WHAT ARE THE TEMPTATIONS WE COMMONLY EXPERIENCE?

On the first Sunday in Lent we read about the temptations of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12,13; Luke 4:1-13). It is an archetype of the spiritual conflict we experience on a daily basis. What are the temptations we commonly experience?

The most down to earth description of this spiritual conflict is to be found in The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Published in 1942 it was reprinted eight times during that year. It consists of letters from a senior to a junior devil, who has been assigned to a young man as his tempter. He is to wage war on the psychology of the man in order to separate him from God. Lewis believed that there are “two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devil. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

I have extracted from the book what I consider some of the chief temptations by which the junior devil wages war on his subject, and how he can be driven out.

The first temptation is to believe that “real life” is to be found in “the stream of immediate sense experiences,” the familiar, the ordinary, what grabs the headlines in the news. We are pressured to believe that it is in the concrete, and the material that real life is to be experienced, and not in the issues of the Spirit, of faith and of the eternal. It is bad advice to focus our attention on only the news headlines, and our daily “To Do” list, because these change every day. Instead we can drive out demons and take away the armor of Satan when we grapple with difficult issues, and can separate out the ephemeral, the passing, the temporary, from the substantial, the lasting and the permanent. Learning to distinguish between what is important and what is ephemeral is critical to survival and spiritual health. We overcome Satan when we learn to value reflection for ourselves, and meditation on the Word of God, instead of being bullied by the advice of secular skeptics, and cynics.

The second temptation is to judge those who profess to be Christians by their appearance, and to be critical of them for their obvious faults and failings, while minimizing one’s own. When we do that we fall into thinking that they are poor advertisements for Christianity compared with us. We often have unrealistic expectations of other Christians. Satan wants to encourage a critical attitude in us so that he can divide us and thereby weaken our community. We drive that attitude out when we note the plank in our own eye rather than the speck in our brother’s eye (Luke 6:41,42).

The third temptation is to be irritated with our relatives because we dislike their habits and personalities. We are tempted to adopt an attitude of mutual annoyance. There is the tendency to maximize the pinpricks of others and to minimize one’s own. The tempter focuses on tones of voice and expressions which are unendurably irritating. Tones of voice and facial expressions can be misinterpreted to provoke defensive behavior. Our own utterances are never subjected to the scrutiny we give to those of others with whom we live or visit. We judge the words of others with the fullest and most over-sensitive interpretation of the tone and context and the suspected intention, while absolving ourselves of any such failure of charity. We drive out demons when we realize how hypocritical we are, and how we need to learn generosity and charity to others. “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Col.3:13)

Fourthly, every attempt is made by the tempter to keep the believer from the serious intention of praying. Organized times of daily prayer are discouraged. Instead we are tempted to believe that as long as we have feelings of prayer that is enough. There is the tendency to encourage trying to produce spiritual feelings rather than praying for what we need, e.g. charity, courage, and forgiveness. There is the deception of trying to imagine our idea of God rather than accepting the real presence of God with us. The war will not be won without regular prayer.

The fifth temptation is to make us so contented in this world that we want to live as long as possible and deny the reality of death, rather than be prepared for eternity. Increasing prosperity knits a man to the world – so that he feels really at home in this world. The task of the tempter is to build up a firm attachment to the earth, so that he will not be prepared to leave it for the next world. That is why Lewis said, in the midst of the Battle of Britain, that it was more likely that people were prepared to die in war than in peacetime. He has Screwtape write: “How much better for us [the devils] if all humans die in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray the sick man his true condition! And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.” (Lewis, p.39) We drive out demons and take away Satan’s armor when we prepare ourselves for death and beyond.

Sixthly, we are attacked by the creation of suspense and anxiety about the future, about what might happen to us. Our fear of catastrophe wars with the call to pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We drive out demons by concentrating on the Lord, on patience and submission to his will, instead of our own fears. We take away Satan’s armor when we live in the present, in the Presence of God, who gives us his armor to protect us from fear of the future.

Seventhly, all extremes are encouraged by the tempter: extreme patriotism and extreme pacifism, but not extreme devotion to the Lord. We are tempted to make our “Cause” more important than our faith; to make the world an end, and faith a means; to make meetings, policies, movements, causes and crusades matter more than prayers, worship, and charity. Satan wants either to inflame factions, or to soothe people to sleep, so that we are distracted from the main task of the kingdom. We drive out demons when we seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, by setting our priorities by the guidance of the Word and the Spirit of God.

Eighthly, the subtle temptation to waste the time we are given on earth. As Lewis makes one person say when he arrives in Hell: “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.” He calls this spending life doing Nothing. “And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins, but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them…. the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” (Lewis, p.67) We drive out demons and take away the armor of Satan when we make the most of every opportunity God gives us to do good, and we consecrate every hour of every day in his service.

Ninthly, the tempter encourages “moderation in all things”, or the feeling that “religion is all very well up to a point.” He knows that a moderated religion is as good as no religion at all. He wants us to believe that all people go through religious phases and intelligent people progress to a more educated point of view. We drive out demons when we recognize this as a form of intellectual snobbery that wants to avoid the antithesis of true and false. Jesus demands us to choose and not sit on the fence: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.” (Luke 11:23) The only way we can overcome the strong man is in the power of Christ. If we want to be victorious in this cosmic battle, we have to be with Jesus.

St. John tells us that during the serving of the last supper in the upper room, “the devil had already prompted [put into the heart of] Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus.” (John 13:2) Judas had a choice. He was being prompted, encouraged, by the devil to betray Jesus. He was not compelled to follow that advice. He gave in to that prompting.

Every day we face conflicting advice. The temptation is to go with what appeals to our vanity, to our self-interest, or to our immediate gratification. The temptation in the face of a hurricane is to do nothing and hope for the best. Such inactivity can be disastrous. If there is in fact a cosmic battle for our hearts, minds and souls between Jesus Christ and the devil, between light and darkness, then we had better be sure of which advice we follow. The Bible is our surest guide because its words are inspired by the Holy Spirit.

A Prayer:

“Grant us, O Lord our God, ever to find in you a very present help in trouble,

When we are in the darkness of doubt or perplexity, shed your light upon our way.

When we are burdened with the affairs of our daily life, lift us up to the calm of your presence.

When we are battling with temptation and the flesh is weak, by the might of your Spirit make us strong to overcome.

We ask these things through him in whom we are more than conquerors, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”

(Frank Colquhoun)