The False Treasure Chest

The False Treasure Chest

Reckless Rambles

By: Chase L. Currie

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

So, my dear friend, there is no way for me not to write to you on this matter and keep my faith at the door. Although, if I’m telling you the truth, my faith, the belief in the Lord, and His Word is never left at the door. All my arguments and ideas are rooted in my faith, I simply leave it up to you to name them in that meaner, but they all wrapped up in my faith as a Christian. I hope you will not bear me any ill will. I pray you read my words to the end, and rather you agree with my faith or not, you can still pull some advice from my words.

                I fear I might even say wisdom. I do not sit well with the word ‘wisdom’ coming from my lips or the idea of me showing you any kind of wisdom. I am not your teacher, I am your friend, and we are merely having an in-depth conversation.

                At this moment, as I write to you, there is an un-open bottle of sweet wine in my kitchen. It was a gift given to me on my birthday. I do not feel as it is the right thing to open it when there is no one to share it with over dinner. I want to drink it, you see. I would love to find out if the wine is as sweet as I hope it is, but I have to keep the longing to taste it at bay.

                Every time I walk into my kitchen, I look at the bottle. It is an amazingly crafted bottle with a picture of mundane life on it, and the bottle itself looks as if to be made from stone, but it is not. It is from the Middle East, where I am not sure. I could go find out, but I fear, I would not finish this and end up drinking it if I left my desk.

                But when I stand in my kitchen, I wondered what it would taste like? There is a fight within me not to open it and drink just a cup.

                The fight is not a great one; in fact, it is a dull one to tell you the truth. All I do is look at the bottle, wonder, shrug, and go back to my books. I know, however, there is a dragon that loves alcohol swimming in my blood. This dragon green with envy at all the drunks wishing to be with them, and he is very tiny in my heart. He covenants the love of the drink like all dragons worship the brightness of gold. He wants it. He almost needs it.

                I haven’t slain this dragon; there is no need to bring the sword to bear on its neck. It is not big enough to be deadly to me, but what this little green devil does is remind me daily not to feed it. I do not wish to battle this dragon in my life. I have so many others to circle in combat within my heart.

                This little green guy had me thinking the other day as I stared at the bottle of wine. In the old stories, the hero goes off to slay the dragon. It is a good story and one we should teach, but why does the hero do this? Is it because a dragon must be slain? Is it the nature of the hero?

                I guess, yes to both of those questions.

                The hero kills the dragon and gains the treasure; then he goes back home. A poor fairy tale would leave you there, but in truth, the treasure is almost, if not more so, as deadly as the fire breathing dragon. Beowulf becomes King after killing the monster and his mother, only to do the same thing the monster did in the end, covenanted his power. Lancelot rushes off to find the Holy Grail but betrays Arthur by loving Guinevere, which we should have known after all Lancelot is the first person to utter her name. Thorin Oakenshield from The Hobbit kills the dragon but loses his mind to dragon sickness, the love of gold.

                Those true legends or myths teach us a lesson we tend to leave at the entrance of the cave. We may have killed one dragon, but we have given birth to another one. The monster of a false treasure chest is far deadlier than the monster with claws and fire.

                Or, as I was sitting there thinking about the matter, we overcome one sin only to find another one. I sighed deeply when this idea came over me. I was almost saddened to the point of pouring me a cup of wine to drown it. I have been wrestling with some of my dragons as of late, never seeing able to slay them. Sins I wish no longer to feed, but for my failures, I keep giving in to them far more than I would like.

                I keep praying to slay the dragon, to stop these sins, but in truth, it is a weak pray. The devil, you know, kind of pray. I want to stop it, true, but I know when I do, the monster behind it might be worse. So, it is better to have this dragon than another one. At least, I know how to wrestle this sin.

                Too bad I’m not like Jacob …

Or maybe I am. I know this sin is wrong, and yet, I am still giving into it. The Lord calls us to stop sinning and turn to Him. Now, God knows we are foul people who will find a way to sin anyway, and we will sin every day of our lives. It is our nature to do so, but we should turn to Him when we do sin. To ask Him forgiveness, along with asking Him to help overcome this sin.

                Here I am wrestling with the Lord on the matter of my sin. He has told me what to do, and I, the childish man I am, am not happy with it.

Ah, I scream out at Him; it is a small sin; it is only hurting me and no one else. It makes me happy on those low days, and I have been having quite a few of those as of late. It feels good, and the world, everyone around me tells me it is not wrong. After all, this sin is a part of our nature. Why give it up for something worse?

I can almost see Him standing in the cave dress in all the glory of His armor, shaking His head at me. He is watching me battle this dragon waiting for me to turn to Him. But fear of the unknown has poisoned me, and I see foolishness in letting go of the sin I know for the one I do not know.

“The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth (145:18),” so says the poet of Psalms. I had almost missed the point as I reached by the bottle of wine. I was about to feed my little green dragon, but I stopped himself looking back at the Lord. He smiled at me, waiting for me to see the point.

Here it is my friend; it is not about defeating the dragon or stopping the sin. Yes, you should try to do those things. It is essential to remove unhealthy subjects out of your life, friends, lovers, and sins. Not for your happiness but for your health, and not for health but your relationship with the Lord. We should try not to feed our dragons, allowing them to grow until we have to slay them, or they swallow us whole. 

But the point is to turn to the Lord and ask Him for help. You must ask Him to help you in this battle with the dragon, no matter if you fail or not because the greatest failure is thinking you can do it alone. He will come to us every single time we ask, and He will wait for you at the door. He has already said so in Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

I may slay the dragon I am facing now. I may not, I’m not sure, but what I do know is no matter how many times I fail, the Lord will help me back to my feet. He will be with me along the wicked path of life, trying to pull me ever closer to Him. He will be my sword and my shield if I allow Him to do so.

It is I who have to follow close to Him. It is I who have to stay on the right path, but far too often out of my childish ways, I wandered into the dark to fight dragons because I want to be the hero. (I will write another letter to you about what I mean on the matter of wanting to be the hero, but if I do so now, then we will be there all day.) Only to be wounded and broken, calling for the Lord to rescue me. He will not fail to do so every time I cry for Him. He will always come running, but I have to call for Him.

How unfair, I can hear you saying. If the Lord knows I need help, then why not – what? Force the help onto me? Have you ever tried to help someone who does not want it? I have, and it ended very badly. The same can be said to the Lord. He could make me right, whole, and force me to love Him and stay on the right path, but that would take away so much of my love for Him. I would no longer be able to come to Him out of love freely.

You could put a gun to my head and force me to write this letter to you, but we both know this letter would be weak, dull, and at worse, pointless if you used the gun. By allowing me to sit down with my pen to write to you with passion, I hope my words dip with love.

Someone could force someone else to love them, but we would call that wrong and rightfully so. Love by its nature must be freely given. The Lord is merely waiting for us to call upon Him. He is already at the door, we just have to open it, and we have to keep it open for Him. Love might have been freely given, but it also means you have to work at it, like any relationship. 

The dragons are going to come. They might even be more enraged when they see you or I are with the Lord. I genuinely do believe sin becomes harder to avoid the more you become closer to the Lord. For many reasons, I would say, but the few I can put forth here will be the fact our nature as sinners do not go away, we still want to sin. I sat want the drink even though I know it is wrong of me to do so. I can now see the wrongness of actions clearly, but that does not take away the fact I want to do them. My mother may say I can only have one cookie, but the dragon in me longs for more and giving into the dragon, as I’m sure you know, is quite fun. It is why we hold people of faith to such a high bar of morality, but it doesn’t make it any easier to reach the bar.

Because we are foul creatures, we will fail in trying to be perfectly good. Or we will fail in trying to slay the dragon alone. We need help. We need more than ourselves to be able to defeat the dragon. And maybe, we don’t defeat those dragons. Perhaps, we become wounded fighting them; either way, the Lord will come to help us.

I’m sure you might ask yourself how does someone like me, who doesn’t believe in God, take anything from all my words on the Lord. Well, first, I hope you do find the Lord one day, and then my words will carry with them even more weight. But if that day never comes, then I hope you see that whatever dragons you are facing, you can’t do so alone. I hope and pray you reach out to someone to help you in those battles. Most of all, I hope you do not keep feeding those dragons, and if you do, if you fail somedays to stop them, forgiveness is still there for you.

With a tip of the hat,

Chase

    

P.S. After re-reading and editing this letter, I have noticed something else. The treasure is a blessing given to us by the Lord, but that blessing has pulled the heroes from Him. God, I believe, will never allow you to keep any blessing He gives you if it pulls you from Him. I do wish to elaborate more on this topic, but that will be a future letter down the road.