What is Temptation?

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

Last week our text told us that Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. Then we thought about the meaning of the term “devil;” today we are told that Peter is a temptation to Jesus, and so we shall think about the meaning of the term “tempted.” “Who is the devil?” And, “What is temptation?” Clearly they are closely related, indeed, the NT calls the devil the tempter (Matthew 4:3). Temptation is the work of the devil, and so it is natural to ask the two questions together.

We saw last week that the devil’s work is chiefly to slander in the sense of making false accusations, something that arises from the morass of interpersonal rivalries and jealousies, competitions of the willful and resentments of the frustrated, that are the life of any human community. We also saw that these competitions arise because we are so constituted as to imitate each other’s desire and so likely to become rivals for the same objects of desire. The word for such a “rival who frustrates my desire” in the NT is “scandal,” or more literally, “stumbling block,” which describes the phenomenon of being attracted and repelled by our model/rival at one and the same time, - we want what he wants and we don’t want him to want it because that would conflict with our wanting it. Nevertheless, we want him to want it because unless he wants it we would not want it, and we want him not to want it because his wanting it blocks us having it. This is clearly the state of addiction, to love what one hates and to hate what one loves, or as Juliet puts it in Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet, to see “My only love sprung from my only hate.” Another translation of this Greek term skandalon, in addition to “stumbling block” and “scandal” is “temptation” or “occasion of sin.” Temptation therefore takes its meaning from this structure of interpersonal relations and I think the incident between Jesus and his best friend Peter is the best illustration of temptation in the NT. I have chosen to quote the version of the saying in Matthew rather than Mark because it includes the term scandal, which the version in Mark, our lectionary reading for today, does not. I think in this case Matthew understands better than Mark. Let us analyze this interchange between Jesus and Peter as a model of temptation.

Peter refuses to accept Jesus’ disclosure, - which he makes privately to the disciples, - that he must soon die ignominiously and through that humiliation attain to resurrection. Psychologically speaking we could say that Peter was simply trying to encourage and support his friend, much as we do when a friend tells us that he expects a great disaster to happen soon and we say something like, “Surely it’s not as bad as that, things will work out, don’t be such a pessimist.” We all recognize ourselves in that sort of well meaning solicitude. But there is more than psychology at stake in our text as the surprisingly vehement response of Jesus indicates. It is as if Peter has hit a nerve. Psychologically it could be that Jesus was indeed tempted to try to avoid the Cross? Why not? The narratives of the temptation in the wilderness in Matthew 4 and Luke 4 are probably dramatizations of temptations Jesus felt constantly during his ministry and shared with his disciples from time to time – to seek popularity by working miracles, and to use that popularity to gain secular political power and so rebuild the world into the Kingdom of God on earth. Who could fault him for wanting to become the benefactor of humankind, the greatest humanitarian in history? This was a real and ongoing temptation so it seems; as late as Gethsemane Jesus still hoped to escape the horror.

Strictly speaking, we cannot profitably speculate about Jesus’ psychology, but we can see the anthropology and sociology at play. This exchange reveals the nature of temptation as it arises out of the structure of human community around rivalrous desire or competing wills. Peter, Jesus’ best friend was best placed to tempt him, and that too we understand. Clearly those whom we love best are best able to impose their wills on us. Peter seems to be saying, “I love you so much I don’t want you to have to suffer like that,” and at the psychological level that is indeed what he says, but at the structural level of human society Peter is saying something more revealing. He is saying, “Not your will Jesus but mine be done!” “You imitate my desire instead of me imitating your desire. Let me win this contest of wills and you will thank me, because I know better than you what is best for you, and it does not include an imminent horrible death! And in any case, I love you and you cannot betray that love by leaving me!” These are powerful words of temptation. Peter is using the noblest and best human sentiments we have, deployed in service of mimetic rivalry, to try to get Jesus to follow Peter rather than Peter follow Jesus.

Jesus’ answer is determinative for us and for the understanding of temptation. Jesus does not answer, “Not your will Peter but mine!” but rather, “You speak the things of men and not of God.” Peter’s wonderful expressions of love and solicitude, the highest sentiments we human beings know, are in this instance the words of the devil. (This use of Christ like attitudes against Christ is, by the way, the defining mark of the anti-Christ. He is the mirror image of Christ, exactly like the real thing until you realize that the image is in reverse, as in a mirror! This also explains why people claiming that Christ controls their decision-making can sow such horror all around).  Peter at this moment is not just “like Satan” but is Satan or anti-Christ, an instance of temptation as scandal in the sense of the crisis of rival wills, presenting itself as an expression of loving solicitude.

What is determinative in this? Let me repeat: Jesus does not oppose his will to Peter’s but rather listens for the voice of his Father. Jesus does not enter the realm of the Satanic conflict of human will and desire but rather points the way to the realm of God, where only God’s desire rules. Jesus does not try to win in the realm of Satan but rather deliberately loses and thus makes present the Kingdom of God. Soon he is telling us what this means, “If any one would come after me let him deny himself and take up his Cross and follow me. For whoever would save her life will lose it; and whoever loses her life for my sake and the Gospels’ will save it. For what does it profit a person to gain the whole world (read, “all the kingdoms of the world which Satan controls”) and forfeit one’s life?  For what can one give in return for one’s life? (Mark 8:34-37)” Thus Jesus tells us the meaning of his Cross: it is to give up one’s own desire in favor not of the other’s but of God’s desire, one’s own will in favor of God’s will, one’s own ambition to rule the world in favor of God’s desire to establish His Kingdom. Concretely this means that I must turn my desire from the imitation of the other to the imitation of Christ, as Christ imitates not his friend and rival but his heavenly Father. I must imitate Jesus’ imitation of God. Turn away from inner-worldly rivalries of desire and submit to the desire of our heavenly Father. In this way alone do we turn away from temptation.

That is the entirely simple and deeply difficult demand of Christ, and most of us do not meet it. On the contrary most of us are ashamed of Jesus, because he died rather than fought. Like Judas Iscariot we cannot accept the fact that he is not going to reorganize the world, not going to march with armies against evildoers, not going to endorse our ambition to control everything that may threaten us in any way. “For whoever is ashamed of me in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38). We are ashamed of Jesus because he imitates the love and generosity of the Father and not the rivalry and parsimony of the human world, where the coin of exchange is crime and punishment, loss and gain, defeat and victory.

So what is temptation? It is the situation of mimetic rivalry we are always in all of the time. Let’s think of some obvious examples. Immediately modern advertising comes to my mind, where our desires are manipulated and indeed new desires are created as the old ones flag. Everywhere we are seduced to desire and made to feel unworthy if we do not share the desire of the beautiful, successful and heroic people who are held up as models. We love them and we hate them; they set us free and they keep us in bondage. Then there is the simple situation of competition in most business and professional activities; can we compete without being rivalrous? Can we simply do our best and trust that good work will always be recognized and rewarded? I suppose the answer we give depends on our degree of cynicism. Let me not give an answer. And thirdly, there always remains the family and the social situations in which we look for genuine love and real friendship. How may they be freed from temptation?

I do not think we can free ourselves from the power of this rivalrous desire, deliver ourselves from pain of scandal and the wiles of the devil; but Jesus can set us free. Jesus does not teach us to deny ourselves and take up the Cross and follow him unless he is willing to provide the spiritual resources to do so. So he gives us the example of his own life before God and obedient death in the service of God’s salvation to imitate in our own special circumstances, his own example of resistance to temptation by orientation of his desire towards God alone. And he gives us the power of the Holy Spirit who defends us against the false accusations of the devil and the false gospel of consumerism (read: advertising), and empowers us more and more to listen for the words of God and follow them rather than the words of the devil, even when the latter come through the lips of our friends and loved ones.

That’s probably as much as one can say in general about resisting temptation. Each one of us alone must wrestle with temptation every moment of every day, but we are not in fact alone in that wilderness. Jesus has gone before and prepared the way for us. Jesus has conquered Satan and lifted the burden of temptation. Now all that remains is for us to let him lift our particular share of that burden and to prevent us from temptation and deliver us from evil. (The line in the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation” reads in the original Aramaic, “Do not let us be led into temptation.”)

Amen.