Trials and Temptations

The scriptures referred to are James 1:12-18.

Lent is a time of spiritual self-examination. So, in view of our gospel reading about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, I thought I'd look at temptation, especially that of the traditional seven deadly sins, as articulated by Pope Gregory 1 in 590 AD.

When mystery writer and lay theologian Dorothy L. Sayers mentioned that there were seven deadly sins, a person with her asked, “What are the other six?” When it comes to temptation, everyone thinks of sex. But sex is not a sin; it is a creation of God. When God tells the man and woman in Genesis chapter 1 to be fruitful and multiply, he is talking about sex. Sex is a gift and not a sin; lust is. Lust is the abuse or misuse of sex. It is having or pursuing sex in the wrong way: when it is inappropriate, when the person you want to have sex with is inappropriate, like a close relative or someone else's spouse, or when the way you want to have sex is inappropriate, like rape or to inflict pain or to assert dominance. Sex is good when it is done as God intended it: with the right person for the right reasons and done in love.

As I've pointed out before, sex is not an individual need. It is, strictly speaking, only a need for the species. Without it, the species dies out. But not every member of the species must have sex. Individuals will not die if they go without sex. Eating, however, is a need for every individual. So how can it become a sin? Through its abuse, misuse or neglect. The average person should take in somewhere between 1000 and 2000 calories a day. Taking in a lot less leads to starvation. Most people who starve do so involuntarily. But some people do it deliberately, like models or movie stars, trying to fit an unrealistic picture of beauty. And many of us eat too much. I can't resist potato chips and will eat an entire bag if left alone with it. We also eat a lot of foods not found in nature, concoctions that are full of what we crave—sugar, salt, fats—and empty of the nutrition we should be getting. In 2012 a 17 year old British girl was rushed to the hospital with anemia, breathing problems and inflamed veins on her tongue. It turns out that ever since she was two all she ever ate were McDonalds chicken nuggets and fries. Doctors had to inject her with vitamins to stabilize her. Gluttony is another of the seven deadly sins. In this girl's case it was almost literally deadly.

Greed is another of the seven deadly sins. Examples of greed are not hard to find. A person I was talking with said that people having a hard time making a living is entirely due to capitalism. But the problem goes all the way back in time, due to the nature of human beings. Just recently I saw a documentary about a grave uncovered by archeologists. It's the wealthiest grave containing the oldest golden artifacts ever found and it dates back to the 4000s BC. It's in Varna, Bulgaria and it's older than the empires of Mesopotamia and Egypt. They found an individual wrapped in clothes with gold ornaments sewn into them, plus gold bracelets, necklaces, a scepter and even a gold penis sheath. This was more gold than found in the rest of the world at that time. And there was no such thing as capitalism back then. Just greed.

To be sure, capitalism has made it so that 10% of the world's adults hold 85% of the world's wealth and half of the world's wealth belongs to the top 1% of the rich. That leaves 15% of the world's wealth divided among the remaining 90% of people in the world. And to make things worse, we have hedge funds, which don't manufacture goods or provide services but just buy up companies and suck out all the money they can, leaving the dry husks behind. That's what happened to Sears, K-Mart, Toys R Us, Payless Shoes, Radio Shack and Sports Authority. And now hedge funds are buying up pharmaceutical companies, so the prices of medicines people need are going up. 80% of the drugs with the fastest-rising prices are owned by companies with a lot of involvement with hedge funds, private equity or venture capital firms. These elite investment groups aren't interested in the research and development of new drugs as much as they are in raising prices of drugs that already exist and are needed by patients. One drug that treats a particularly resistant form of tuberculosis went from $13.50 a tablet to $750 a tablet. There is no reason for this other than greed.

Rage is another of the deadly sins. People who shoot up offices and schools and churches are filled with rage that they take out on others, including those who never even interacted with the shooter before. Death threats sent to politicians have become so common that many need to have security and bodyguards—in a supposedly free society. Women who are public figures and say anything controversial receive not only threats to their life but threats of rape. We cannot politely disagree anymore. We can't agree to disagree. No, if you don't agree with someone 100%, you are considered to have lost your rights to life and liberty. And often the people making the threats do so in the name of the constitution—or of God!

Envy, another deadly sin, is a staple of our media. The lifestyles of the rich and famous are dangled before us as things to pursue. We want what they have. We want to dress and even get surgery so we look like our favorite celebrities. Envy of what others have drives our economy. We are encouraged to buy more and have more. It's not just the ads. Our music is rife with singers rhapsodizing about jets, mansions, Rolex watches, and Lamborghinis. And yet studies show that once we get enough to take care of our needs and our modest desires, more money doesn't make us that much happier. Winning the lottery brings headaches and conflicts with family and friends. Studies show that after a few months the winner's happiness level reverts to what it was before they won. Depression is more common in wealthy countries than in less wealthy ones. Perhaps it is that we are trying to fill the emptiness in our life with material things. And when that doesn't work, we are tempted to do it by getting more stuff.

Today a lot of people want to be celebrities but they don't want to spend years learning to play an instrument, or working their way up from being an actor doing a dog food commercial to being a movie star, or toiling away at inventing something people want. They just want to go onto social media and be an influencer. Because it seems to be less work. That's laziness, another of the deadly sins. Elizabeth Holmes came up with a great idea: invent a machine that can test for 200 different diseases using just a drop of blood. But she didn't want to finish college or spend a decade or more trying to work out just how to do it. So she created a company called Theranos, that announced it could do what she promised. Meanwhile her employees couldn't get the prototype to work and had to fake the results to convince investors to give her billions of dollars for what was still simply a dream. She made a deal with Walgreens to put the machine in their stores but patients got the wrong diagnoses, endangering their lives. It all came crashing down, of course. But she wasn't willing to do the hard work of first inventing a method that worked and only then marketing it. Lasting achievements are not the result of laziness.

The final and worst of the deadly sins is arrogance. The old word for this was pride but this is really about thinking you know better and are better than others. And that is often the gateway to the other sins. The story in Genesis 3 is a paradigm of temptation. It starts with doubts about God's motivation and goodness. The tempter tells the first humans, “You certainly will not die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5) The next verse is all about how we rationalize doing the wrong thing: it looks good; it feels good; the end result is desirable. They thought they knew better than God what was the right thing to do. Thinking we are smarter than God has always been at the root of our problems. We want to do something we know we shouldn't and we tell ourselves, “Just this once won't hurt.” Or knowing that doing the same thing did not work out well for others, we say, “Well, that won't happen to me.” And then we find out we are not the exception to the rule.

James makes an excellent point about temptation. He says that temptation doesn't come from God; it comes from our own desires. We often have a problem distinguishing between needs and desires. You need food; you desire sweets. You need shelter from the elements; you desire a million dollar mansion. You need love; you desire a sexy celebrity. You need some control over the vital aspects of your life; you desire absolute power over other people.

Not all desires are bad. It's okay to desire that things be better than they are, especially when you are not in a good place. It's okay to desire better and more nutritious food, or a home that doesn't leak, or a spouse who is helpful and not harmful, or to not be living paycheck to paycheck. But our desires can get away from us. Notice that the seven deadly sins are desires for things like forbidden sex, for piles of money, for what others have, for others to feel your pain, for more of what tastes or feels good than is good for you, for getting rewards without effort or for total independence from God because you know better than he does.

James warns us that when our desires get out of control, they can give birth to sin. And a little later in his letter he explains how. “What causes the conflicts and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle inside you? You desire but you do not have, so you kill. You envy what someone else has and you cannot obtain it, so you quarrel and fight.” (James 4:1-2, my translation) Actually the Greek word translated “fight” literally means “to make war.” Aren't most wars about one side wanting something the other side has? Nations fight over territory, resources, power over other people or all three. Putin says he invaded Ukraine to fight neo-Nazis. The fact that Ukraine has ports that Russia wants, and that it is a major producer of wheat, and that it is the flat plain through which everyone from Napoleon to Hitler has invaded Russia so that Ukraine joining NATO makes Putin even more paranoid, has absolutely nothing to do with it. Or so he says.

James is right. People who are content with what they have rarely have internal conflicts nor do they get into conflicts with others. Among the fruit of the Spirit Paul lists peace, or well-being. (Galatians 5:22) The Greek word means “tied together into a whole.” If you feel that all the essentials in your life have come together, you have a sense of wholeness and peace.

The Swedish have a word for it. It is lagom and it means “not too much, not too little but just enough.” This is a common theme in Swedish culture. Which is why they have striven to balance out capitalism with high taxes that fund social programs that cover everyone. It's why Sweden is consistently ranked in the top 10 countries with the highest levels of satisfaction. It's not perfect however. An economic downturn in the 90s led the country to slash taxes as well as spending on social services. This has led to more income inequality and violence. So the country is trying to regain their sense of lagom.

Getting everything you desire does not ultimately make you happy. Having a lot of stuff does not give your life meaning or a greater purpose, two things that are associated with happiness. Paul put it this way: “For to me living is Christ...” (Philippians 1:21) He knew he was part of something bigger than himself. He was bringing people the good news that God loves them and that he demonstrated his love through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Unlike the pagan gods, the God revealed in Jesus cares about human beings—Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free people. Unlike the pagan gods, the God who is love is moral and cares about how we treat one another. He is just and merciful, giving and forgiving. He created us in his image and expects us to live up to that. He adopts us as his children and through his Spirit helps us to become more like his son, Jesus. Paul knew that even when he was gone the good news would continue to spread and bring people together. That gave him joy.

James says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights...” God doesn't expect us to ignore the gifts he gives us. Paul says that God “richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment.” (1 Timothy 6:17) But we are not to hog them or hoard them. We are to pass them on. Studies have shown that getting something for someone else brings us more happiness than getting stuff for ourselves. As Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

One person who seems to have gotten this message is J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. She went from being a single mother on welfare to the first author to be worth $1 billion. She was richer than the Queen of England. Then she dropped down to a mere millionaire after giving $160 million to create and fund charities for medical causes and for at-risk mothers and children. She said, “I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need to do wise things with it and give intelligently.” She identifies as a Christian and belongs to the Scottish Episcopal Church.

Now why am I talking about the rich in a setting where most of us definitely aren't? Because compared to most of the world, we are. The only countries that rank higher than the US in per capita purchasing power have much smaller populations with which to share that wealth. So while we are the 7^th richest country by that measure we are the only large country in the list of top ten richest nations. There are more than 220 countries below us. And on average we live better than the kings of the past. They had jesters and singers and storytellers. We have access to thousands of TV shows, movies, videos, albums, and books in a little device we carry in our pockets. They had to move out of their city palaces in summer when it was hot. We have A/C. They needed stables of horses and people to feed and take care of them and their chariots or carriages. We have cars, usually with cruise control, as well as A/C and sound systems. And we can fly; they couldn't. Their beds were stuffed with reeds, hay, wool or feathers. We have soft, cushioned mattresses with pillow tops or even sleep numbers.

We take these things for granted. And we don't share them readily with those who don't have these advantages. The average American rents a home but more than 650,000 Americans are homeless. The average American eats 1000 to 2000 calories a day but 44 million Americans, including 1 in 5 children, face hunger. The average American has some form of health insurance but 26 million Americans are uninsured. Most health insurance policies have limited coverage for mental illness, even though around 20% of adults experience a mental illness in any given year and 10 million have a serious mental illness. 48.7 million people aged 12 or older have a substance use disorder, including 29.5 million with an alcohol use disorder. Yet only 6% receive treatment. 94% go untreated.

We say we are a Christian country but we are more focused on what we want other people to do or not do rather than what other people do not have. We have succumbed to the temptation of complacency and self-righteousness. Jesus scolded the Pharisees for paying way too much attention to little matters “yet you neglect what is more important in the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness....” (Matthew 23:23) Jesus said that he would judge us for how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the sick, the imprisoned and the immigrant. He says that how we treat them is how we treat him. (Matthew 25:31-46)

Desires are all about ourselves. So one of the best ways to fight temptation is to get our minds off ourselves and think of other people. Instead of buying junk food for yourself, buy some extra cans of good food and give it to your local food bank. Instead of seeking out someone for a one night stand, call your grandmother or your mom or a friend you haven't talked to for a while and enjoy connecting to a whole person who actually cares about you. Instead of buying the latest unnecessary gadget or collectible on Amazon, go to Charity Navigator and look up organizations that help people and donate. Instead of soaking up the outrage of someone on TV or the internet, join an organization that makes things better like Habitat for Humanity or a disaster relief organization. Every major denomination has one. Instead of wasting your life playing video games for hours, unlock some real achievements like volunteering to read to the blind or driving people to doctor's appointments. Instead of basking in your superiority to others, read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) or 1 Corinthians 13 or the book of Proverbs and see how you measure up to those standards.

The Greek word for temptations also means tests or trials. It is often when we undergo trials that we get tempted to abandon God's ways and do what we want. But Paul says, “No trial has seized you except what is common to humans. And God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tested beyond your ability, but he will provide along with the temptation a way to escape so that you can endure it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13) This does not mean that you will not undergo trials that are more than you can deal with using only your own strength. But with the power of his Spirit within you and the gracious gifts he provides and the people he puts in your life who support you, you can overcome them. It takes persistence and patience and trust in him. But as Paul said of the trials that must have tempted him to give up, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, not depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 35, 37-39)