RUN!

KITTEN OR KILLER? On September 30, 2003, 33-year-old Antoine Yates was attacked by a 425-pound Siberian Bengal tiger, an apex predator known for its strength, stealth, and ability to kill. The tiger’s jaws gripped him by the neck, then his arm, then clamped on Yates’ knee, his fangs leaving gaping gashes and gushing wounds. Somehow Yates scrambled away from the beast and had the clarity of mind to call 911. When NYPD officers arrived, they found Yates lying face-up, screaming and crying in pain. His right forearm had been torn open by fangs and claws, and the gash on his right leg was so deep that it exposed the whiteness of his bone beneath. They rushed him to the hospital and after a few days of treatment and recovery, Antoine was released, miraculously escaping the ordeal with his life, and his limbs still intact. What’s more shocking than Antoine’s survival was the location of the attack. Had Yates jumped into the tiger enclosure at the zoo or taken a solo trek through a Nepali forest, carnage would be expected, but this time, the human wasn’t in the tiger’s domain… the tiger was in his. Antoine returned home from the grocery store on that fateful Tuesday, climbing the stairs to his apartment in the Bronx, New York. As he inserted his keys and unlocked the door to his fifth floor apartment, the door swung open to a hungry tiger standing in his living room. How could this happen? Antoine had let the tiger in. Three years prior, Antoine went to the BEARCAT Hollow Animal Park in Racine, Minnesota, where he purchased a cute, cuddly eight-week-old tiger cub that he affectionately named “Ming.” Antoine brought this natural born predator into his home, and allowed the quickly growing tiger to sleep in his bed. He played with Ming and made daily runs to the local grocery store to feed its ever-intensifying voracious appetite. Yates later described his relationship with Ming like “having a dog,” and even said Ming was like his brother or his best friend. The once cuddly cub transformed into the king of cats, eventually consuming twenty pounds of raw chicken every single day. While his neighbors and the local grocers theorized about Antoine’s ever-expanding diet of chicken, most people would have never guessed what was lurking on the other side of his apartment door. The kitten was now a killer. As first responders descended on the location, they zeroed in on Yates’ apartment. The only way in required an officer to rappel down the side of the apartment building to tranquilize the tiger through an open window. It took five officers to carry the limp tiger’s body down the stairs and out of the building, where he was rehomed at an animal sanctuary to live out the rest of his days. After they gave Antoine time to recover in the hospital, he was arrested and faced up to seven years in prison for reckless endangerment. He took a plea deal and served only five months. Some would say he got off easy. *** While you probably don’t have a tiger in your living room, you may have allowed a predator into your life via an addiction in your refrigerator or a fatal attraction in your marriage. Or maybe, like Antoine, you’ve let it sleep in your bed. Whether it’s a drink, a relationship, a website, or something else, it started the same way Ming did: small, fun, and seemingly manageable. But what you feed grows. If you don’t work to get a handle on your problem now, soon you too will have a monster on your hands. Nobody wakes up one day planning to become a raging, abusive alcoholic or an unfaithful adulterer who fractures their family and destroys their legacy. This is why Ephesians 5:3 warns that there “must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people,” because life-altering sin starts as just a whisper… or a cub. In a counseling room, there are two sides of the conversation. I’ve been on both sides. As a pastor, I’ve sat for hours with crying spouses, fractured families, and broken addicts, as they questioned how they got there and wondered if they would be able to get out. As a former addict, I’ve also been on the other side. I’ve done things and lived in ways that hurt me and those closest to me. I too have wondered if what I had done could ever be remedied. As Yates later acknowledged about his fixation with dangerous exotic animals, “It’s like playing a game of Russian Roulette. Put a bullet in it, spin it and click it.” Or as King Solomon wrote, “Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished.” Flirting with sin is playing with fire. Pain and destruction are inevitable.