John 17:15
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.
The other day Sydney came running into the kitchen holding up 2 slices of bacon. That alone caught my attention because I wasn’t sure where she’d gotten the bacon and I was even more unsure of why I didn’t have any. 
But, I digress. As I was looking at her, she asked me matter-of-factly if I knew how to feed a piranha. Now, I don’t know what kinds of things happen to you during the course of a normal day, but being asked if I know how to feed piranhas by a five year-old standing in my kitchen holding 2 slices of bacon isn’t one of those things. This was – even for my reality – WAY out of the norm.
“No,” I replied. “How?”
“You drop the bacon in the water where the piranhas are and then you run!” She stood there, watching me, all the time knowing that I needed to know more, even if I didn’t ask. “If you hold the bacon down for them to eat it,” she continued, “they’ll eat the bacon and your fingers all the way to the bone!!” That, she decided, completed the piranha-feeding course, so she turned and walked out while eating her bacon. She left me amazed, wondering how she’d gained such knowledge and still unsure about why I didn’t have any bacon.
She also left me thinking about church and culture and how so often the way they interact is a lot like feeding piranhas. Seems like the only options we see are the “drop the gospel and run” approach or the “get so close while we’re giving them the gospel that we end up losing ourselves in it” approach. How many well-meaning believers have ignored people who need Jesus because they’re afraid they might “eat the bacon and your fingers all the way to the bone?” And so we hide away, safe in our “fellowship groups” and never see the people who Jesus died to reach.
Of course, the other extreme happens, too. We get too close, not realizing the danger that could be waiting for us, and we get eaten up by the sin in the culture and the world. Usually, it’s because we are already eaten up on the inside with the same sins, and haven’t dealt with them on a personal level. You’ve got to wonder why Jesus gave bacon to piranhas and never pulled back a nub, and the answer has to include the fact that His heart was pure. The question is whether ours are.
Tough things to think about, especially in a short format like this, but we must think it through, right? After all, we are called to feed piranhas, aren’t we? Jesus never prayed that God would take His disciples – then or now – out of the world, but that God would protect them from the piranhas (the evil one working in the world) as they lived for Him in the culture. God’s plan for our protection? That our hearts would be set apart from the evil in culture, not that our lives would be (see verse 17).
So grab some bacon. It’s time to feed some piranhas.
