"Wasn't Dr. Franklin's message scary last night?" asked Kathy with a shiver. She and her brother Kevin had heard a missionary speaker at their church tell about heathen practices of black magic, voodoo, and Satan worship.

"Yeah-creepy!" Kevin replied as they went out to play. "I'd sure hate to meet one of those witch doctor guys in a dark alley."

Soon, the children came bursting back into the house. "Dad!" shouted Kathy as her brother held out a stick with a large green caterpillar on it. "Look at this thing. It looks like it has great big eyes and an ugly monster face!"

Dad looked up from his newspaper. He smiled as he looked at the caterpillar. "He does look rather scary, doesn't he?" he said. "But don't let that 'monster face' fool you. Actually, it's not a face at all-just a pattern of markings. I've read that he's designed that way to scare away any bird who might want to eat him. His real head is on the other end. See?"

Kathy laughed as they peered at the caterpillar. "So he looks like a monster, but he's really just a harmless worm," she said.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Dad said. "If enough of these got into our garden, they could do a lot of damage. So he is dangerous, but not in the way you thought." Then Dad added, "You know, Satan is like this caterpillar-he has two sides, too."

"What do you mean, Dad?" asked Kevin.

"Well, last night we heard about what we might call the 'scary' side of Satan, causing people to commit sins like witchcraft and magic spells," Dad explained. "That side of Satan is very dangerous, and we sometimes tend to think that if those things aren't happening in our own neighborhood, we're safe from Satan's influence. But the main reason Satan is dangerous is because he tempts us to commit 'ordinary' sins-like lying, gossip, disobedience, pride, and unbelief. Don't be fooled, kids. Sin doesn't have to be 'scary' to be dangerous! It all leads us away from God."