Prose

When I was a little boy, I had a habit of browsing my elder brothers’ textbooks to look for anything interesting to read. I remember seeing a drawing of a dog in one of those textbooks. The dog had a bone clamped in its mouth as it stares at its reflection through a probably deep river. Under the picture was a popular saying that says “Curiosity killed the dog.” (Well, something’s got to be wrong with that book. The proverb should say “Curiosity killed the CAT”, not the dog. Plus, the picture is based on a fable by Aesop, not on that proverb.)
 
For some decades, that saying had been well known and believed in by most people. And for this reason, most people blame curiosity for causing fatal mishaps to their lives. One lung cancer patient said, “It was just out of curiosity that I tried my first stick [of cigarette]. And now, it’s ruined my life.” One teenage girl victimized by human trafficking and prostitution said, “I was offered a job to become a model. I was just so curious about how it feels become one. So, I took the offer and was deceived.” These two people have different stories but they have one thing in common: blaming curiosity for ruining their lives. The same goes with people of similar stories. Those stories made me think and ask, “Was it really curiosity that killed the dog?”
 
These thoughts came out of my mind while I was reading the whole third chapter of Genesis. This chapter narrates the account of the fall of man. It tells us how Eve was tempted and deceived by the serpent to disobey God’s instruction – to not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge between good and evil. She was told that eating that fruit can make one wise enough to become a deity. And so “when [Eve] saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate…” (Genesis 3:6, English Standard Version). If you are a believer of the mentioned saying, you would have probably thought, “For sure Eve was just being curious about how the fruit tastes and whether God was on His mind or not when He said ‘Don’t eat it!’” But can we really blame curiosity for things like this?
 
I came to realize that curiosity shouldn’t be blamed for anything. First of all, curiosity isn’t evil. In fact, it has provided a way for solving many scientific problems. Remember that it is by asking questions “I wonder what…?” or “I wonder why…?” or “I wonder how…?” that a scientist starts to solve an identified problem. And so, we have the advances in science, technology and medicine that made life easy for many people. It is also through curiosity that a child learns about important things in life. Curiosity can also start a friendship when a person begins to ask “I wonder how it feels to be on the shoes of that person.” And if I might add, our church sometimes “uses” the curiosity of many people to draw their attention for evangelism. Plus you are reading this article probably because you were curious about what is it with the title.
 
So what could have killed the dog if it wasn’t curiosity? I believe that it was the looseness of the dog that killed it. Why? First of all, if the dog was bound to its master, the rope or the chain that should have held its neck will keep it from jumping into the river. Or, if the dog didn’t strayed from its master, it couldn’t have ended up straying to the riverbank. Or maybe the dog didn’t have a master to follow at the first place. If that’s the case, then it would have been safe if it had one.
 
The same explanation can be applied to the case of Eve. It wasn’t her curiosity that brought trouble to her. Rather, it was her “looseness” – that is to say, her unwillingness to follow God’s instruction – by which she gave in to the trap. Desiring to become as wise as God and thus become independent from Him, she bought to the deception of Satan. Instead of simply trusting God and submitting to His word, she became wise in her own eyes. And that is what we all can become. We all have the tendency to desire independence from anyone, even from God. We all wanted to do things in our own ways, thinking that we are doing the right thing. It is as if we’re saying that we are right and God is wrong. In other words, we all have desired to be “liberated.” And for this kind of “liberty”, many lives ended up being ruined just like that of the “curious” dog.
 
Proverbs 16:25 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death (ESV).” That is why the Lord Jesus Christ told us to “enter the narrow gate… that leads” few people “to life” rather than “the wide gate… that leads” many “to destruction.” (Matthew 7:13-14, ESV). Don’t just follow your heart, for your heart can deceive you (Jeremiah 17:9). Instead, “trust the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding… [Not being] wise in your own eyes, [but fearing] the LORD and [turning] away from evil.” – Proverbs 3:5 & 7, ESV
 
-       Yehoshua ben Peleh Shim’onai :D