Genesis 3:1, 4 (NASB95)
1Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” . . . 4The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!
Disciples must become wise to temptation. Discipleship teaches how to see the choices rightly; how to walk through the fire in the presence of the Son of God.
As my mother was dying, my wife urged me to reread The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying. Returning to that book that influenced John Wesley, I was drawn to chapter 3, “On the Temptations Incident to the State of Sickness, with Their Remedies.” At that time, I had been a Christian for 50 years, and no one had ever taught me this, or, perhaps, I had never learned.
Fifteen months later, I lost much of my eyesight. For the next three months, I was much in the fire in which I discovered that I already had forgotten the insights from the season of my mother’s long suffering and death. The temptation to impatience and fear were more present than I realized at first.
Temptation comes to all. Becoming holy in this life does not mean we have ceased being tempted. The holy ones learn to recognize temptation’s presence and to understand its strategies.
My short thoughts cannot delve deeply into this topic. However, I suggest that every temptation carries this lie, “trust your own judgment.” The corollary is “distrust God’s judgement.”
I am not to the first to observe that Satan in the form of the serpent (c.f. Revelation 12:9) deceived Eve. (c.f. 1 Timothy 2:14) Simplifying the passage, the serpent convinced Eve to trust her own judgment over God’s. He convinced her not to be grateful for the freedoms of the garden, but to pity herself for the one prohibition. He convinced her that happiness was not to found in God, but in something other than God. Her judgment was deceived, and she took the fruit and ate it.
Am I having difficulty trusting in God? Then I trust in my own judgment. Lesslie Newbigin wrote that one cannot doubt one set of beliefs except from another set of beliefs. If I am deceived to doubt God’s care, God’s love, God’s good purpose in my present trial, like Eve I am resorting to my own judgments of what is good, beneficial, and happy.
An easy example is temptation around our use of money. God’s judgment is that generosity begins and greed diminishes at the tithe of ten percent. My judgment is life will be easier and happier if I give a lesser amount. I trust my judgment and distrust God’s.
To lose my eyesight raised the temptation to pity myself and to think my purpose was lost. “Seeing” the fourth man in the fire was nearly impossible. I was tempted to elevate my judgment. Yet the Word of God bolstered my soul as I “saw” anew that Mark’s Gospel begins and ends the premier discipleship section (chapters 8 through 10) with a blind man. Men whose blindness became the occasion for learning to follow Jesus and trust His judgment.
Whenever temptation comes, it carries a lie. Among the lies is this, trust your own judgment and not God’s. Do not believe the lie. God is faithful and true. He is the joy our hearts seek, and He is the satisfaction of the soul.