First Sunday Of Lent, Year A- Tempting Thoughts

First question in the Bible we heard was, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”

This is an ideological overstatement by the serpent. It distorts God's command to not eat from one specific tree into a total ban on all trees, thus framing God as restrictive.

Just like the serpent twisted "don't eat from this one tree" into "you can't eat from any tree," a teenager might twist your dad or mom saying, "you can't go to this one party" into "I'm never allowed to go out".

In both the Garden of Eden and the suburban living room, the goal of the overstatement isn't to get the facts right—it’s to generate resentment toward the boundary itself so that authority is always the villain.

Next we hear, “You certainly will not die!.. God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.”

He suggests God’s "rule" isn't for protection but is a selfish act of gatekeeping to prevent humans from reaching His level.

This is a liberation narrative—suggesting that the authority figure is "holding you back" from your true potential.

In high school, this is the peer who says, "Your parents only gave you a curfew because they’re jealous they can't stay out late anymore. They want to keep you a 'baby' so they can stay in control." It's not just a lie; it's a character assassination of the rule-maker to justify the rebellion.

Next, the snake makes an emotional appeal. The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.

The sequence is “see; good, take”

In high school, this is the moment a student stops thinking about the rule ("Be home by 10") and starts focusing entirely on how fun the party looks and how unfair it feels to miss out on that "wisdom" (the experience). Once they re-label the rule as "limiting their growth," the "taking" (staying out late) becomes a logical next step in their mind.

Sometimes we are like a train that decided that it was tired of running back and forth on the same boring track. The unhappy train thought of the adventure and excitement it was missing because it had to run on tracks. So, one day he decided to jump the tracks. The result was a horrible crash.

Or, we can be like the Englishman who once startled the world by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Amazingly he escaped serious harm. However, he did suffer serious injury several years later. He slipped on a banana peel. That is the way the tempter works. It’s the little things that he most often tries to trip us up.

Intelligence can make us blind by too much self-confidence… and disaster through too much presumption.

Notice that Christ “answers the devil only with biblical quotations [which] is the origin of the tradition according to which we should not argue with the tempter, who is always a better sophist than we are.

Saint Teresa of Avila wrote that the devil little by little darkens one’s understanding and causes its self-love to increase, until the love of God lessens to the point where the person then begins to indulge in its own wishes.

But, as the poet Charles Baudelaire famously wrote in his 1864 short story The Generous Gambler, "The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist."

The traditional purpose of temptations is that it is an experiment, attempt, trial, proving, to test one’s faith or fidelity.

E.g. The Desert Fathers have Eight Thoughts that demons like to provoke in us: gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sadness, sloth, vanity, and pride.

Hebrews 4:15 ".. .For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."

Trait self-control (TSC) is typically conceptualized as the ability to resist immediately gratifying (but problematic) impulses, and it predicts many positive life outcomes. Recent research, however, suggests that the benefits of TSC may operate not through effortful resistance of temptations, but rather, via good desires and habits.

The desert symbolizes confrontation with self-seeing one’s dark side; a deep realization of one’s dependency upon God.