I'm an agnostic, but I go to church on Sunday. I go for many reasons.
Two in particular: First, the church down the street from the house we just bought is a warm, welcoming community, a good place to make friends. More important, the familiar services are a period each week when I can sit and think seriously about what it means to be human, in the context of a tradition that has meant a lot over the centuries to a very large number of humans, so it clearly must have something going for it.
This week, the first Sunday in Lent, the Gospel reading was about the forty days and forty nights Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness. (As a child, I remember being struck by Luke’s peculiar insistence on the 'forty nights,' as if we might otherwise think that Jesus only made day trips to the desert and trotted back to sleep in a motel each night!) At the end of that period the Devil tempts him. Jesus resists, quoting scripture.
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Now, I may be agnostic about the existence of a Supreme Consciousness in the universe, but I don't believe one bit in the personhood of the Devil. That eccentric gent in red spandex with the eyebrows and pointy beard, horns, tail, and pitchfork is a great big honking metaphor. Evil exists, yes, but as a pattern of malfunction in the brains of human beings. If Jesus met the Devil, it was inside his own head -- where all temptations reside.
As our minister pointed out in her sermon today, in the story, nobody is there but Jesus. The only way anybody could have known about his vision was if Jesus told someone about it afterwards. Well, I thought, and who's to say he wasn't telling them a teaching story? Or maybe this was a piece that accreted to his life history afterwards because it seemed appropriate. Long fasting was already a known method of inducing visions; spiritual leaders were pretty much expected to have had them as a kind of qualifying exam.
To me, who contributed the tale hardly matters. We all have to deal with temptation. The fact that this story has survived and become part of the core narrative of a major religion means it contains elements that fit into certain keyholes in human consciousness. It's worth looking at.
The temptation I want to think about today is the middle one, the temptation to power. The Devil takes Jesus to the top of a mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. "Worship me," he says, "and I will give you dominion over all of them." Treating the Devil as a metaphor for human evil, what does the story tell us about politics?
I'm not going to answer that. For one thing, I don't know. This is a meditation here, not a pronouncement. If I had all the answers, I wouldn't need to devote so much head space to trying to puzzle them out.
Is the desire to wield power over others evil?
I don't think it's a short-answer question. In fact, I'm almost certain it's the single most important question anyone in a position of authority should be worrying about at odd moments throughout their entire life. The thing is, power wielded unselfishly can make life so much better for others. That’s not evil, is it? No, it isn't. But the aspiration to attain enough power to help people can so easily morph into something nastier...
I was thinking about this in the service, and then we came to the ending of the Lord’s Prayer.
"For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever..."
Yes. Well, that's one way out, isn't it? If you truly believe that all the power that has ever existed or ever will exist belongs by its very nature to an all-powerful God –- that it's not yours, never will be yours, and any notion that it is your own personal power is only a foolish delusion -– well then, that's one way to wield power in the public service and yet stay humble, isn't it? It's not your power, it's God's, and you’re only wielding it in trust for him, to help his other children.
So that's one reason belief in God... works. Human beings have found that it's easier to wield power and stay sane if you project the ownership of that power elsewhere, and think of yourself as only an obedient servant.
Of course, that sort of a God is a human invention, which injects a certain... shall we say, instability... into the psychological solution. The God you make is only as good as the God you want to make. It’s very easy to lower your standards until all you’ve got left is a God who wants you personally to be rich and comfortable, and who also hates all the same people you hate.
All the same, I notice it functions well enough to have a recurring appeal. And sometimes, it can help people become kinder and wiser than they ever thought they could be.
Here... endeth my meditation.