Spiritual Cement Shoes Brandon Buil “God describes sin as a weighted trap. We must all be careful not to let it drag us down.”
G rowing up, I used to watch old black-and-white gangster films with my father. We often watched James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson or Humphrey Bogart try to evade the authorities or seek revenge for a wrong. In some of those films I learned about the gruesome ways fictional gangsters disposed of their enemies. One such method was known as “cement shoes” or “con- crete shoes.” In the movies, mobsters would en- case a victim’s feet in concrete and throw him into the ocean or a lake. The weight of the cement was de- signed to be so overwhelming that it dragged the victim down until he grew tired and eventually surren- dered to the dark depths. It’s a brutal reminder of the cruelty human be- ings can inflict on one another. Biblical Parallels The Bible speaks of a similar dan- ger for Christians, one that can si- lently form around our own feet if we are not careful. Hebrews 12:1 tells us: Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us Here, sin is clearly identified as a weight—a burden God’s people
must cast aside if they hope to finish the race of their Christian calling. Lamentations 1:14 describes the crushing consequences of sin: The yoke of my transgressions was bound; They were woven together by His hands, And thrust upon my neck. He made my strength fail; The Lord delivered me into the hands of those whom I am not able to withstand. Christ [took] upon Himself the weight of the cement shoes that would drag us into the deep abyss. The Bible shows sin to be an ev- er-tightening yoke, a form of bond- age. Like those fictional cement shoes, sin weighs people down, brings pain, worry and punishment, restricts mankind in every way, and if left unchecked eventually drowns people.
Satan the devil—the god of this world and the author of sin— wants everyone to surrender to that weight. He wants to strip away the future God promises to His peo- ple. He wants us to crack under the pressure, to stop resisting, and to become so overloaded with sin that we finally sink beneath it. Resist The World Part of Satan’s strategy is to cre- ate a world perfectly designed to get those “cement shoes” fastened around our feet. Turn on the television and you’ll see sin, often several forms. Stream music or a podcast and you’ll hear sin. Start a conversation with a classmate or co-worker and foul language quickly appears. God’s name is often taken in vain as a throwaway expression.
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