A Few Days in the Wilderness

Excerpt from Chapter 4.

 

To be alone is one thing.  To endure it is another.

The foundation of western culture is an attempt to make life easier.  Progress is the currency of the lazy.  Over the last twenty years, innovation has created a culture that believes it no longer has to exert any energy.  Even the commute to work has now been subsumed by the early morning traffic on the digital superhighway.  Instead of stopping at Starbucks, McDonalds or any other coffee shop that requires a guaranteed loan to get an eight ounce cup of coffee, many flip the switch on their own coffee machine.  If they are innovative enough, they will have already purchased a coffee maker that can be set for a certain time in which to turn on.  At 8:45, hot cup of steaming coffee in hand, many workers stumble twenty feet to their office chair where they park themselves for the next ten hours stopping only to refill the coffee cup.  Some don’t even change out of their pajamas to go to work.

We have electric toothbrushes, digital watches, automatic vacuum cleaners and, of course, the ubiquitous mobile device that allows you to be connected to the world at all times but disconnected from reality at the same time.  No longer is there any stress of communication: if you don’t want to expend the energy to talk to someone, text them.  If you don’t want to read a book, Google the notes.  If you don’t want to play a CD (what’s that?) you can instantly download individual songs without having to ‘waste’ time looking for it in your CD (what’s that?) tower. 

We have sacrificed patience on the altar of progress.

When we look at the story of Jesus in the wilderness, repeating, day after day, the discipline of preparation for his vocation, the modern mind would think, why forty days?  Why couldn’t Jesus just download the savior program from his father and be ready for the next day?

When an employee is new to a business, often there is a training process.  Usually the trainee is subjected to a certain number of hours of ‘how to’ and ‘what not to do.’  More often than not, this is done either online or by video.  You would be lucky if you were only subjected to four hours.  Most of what you learn through the videos is disposable; they are simply things that the hiring body must do so that they aren’t liable later on.

The most important thing you learn?  Make the boss happy any way that you can.  Avoid being responsible for anything.  Repeat this phrase: It’s not what you know – it’s who you know.

It’s not in the plan for Jesus.  His testing is part of the on-the-job-training.  In the midst of the six week course (yes, six weeks!) he is given worst case scenarios to check on his response time.  Temptation by the devil?  Probably every day and it’s not as if the devil shows up and says, ‘Hey, Jesus, I know that you are ravenously hungry after two weeks without food, here, I’ve brought you a nice bowl of ketchup and a spoon.  Eat up.”  No, it’s the thought (it usually is the unbidden thought that is the greatest temptation) that overcomes us, hijacks our minds, hearts, souls and strength.  The devil’s wiles are never what we expect.  Our weaknesses are well known to the deceiver.  For those who struggle with alcohol, he doesn’t bring a glass of chocolate milk.  For those who have a drug addiction, it is not aspirin that sits on the dining room table.  Pornography?  I would guess the devil doesn’t show up with a J. Crew magazine.

Part of Jesus training and testing is to know the utmost limits that his humanness will stretch before breaking.  Yes, he was hungry.  Bread would be great.  But that was the easiest of the tests.  If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.  Just check.  Just be sure that God is watching over you.  He lets a lot of people down.  Cancer? Hurricane?  Divorce?  Abuse?   Ever heard of those?  You’d better make sure that he’s got your back before you sail this course, because I’m going to cruuuuushhhh you slowly and surely. 

Isn’t there a part of all of us that wishes, no, needs, to know two things about God:  that he is real and that he cares?  Don’t we test God all the time?  Just one more drink.  If God really wants me to be sober, he’ll do something to let me know.  Or, this is the last time, one last hit and then I’m done, I mean it.  That’s what God really wants and if I quit (after this time) then I know that he is real.  One last time on this website.  I’ll know I feel guilty when I look at this, but if it were really wrong, wouldn’t the computer crash when I turn it on?  That will be my sign.  And, if God doesn’t cause anything bad to happen… well, it must not be that wrong. 

Jesus, like any human, had to have struggled with this, right? 

Then, to the top of the mountain.  At the end of forty days, perhaps mind and body beginning to play tricks on him, perhaps weakening in resolve, the devil sends the last salvo, the one that all humans fall for.  You can have everything.  I control this and I can give it to whomever I choose.  Why not you, Jesus?  Why not enjoy this amazing gift of life that he’s given you in a villa by the ocean, servants everywhere at your disposal - everything that gives pleasure (even if momentary, but don’t think about that).  It’s just one moment of hesitation.  That’s all it would take and I’ll remove every physical obstacle from you.  No cross, no pain, no abandonment by friends – all that you have to do is fall on your knees and confess that God is good, but not quite good enough. 

How easy would it have been?  God is a God of forgiveness.  Surely he would forgive his own son for a moment of weakness.  They could just start over, maybe in another generation.  Maybe when the world was a little easier.  Maybe when there would be mobile phones and completely different, and less painful understanding of sacrifice.

The cliff notes version of Jesus’ encounter with the devil is in Mark; Matthew and Luke are much more patient, but today’s Christian would appreciate Mark’s version: Test taken, test passed – let’s get on to the good stuff.

But we 21^st century Christians are so incredibly impatient and so completely allergic to being in want that we skip over these two verses.  This is the beginning of Jesus’ transition – to need food, to need assurance and to need safety – we can’t skip over it. 

What is the symbolic desert that the contemporary human must be led into?  What are we lacking that must be tested?  What is our hunger?  What is behind our need for assurance?  What about our addiction to feeling safe?