This weekend there was an article in the Los Angeles Times about a couple who are both entomologists from Riverside, California and they spend a good deal of their time traveling to far flung places seeking natural enemies of rare insects that have somehow made it to America and are playing havoc with our agricultural industry. An insect developing in a new habitat without its native enemy to keep it in check can jeopardize an entire crop.

Reading this article I couldn’t help but think about a family story that has now reached legendary status in Fischer folklore. It’s a story about what happened when our adult son, Christopher was but 3 or 4 years old and got entangled in his first undeniable lie. Marti sat him down at the kitchen table and asked him to tell her how this could have happened – how could he have told her such a straight up lie to her face.

As Marti tells the story, this was when she could start to see the wheels turning as Christopher casually leaned back in his chair and finally began to speak: “Well you see, Mama, it’s like this…. There are these five bugs in my head… two good bugs and three bad bugs, and what happed was… well… the two good bugs went out to lunch leaving no one to stop the three bad bugs from taking over.”

Now those entomologists from Riverside would certainly understand how this could happen. They deal with this in their lab every day. But we deal with it, too, because Christopher is exactly right, and I think he’s amazingly insightful about the odds, too.

Scripture teaches that the wherewithal to do both good and evil is present in all of us, and it would appear the odds are stacked against the good winning. Paul puts it this way in Romans, “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (Romans 7:20).

The point here for all of us is that we need help making the right choices. If all God did was give us the law to show us we are wrong, he would only be condemning us to the odds that are obvious in us all. But if, as well as the law, he provides us with his Spirit that can empower those two good bugs to superpower status, giving them the ability to overcome the bad bugs, even if they are outnumbered, then he is really doing something for us.

This is exactly what it means to live a daily Christian life. There is a bug war constantly going on in all of us, and how we fare in this war is all about our choices. With the Spirit, there is power to do the right thing. Choose correctly and you’ll be able to walk correctly.

And one more thing: Whatever you do, don’t send all your good bugs out to lunch at the same time. Got to stagger those lunches.