Oscar Wilde reckoned he could resist anything except temptation. We are now in Lent, this period of forty days that reflect the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness being tempted and tested. It’s a time when the church prepares for Easter by engaging in a time of self-reflection and we begin this week by looking at temptation. As we are surrounded by advertising all the time, we are surrounded by temptation all of the time. The basic premise of any temptation is that what we are being tempted with is within our reach and it will make our lives better if we yield to it. We tend to think of it in terms of wanting another chocolate biscuit or a pair of shoes, but as we see in our example today, temptation serves a far more insidious purpose.
Most people are familiar with the incident involving the serpent and Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis. It’s where we get our expression “forbidden fruit” to describe what is tempting us. At its heart, this temptation invokes a fear in Adam and Eve that God is deliberately withholding something from them that will make their lives better. They begin to wonder why God would not have their best interests at heart and that they know better what is good for them. As a result, they eat the fruit that has been expressly prohibited to them. It is simply the thought that God is holding them back which is enough for them to take matters into their own hands and turn from God.
This is the harm caused by temptation. We are not talking about damage to your waistline or bank balance here but rather damage to your faith and your relationship with God. The simple fact for many of us is that life is not easy. Most people I know are facing challenges of some sort. It’s at these times that we too begin hearing a quiet voice asking us to consider that if God truly cared about us, why then are we in this situation? We too begin to fill in the blanks ourselves and think that maybe God doesn’t have our best interests at heart and is keeping us back for some selfish reason. We are then tempted to turn our backs on God and take our own path in life. During Lent, as we spend time considering these things, we are especially vulnerable. As we will see from our looking at this reading, the reasoning applied by Adam and Eve is flawed. We too must take care to remember God’s great love and care for us and never give into the temptation of believing otherwise.