The death last week of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro reminded me of a story Armando Valladares tells in Against All Hope, a memoir of his time in one of Castro’s political prisons. A guard boasted that no prisoner could sneak any contraband past him. His comrade replied, “Why, if you’re not careful, these men will drag a sack of fertilizer in right under your nose and you’ll never know it.” The prisoners overheard the exchange and took it as a challenge. One week later, a routine search turned up that exact item. . .inside the prison.
Valladares explains how the miracle came about: The men emptied a fertilizer sack by unstitching the top seam a bare few inches, then dropped the empty container next to the prison door, where a cleaning crew stashed it among their rags and snuck it in. Then, each inmate muled in a handful or so of fertilizer each day in a pocket or matchbook. They refilled the bag bit by bit, sewed up the tiny aperture, and waited. The stunned garrison never learned how this massive security breach occurred.
Conclusion: A little manure every day poses a greater threat than a lot in one place.
C. S. Lewis has his arch-tempter Screwtape impart a similar lesson to his bumbling protegé Wormwood. He advises the rookie to produce a series of pecadillos that fly beneath the “patient’s” radar, then adds:
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. . . .It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.
A few trinkets from the spoils of Jericho sent all Israel down to defeat at Ai. David’s career as an adulterer and murderer began with a single admiring gaze at Bathsheba. Our Lord warned that a flinty word of contempt provides sufficient friction to strike the match that kindles hell-fire for our souls. Peter never meant to betray his Lord, just to warm his hands on a cold night.
Scripture insists, and experience confirms, that Satan seldom starts with the hundred-pound payload of a massive and mighty fall from grace. Our Enemy prefers handfuls of habitual compromise repeated daily. As Screwtape concludes in his lecture on small sins: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
