Temptation
“There is none good but one, that is, God.” (Matt. 19:17) Jesus said we are not good. Apostle Paul also said, “they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable: there is none that does good, no, not one.” (Rom. 3:12) Both Jesus and Paul seem to talk to us right now, when we see what is going on in America today. The Word is eternally true in both social and individual level. Christianity believes that no society is good, unless individual is good. We are not good, but want to be good. The only way we can be good is to exercise our free will to make right choice. The difficulty is that every choice is a temptation, which is an inner struggle for us to settle.
Do we know how to make a right decision? Of cause, we do, only if we know what is right and what is wrong. Alas, our knowledge is imperfect, no data collected are totally errorless, and our will has a tendency to make a hasty decision. It is as if we take our best shot with the blindfold. There are simply too many choices to make all right. We meet temptation to fight. Ignorance exacerbates the fight. Our wisdom is not sufficient to keep us good. We must choose without knowing how; it is inevitable for us to make mistakes, but possible to learn from them.
Sin is the choice we make against the will of God, and degrades human quality. It is not good and hence injurious to us all. We are likely to fall into sin, but our hope is to correct in humility our missteps to come back on the right track again as the prodigal son returned to his father. Our neighbor is here to help us and God is in us to help each of us with His mercy.
We pray that “God be with us on earth as in heaven. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Here, evil is not a substance, but a lack of goodness. No goodness, no life! We are asking God to come down to lead us to be good. How can we be good? We seem to ask God to protect us from temptation. This world is full of temptation. Then without facing temptation to overcome, how can we grow to be just in this world? How can we become good without trying? Don’t we need temptation for spiritual maturity as an athlete needs physical exercise every day? Even Jesus suffered temptation in the wilderness. He took forty days to overcome it. Perhaps, we may never be able to come out of the wilderness ourselves.
God is perfect. God does not tempt us. (James 1:13) But we are imperfect and incomplete. Our infirmity causes temptation in us. God may want us to be strong in spirit by allowing us to battle against temptation as a tool of discipline. Then, I would read the portion of the Lord’s prayer as follows: Though we may be defeated by temptation sometimes, save our lives and deliver us from evil. Fire proves iron, and temptation a just man. We may not know clearly what to do, but temptation shows us clearly what we are. God says, “I have set before you, life and death, blessing and curse: therefore choose life that thou and thy seed may live.” (Deut. 30:19) (June 22, 2013: KYP)
