The Good Book

by Peter J. Gomes

  Temptations and the Sensible Soul

  Temptations to evil and wickedness are understandable. Faustian bargains with their Baroque entreaties and Gothic deals are the stuff of which moral melodrama is composed. Familiarity with the idiom tempts us to believe that we will recognize such dangers when we see them, and that we will also take appropriate measures. We sympathize with the remark of Mae West, who said, “I was pure as the driven snow until I drifted.” We smile because we think we know better, but what about those temptations that seduce on behalf not of evil but of good? What about those temptations that do not, at first, tempt our self-indulgence but rather our sensibility for the good? I suggest that more people are subject to temptation in an effort to do good than they are in pursuit of pure evil or pleasure. Temptation masquerades most cleverly in areas of moral ambiguity where good people can be tempted either to do good things for the wrong reason, or bad things for a good and high purpose. Self-deception, pride, and moral ambition are the means whereby temptation engages the soul, and in the name of virtue vice is given aid and comfort. Thus temptation appeals most particularly to those who would think of themselves as good, and who pursue the good as a goal they themselves are capable of bringing to pass.

  Temptation thus appeals to moral vanity. Goodness is inevitably the host for the parasitical temptation, and thus goodness must be constantly addressed and challenged. When people ask why preachers waste their time on the people in their pews, “preaching to the converted” or “preaching to the choir,” they fail to understand that it is those who aspire to goodness who most need to be reminded of and protected against the dangers of the moral ambiguity that is the seed of temptation. Those who are in church are like those who are in a hospital; they are not there because they are specimens of virtue or health. They are there because they know their needs. Hospitals are not healthier places than other places, but in the hospital the weapons to fight the illness are ready to hand. So too is it with the church.

  This is the context and these are the considerations that compel our attention when we look at the famous series of temptations with which Jesus is confronted at the beginning of his ministry, encounters recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The prominence given to these temptation stories suggests that their themes and concerns are of high value to the communities of believers in Jesus. These encounters with temptation at the start of the public ministry are also meant to describe the persistence and perversity of temptation in the life of Jesus, and in the life of all those who would aspire to godliness and the good life. The nearer one lives in proximity to God, contrary to our expectations, the greater is the influence of temptation.

  This paradox is driven home by the placement of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness to his baptism. Baptism is seen as the high point of one’s spiritual life, the cleansing of the stain of sin, the washing away of the claims of the lower life upon the higher. Some even think of baptism as an innoculation against sin and temptation. Thus it is something of an irony that Jesus is tempted immediately after baptism and not before it. The temptations are not a form of hazing before he is allowed to enter the fraternity of the holy and good life. Quite the contrary. The temptations in some very real sense are the consequences of a life set apart for goodness and God’s will. That is why they follow directly upon that moment of consecration and dedication; there is no one more desirable to Satan, more susceptible to Satan, than the one who has just given his or her life to God. Jesus and his temptations remind us that the good life is the context of the ultimate struggle with evil. I am convinced that this construction of these episodes in the early ministry of Jesus is no accident, no mere formal chronology. The gospel writers have an acute instinct for those situations that help animate Jesus’ investment in the realities of the moral life in the real world. No Olympian recluse, Jesus must be seen to be engaged with the real forces of this world that argue for evil and that appeal to the best in people in order to seduce them into bondage to that very evil.

  It is not only proximity that makes this case, however, but the very nature of the temptations themselves that reveals the subtlety of those forces for evil that would lay siege to the soul. We recall that subtlety was the chief characteristic of the serpent in the account of Adam and Eve, and the uncanny ability to appeal to the desire and curiosity of the human being; and we get it wrong again if we focus all our attention in the temptation story of Jesus on his ability to withstand and overcome Satan. We like moral winners, and we expect Jesus to win, and applaud when he does, but the point here is not so much the victory of Jesus, real as it is. The point ought to be the reasonableness of the temptations themselves and the craft with which they are offered. It is no longer Jesus who will be subjected to these blandishments but his followers and successors, among whom are to be counted ourselves. We have much more in common with hapless Adam and Eve than with Jesus, in coping with the artful deceptions of that chief deluder, Satan. Thus we should pay attention to the Satanic strategy, the appeal to our better instincts, the manipulations of what the Book of Common Prayer calls “the devices and desires of our own hearts,” which alone are not sufficient to wage moral combat against temptation.

  The three temptations that Satan places before Jesus in the wilderness appeal to three ideals of the good life to which Jesus and all who would follow him in holiness would ordinarily be attracted. These ideals are spirituality, power, and faith. What religious person would be immune to the divine possibilities for good and goodness inherent in each of these qualities? Who has not yearned after one or all of them? Who could not use any or all of these to enormous benefit for the well-being of the world? The religious aspirant, the soul-sensitive man or woman, is not easily bought with silver or gold, or the glittering prizes of earthly success, but who can resist the moral allure of spirituality, power, and faith, all to be used, of course, in the service of God and in the help of the people of God? We must give Satan the highest possible marks for recognizing these admirable qualities as our points of vulnerability rather than of strength. Appealing to these demonstrates that Satan knows us better than we know ourselves, and certainly better than we know him. It is this point, I believe, that the gospel writers are at pains to demonstrate to us for our good, and the temptation of Jesus at each of these points is their means to do it.

  Spiritual Pride: The Door to Destruction

  Is it fair to regard the first temptation, the invitation to turn stones into bread, as an exercise in spiritual pride? I think that it is, but we must consider the context of that temptation in order to make the case. Luke sets the stage: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry.” (Luke 4:1–2) Jesus is on a spiritual retreat, disciplining his soul, mortifying the flesh so that the spirit housed within it can flourish. His first temptation occurs at the conclusion of this season of acute loneliness, physical hunger, and spiritual tension. All of the senses are on edge; Jesus is a moral athlete at the height of his training, and as all who have ever attempted a season of intense training—physical, spiritual, or intellectual—realize, the demons that one attempts to monitor, control, and indeed overcome do not diminish in their ferocity as one develops more skills to cope with them. No. Like a deadly cancer they develop new resources to combat our vaccines and develop new and frightening resistances to our cures. Evil, like cancer, does have a mind, a will, and a strategy, and temptation is the maneuvering device that doesn’t stay still or in the same place long enough for our cumulative resistance to have any useful effect. Thus, at the end of his temptation—and the gospel is clear that these temptations occur at the end rather than at the beginning of the fast—Jesus is more rather than less susceptible to the wiles of the Tempter.

  Spiritual pride suggests that if we practice and study, and keep steady in our moral diet and regimen, we will be equal to any force tha
t comes our way. Infected as we are by the doctrine that more is better, and by the athletic metaphors that suggest that when a ninety-pound weakling pumps up and beefs out, he will then be able to whip the bully who had heretofore intimidated and humiliated him, we think that when we are strong spirtually and physically we are invulnerable to attack. It is that very conceit that Satan uses against us, like the tactic of using your enemy’s superior weight against him in a wrestling match.

  Satan invites Jesus, in his physical hunger, to turn stones into bread. The first level of inquiry would suggest that this is little more than asking Jesus to satisfy his own need for nourishment by performing a harmless and useful trick. Satan is asking Jesus to prove that he has attained the spiritual wherewithal to solve a simple problem: “If you are the Son of God” is the taunting bait that Satan uses here. In other words, if you are who you say you are, and if your God is really who you say he is, and if your spiritual exercises have had any effect, prove it by this simple demonstration.

  Spiritual pride would easily tempt us to respond in kind; it would be to the honor of God, a demonstration of spiritual superiority, and an appropriate rebuke to an audacious doubter who by the performance of this action should be won over to the faith. Christians are always eager to prove that “my God is bigger than yours,” and spirituality, that benighted buzzword of the late twentieth century, tempts us so often to play such games. The amateur martial-arts student is always susceptible to the vanity of smashing a plank or a pile of bricks to prove to doubting onlookers that his years of practice and discipline have paid off, and that his deprivations have been rewarded by a new and terrifying skill. The onlookers will be impressed by such a display of power, and the reputation of the would-be Karate Kid will be forever established by a single blow or kick. Scholars of the martial arts, however, remind us that the skills of karate and the other disciplines are not meant to be displayed as parlor tricks or mere entertainment. These skills are only to be employed when necessary, and in fact, their greatest power lies in their potential. Those who are powerful in these dangerous arts are so because of their capacity for deterrence rather than for their mere demonstration.

  Spirituality is an attitude, not a set of actions designed to impress the otherwise unedified, but the spiritually immature are those who are easily tempted to “prove” their new skills and to test them out, “kicking the tires” of the soul, so to speak. It is in those moments that spirituality can so easily be abused and manipulated. Jesus is not prepared to squander the spiritual gifts he has cultivated in the wilderness simply to impress Satan or to prove the validity of that gift to his skeptical antagonist. He is unwilling to play the game of “Gotcha!” just for the momentary satisfaction of winning, for to do so is to play Satan’s game by Satan’s rules.

  Most of us would not be able to resist that offer, however, and for the best of reasons—“our” God is on our side, and we can prove it. Then, while giving God the glory, we take what really counts in the game, the credit; and people will see our piety, our morality, and our superior spirituality, and admire us for it. This first temptation is meant to remind us that spirituality is a matter of substance and not of signs. Satan and the world require signs, proofs, incontestable evidence that we and our God can deliver the goods, and we are sorely tempted to provide these proofs and signs to confound the bullies of this world.

  If Only I Had the Power, Then I Would Do Good

  Religious people in general, and Christians in particular, feel powerless in their religion because they do not feel that they have a power that the world takes seriously. Thus, religious people want to be taken seriously by the world and so they seek after power, and it is in this ambition for power in the world that Satan makes use of religious people. The second temptation of Jesus is an exercise in the temptation of power wrapped in the chameleon desire to do good and on such a massive scale that the world will have to take notice.

  “And the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, To you I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, shall worship me, it shall all be yours.’ ” (Luke 4:5–7) This is how the second temptation is introduced. Classical commentators have often seized upon the Devil’s presumption in claiming the kingdoms of this world as his own. He is promising to give away that which does not belong to him, and so his promise is based upon a lie. That is true, but that is also the easy way out. The kingdoms of this world may in fact not belong to Satan, but it is an ancient principle of the common law that possession is nine tenths of the law, and to all intents and purposes the Devil seems much in possession of the kingdoms of this world. He may not be the lawful owner or the landlord, but he is a very effective squatter, and there is little realistic doubt of his ability to deliver worldly power to whom he will. He has had remarkable success in this transaction to date, and so appeals to legal pieties are neither helpful nor persuasive.

  What this really is about is trafficking in the tempting power of power, which in the minds of the faithful in all places and in all ages would be a preemptive strike for virtue and goodness. Think about how much time and effort would be saved on the part of the righteous if they could command goodness and orchestrate secular power in its behalf. We should remember the irony of Satan’s proposition here in Luke’s gospel. Those who first read it, the dispersed and defeated followers of a Lord whose kingdom was not of and not intended for this world, would have found the notion of a powerful religious state, Christian or Jewish, laughable. What Satan was offering Jesus was nothing that any follower of Jesus would want. It is only after the formation of a stable cultural and political force in a world not yet dissolved in favor of the kingdom of heaven that this second temptation in fact becomes tempting.

  The record is not encouraging. The Holy Roman Empire was never a good example of either statecraft or of Christianity, and the modern efforts at theocracy, whether in Calvin’s Geneva or in Oliver Cromwell’s England, proved equally venial. The Puritan oligarchs of New England gave it a good try in the seventeenth century, but it became pretty clear that religion and power do not mix well, particularly when religion has the power. In contemporary America, despite the Bible’s chary attitude toward the state, many Christians cultivate civil and political power in order to exercise a biblical rule over the state. Power to do good and thereby to compel a more just and moral society is the kind of theocratic illusion that has always proved such a tempting ambition to religious fundamentalists who, in the name of God, would seize power to compel others to righteousness. The English and New English Puritans of the seventeenth century, the Islamic fundamentalists, and the American Christian Coalition, among other religious constituencies, have all flirted with the seductions of power, all for very good and high-sounding reasons, and all with questionable, even dangerous consequences not simply for the secular order but for the proponents of this power themselves. Lord Action’s famous dictum on power’s capacity to corrupt is absolutely true, and when such power is compounded with a sense of moral purity and absolutism, the corrosive force on those who possess and wield such power is utterly corrupting, because virtue and the capacity to compel are neither the same thing nor necessarily complementary. Not to know that is to be subject to the one who does, and that is Satan. This is the lesson that Jesus teaches when he rejects the power Satan so wantonly offers him in the second temptation. The temptation to do good with that power simply is not good enough.

  To Tempt God Is Not Faith, but Sin

  The third temptation is little more than a naked abuse of faith, turning a virtue into a vice. To believe that God can do anything is one thing; to ask God to do something to see if God can do anything is an abuse of belief, a testing of God. That is not faith, that is sin. Satan wants two things here: He wants Jesus to prove his own belief in God, and he wants God to prove that God is God. Thus, he invites Jesus to throw himself down from the tower of
the Temple. If Jesus believes in the goodness of God he will not be afraid to risk his own life in this seemingly suicidal act; and if God is good, the good God will not allow Jesus in his swan dive from the tower to come to any harm. From Satan’s point of view, the added incentive to this heroic gesture would be to witness to Satan the ultimacy of one’s faith in God. Like the appeal to power, and the earlier one to spirituality, this appeal to faith encourages a dramatic shortcut in the tedious journey of moral perfection. Satan offers these racy, bottom-line opportunities, and they are tempting because they offer in an instant what it would take a lifetime to accomplish through preaching and teaching disciplined evangelism and slow, steady spiritual growth. That is the lure of the get-rich-quick schemes, and that is why the unwary are so susceptible to them.

  To tempt God, for this is what Jesus rightly charges Satan with attempting to do, is not an exercise in faith but rather in doubt. It is to put God to the test, and to make God satisfy our need for satisfaction and reassurance, thus subordinating God to a human agenda. For any believer in God this is an unacceptable consideration. This makes the Creator the agent of the creature, when faith maintains that it is just the other way around. Faith thus manipulated by a subtle tempter and a needy believer becomes an abuse of confidence in the divine rather than an expression of it, and the abuser is revealed to be a creature of anxiety rather than of faith. Tempting God then is to try to get God to act in such a way as to satisfy our agenda. Certain Christians in the mountains of Tennessee who practice the rites of snake handling do so as a testimonial to the power of their faith in God, God’s faith in them, and their faith in the Bible. Acting upon their reading of Mark 16:18, “They will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them,” they incorporate into their worship the handling of poisonous snakes. The theory is that God will not allow them to be bitten. The fact of the matter is that many of them are bitten, and die from their wounds. To many, the handling of snakes in such a fashion, due respect to cultural diversity and sensitivity notwithstanding, is more foolishness than faith, and is the sort of thing against which Jesus rebuked Satan when in this third temptation to manipulate faith, he said, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”