(2 Cor 11:3) But I am afraid…your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

Most people who have grown up in the rural South have experienced the time honored tradition of frog gigging, which is how one obtains the delicacy known to the French as “jambes de grenouille” (i.e. frog legs). If you’re not familiar with gigging here’s what you do. You get your buddies together, grab a light and start shining ditch banks or backwater bayous for the tell-tell sign of two eyes peeping out of the water. When you see a frog staring back at you, hold the light on him to freeze the frog in place while someone with the gig, a large bamboo pole with a small trident spear attached to the end, slips up quietly and jabs the amphibian. Well this particular story is about the evening we decided we were going to be more sporting by leaving the gig at home and attempting to catch the frogs with our hands.

Ox, our friend Ray and I piled in a pickup and headed to a farm to try this groundbreaking experiment. Ox was driving, I was shining and Ray was in the back waiting to jump in the water and catch the frogs. We had a good measure of success that evening so when the light hit a pair of eyes just above the water, we stopped and Ray eased into the water to catch what looked like a big bullfrog. He reached down and made a perfect grab, but it was not a frog – it was a cotton mouth, also known as a moccasin, one of the orneriest, nastiest, not to mention poisonous serpents in the Delta. When Ray came up with the snake, he looked at the white mouth unhinged, fangs extended and let out a blood-curdling scream, cocked his arm back and flung that moccasin as far as he could – the thing looked like a scaly propeller flying through the air. At that moment our noble idea of being more sporting when it came to our quest for frog legs died. We went back to the 10 foot pole.

Here’s the point – Paul was dealing with people who were being tricked into believing another “gospel”. False teachers had infiltrated the Corinthian church and were undermining biblical truth. And the sad fact was some believed the lies and walked away from the simple calling to love Christ completely. They had heard the Gospel, but then allowed themselves to be seduced by something that kind of looked like the truth but was in reality heretical. And instead of chunking it (like Ray with the moccasin) they held onto it to their detriment as well as the church’s.

We live in a world today that says all religions are the same. Don’t buy the lie because such beliefs make as much sense as saying a cotton mouth tastes like frog legs.

Blessings to you boys,

Joel Mc