The Good Book

by Peter J. Gomes

  Beware Your Strong Points; They Are Spiritual Land Mines

  One of Saint Paul’s consistent themes is the danger of spiritual overconfidence, a form of moral arrogance that overestimates one’s own abilities and underestimates those of Satan. No moral shrinking violet himself, Paul certainly could speak with existential authority about the dangers of moral and spiritual self-confidence. He thought he knew all he needed to know and was beyond learning in piety and knowledge, a moral aristocrat; yet it was he who in his spiritual blindness was the zealous persecutor of the church of God. Saul, as he was before his conversion, was not just a spear carrier in the movement against the Christians; he was a self-promoting, ambitious agent of persecutions. He reminds one of those fanatical Jewish settlers in modern Israel who, so attuned to the righteousness of their cause, hear God’s instructions in their ears to murder those who stand in the way of their particular vision. Nothing less than a colossal clout on the head on the Damascus Road and a confrontation with the risen Christ was sufficient to get Saul’s attention, and to turn him from the persecutor of the church into the Apostle to the Gentiles.

  We are therefore to take his counsels on overconfidence and spiritual arrogance, the greatest temptations for all believers, seriously. In I Corinthians 10:12, he writes, “Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” He then goes on to a discussion of temptation, encouraging the faithful not to believe that they have been tempted any more than anyone else, for such a belief would itself be another form of spiritual pride. He then reminds them that God is faithful, and “he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way to escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (I Corinthians 10:13)

  Paul does not demonstrate his observation by citing the gospel accounts of Jesus’ temptation, but we know how Jesus in fact both escaped and endured the subtle snares of the tempter. He recalled in every instance the instruction of scripture, the teachings of an inherited faith to which he subordinated himself in his debates with the tempter. He didn’t outfox or even outmaneuver Satan; he simply relied on those things he knew to be trustworthy and true, and therefore, because he had the big picture, he could not be intimidated by the tempting little scenario. Adam and Eve had nothing to fall back upon but their own ignorance and desires. Jesus is the model for addressing temptation, and Paul, by implication, supplies the formula for those who must every day deal with temptations that seem designed to move them farther and farther from God.

  It is Paul’s conviction that we are enabled to endure what we must bear, or, as our grandparents might have said, “God gives us burdens, and the strength to bear them.” This is a view out of fashion in our contemporary vision of ourselves as put-upon victims. We have been promised the pursuit of happiness, and yet these burdens and temptations come to taunt us and to slow us down. They are more punishment than opportunity, and unless we are masochists, it is hard to see temptation or any other burden as a spiritually edifying exercise.

  The Bible, however, is not a product of the culture of happiness and personal satisfaction. Biblical religion is not an exercise in self-improvement and private therapy. The Bible is an account of people who in their sinful pride are confronted with a vision of holiness to which they then aspire and to which they are assisted by a holy and gracious God who spares nothing in the morally ambitious exercise of re-creating his own people in his own image by any means necessary. One of those means, implicit throughout all of scripture, and made explicit both in the accounts of the temptations of Jesus and in this discourse on temptation by Saint Paul, is the right and creative use of temptation itself.

  Yes, there is a right and creative use of temptation, for temptation is designed to show us what and whom we are up against, and what we can do about it. Like all testing, temptation is meant to strengthen us and build up our endurance; we are not meant to yield but to endure, and, indeed, to overcome. To remind us of this, Paul tells us that God does not and will not tempt us beyond our endurance. So, if we feel we are tempted beyond what we can do or know, we are to explore beyond what we do or know to discover that about ourselves which God already knows and is calling into active service. The adventure of temptation is the adventure now of self-discovery, of learning more about self, and of learning more about God.

  Beating the Odds of Temptation

  In the gospel meetings of our youth, many of us used to sing an old hymn called “Yield Not to Temptation”:

  Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin;

  Each vict’ry will help you some other to win;

  Fight manfully onward; dark passions subdue;

  Look ever to Jesus—He will carry you through.

  Ask the Saviour to help you, comfort, strengthen, and keep you;

  He is willing to aid you, He will carry you through.

  Most of us of a certain age associate that hymn with those rambunctiously hormonal years of our adolescence when our bodies were telling us things of which our Sunday school teachers and parents never dared speak. I think we thought it was all about sex and the subduing of those “dark passions,” for what else could temptation be about? After all, it was sex that got Adam and Eve into trouble in the first place, was it not? It is, I think, a sign of real spiritual maturity when one comes to the realization that temptation is about more than sex. Realizing that liberates the old hymn for a wider purpose than simply the preservation of teenaged evangelical chastity—itself, however, an admirable purpose—and we are able to realize that in the matter of temptation, as Saint Paul reminds us, God is faithful and does not allow us to be tempted beyond our endurance.

  From this I take four points to help us in our temptations, all of which are derived from biblical principles and examples. These are:

  Name the temptation.

  Name the tempter.

  Practice resistance.

  Call for help.

  In naming the temptation we identify what it is that we are tempted to do; we are morally explicit so that we know exactly what it is we are talking about. When contemplating evil, it is always better to contemplate evil in particular rather than in general. When we find ourselves caught in a moral dilemma, we should give that dilemma a name. Naming it gives both it and our attempts to deal with it a reality and a focus.

  When we name the tempter we are also giving reality to the temptation, and we are making it clear that there is a force, a personality, a will outside and beyond us that is making an illegitimate claim upon us. So, if the temptation is infidelity to a spouse or partner, name the “other person” so that you realize that you are not consorting with an abstraction. Perhaps a better way of putting this is a call to unmask the delusion under which you are operating. You may justify your petty embezzlement from your thankless job because you are using the money to pay the medical bills of your sick mother, or you are putting your child through college, or you are even contributing to charity. The delusion is your good end. To unmask it is to realize that you are stealing. The naked delusion may in fact help you to come to your senses.

  To practice resistance may seem so obvious as not to be worthy of inclusion in a discussion of how to overcome temptation, but because it is so obvious it is often overlooked, and its therapeutic values are lost. In the recovery of moral education that has been sweeping the country in recent years, we have discovered what the ancients always knew, and that is that virtue is a habit. It is not just a series of admonitions, exhortations, and a code of conduct. Virtue is all of that, but it is much, much more. It is a habit, the accumulated and consistent practice of certain behaviors based upon certain beliefs. The chief of these beliefs is that the practice of virtue is a series of actions that, while unnatural at first, become, like brushing the teeth, what one does as a matter of course. Eventually the habit is so ingrained and established that it becomes not only what one does, but indivisible from who one is. Moral training, like any other form of training—we can think of music a
nd of athletics, for example—takes discipline to acquire. That discipline is designed to be experienced, tested, in the exceptions and not the routines. Temptation is the exception in which the moral disciplines are designed to operate. The practice of resistance to that which is likely to tempt not only wards off that particular temptation but provides the means with which to resist other temptations as well.

  Finally, in the matter of temptation, again as Saint Paul reminds us, do not rely upon your own resources. “Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.” This is the New Testament version of Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” which is, of course, the ancestor of the secular aphorism, “Pride goeth before a fall.” Relying on one’s own strength and understanding in the matter of temptation, no matter how spiritually alert one is, is a recipe for disaster. So call for help. Talk about your temptation with one in whom you can confide—a friend, a colleague, your confessor, priest, pastor, or spiritual director. Most important, call on God for help, knowing that God has not sent you this temptation to taunt you but to strengthen you. Lay claim upon that promised strength. Practice the art of divine dependence while exercising all of your graces and gifts. You will discover, as the ancients knew, that temptation is not simply the devil’s recreation, it is also for the faithful a school for the soul. Perhaps in this age obsessed with physical exercise and the cult of the health club, we should say that temptation is the gym of the soul, and the faithful take its benefits: dexterity, agility, strength, endurance, and the developing confidence of one who is now more and more able to give the devil a run for his money.

  Chapter 14

  The Bible and Wealth

  Drama in the Church

  ASK any group of people who has ever attended a Sunday service in a Protestant church what it considers to be the most exciting or dynamic part of that service, and while a few will say it is the sermon, most will answer, “The offering.” This is not because people generally like the offering or are inclined to natural generosity, but rather because in the structure of most public worship the offering appears to be the point of focus and dramatic intensity. Think about it. Except for the hymns, and in liturgical churches, the kneeling, the offering is the first time the people are actually asked to participate, or invited to do something. There is movement in the aisles as ushers pass the plates, always an exciting diversion to children, and the liturgical tension is relaxed as people shift about. Often there is music accompanying the process, and then comes the climax: The music comes to a great crescendo before making a glitzy transition into a doxology, the congregation leaps up, and down the center aisle marches a procession of men and women carrying plates of cash. The ushers arrive at the front of the church—which has now become a theater—and with the audience on its feet, and at the crescendo, the plates are handed over to the minister, who in many traditions raises them up high over his head in the most dramatic posture of the service, and then places them with great reverence on the altar or holy table. Music, minister, and people then settle down for whatever is to follow—sermon, prayers, or benediction, but it is clear to anyone with the slightest hint of show biz that the climactic moment has come and gone, and invariably will come again; and that it is all about money.

  Given the primacy of the ceremonial act of the offertory, one would think that money and worship, among Protestants at least, is a congenial relationship, but we all know that is not necessarily the case. Money, in fact, among Christians is a bit like sex. We know we need it but we don’t like to make too much of it in public. Protestants have guilt complexes for every condition, and here is one that involves a conflict between the allegedly spiritual dimensions of worship on the one hand and the unambiguously material dimensions of money on the other. There is the old aphorism that a too spiritual religion is of no earthly good, but there remains among middle-class Protestants the distinct sense of bad form as far as money and religion are concerned.

  This has never been a problem among black Christians. I remember very well the excitement of the offering in the little Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where I worshiped as a child fifty years ago. The custom of long standing in Bethel Church, and still in use in many rural African-American churches today, was for the congregation to take their gifts to the table at the front of the church, and thus there was even more movement and excitement than in those churches where the plate was passed among the people. Here the people got up while singing rousing hymns and made their way up front with their gifts in hand, and, wonder of wonders, the stewards counted it as the process continued. At the end of that procession, if the day’s financial goal had not been achieved, the congregation would be asked to pass up front again, and so on until the desired goal was reached. The minister would say, “We need only fifteen more dollars. Who will stand up for Jesus and give him fifteen dollars?” The congregation would sing some more, the stewards would count some more, and only when it was settled would the doxology be sung and the prayer of thanksgiving offered. It was high theater for a child, with the whole congregation on view and in motion, the murmuring of the stewards as they counted, the relentless rhythm of the singing, and the anxious moments while awaiting the result.

  It was also the perfect example of what one of America’s most famous black preachers, Father Divine, called “the art of tangibilitation.” From his Harlem “Heaven” in the 1930s, Father Divine would urge the throngs who attended his services to make their faith real by the reality of their gifts: “You got to learn how to tangibilitate!” he would thunder, and the people would bring their tangible gifts and lay them, New Testament style, at his feet. The black church has never had a problem with the problem of the material, and it may be because the black church has had so little of the material goods of this world with which to have a problem. White Christians who visit black churches are often surprised and not a little shocked at the number of offerings given, and with the fine art of encouraging the people to generosity. It takes them some time to realize that in the black church the giving of money is not a necessary concession to the material needs of the people of God, but that rather it is the central drama in the act of worship.

  It is a question of what is nicely called stewardship, which in the church means the wise and prudent use of one’s resources. In theory, stewardship implies that one’s money is not really one’s own; one holds it in trust from God and for the benefit of others. As we used to sing in Sunday school:

  We give thee but thine own,

  Whate’er the gift may be;

  All that we have is thine alone,

  A trust, O Lord, from thee. 1

  Though we may sing it, however, very few modern Christians actually believe it. Francis Ridley Havergal wrote the hymn much beloved of Episcopalians, “Take My Life, and Let It Be,” the fourth verse of which reads, “Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold,” and the thought of J. P. Morgan or August Belmont—or any other of the “Episcocrats,” as Kit and Frederica Konolige call them in their book on the Episcopalians as America’s ruling class—giving up their precious metal is enough to generate an undecorous guffaw. “God gave me my money” is the famous remark of John D. Rockefeller, the wealthiest man in the country; and even those who might not have as much as he would have some sympathy with his point.

  The theory of stewardship has sound biblical foundations, as we shall see, but theory often runs afoul of practice and raises the irksome questions of the relationship between money and virtue, between money and religion, between the material and the spiritual, and between faith and wealth. Every minister who has ever had to preach a stewardship sermon, or run an every-member canvass, or solicit funds for benevolences, missions, or building campaigns, knows the dis-ease in relationships with parishoners that comes when he or she must get down to cases and talk to the individual about questions of money; and every person who has ever endured one of these efforts kn
ows the clammy feeling that comes at the prospect of having to face these money questions. Our inhibitions in talking about money stem in part from the fear that we will somehow be manipulated into doing something we would rather not do or cannot afford to do, or that we will be made somehow to feel guilty because we are unable or unwilling to respond at the level that we are asked.