DEVICES AND DESIRES, CARROTS AND STICKS: HOW TO KEEP A BALANCED IMAGINATION

Christ in the Wilderness, by Ivan Kramskoi. Public domain, found on Wikipedia. 

Here’s a Lenten question: How does the Devil use temptation to attack you?

Back in the fourth century, Christians headed out into the deserts of Egypt. They went to leave the temptations of the city and confront the temptations of solitude. They went to discover themselves, contend with the Devil, and encounter God. One of them was Amma Syncletica, who said this:

“When the devil does not use the goad of poverty to tempt us, he uses wealth for the same purpose. When he cannot win by scorn and mockery, he tries praise and flattery. If he cannot win by giving health, he tries illness. If he cannot win by comfort, he tries to ruin the soul by vexations that lead us to act against our monastic vows. He inflicts severe illness on people whom he wants to tempt and so makes them weak, and thereby shakes the love they feel towards God…”

Back in my Boy Scout days, we’d play this game: two of us balancing on a log, and the goal was to wrestle your opponent off. The usual tactic was to push, then pull, then push, until the other kid was knocked off the log. This is how the Devil works: first one attack then another, until we’re knocked off balance.

We’re knocked off balance because we’re constantly tempted, and we’re tempted by conflicting, often competing desires. We confess that “we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.” But where do these desires come from? And why are we tempted by so many different things? 

For me, and perhaps for you as well, the roots of temptation lie in my ability to imagine different versions of my life. I do this constantly, which is the first thing I discovered when I took up a contemplative prayer practice. All I had to do was sit in silence for a few minutes and recite a short prayer phrase. That’s all. But I discovered that my inner landscape is anything but silent. I have this constant commentary track on my own life. I wonder about an interaction I just had this morning, or last year, or way back in my childhood. I try to make sense of it, and all too often I’m self-critical. And when the commentary track isn’t reviewing the past, it’s speculating about the future — dreading an unpleasant conversation coming up, wondering about a big decision on the horizon, dreaming about retirement, or whatever. Few of us simply live our lives moment to moment. We’re all writing and rewriting the stories of our lives, endlessly. 

This is a gift – or it’s a side-effect of a gift. God has given us memory, reason, and skill; has made us story-telling creatures, which is undeniably a blessing and a gift. We can imagine how our lives might be different than they are, which gives us creativity and ambition and hope. 

This ability to imagine alternative lives has both positive and negative dimensions, of course. We want to maximize our happiness and minimize our suffering. Sometimes that imaginary life sounds better, and I want it. Sometimes that imaginary life sounds worse, and I want to avoid it. 

Sometimes we don’t even have to imagine the worse life. We might actually be experiencing it. Jesus went into the desert and fasted for forty days. He was famished. He was hungry. Doubtless he wanted this suffering to end, to imagine a life filled with food and feasting. The Devil spots his chance. Why not have some bread?

So temptation is linked to our God-given ability to imagine what our lives would be like either better than they are now, or worse. But how is it that we are vulnerable from multiple angles, able to be tempted by poverty one day and wealth the next, by mockery one day and flattery the next? Why is Amma Syncletica correct that the Devil can try one temptation, and then hit us with its opposite? I think it’s because we really don’t know what we want. 

I want lots of things. I want people to like me, but I also want to not care what people think about me. I want stuff, and I want to simplify. I want to be lazy, I want to finish this article. I want lots of contradictory and contrary things, which is just another way of saying that I don’t really know what I want.  We don’t, we humans, since the Fall. We’re hungry, but we can’t figure out what will fill the void.

Sure, we have this basic ability to want our lives to be better and not to be worse, but based on what scale? Based on what sense of “better” or “worse”? Who will my heroes be? What will be the values against which I’ll measure my life? Although we can imagine alternative lives, good ones and bad, we actually can’t see into the future. Even at a young age we realize that we don’t quite know how our lives will turn out, which mix of fortunes and calamities will befall us. I can imagine my life taking not one but countless different paths, and I can begin to sort those into the paths that sound delightful and the once that sound terrible. 

I want to live a good and happy life. But the list of things that make up “good” and “happy” is very long, and it get shuffled every few days, and many of the items compete and conflict with each other. The same is true for my list of things that are the opposite of good and happy. I want different things all the time. I’m inconsistent. And the Devil can use that against me, pushing and pulling.

Amma Syncletica is right: we are balanced on a beam, just trying to stay upright. The Devil comes at us with the threat of the bad, and then with the promise of the good, or the good first, then the bad. The Devil pushes and pulls, and one temptation makes us more vulnerable to the next one. When someone has hurt me, made me feel worthless or useless or lonely or unlovable, am I not more likely to cling to the next person who flatters me, tells me I’m great, and puts me on a pedestal? Pulled off balance, we overcorrect, and the next push knocks us off the log. 

There are two chief dangers in this chaos of our temptations. 

The first is that we might remain perpetually distracted from God. Whatever temptation I’m wrestling with, and wherever I am in the push-pull cycle, the danger is that the temptation will become all I see. Whether it’s poverty or wealth that tempts us, it might seem that money is the problem. Whether it’s scorn and mockery or praise and flattery that tempts us, it might seem that the opinion of others is the problem. Perhaps we will tell ourselves that once we get these things balanced out, then contentment will follow. But our hearts, as St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions, are restless until they rest in God. What temptations have a grip on you?

The second is that there are often sacrifices to be made when chasing alternative imaginary lives. Imagine all the kingdoms of the world bowing down to you, says the Devil to Jesus, if only you will bow down to me. Too often, the most powerful temptations offer the possibility of an imaginary life at the expense of something or someone else. We seek the easiest way out, which is only natural, but risky. Where are you being tempted to sacrifice something to ease your path?

What’s the solution to this? If poverty, scorn, and illness are temptations, why did the desert fathers and mothers choose the hard life of the desert? I suspect it’s a strategic choice: by simplifying the opportunities for temptation, it’s easier to spot them when the Devil fires them up. But I give in to temptation too easily to answer that. That’s probably an article a monastic will have to write. 

I do notice when Jesus is challenged by the Devil in the desert, he rises above the imaginary life that the Devil sketches for him. Jesus turns all talk of bread and angels and adoration into an opportunity to remember his foundation: he is the Father’s Son. Nothing else is so important as that. 

This Lent, as we wrestle with fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, as we strive and fail and scold ourselves for failing, as we worry about the future and pick over the past, it would be good for us to remember our foundation: we are the Father’s children. No alternative imaginary life will ever replace that reality. If we are made to desire, let us desire God, and what God wills, to the best of our ability.