears to hear but does not hear.” Our protagonist had ears and eyes but chose not to hear. His flesh was in a lustful rebellion, seeking after things he should not have but hungering for the good he knew not of because of the blinding effects of sin. 

That was the Friday night Bible Study. Saturday morning dawned beautifully as it usually does in Georgia in the summer, but our protagonist was enclosed in the darkness of sin and lust. At 16, he had decided that the time had come for himself and his girlfriend to lose their virginity. The two of them had arranged a meeting that night while her parents were out at a social dinner and his parents were playing cards with the neighbors. Though neither had mentioned sex, they both knew that it would happen. 

That day seemed to crawl by to our protagonist. In the middle of the day, while begrudgingly washing his father’s car, three of his friends drove up in a doorless jeep. “Come on in!” said the driver, an 18-year-old senior with a red, flamboyant mohawk. Let’s go for a drive,” he added with a seductive smile.  Our protagonist hesitated for a moment, torn between his desire to do what seemed cool and his responsibility to his father. 

The Bible tells us  “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men” but the tempters in the car had become his friends. He followed in their wicked ways because he wanted worldly pleasures. His inspiration to do the right thing was  “choked by life’s worries, riches, and pleasures.” He was embarking on the wide road that leads to damnation, and, oh, how easy it was to simply say “yes.”

Once in the car, they sped outside of the quiet neighborhood where his parents lived. They scared old women and children out of the road by cranking rock music. As they made it to the coast, all of them including the driver enjoyed a beer while driving. Our relatively innocent protagonist was at first shocked by this but when his companions laughed at his expression, he tried to act as cavalier as possible.

They sped along the beach and passed a busty girl in a bikini walking along the sidewalk. “Wow, what a hotee!” The driver yelled over the music. “Yeah 10 out of 10 in my book” gleefully cried the boy in a baseball cap in the front seat. “What do you think?” the driver asked the protagonist. For a moment the protagonist stumbled for words. He felt a little taken out of his comfort zone by being asked to talk about a woman’s body especially when the person asking was a senior. At last, he mustered “I think. . . I think she has a nice ass!” They clinked their bottles together in agreement, and the driver gave the protagonist a high five and exclaimed: “He’s finally coming out of his shell!” Our protagonist smiled and was reminded of his own girlfriend. He thought lustfully about his girlfriend’s physique which he considered very nice. 

“And how is your girl?” The boy with the baseball cap asked. “Yeah,” said the driver “the one with the nice legs.” A teasing conversation ensued in which he never actually gave an answer. He was now part of the club. Perhaps, later he would recount the events of the night soon to pass. For now, he wanted to keep it a secret out of safety. 

When he got home, he had only one hour before meeting his girlfriend. He brushed his teeth three times and gargled twice with Listerine to get rid of the alcohol on his breath. Then he sent his girlfriend a text to confirm their meeting. It read “still on tonight?” and the reply was “Yes” with a winking emoji which he replied to with the same emoji, not being sure what it implied.

His parents were on the deck. When they came in and found him, his father gave him a frown. “What happened to my car?” he asked. The boy had no answer. He had no answer because the sinner has no good answer. He was breaking God’s law in the commandments and which is repeated by the author of  Ephesians who states:  “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.” He should have obeyed his parents, but he was against all authorities. He did not want to see what was right. He preferred to live in darkness. 

“I’m sorry dad, I meant to finish” the protagonist stammered, not wanting to say what happened. His mother finished this for him “you really shouldn’t be so obsessed with your phone, you know.” Happy to have an excuse offered him,, he apologized and reminded them of the lie he had made earlier in the week, the lie that he was going to play board games with a friend while they played cards. He reminded them that he needed to get ready to go. 

Alas, these parents were far too remote from the life of their son. They should have seen the evil into which he had strayed but they were blinded to it by their own lives. They thought that the fact that he went to a youth group was good enough. Proverbs tells us to “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” but these parents felt that it was not their job to train, not their job to meddle in the life of their teenage son. 

His parents left for their cards leaving the protagonist alone. The neighbors lived a few houses down, so they left the car and walked.  The Bible says “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” and it was with a head full of its own importance that the protagonist went with the audacity to his father’s car. He should have devised another means of transportation, but somehow the sheer boldness of taking the car overtook him. 

His girlfriend was impressed by the car though also a little scared. After a brief and somewhat stilted conversation on the sofa, full of complaints that 16-year-olds have about their parents, they began making out. It wasn’t the first or even the second time. They were like the leopard mentioned in Jeremiah that cannot change its spots. They had become well acquainted with sinful ways and had started down a sinful path from which they couldn’t easily escape.

Our protagonist started to lift up his girlfriend’s shirt. She shuddered at first and seemed to resist but it was not real resistance. Using a condom he’d bought secretly during the week, our protagonist saw to it that they both lost their virginities. To be sure, it was awkward and embarrassing and full of what our protagonist’s friends would have called mistakes.

Afterward, the thrill of the moment, and its anxiety brought them into the kitchen for a snack. Yet while eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they were already thinking about having sex again. Soon after, they were making out again and having sex on the sofa as if by accident. In fact, during that brief hour and a half they had sex three times, each time with a little less awkwardness and a little more movie-perfection, movies were of course in their mind the whole time. 

Driving away in his father’s car, our protagonist felt like a million bucks. He was already reliving the moments in his mind, embellishing them and making them more salacious than they were in reality. What a score. He was proud to have taken the virginity of such a highly prized girl. He was wrong. Though I said they lost their virginity that night, I was not speaking truthfully. Only one of them had this to lose. She had had sex last year after a night of underage drinking had gone awry with a classmate. And before that, she’d been abused by a family friend.

It was fun to drive at night with the stars out, the windows rolled down, and a warm breeze wafting in. He ran a stop sign without noticing and was unconsciously driving well-over the speed limit on the wooded road. Suddenly, a horrible thing happened. A tree appeared in his dashboard, like the whale of Jonah coming to swallow him. Everything happened in an instance. He was driven like a bullet into the glass of the dashboard, his head felt like it had been ripped open, a noise like thunder deadened his hearing, and the heat of fire was already all around him. In seconds, he’d lost consciousness. 

The car and his unconscious body were discovered by a mousy-haired policeman making his rounds. The policeman was not at all used to this kind of a disaster and kept exclaiming “Oh my god! Oh my god!”  With a prayer, he jumped into the car and dragged the boy out before it was too late. The boy’s body was not yet completely charred but a huge bump was ballooning out on his head. Blood was everywhere. 

The policeman called an ambulance. Our protagonist was unconscious for that ride in the whizzing ambulance. Once at the hospital, the medics managed to identify the boy and find his address but they couldn’t find his number until a nurse who specialized in blood loss came in and recognized the protagonist from her church. “Oh Lord!” she exclaimed when she saw him. She personally called his parents and told them the news between her histrionics. 

Our protagonist’s parents were just leaving the card game when they got the call. The nurse, barely able to speak for crying, gasped out, “Your son was in a car accident” “No, I don’t know the details.” “Yes, it was just him.” “He’s real bad. He’s in a deep coma. Come quick.”

On the ride to the hospital, the mother of our protagonist started to lose control. “It’s all our fault. We’ve been neglecting him. I knew I should have been more involved. I knew he was going down the wrong path. Didn’t I tell you about the text I saw on his phone the other day? Oh, honey! Why didn’t we do something?” The father couldn’t take it “Damn it! Do we have to talk about that now? Let’s pray.” And pray they did, more than they had ever prayed in their life. They had never really had so much desire behind their prayer. 

When they got to the hospital, they were able to spend a few moments with our protagonist before his heartbeat stopped. Often unemotional the father broke into sobs, and for a while, they were both sobbing in each other’s arms. 

Our protagonist was now meeting his maker, and no matter how omniscient a narrator can claim to be, I can’t say what happened in that moment or in those moments in which his body clung to the last threads of life. The wicked are “like chaff driven by the wind.” They are snuffed out like a candle and forgotten, but let’s not forget this boy. Let’s hope that somehow he repented before he saw God face to face.

Now, it may be easy to see this story as a simple judgmental rant against our age. That’s not my intention. I present his life as a fable or parable to be a guide to others. The Lord said that death comes like a thief in the night but none of us truly take this seriously. 

Your actions affect others as well as yourself. But it’s also true that we all can decide our response to the actions of others.  I wish I could say our protagonist’s girlfriend used this episode to change, but somehow the trauma of the accident and the sex led her deeper into physical relationships for many years.  Perhaps, this was her way to both escape and relive the past. 

The parents changed for the better. They visited their son’s grave every year and started a youth ministry at their church called “The Prodigal Son Project.” 

The two friends in the jeep never joined the project. They were far too ensnared in the vices of the flesh, drinking, and fornication. Both came to untimely ends. Both in car accidents. Thus, sin leads to death whether now or in the future. God is chasing you, so repent now before it’s too late. Change your ways, and perhaps He will spare you.  The End