Apparently the subject of temptation makes people uncomfortable. When we sent out 500 questionnaires to our readers asking about their greatest temptation, less than 6 percent responded. Usually 30 percent return our surveys.
For those who did respond, the familiar problems surfaced: sexual temptations headed the list (41 percent), followed by the temptation to quit (30 percent), ambition (22 percent), and money (7 percent).
The small response, however, raised a question—is temptation too painful to discuss? Most agree that morbid attention to weaknesses can be destructive. Someone once said that temptations are like tramps. Treat them kindly and they return, bringing others with them.
Yet the Bible teaches that we should confess our sins one to another. And the advice usually given on how to cope with temptation—to focus more clearly on Jesus—works. As one reader noted on his survey, “My most successful antidote to temptation’s fever has been a regular discipline of prayer and Scripture study.” It’s not as if we’re dealing with an impossible problem—just a very difficult one.
Perhaps we’re reluctant to discuss temptation with each other because we know how to deal with this powerful and universal force but still don’t do it. That makes us feel powerless. Even if we’ve conquered most of the big areas of sin in our lives, tucked away in one corner is an area where we regularly fail. We know we should give it up to the Lord, but we don’t.
One of the things that makes discussion more palatable is to understand the reason for temptation’s strength and universality. Its source, of course, is Satan. But the fact that we can be tempted and that the desire is so strong is because we’re human beings created in God’s image.
Animals aren’t tempted. As Mark Twain once noted, “Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to.” The uniqueness of being human rests in our ability to choose between good and evil. Everyone is tempted—God created us with the capacity for moral choice.
But God also created us with a natural desire to fellowship with him. Theologians tell us we all have the imago dei, the image of God in us. Because we’re made in God’s image, we have a very strong desire to know God.
Although this desire is very strong, it’s rarely pure. It is this desire Satan perverts for his own evil ends. Subconsciously at least, we seek God in the beauty of creation, in other human beings, in our religious observances. He is present in each of these things.
But instead of patiently enjoying the beauties of the world, its people, and the Church, waiting for God’s grace to fill our desire, we attempt to possess the eternal. Eve, in a paradigm of all desire turned sour, ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge instead of gazing at it in awe. We have followed in her footsteps. Instead of seeking the image of God in other people, we play power games with them. Our sexual unions, without God as the unifier, are sophisticated exploitations. Wealth accumulated out of insecurity is an attempt to dominate the material world. The wealthy of the world buy nature; St. Francis found God there.
The positive side of temptation is that our powerful desire to sin could be an equally powerful longing for Christ if let God direct it. The tragedy is that our activity-controlled attitudes demand we do something to satisfy our temptations, either by succumbing or mightily waging moral war against them, instead of letting God take control.
Seen in this light, the Bible’s advice to “watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation” (Matt. 26:41) becomes not only intellectually but emotionally satisfying. Suddenly all the advice makes sense:
The cynical Mark Twain: “There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.”
The moral essayist Walter Bagehot: “It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.”
Instead of mere palliatives, these become helpful reminders that tempting desire has a good source and needs not to be squelched but redirected toward God.
Early in his massive systematic theology, Thomas Aquinas says that “the road that stretches before the feet of a man is a challenge to his heart long before it tests the strength of his legs.” We must decide our single goal in life is to become more Christlike before God can begin to use the very temptations that fell so many to shape our lives in his image.
Everett Fullman tells the story of the rock collector who polished his treasures in a rotating machine that jumbled the nuggets together until the rough edges were worn smooth. Someone asked the collector, “How do you know when a rock’s been polished enough?” “When I can see my reflection in it,” he answered.
God uses temptation the same way. He lets us be tempted in certain areas of our life until he can see his reflection. Then the testing is complete. We desire God alone.
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