Light Lenten Reflections

Week 5

Mmmmm.....Tempting....

My brother attributes my great fishing prowess - including my annoying tendency to outfish him – to my ability to think like a fish. My brother is a highly knowledgeable fisherman, so I assume he is correct. A few years ago, on a trip to Wal-Mart for some random grocery item, I inexplicably found myself in the fishing lure aisle. (This happens surprisingly often.) There among the bags of Gulp and Zoom soft baits, a generic package of rubber worms caught my eye. Earthworm-mauve in color at the head, fading to a creamy rose in its tapered tail, this worm stimulated that part of my brain that thinks like a fish. Somehow I knew if I were a largemouth bass, I definitely would go for this worm. I promptly grabbed a pack of them, got my random grocery item (I think...) and went home to try out the worm in the backyard pond.

Over the next fishing year the worm proved to be very successful. I caught a lot of bass with it, some crappie and even a bluegill who should have known better than to go for something that big.. But when I started thinking about the actual size of the fish I was catching, I honestly had to admit that I didn't catch any really big bass with what was now my favorite rubber worm. Most of the bass I was getting were what I would call “teenage” or “college-age” bass, that is, not small, but not yet having reached their full weight or length maturity. Oh, I did see some big ones out there, but they either ignored the worm, or looked at it with disdain as if to say “Yeah, seen that before. Not interested. Going after one of those never ends well...” It got me thinking about the role experience and maturity has in the ability to resist temptation.

Temptation, a desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise, is part of our human nature. There is nothing really wrong with temptation itself. It's a desire, but not yet an action. We can resist the temptation to do something that is ultimately bad for us, and after a little strain to our self restraint muscles, life goes on as usual, or we can give into the temptation and find out how bad the resulting consequences will be. Like those luscious rubber worms, temptations are things that appear to be real but are in fact just faint imitations of what we really need or long for. When we are tempted to eat an entire bag of sour cream cheddar potato chips it's because we are hungry for real food. When we are tempted to lie or misrepresent ourselves it's because we want to be accepted or seen in a particular light. When we drink too much or indulge in drugs it's because we want to feel good or distract ourselves from some inner pain, if only for the present moment. When we are tempted to enter into unhealthy relationships it's because we are wired to be in good relationships, but we don't have the patience to wait for the good one to come along. As we age and mature, I think we become more aware of the temptations out there we are most likely to succumb to, their personal consequences for us, and, if we are wise, learn to resist them. Unlike the teenage and college-age bass, we develop the disdain of the lunkers - “Yeah, seen that before. Not interested. Going after one of those never ends well...”

Toward the end of my successful fishing season, I did catch one big largemouth with that worm. It was the biggest bass, biggest any fish, I had ever caught in my life. It was an exciting catch for me. It did not end well for the fish. I was a little surprised a big bass had given into the lure of that worm, but I think it was a good reminder that our age, maturity, and experience isn't always enough to resist temptation. The ultimate way of escape from temptation doesn't come from deep down, within us, but from Above. Sometimes our resolve fails us, and without a heaven-sent escape, we human lunkers find ourselves behaving like teenage and college-age bass when it comes to temptation. We give in. And it never ends well... 

 

Something to Ponder:

What are your “rubber worms”, the areas that hold the most temptation for you? Food, money, image, relationships, sex, alcohol, drugs, other things? What are the areas you don't think are a struggle for you, that you feel a bit smug in your resistance to?

Something to Pray:

Grab a Bible or go to BibleGateway.com. Read 1 Corinthians 10:11-13. Reread verse 12. Give to God the areas you feel a bit smug in your resistance to temptation. Acknowledge that your strength is often not enough. Ask Him to protect you with His strength to keep you strong and wise. Reread verse 13 a couple of times. Ask God to “provide the way of escape” for you in the areas you do struggle with temptation.

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.” - C. S. Lewis

Sherman's Lagoon                   Jim Toomey                 1994