Swimming With Alligators: The Warnings We Ignore and the Life We Were Made For

On July 2nd, 2015, a man named Tommy Woodward stepped out of a bar in Houston, Texas, into a warm summer night. He looked out over Adams Bayou, saw the moon reflecting off the water, and decided it was the perfect night for a swim. A bartender ran out to warn him. There was even a sign on the dock that read: no swimming, alligators. Tommy’s response was dismissive, defiant, and ultimately fatal. Within minutes, a ten-foot alligator pulled him under. He became the first person in 178 years of Texas state history to be killed by an alligator.

It is a tragic story. But it is also a deeply human one.

We do not listen well to warnings.

We drive with the check engine light on for months. We ignore the gas gauge until we are coasting on fumes. And when it comes to the most important warnings of all, the ones that concern our souls and our eternity, we are perhaps most dismissive of all. We shrug, we delay, we rationalize, and we keep swimming.

The twelfth chapter of the Gospel of John records the final public teaching of Jesus. It is the last time he would address a crowd before his crucifixion. And what he chose to say in that final address was a warning. Not a comfortable one. Not a feel-good send-off. A genuine, urgent, cry-it-from-the-rooftops warning about the dangers of unbelief and rejection.

The Lie That You Have Time

The passage opens with a striking detail. After delivering his warning, Jesus hid himself from the crowd. That image carries enormous weight. The prophet Isaiah wrote that we should seek the Lord while he may be found. There is an implied urgency in that phrase. Access is not permanent. Hearts that are repeatedly hardened do not stay neutral. They calcify. They close. And eventually, the voice of God that once felt near begins to feel very far away.

The lie that we can simply believe later, that there is always more time, is one of the most dangerous lies a person can tell themselves. Every time we push Jesus aside and say not right now, our hearts grow a little more resistant. A little more sealed. You do not know when your time will be up. None of us do. And the longer we wait, the more we risk arriving at a place where we can no longer hear what we once heard clearly.

The Lie That You Need a Miracle First

John 12:37 says that even though Jesus had performed so many miraculous signs, the people still did not believe. This should permanently put to rest the idea that evidence is what stands between a person and faith.

Pharaoh watched the Nile turn to blood, watched frogs and gnats and hail descend on Egypt, and hardened his heart every single time. The Israelites watched Elijah definitively demonstrate the power of God over the prophets of Baal, and went right back to worshiping Baal. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and the religious leaders responded by plotting to kill him.

The Bible is clear: faith comes by hearing the word of God, not by witnessing miracles. Jesus himself told a parable about a rich man in Hades who begged Abraham to send someone back from the dead to warn his family. Abraham’s response was sobering: if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. Unbelief is not an evidence problem. It is a heart problem.

The Lie That It Is God’s Fault

John 12:39-40 references the words of Isaiah, describing how God blinded eyes and hardened hearts. This is a difficult passage, and it deserves an honest response.

God’s foreknowledge of an outcome does not make him the cause of it. A parent who knows their child learning to ride a bike will eventually fall is not responsible for pushing them over. In the same way, God knowing that people would reject Christ does not mean he forced their rejection. What the Bible consistently shows is that God hardens those who have already, repeatedly, hardened themselves. Pharaoh hardened his own heart five times before the text records God hardening it. The pattern in Romans 1 is the same: when people persistently suppress the truth and push God away, he eventually gives them over to what they have chosen. This is called the passive wrath of God, and it is a sobering reality. It is not God being cruel. It is God honoring the choices of those who have made their rejection clear.

The Lie That Approval Is Worth More Than Truth

Perhaps the most quietly devastating warning in John 12 comes in verse 42. Many of the religious authorities believed in Jesus. They saw the signs, they understood the implications, they knew he was divine. But they did not confess it, because they feared being put out of the synagogue. The text says plainly: they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

They got it right in their minds and still chose wrong in their hearts.

When we anchor our identity in human approval, we become shapeshifters. We change our convictions depending on the room we are in. We exhaust ourselves trying to be whoever the crowd needs us to be. And no matter how much approval we collect, it never fills the deep ache inside us, because that ache was not designed to be filled by human applause. It was designed to be filled by the voice of God saying, you are mine.

The Light That Darkness Cannot Overcome

Against all of these warnings stands the most beautiful offer in human history. Jesus said in John 12:46 that he came into the world as light, so that whoever believes in him would not remain in darkness. The darkness he describes is real: enslavement to sinful desires, a life lived in foolishness, and a future without hope. But he came to reverse all of it.

He came to break the patterns that trap us. He came to replace foolishness with wisdom and despair with a radiant, unshakeable hope. He came not to judge but to save.

The warning is real. The alligators are real. But the dock is still there. The offer is still open. And the one extending it is crying out, not whispering, that it is not too late to get out of the water.