TEMPTATIONS
Estimated reading time: 13 minutes.
Woe to the world from temptations, for temptations must come; but woe to the man through whom temptation comes
, says the Lord (Matthew
18
:7). What is temptation? In advertisements, this word is pronounced with a languid aspiration - “Chocolate bar “Prelest!” Melting temptation! In this case, "temptation" simply means the opportunity to obtain pleasure - not necessarily morally vicious. In the Christian context, the word “temptation,” like another favorite word in advertising, “temptation,” means something completely different—the desire to do something harmful and bad, evil, treacherous. Something that will bring temporary, and possibly eternal, unhappiness to us or other people.
Temptation is that specific thirst that an alcoholic feels when he sees a bottle on the counter; those thoughts about expensive things and pleasures that flash through the head of an investigator who is offered a bribe. This is the current that simply carries away a person who does not have solid principles, and which throws off course the one who does have these principles. Sometimes this desire is simple and rude - to steal an expensive and so desired item while the seller is looking away. Sometimes it is skillfully disguised as something harmless or even good - a struggle for truth, for freedom, and often for Truth.
Temptation often comes through certain people; Thus, the Russian people were seduced by the Bolsheviks, the German people by the Nazis. The Lord sternly warns those who can cause the sin of others: But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and thrown into the sea
(Mark
9:42
). As a rule, those who succumb to temptation themselves become the cause of temptation for others - as if a deadly infection is seizing more and more new carriers. But unlike an infection that affects us against our will, we decide for ourselves whether to succumb to temptation or not; and the entire tradition of the Church teaches us to recognize and reject those impulses that can lead us to evil. The question of temptations arises especially acutely when it comes to people who are repelled by something from the Church, or people who, after being there for some time, left it.
Walk home
The psalmist David turns to God with amazing words: You know when I sit down and when I get up; You understand my thoughts from afar. Whether I am walking or resting, You surround me, and all my paths are known to You. There is not yet a word on my tongue, - You, Lord, already know it completely... My bones were not hidden from You when I was created in secret, formed in the depths of the womb. Your eyes have seen my embryo; in Your book are written all the days appointed for me, when not one of them was yet
(Ps
138
) Our faith says that people are not the product of an assembly line - each of us is designed by God separately, according to a special project, and God has prepared for each of us something inexpressibly beautiful. God has prepared that place at His table that you, the reader, should take, that reflection of the glory of God that should be reflected in you, that eternal and endless joy that you should experience in your own way, as a unique and in your own way only child God's. Temptation is what threatens to deprive you of this, to tear you away from salvation, to prompt you to leave the eternal light into eternal darkness.
Various reasons can be intertwined in temptation - our own bad habits, sick passions and false beliefs; bad example and false words of other people; suggestions of spiritual forces of evil. The Church sees behind evil not just human imperfection, but a certain personal force, which the Lord called “the prince of darkness.” We have an enemy who desires our destruction; and the first thing he wants to achieve is to tear us away from the Church, if we are already connected with it, or to prevent us from coming to it, if we are not yet in it.
Bosch imitator. Temptations of St. Antonia. OK. 1500. Collection of F. van Lanschot. 's-Hertogenbosch
“Why doesn’t God kill the devil so that there is no evil?”
Those who have read Daniel Defoe's famous novel "Robinson Crusoe" remember this question that the simple-minded savage Friday asks Robinson. Robinson, after his misadventures on a desert island, turned to God in repentance and faith and now wants to convert the poor savage to the light of truth. The following conversation takes place between them: “Friday stopped me with the following words: “Okay, you say, God is so strong, so powerful, isn’t He stronger than the devil?” “Yes, yes, Friday,” I answered, “God is stronger and more powerful than the devil, and therefore we ask God to cast him into the abyss, so that He will give us the strength to resist his temptations, and turn away his fiery arrows from us.” “But,” he objected, “since God is stronger and can do more, why doesn’t He kill the devil so that there is no evil?” His question struck me strangely... At first I didn’t know what to answer him, I pretended that I hadn’t heard him, and asked again what he said. But he was too serious about seeking an answer to forget his question..."
In fact, what could be simpler? One good lightning bolt, and the devil's temptations are over once and for all. Is it over? Will another of the same kind take the place of the destroyed evil spirit? God could have destroyed any of His creation that rebelled against Him, but He chose not to do so. He created a world in which there is true freedom and true choice. This means that some angels and people will make the wrong choices - and they will have the opportunity to do so.
But most importantly, if, as the simple-minded Friday wishes, “God kill the devil,” will this be a victory? For God it is possible; but not for us. We will have nothing to do with it - in the battle of good and evil we will be outsiders, the victory that will be celebrated in heaven will not be our holiday. But God decided differently - people are honored to take part in His battle and share His victory. As the Revelation of John the Theologian says, And the great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole universe, was cast out to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven: Now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ, because the slanderer of our brethren is cast out, who slandered them before our God day and night. They defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and did not love their souls even to death.
and (Open
12
:9—11).
God fights with the devil not for physical dominance over the universe, and it would be a mistake to imagine this struggle as some kind of star wars, in which regiments of angels, with varying degrees of success, try to knock out hordes of demons from our galaxy. In this respect, God is the undisputed, absolute and only Sovereign, who cannot be threatened in any way by His rebellious creatures. The entire Universe belongs to Him and Him alone.
God fights not for territories or resources, but for something else - the souls of people endowed with free will. It's a bit like how a father struggles to raise his son to be a worthy man, or the relatives of an alcoholic struggle to get him to stop drinking. Here simple physical power helps very little.
People are active and free participants in the cosmic drama; the conflict between light and darkness unfolds in our souls, and each time we decide which side to take. Saints defeat the devil not by force of arms, but by loyalty to Christ “even to death.” Temptations that cannot help but come mean that we are involved in a battle - and our loyalty or betrayal has a universal, eternal dimension. Yes, usually we do not see behind our petty desires, petty displeasures and petty grievances our participation in this universal spiritual confrontation; but the Church reminds us that we humans are inevitably involved in it.
Leave the cave
In H.G. Wells's story "Country of the Blind," the hero finds himself in a mountain valley cut off from the outside world, inhabited by people who have been stricken with hereditary blindness for many generations. The valley is distinguished by its fertility and mild, favorable climate, so that its blind inhabitants are fully adapted to their life in eternal darkness. The memory of the world from which their ancestors once came was preserved in the form of half-erased myths. The traveler tries to tell them about the world outside their valley, but to them his speech seems complete nonsense. These people have never seen the green grass on which they walk, nor the starry sky above their heads, nor the sparkling mountain peaks that surround the valley. They live in a very small world accessible to their senses - and do not believe in the existence of anything else.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato's famous myth about the cave talks about prisoners sitting in a cave who can only judge real objects by the shadows they cast on the cave walls. All that is accessible to their perception, their entire world, is shadows, so for a person freed from the cave, meeting reality will be an almost unbearable shock. Both of these literary images have one thing in common: people can be deprived of the most important dimension of their lives, living like blind people, like prisoners in a cave, and almost not realizing it. The huge, mysterious and incomprehensible world of spiritual reality remains outside their lives. In our country, people have been taught for decades that the cave is the only reality, and now, when this pressure has long ceased, people have simply become accustomed to living in a cave. It is difficult for them to believe that there is anything else besides the cave. Yes, many people vaguely feel that the cave is not everything; and some even speak with confidence about a vast and shining world beyond its borders. But most often people brush aside such conversations, even consider them harmful, distracting from the improvement of our dungeon.
Christian interpretation of Plato's myth of the cave. Prisoners sitting in a cave can judge reality only by the shadows on the walls. The saints show the prisoners the light and lead them out of the cave. Engraving by Jan Saenredam (1565-1607) after a drawing by Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem (1562-1638)
A navigator setting foot on a new continent, or an astronaut going into outer space, experiences a less amazing discovery than a person discovering the reality of the spiritual world; suddenly regaining his sight, he discovers that the grass he has been walking on all this time is emerald green, the snow on the mountain peaks is white, and the sky is blue. With a sudden shudder he sees the abysses along the edge of which he has been walking all this time, and with joyful trepidation he sees hospitable valleys full of amazing wonders. The habit of living with his eyes closed pulls him back, but he can no longer live as before.
And the Christian life is a life in contact with spiritual reality. Sometimes God makes us realize it very clearly; sometimes we must “walk by faith and not by sight” and simply be faithful to the decision once made. As spiritually awakened people, we are called to recognize that we are in a battle, and the temptations we experience are part of it. Through the eyes of one who has seen the light
It is on the basis of this awareness of spiritual reality that we build our relationship with the Church. We begin to understand why the Church is needed at all when we recognize that the world is much larger than the cave we are accustomed to, there are things in it immeasurably more beautiful than anything we have ever desired, and inexpressibly more terrible than anything we have ever were afraid; not only the world in which we live, but also we, people, are much more than we dared to admit to ourselves; we are called to eternal life - not just endless, but qualitatively different; Moreover, this new, completely different life begins now.
In the rite of the Annunciation (preparation for Baptism) there are the following words: “Standing at the door inside the temple, the priest asks the catechumen: “Who are you?” He answers: “I am someone who wants to know the True God and seeks salvation.” Priest: “Why did you come to the Holy Church?” Announced: “To learn true faith from her and join her.” Priest: “What benefit do you hope to receive from true faith?” Announced: “Eternal and blessed life.” There is a famous song: “love changes everything - hands and faces, heaven and earth, the way you live and the way you die.” Faith, if it exists, changes everything even more profoundly; we are not adding a few architectural embellishments to our home, we are building it on a new foundation. We look at everything with completely different eyes - including what could serve as embarrassment and temptation to us.
Face reality
People leave the Church or refuse to enter It for various reasons. Some are burdened by the commandments, some cannot “hang out” or find an environment for comfortable communication, some are embarrassed by the (real or supposed) sins of church people. But the root of the misfortune is not in this, not in the other, and not in the third; rather, it is in the stubborn ignoring of the most important and, in fact, the only important question - is this true and why is all this? Is Christ Really Risen? Does the Gospel tell the truth? If this is true, then it is true no matter how comfortable I am in the Church or how pleasant I am to certain people standing next to me in the temple.
At school I had an excellent mathematics teacher. She knew how to teach her subject in such a way that everyone listened with bated breath; she stayed to tutor struggling students and put her heart and soul into her work. Everyone loved and respected her. Others may have been less fortunate—they may have encountered an unprofessional, irritable, or indifferent math teacher. Moreover, quite rarely, there are even criminals among teachers. But what if one of us said: “I don’t believe in the multiplication tables! We had a terrible math teacher!”? Obviously, we just won't make the connection. A math teacher can be a wonderful person, or he can be completely unfit - this does not affect the truth of the multiplication table.
The doctor who advised me to lose weight was clearly overweight herself; did that make her advice false? No. If certain statements are true, then they are true no matter how consistent with these statements those who make them behave. Twice two is really four; Being overweight is really bad for your health. If for some reason the multiplication tables were unpleasant to me, I could easily find examples of bad mathematics teachers or tell stories (quite true) of how excessive enthusiasm for mathematics leads people to a psychiatric hospital. But would I prove by this that the multiplication table itself is false?
As the school physics textbook says, reality is something that exists independently of us and our thoughts about it. The Church makes certain statements about reality: it talks about God, our Creator, Judge and Savior, that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead, that whoever believes in Him and follows Him will have eternal life , and the one who completely ossifies in unrepentance will perish. The Church claims that immediately upon leaving our body we will be convinced that we have made the most important choice in our lives - and made it either correctly or tragically incorrectly.
If all this is not true, Christ has not been resurrected, then we should not join the Church and should not, even if there were not a single person in It that was unpleasant to us, because in this case, untruth lies at its very foundation. If this is true, we should join the Church. If God himself, who became man for the sake of our salvation, meets us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, then no sins and weaknesses of the people standing next to us in the temple can turn us away from Him; if this is not so, then we have nothing to do in the temple.
We will definitely face temptations, and they will be very diverse. But if we face the truth and remember the reality of the spiritual battle in which we are involved, we will not be carried away by their currents. Our faith, as Scripture says, is a safe and strong anchor. As the holy apostle says, Put on the whole armor of God, so that you can stand against the wiles of the devil, because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spirits of wickedness in the heavenly places. For this purpose, take on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on the evil day and, having done everything, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girded with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; and above all, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery arrows of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Pray at all times in the spirit with every prayer and petition, and strive for this very thing with all constancy and prayer for all the saints.
x (Eph
6
:11—18).
Temptation
The Bible Dictionary defines the word “temptation” as a Church Slavonic word meaning “test”, and in different contexts the word can have its own connotations. For example, this could be an action of God, a test sent from Him, aimed at testing human perseverance.
This can be a provocation of people or demons in order to force a person to sin or show himself in an unflattering way; this may be a person’s internal message, pushing him towards the fall, or it may be a person’s test of God’s patience.
For example, in the biblical Book of Exodus there is an episode when the Jews scold Moses, and he warns them, pointing out that they are tempting the Lord: “And the people blasphemed Moses, saying: Give us water, that we may drink. And Moses answered them: Why do you blaspheme me? And why do you tempt the Lord? (Ex. 17:2).
Archpriest Igor Filin believes that temptation is an invitation to commit a sin, and it can come from anyone: from the person himself, from demons or from other people. Essentially, this is a test of a person’s strength, so it is not surprising that it can come from God. It should be remembered that even Christ in the desert, tormented by thirst, became hungry and was immediately tempted by the devil.
The Monk Abba Dorotheos, who lived at the end of the 6th century, pointed out that if a person does a good deed, then this will certainly be followed by temptation, testing the believer’s strength. You must be prepared for this and you should not be surprised by this, but you should endure, pray and thank God, since temptation not only tests, but also teaches the soul. You just need to ask God to grant you attention and patience.
Thus, temptation is a process that must bear its own special fruit. Modern preacher Andrei Tkachev says that this fruit is self-knowledge, understanding of one’s weaknesses, leading to their correction.
Second interpretation
“The second understanding,” Fr. further writes. Daniel, - this place was known to Chrysostom and was accepted by Blessed Theodoret, Sevirus (at Ecumenius) and Saint Photius. According to him, the coming of the Antichrist is restrained by God's determination about the time of his appearance and the grace of the Holy Spirit, which will depart from people (although not from everyone) for their sins, especially for the impoverishment of love. Saint Theophan the Recluse also adheres to this interpretation as the main one, admitting the first interpretation as an additional one” (“Theological temptations of the monarchical movement”).
However, we do not observe any separate second interpretation from the Holy Fathers, as Fr. Daniel, because he says that
