Every year I develop a reading plan. As some of you know, I try to read two books a week. Typically I am busy reading one book that relates to my current ministry research – whether it is a commentary on the book of the Bible I am preaching through or a collection of essays on Paul, etc… The other book is usually either written by or about some figure from church history who I adopt for the year in order to let them minister to me. This has allowed me to get to know folks ranging from Augustine and Anselm to Spurgeon and Moody – and all have blessed me in my pilgrimage.
This year, in part because I wanted to ease into my reading regimen after my brain-mushing surgery, I chose to use that second book slot to revisit the great works of fiction that were once considered a western literary canon of sorts. And so I have reintroduced myself to everything from Aesop’s Fables to Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, in which Mr. Toad figures prominently.
In reading about the adventures of Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger, I stumbled upon one of the most insightful descriptions of addiction that I have ever read. It concerns Mr. Toad, who has become addicted to the feeling of racing about in motor cars – generally crashing them, destroying property and disregarding laws in the process. His friends (the aforementioned creatures) have intervened and restrained him. He escapes their care and enters an Inn where he orders lunch…
“He was about half way through his meal when an only too familiar sound, approaching down the street, made him start and fall a-trembling all over. The poop-poop! drew nearer and nearer, the car could be heard to turn into the inn-yard and come to a stop, and Toad had to hold on to the leg of the table to conceal his over-mastering emotion. Presently the party entered the coffee-room, hungry, talkative, and gay, voluble on their experiences of the morning and the merits of the chariot that had brought them along so well. Toad listened eagerly, all ears, for a time; at last he could stand it no longer. He slipped out of the room quietly, paid his bill at the bar, and as soon as he got outside sauntered round quietly to the inn-yard. “There cannot be any harm,” he said to himself, “in my only just looking at it!”
The car stood in the middle of the yard, quite unattended, the stable-helps and other hangers-on being all at their dinner. Toad walked slowly round it, inspecting, criticizing, musing deeply.
“I wonder” he said to himself presently, “I wonder if this sort of car starts easily?”
Next moment, hardly knowing how it came about, he found he had hold of the handle and was turning it. As the familiar sound broke forth, the old passion seized on Toad and completely mastered him, body and soul. As if in a dream he found himself, somehow, seated in the driver’s seat; as if in a dream, he pulled the lever and swung the car round the yard and out through the archway; and, as if in a dream, all sense of right and wrong, all fear of obvious consequences, seemed temporarily suspended. He increased his pace, and as the car devoured the street and leapt forth on the high road through the open country, he was only conscious that he was Toad once more, Toad at his best and highest, Toad the terror, the traffic-queller, the Lord of the lone trail, before whom all must give way or be smitten into nothingness and everlasting night.”[1]
Consider for a moment what the Scriptures teach about sin in James 1:14-15: “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
Two things are essential to note in this description of temptation’s power. At first, as free moral agents we are active and sin is passive. It is “our desires” that begin the process. But then the script flips and the temptation/sin becomes active and we are passive. We are “dragged away…”
Whenever we encounter the Mr. Toads in our life – whether we see them in the bathroom mirror, around our dinner table, at our workplaces, in our neighborhood – and especially in our churches, it is critical that we remember these two things and remind ourselves that we and the addicts we love are both perpetrators and victims of the temptations that have over-mastered us. Mr. Toad goes from making decisions to being completely and utterly owned by his addiction. The same thing happens to us.
Kenneth Grahame understood addiction. His father was an alcoholic – his addiction was such that he was in and out of his son’s life and Kenneth was raised by his mother, his grandmother, and his uncle (who happened to be an Anglican clergyman). Grahame writes from his observations and experiences of the power of temptation and sin in the life of the best and most loved of us. Take some time to reread The Wind in the Willows for yourself to see how it all ends for Mr. Toad. But, far more importantly, take some time to read God’s Word and be sure that by his grace it ends well for you and those you love.
Your Pastor,
Bob Bjerkaas
[1] The edition I have been reading is: Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., 2017), pp. 97-98. The bold words are italicized in Grahame’s original.