A person is brave not when they act without fear, but when they act even though they are afraid. That, and that alone, is true bravery.
If you are not tempted to eat liver and do not eat it, that does not make you a spiritual giant. If you are tempted to eat chocolate cake and do not, that is what makes you a spiritual giant. One of the more monstrous evils perpetrated against human beings is the deeply held belief, the false guilt, of imagining that being tempted is the same as sin—misusing the words of Jesus, that if you’ve “lusted in your heart” then you’ve as good as done it. Jesus was not arguing that temptation is the same as doing the sin, and that if you’ve been tempted then you are guilty and an awful person. He was condemning Pharisees who came up with complicated rules that allowed them to bypass God’s commands so they could sin all they liked while technically following all the rules (Matthew 5:27-28).
It is an absurdity to believe that temptation is sinful. Jesus was tempted we are told, but yet was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). This is not some metaphysical mental game of deep spirituality. It’s very simple.
Jesus was tempted to eat chocolate cake.
But he never did.
Something to remember: you can only be tempted to do something you want to do. If you are hungry, then you can be tempted to eat. If you are not hungry, there is no temptation. Someone may try to get you to eat liver. If you hate liver, you are not being tempted and the fact that you don’t eat the liver doesn’t make you a spiritual giant. It simply means you don’t like liver.
So stop feeling guilty because you want to eat chocolate cake. If you aren’t eating it, then you are doing well; then you are being a spiritual giant. Just like the terrified person who goes ahead and saves people from the burning house in spite of her terror is being brave.
Stop worrying! Stop feeling guilty! Stop imagining you are an awful person for being tempted. Jesus was tempted (Luke 4:1-13). Was he an awful person because of that?
Don’t let anyone else make you feel bad because you are tempted. Temptation is part of being human. Resisting temptation is just what Jesus did.
You are being like Jesus when you are tempted, and you are being like Jesus when you don’t give in and act on it.
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Appreciate your words on bravery. I first encountered this thought in one of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels.
Since we are pulling out a lone text, please comment too on Jesus’s words about lusting after a woman in the heart being the same as adultery. I am not being facetious, or literalist, but pastoral; this text from Luke 4 never goes unchallenged by my simple, good-hearted but worried hearers, who cite Matthew 5.
Can you provide us a bit of contextual frame for this seeming
inconsistency? Preferably, a framework that can be conveyed to people out on the ground outside of AAR meetings?
In Matthew 5: 27-28 Jesus is speaking to those who wanted to have sex with someone they were not married to, but who also wanted to avoid becoming guilty of adultery. These people would, therefore, divorce their current spouse, marry the object of their desire, and then, once satisfied, would divorce her and marry the next woman they wanted. Jesus is explaining that if your intent is to circumvent the law, then you have in fact broken it, regardless of how carful you might be to follow all the legalistic requirements. It’s the letter of the law vs. the spirit of it that is in view.
It also reminds me a bit of the later Islamic practice of Nikah mut‘ah, a “short term” or “pleasure marriage” where marriage is set up for a specific period of time—as short as an hour—and then dissolved. See the discussion here:
http://www.al-islam.org/encyclopedia/chapter6a/8.html
And for more detail, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikah_mut%E2%80%98ah