When Scripture states that God tempted Abraham, it merely means God tried Abraham's faith as a goldsmith tries gold in the fire; there is a world of difference between God trying His people and inciting their corruption.
Coming more precisely to the subject of temptation, here are a few basic principles:
1. - Temptation comes from the duality or complexity of our nature. We are not simple creatures like crystals but rather a compound of body and soul, matter and spirit. The human personality is like a driver in a chariot, as Plato suggested. Before him are two headstrong steeds: one is the animal urge with us and the other the spirit. The charioteer or the driver has great difficulty to get both steeds headed in the same direction.
Though modern psychology has done much to develop the nature of this tensions, it must not be thought that the tension inside man was not known in the past. The greatest of Greek dramatists, Sophocles, wrote of the great primeval disharmony that it was "grave with age and infected all men". Ovid, the Latin poet, wrote: "I see and approve the better things of life but the worse things in life I follow".
Every human being in the world can bear witness to the civil war which goes on inside his being. Good people sometimes act like bad people; very bad people, in certain circumstances will act like good people. Goethe regretted that God had made him only one man. There was enough material in him for both a saints and a villain.
2. - It must not be thought that the origin of temptation is solely to be sought in the individual human personality. If the origin were wholly within the person, it is conceivable that some would be without temptation; but there is no one in the world who is not tempted - absolutely no one. The nature of the temptation may vary one from another and they may even vary with age. Confucius divided temptations into three different stages of human life: in youth man is tempted to lust, in middle age to pride and power, and in old age to avarice or greed. No one tells the full story of temptation by seeking its origin in a grandfather or a grandmother or too much love for a father or too little love for a mother, crowded tenements, low calorie diet or insufficient education.
3. - The true origin of the conflict is not to be found in the individual exclusively but in human nature. This assumes there is a difference between "nature" and "person". Nature answers to the question, "What is it?" A person answers to the question, "Who is it?" A pencil is not a person. An atom is not a person. John Jones is a person. Something has happened to disturb the original human nature so that it is now neither an angel nor a devil. Human nature is not intrinsically corrupt (as some theologians claimed 400 years ago); nor is it intrinsically divine (as philosophers began saying fifty years ago) Rather, human nature has aspirations for good which it sometimes finds impossible to realize completely by itself; at the same time, human nature has inclinations to evil which solicit it away from these ideas.
It is like a man who is down a well of his own stupidity. He knows that he ought not to be there but he cannot get out by himself. Or to change the picture, he is like a clock whose mainspring is broken. He needs to be fixed on the inside but repairs must be supplied from without. He is a creature who can run well again but only if Someone outside has the kindness to repair him. This Someone is Christ, the Son of God and the Redeemer of human nature. He came not only to teach but to heal the breach caused by false freedom.
BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895 to 1979 )
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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