But

But means we have options, but not in the same way that and or or suggests options: but gives us direction. But points us in the other direction, the way that is away from the way we have been heading. In our Christian life, the idea of having this kind of option is essential. Having choice, the concept of free will, is central to our relationship with God. If we do not have choice, then Christ is redundant. We are made in God's image, and that includes our ability to choose.


Our lives are filled with buts, but the big buts are the most important. I like big buts. (I am not being sacrilegious. I am being juvenile. Being juvenile is not a sin--just annoying.) We are faced with decisions that have real consequence, and we have to accept our role in addressing each of them.


Robert Frost offers us the idea of two paths in a wood, and he suggests that this one decision, this one choice, "makes all the difference." However, our lives are filled with choices; instead of one fork in the road, we are all faced with navigating the road system of Los Angeles. But, there is one choice that remains central to our lives, and that is our choice of being a Christian.


But even after making that choice, we aren't out of the woods (notice how I cleverly cling to the Frost allusion): we are still traveling, still having to make decisions. The only difference now is that we have a GPS to help us as we make our way. I realize that this smacks of a bad country song from the seventies (and, no, that is not redundant)--"Jesus is my GPS"--but the analogy is not altogether bad. A GPS tells us where we are and plots out the best possible route for getting where we want to be. We do not have to listen to the GPS; we have to make the ultimate decision. Christ also points us in the right direction, and we still have to make the final decision.

Making the decision for Christ is not a once-and-you're-done thing. Living as a Christian is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment undertaking. We are not elevated above the world and free from all temptations and tribulations. As Christians, we live in the same world as everyone else, and we face the same kinds of choices each day. Many people outside the church--and a good many inside--misunderstand the idea of our transformation in Christ. Yes, we become a new person, but we are still a person. Our transformation is a first step, and the journey lasts as long as we inhabit the bodies we have on the earth. A lot of people confuse the transformation we undergo when we accept Christ with the transformation we will undergo when we leave this life. We are still human as long as we are here.

Being human, as we have said, means that we have to make decisions. Some choices are simpler than others, but all choices have consequences (and there I go, getting all existentialist again). As Christians, we have to watch for the choices--sometimes they can be sneaky--and we have to offer up the decision to Christ. We have to ask the ubiquitous "What would Jesus do?" God has given us the gift (and curse) of having free will. What we do with it identifies us.

Temptation

According to Oscar Wilde, "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Wilde may not be the best person to seek out for advice on how to live a Christian life. He definitely had his own issues. But he also had a certain knack for seeing into the truths of the human psyche (if not the human soul). Many of us live our lives adhering, whether we know it or not, to Wilde's philosophy. We find that it is easier to ask forgiveness than to stand strong against the temptations we face each day. We give in to the temptation because we find that it is stronger than we are.


If we look at the rest of Wilde's quotation from The Picture of Dorian Gray, we see that temptation is a bit more complex: "Resist it [temptation], and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself." Wilde suggests that our soul will grow sick without the thing--whatever it is--that the temptation promises. What he is talking about, though, is that we will continue to dwell on the thing at the heart of the temptation--if we don't get it. However, there is more than one way to fulfill the perceived need which is the essence of the temptation.


We probably need to start out with an understanding of what temptation is. According to the on-line version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, temptation is "the state of being tempted," and tempt is "to entice to do wrong by promise of pleasure or gain" or "to have an urge or inclination." We do not say that we are tempted unless we mean that there is something, on some level or in some way, forbidden about the action. We might say that we were tempted to take a brownie, which would imply that we know that we should not--they are supposed to be saved for the bake sale or we are supposed to be watching our calories. If we say that we were tempted to tell off the boss, we are suggesting, by the word tempted, that we know that we should not do it. If we say that we are tempted to do good, then, we are being ironic.


However, there is more than one dimension to the word: according to the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary, temptation is also the act of tempting. We are admonished, then, not to tempt others. We must be aware of our own lives, but we must also be aware of those around us. We should strive to be sure that we are not, in any way, serving as a hindrance in someone else's attempt to live a Christian life. This requires that we be conscious of those we encounter. We have to think about what they see, what they hear, what they notice about us.


Whichever way we read the word, whether we take it to mean our own temptation or the combined idea of our temptation and our tempting of others, we have to realize that we are called to be aware. We cannot hope to avoid temptation if we do not pay attention. We are destined to fall into temptation unless we look at everything around us. According to Socrates (according to Plato), "The unexamined life is not worth living." This idea can be (and has been) discussed in many different ways and toward many different ends. For us, it means that we have to pay attention to what we do, to who we are, to where we are, to all the details of life. If we ignore the details, if we are not aware of each moment, we risk finding ourselves in the midst of temptation. We have to be vigilant.


Getting back to Oscar's advice: yielding to temptation, giving in, does not make the temptation go away. It sates it for the moment, but the temptation will still be there, and the next time we encounter it, chances are that it will be bigger and badder--especially if we (mistakenly) believe we have gotten away with something. To put an overly simplistic spin on it, temptation feeds on us: it eats at us, and the more it eats, the more it wants. When we give in to temptation, it takes a bite out of us. In Greek mythology, Prometheus was bound to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains as a punishment for giving fire to mankind, and every day an eagle would come to eat his liver--and every night, a new liver grew back to replace the eaten one. We regenerate in much the same way as temptation eats away at us. We, too, are chained; however, we do not have to accept the daily punishment. We do not have to wait for a centaur to sacrifice himself and Heracles to kill the eagle. We have Christ.

Wilde suggests that the temptation will go away only if we succumb to it, but we have already seen that this is a delusion, that the temptation does not really disappear at all, it grows stronger and more menacing. Truly, the only way to be rid of a temptation is to replace it. Temptations are urges that we face: the urge to take something, the urge to do something, the urge to say something. If we look at these urges, we see that they are supposed to lead us to something, to some kind of gain or some kind of pleasure. If we think about the ways that temptations are supposed to "fulfill" us, we see that these urges are vain attempts to fill up some kind of emptiness within us. They are supposed to fill us up, but they do not. The stuff of temptations is the junk food of the soul, empty spiritual calories--or worse, poison.

If we find ourselves in temptation, we have to realize that we can fill that emptiness much more effectively with Christ. When we face temptation, the only way to get rid of it is through Jesus Christ. But that requires that we be aware. Being a Christian is an active endeavor. Being passive allows us to be dragged along by the currents of the world around us, and we find ourselves dragged into temptations. I have a favorite old t-shirt that has the Ichthus symbol surrounded by the repeated admonition "Go against the flow," suggesting that a Christian life is similar to the fish swimming up stream, that we, as Christians, must push against the current--the life in the world--in order to achieve our objective. We are all going to be surrounded by temptations. We have to accept that Christ is our salvation--ultimately and also moment by moment.

Into

I love words (if you haven't noticed), even little words. The word into may seem small and innocent, hardly worth mentioning, but even a seemingly innocuous word can lead us toward ideas, toward understanding, toward thinking.


The difference between into and in might help explain my point. If we say that a person walks in a room, we might be saying that he has walked from the sofa to the television (because, I guess, he has lost the remote). He has walked in the room. Or, he might step one foot in the room. We don't know whether he has ever been outside the room and we are vague on how far his travels have taken him within the walls of the room. If, on the other hand, we say that he walks into a room, we know that he has been outside and that he is now completely inside the room. That difference is very important.


For one thing, it is important to for us to see the difference between being outside temptation and inside temptation. When we say "lead us not into temptation," we are asking that we not be immersed in the thing. We are recognizing that it is possible to be outside temptation and that we risk the possibility of being dunked in it. We are saying that we know that temptation is out there and we know that we can be either inside or outside the temptation. In other words, we are suggesting that temptation is a constant hazard, but we are not necessarily always mired in it.


We also have to see that there is a difference between encountering a temptation and being within it. Just as we can stand in a doorway and be in the room without being inside the room, we can also encounter a temptation without being swallowed by it. In our culture, temptations are constant. Yet, just because they are present does not mean that we have jumped into them with both feet, like a five-year-old encountering a mudpuddle. (No, I am not condemning anyone for jumping in puddles. The analogy is meant to convey an image and that is all. I enjoy the occasional puddle as much as the next over-grown child.)

The point I am trying to make about the word into is that, like any good preposition, it is showing us a relationship. (Okay, technically any preposition, no matter how well it is performing its function, will show us a relationship.) Here, the relationship is between us and temptation, and the word is showing that we are asking specifically that we not be led into temptation. This is not saying that we should expect that we will never encounter temptation at all. We are not asking that we not be led near temptation or beside temptation or around or close by or just within sight of temptation. We are asking that we not be led into temptation, and that is a specific request.

We cannot begin to imagine that we can live our lives without encountering temptations. We live in the world, and the world is filled with temptations. I know that some people go to great lengths to hide from the world, to hide from temptations, and I am not going to say that those people are wrong; however, I cannot hide from the world: I am a teacher, and I teach in a public school. I live in a college town. I watch television and watch movies and listen to music. I go to the store. I am out in the world, and the world is filled with temptations. I cannot hope that I will never encounter one of them. But the prayer does not suggest that I should hope that. According to Christ, I am to pray that I am not led into temptation.

Each of us has different "rooms" that we need to stay out of--a bar is not an arena of temptation for me--a strip club would be. I am not saying that I should start hanging out in bars, but I have heard of some effective ministries that have been set in such places. My point is that I know that there are those who could not sit in a bar without feeling that they were within the temptation. I teach high school and college English classes. There are probably those who should not put themselves in such situations. I have known college instructors who have had intimate relationships with their students (but I hope that none of my colleagues have ever done the same with high school students). We have to recognize our own particular weaknesses (and mine are many) so that we can try to avoid stepping into them.

Perhaps we are praying, then, that we can recognize the temptations. How often have we heard someone tell a remorse-filled story and include the justification that he did not know how it had happened? We cannot fall back on the defense of ignorance of the law. We must be pro-active, and that requires that we know what we are looking for. We have to be able to see whether we are inside a temptation. That, I believe, is truly what we are asking for from God: awareness. Perhaps, after all, a bar would be a place of temptation for me. But whatever the place, I have to be cognizant of the temptations around me so that I can avoid becoming immersed in them.

As human beings in the world, we are going to encounter temptations. We cannot live our lives by hiding from the temptations. If we ask God to make us aware of the temptations and to give us the gifts we need to avoid them (strength, wisdom, love, compassion, honor, courage, truth), then we can live our lives--and live them in a more Christ-like way.

Not

Many people think of all religion (but perhaps Christianity most of all) as a long list of things not to do. To these people, Christianity is all about the thou-shalt-nots. Not too surprisingly, this group includes a fair number of Christians--people who ought to know better. Just as Christianity is not really about what we do, it is also not about what we do not do. Christianity is about what we are. But, as we have explored elsewhere, being will almost always lead to doing--or, in this case, not doing.


One of the first words we learn is no. It allows us to assert our autonomy: our parents tell us to do something, we say "no"--and we have distanced ourselves from their rule. In the Lord's prayer, we are asking to be distanced from temptation. In our lives, we want to be distanced from anything that we see as a threat. Yet, as much as we might be eager to use the word, we are usually pretty loathe to hear it. We do not like to be told no. Perhaps it all goes back to feeling that we have lost our autonomy, that we have been told to give up our "power." Maybe we just really want to do the thing we have been told not to do.


Call it human nature, call it original sin, call it the id; whatever it is, it pushes us toward doing the kinds of things that we have been chastened not to do. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ explains that the action is not necessary for the sin to occur: we can commit adultery without touching another person if we have experienced lust in our hearts. We can commit murder without killing someone if we harbor anger in our hearts. I bring this up because most people have not killed another human being. I like to think that most people have not committed adultery or stolen or set up idols. Yet, I am fairly certain that there are very few who have not done any of these things in their hearts.

Our culture does not readily embrace the negative. Because we are so immersed in the culture, it might be hard to wrap our minds around this idea--we probably cannot easily understand that negative does not have to be perceived as a negative. We assume that a negative must be seen as negative. We have to understand that we are juxtaposing two different connotations of the word: on the one hand, we are talking about negative as it applies to the function in a sentence, to the idea that we are changing the direction of a command; on the other hand we are talking about negative as a way that we perceive something, to our feelings about the thing.


Concisely, negative does not have to be negative. In fact, we should actually embrace negative, in some situations. In math, a negative represents a distance, just as we noted that the word no can represent the distancing of ourselves from an authority. If we grasp this idea, that the negative can be seen as a distancing, then we should easily see that the negative can be a positive thing. We should embrace the negative when it is a part of our armor against sin. We need the negative in our lives, just as negative space is necessary in art. In art, negative space is the area that is not the thing we are drawing--it is the part that is not the thing itself.


Growing up, I was teased by my uncles and my father about being careful not to eat the hole of the donut. It was a bit of nonsense, a way to have fun with a four-year-old, but it addresses that same idea of negative space, and the idea of negative space is important to consider. In simple terms, everything in a drawing is the thing or not the thing. We tend to do that with the tenets of Christianity: we either do the thing or we do not do the thing. We murder or we do not murder. We lie or we do not lie. Christ, however, admonishes us that reality is more complicated than simple black and white.


Many people feel that the world would be a better place if the Ten Commandments were posted in every school and every public building. Maybe it would. However, I do believe that there are more important ideas with which we should be concerned. And I think that it would be more important to have these things posted in our hearts than on a wall. Instead of limiting ourselves to the basics of Mosaic law, I think we should address ourselves more to the words of Christ. I believe that we should spend more of our time and energy focused on being a Christian than on not doing things from a list of prohibitions.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we have to decide whether we are going to define ourselves by what we are or by what we are not, by what we do or by what we do not do. If we live a life defined by not, then we live a life of fear and loathing; if we live a life defined instead by what we are, then we are free to follow Christ--following Christ is about doing and being. If we choose to follow Christ, we will adhere to the Ten Commandments, even attempting to live as Christ admonished us to live in His Sermon on the Mount. If we choose to focus on the Ten Commandments first, we will miss the truth that is Christ.

I would never advocate that we should not live according to the Law; however, we have to realize that Christ must come first and that everything else will fall into place after Him. Many people see Christianity as a list of prohibitions, but if we are truly following Christ, we are living a positive life--not a life of negatives.