Rethinking Temptation

I grew up evangelical, so needless to say, I’ve heard a lot about temptation. But I’ve been thinking about it lately in a new light. Sometimes we view temptation as a desire to do something we’ve been told not to do but that we want to do (classically, this involves sex). Maybe we aren’t even convinced we shouldn’t, we just know we were told not to. This view of temptation is about behavior – basically, not doing what our parents, pastors, teachers, or other authority figures have advised us not to do. If you do it, your behavior is crossing some moral rules that you’ve had placed over you.

But there’s a deeper level of temptation – and this involves identity. Who we want to be and what we want to do. For example, if you want to be healthy and you’re tempted to eat junk food, you aren’t being tempted to break a rule, you’re being tempted to break with what you want for yourself for a momentary pleasure. If you want to be a grateful person but you’re tempted to complain, you’re being tempted to break from who you want to be. This happens at every level. Wherever you have a desire for growth, virtue, or goodness, you’ll find a momentary pleasure lurking to pull you off track. It almost seems intentional. But there’s that evangelical background again.

Suppose you’ve set out on a path. You’ve picked it intentionally, because it will take you where you want to go. You know others who have gone that way, and their lives and stories inspire you. But the path can be hard. There’s a lot of uphill. It’s a little narrow. By you is another path, and although it seems to run parallel to yours, you know that it has a different destination. You know people who have taken that way, and it inevitably ends in disappointment and pain and wasted time. But its a gentle path and frankly it looks compelling. You know you can’t walk it too long or you’ll end up in trouble, but it seems like you could step off onto it for just a little bit. You’ll get back on the right path before you get too far. But there’s distractions all around, and before you know it, you’re headed the way you didn’t want to go.

Resisting temptation, for the mature person, is not about being a prude or missing out. It’s about becoming. About being the fullness of who you were meant to be and want to be. It’s about not being tricked into believing that this thing that will make you feel good for an hour or so is as good as being healthy, wise and good. It’s about rejecting the counterfeit because you want the real thing.

“Enter through the narrow gate.

For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 

But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life,

and only a few find it.” – Jesus (Matthew 7:13)