March 13, 2011

Clay Nelson

Lent 1     Matthew 4:1-11

Once every year on the first Sunday of Lent we are called to wrestle with the story of the three temptations of Christ. After 30 years of doing this I find my self still uncomfortable with the task.

My discomfort is two-fold. First, contrary to our plea in the Lord’s Prayer that we be saved from a time of trial and delivered from evil, God through the spirit drives his son into the wilderness to be tested by Satan. God and the embodiment of evil are working hand-in-hand.

The second lies in how we usually understand temptations. We usually think of them as anything negative that plays to our human frailties. It might be the temptation to over indulge in food, alcohol or our preferred recreational drug. Our weakness might be as serious as infidelity or sticky fingers in a department store or as seemingly harmless as neglecting our chores to watch one more rugby game or play Farmville on Facebook. But these are not the kinds of temptations Jesus faced. The temptations he resists are to do good. He is challenged to work miracles to make good things happen in the world.

The options Jesus is offered all fit what Matthew’s audience would have considered qualities of the Messiah: caregiver, wonder worker and source of power. And if he gave into them the hungry would be fed, people would be led back to the fullness of life being one with the divine offers and the nations of the world would live in peace under God’s rule.

These all sounds like things we at St Matthew’s could get behind. So what’s the problem?

The problem is in how it is accomplished. Jesus would have to become the comic book superhero we long for to solve all our problems against the evils in the world. He would become an external, supernatural, and invasive God instead of being just like us. The church has made him out to be just such a God who can zip in and out of our lives laying waste to the evil we experience all around us and whitewash our screw ups. We are tempted to buy into it out of a sense of our own powerlessness and a desire to see our enemies given their just desserts. It does sound satisfying. So again, what’s the problem?

Our clue that there might be a problem with seeking such a God is in who is the antagonist in this mythic tale. We have to wonder why Satan, the great deceiver, is the one tempting Jesus to do good? It is so counterintuitive it awakens our suspicions.

I would suggest that we might begin to unravel this conundrum by reflecting on the nature of power and the source of evil and how they can walk hand-in-hand.

Power comes in many forms. We are witnessing fascinating examples of power in Christchurch, Northern Africa, and Wisconsin. Mother Nature is reminding us that we are not in charge of events, only of how we respond to such earth-shattering power. Libyans, Tunisians and Egyptians are revealing the weakness of autocratic and despotic power in the face of fearless cooperation for the common good. In Wisconsin a Republican governor and legislature have demonized unions that tend to support Democrats to justify their being disempowered. Christchurch is about the power of love. North Africa is about the power of cooperation. Wisconsin is about the power of coercion and domination. It is the power of coercion and domination to accomplish good that Satan dangles in front of Jesus. It is the means by which Satan hopes to deliver him unto evil.

Understanding evil and its source is not as easy a task. The most popular elective when I was in seminary was a paper entitled “Evil and a God of Love.” Reconciling a belief in the existence of both is a near impossible task. Logically, to say: God is all-powerful; God is all-good; terrible things happen will cause even a super-computer to have a meltdown. Any two combinations of those statements can be put together but not all three. David Hume, an 18th century philosopher, laid it out best: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

Generally the Hebrew Scriptures explain evil, the opposite of good, as forsaking God. We are not born good or bad, but if we choose not to follow God’s law we are evil. Isaiah had a different view, making God the source of evil: I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things. (45:7). Satan to the Old Testament Jews was not the embodiment of evil in opposition to God, but worked with God to test us. 

Traditional Christianity agrees with the idea of opposition to God as a source evil, but goes further. Augustine roots it in Original Sin and free will. Logically then natural evils, such as earthquakes, are divine punishment for our evil, sinful ways. They are God’s “subtle” way to make us repent. This God seeks to bring good out of evil.

Philosophers, psychologists and preachers have all tried their hand at defining and explaining evil. Some argue that it is culturally defined and relative. One person’s evil is not another’s. Others argue that evil is always evil in all times and places. Some offer a source for evil and others say it just absurdly happens without explanation. 

As a Progressive who no longer holds to the concept of a Supreme Being god, I cannot attribute evil to the divine. Natural evil is simply the tragic circumstances that nature sometimes produces. The rest of evil rests with us.

Carl Jung offers a thought-provoking notion in his book Answer to God: Evil is the dark side of God. Jung interpreted the story of Jesus as an account of God facing his own shadow. People tend to believe evil is something external to them, because they project their shadow onto others.

Scott Peck builds on this understanding. In his book People of the Lie he argues that evil, real palpable evil, creates scapegoats. Evil, thus, is hatred, hatred of the other. Evil despises, it brings ruin; it destroys. Evil is nihilistic. Its source is the human heart. Peck considers those he calls evil to be attempting to escape and hide from their own conscience (through self deception) and views this as being quite distinct from the apparent absence of conscience evident in sociopaths. How do they hide?

An evil person:

· Is consistently self-deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self-image of perfection

· Deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception

· Projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets, scapegoating others while appearing normal with everyone else

· Commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others

· Abuses political power by imposing their will upon others by overt or covert coercion

· Maintains a high level of respectability and lies incessantly in order to do so

· Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency of destructiveness

· Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim

· Has a covert intolerance to criticism.

As we enter the wilderness of Lent with Jesus it is an opportunity to reflect on how our desire to bring about good may be leading us into evil. We do not have the luxury of blaming it on a Supreme Being. Nor can we trust a mythical Satan to test us. No, the Devil won’t make us do it. We must do it ourselves. Instead of praying to be saved from a time of trial we need to welcome it, as did a very human Jesus, to examine the shadow side of our motives and methods. We must remember that evil never intends to bring forth good and only the power of love and cooperation will ever produce it.