The Issue of Atheism

First, I want to humbly say I have not solved the problem.  I only want to make this observation.  From where to modern atheists derive morality?  If humanity is involved in evolution and a part of evolution is the rise and fall of species, the demise of homo sapiens sapiens at the hands of our own environmental destruction could be perceived as an evolutionary dead end.  We evolved the ability to kill ourselves, and we did (or we are).  If our species dies because of this, there is nothing wrong with that.  We, technically speaking, should die.  Still, many evolutionary biologists believe, morally, the destruction of the environment is bad.  Why?  Where did they get the notion that peoples should decide whether or not they fatally destroy themselves if their self-destruction is evolved?  I just want to know.  Is our belief to protect ourselves from ourselves a simple survival strategy?  If so, why would we evolve the capability to crush ourselves in the first place?  I have many questions that no atheists have answered yet.  Peace!

The Problem With the Modern Environmental Movement and Its Brief Moral Implications

The main concept we need to keep in mind when talking about environmentalism is that the planet will survive us, but we might not survive the planet.  The problem, then, is not terracide but suicide or, at the least, homicide.  No matter how much "damage" we do to the earth, we will only be able to relocate resources and alter geography.  What we can do by causing damage is bring about, directly or indirectly, the deaths of thousands, millions, or even billions of people.  The modern, essentially pagan, environmental movement, which demands the earth be saved for the earth's sake, puts reverence into nature at the expense of humanity.  Their critique, therefore, falls on deaf ears as a common person will never act radically and dangerously to protect plants and animals, but we can surely expect them to take to action in order to protect themselves and others.  Peace!

-ben adam

I Am Going to Colombia

At several moments in my life, G-d calls me in such a clear fashion it becomes impossible for me to avoid.  One of these moments happened about a month ago.  This is the brief story of that and the results.

A guy I know named Josh has a sister named Kait.  Kait went to Azusa Pacific University and majored in Social Work.  Following graduation, she moved to Vietnam to take a position with an Australian non-profit called AoG World Relief.  Not long ago, she visited Seattle for a little over a week during which time I discussed the details of her work and listened to many stories of her faithful undertaking.  In Vietnam, she worked doing general relief efforts while building connections with cohorts in order to begin a ministry for the liberation of women and men involved in sex trafficking.  Kait spoke with passion, excitement, and fervor while she exuded the Holy Spirit.  Her visit excited me.

More than excitement, I felt challenge.  The trouble with people practicing radical righteousness is their tendency to expose others' lack of integrity, particularly mine.  I saw in Kait a projection of everything good I wanted to do but was too afraid.  What holds me back?  Why do I stay in Seattle griping about rich, white people, working at a job I cannot stand, pretending as though one day I will be a respectable, Christian man who is known for his love for the oppressed.  Kait's visit exposed my fear.  I spent my life hesitating like those who hesitate to worship Jesus in Matthew 28 yet still receive the same command. 

Laid before me was my unwillingness to go where I feared.  I looked around at those whom I surrounded myself with.  I thought about Kevin and Marian Neuhouser specifically.  My great respect for them grew out of their experiences working among the poor and oppressed in Brazil.  Those times shaped them significantly in an extremely positive way.  My reflections revealed my need to partake in work amongst those who live beneath the heavy hand of empire.  Still, I feared.

Finally, during the first week of Lent, I prepared a sermon on Jesus' temptation in the desert in Luke.  In the sermon (which you can read below), I concluded Lent was a time in which we refuse the temptations that seem to grant us expedient relief or success and do the hard work to rid ourselves of actions that might embody these temptations.  What we give up, then, must be given up forever.  During the writing of that sermon, I felt the enunciation of Kait's challenge to my hesitant, complacent comfort manifest as G-d's ubiquitous command in the Bible, "Do not be afraid."  The command, so clear it was unavoidable, led me to sign up with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT).

From May 12-25 I will be in Colombia working with a delegation on behalf of small artisan miners and small farmers in order to maintain their safety and livelihood in the face of a multinational gold-mining corporation who wants to mine on the 3 million acres of land where these people live.  Paramilitary and Colombian military roam the region.  Finally, I am stepping out.  I am going to go do what I know the L-RD requires of me.  Hopefully, this will lead to a full-time, 3-year placement with CPT.  I certainly hope it does.  In any case, I am stepping out without fear, knowing G-d will be with me.  Peace!

-ben adam

Old Wineskins or Dry Bones: Becoming Uncool

I live on Queen Anne Hill, but I work in Ballard.  When I attended SPU, I checked out bus passes in order to get to work.  I like riding the bus.  Some time ago, I began thinking about public transportation.  I appreciate it.  Public transit provides cheap mobility for those who cannot afford a car or are not physically capable of riding a bike or walking.  As I reflected on the usefulness of the bus, I donned my anarchist lens, and I saw clearly the way in which public transportation, not in principle but in practice, represents gentrification. 

In Seattle, people commonly plaster environmentalist stickers all over their cars (even gas-guzzlers like Subaru Outbacks).  They feel superior or vindicated by doing this.  They make up the Martin Luthers of environmentalism.  If they believe environmentalism is good, the earth will be saved.  The next group of snobbish people come in Priuses and bio-diesel powered Volkwagens.  This group wants to reform cars and petroleum use.  They accept the basic construct, but the answer to the problems is fully attainable without abandoning the current system.  Another group of people either ride the bus or ride their bikes.  The bussers and bikers willingly sacrifice the expediency of the automobile for frugality and longer travel times.  A few of these people do this for environmental reasons.  Some bike to be cool (fixed-gear riding hipsters), some bike to stay in shape, and everyone busses in order to save money.  Herein lies the gentrification.  The upper and middle class in Seattle longs for environmental justice.  They want the earth and its inhabitants to not suffer in the way they currently do.  However, it rests beyond their imagination that the practices expected of them within their strata actually affect the deteriorating ecologic community.  How do we go about decoupling this worldview?  How do we begin critically observing our own activity, repenting of our inconsistency, and move into a life characterized by integrity and sustainability?

I begin by advancing a new philosophy of being.  I believe this philosophy already exists but only in small pockets and never holistically.  First, we must identify the root problems: ubiquitous neo-liberalism coupled with neo-conservatism.  Liberals themselves are people devoted and committed to "social justice".  They talk about environmentalism, gay rights, women's rights, and racism.  Accordingly, they vote to increase taxes so the government can create programs to aid those who struggle through life.  Liberals flock together.  They create certain identifying markers in order to recognize each other.  They love coffee.  Finding a poorly dressed liberal is difficult.  They put "Coexist" stickers on their cars and hang Indian prayer flags on their porches.  Their homes look like Ikea ads.  Everything matches.  Everything is expensive.  Liberals and neo-liberalism meet in the liberal need to be identified as proper consumers.  Consumerism marks out the liberal identifiers.  Resources, then, require requisition in order to maintain identity.  The government obliges by increasing taxation, utilizing taxes for neo-imperial outreach, and creating welfare systems that keep a working-class population from becoming like the upper and middle classes.  Meanwhile, they woo the consuming masses to sleep with debates about foreign policy (which looks more like Middle East policy than it does foreign policy), healthcare, and the environment.  The opposite, equal reaction resides in neo-conservatism.

Conservatives represent pietism.  They do not identify social injustices as the issue at hand; personal irresponsibility causes the problem.  Neo-conservatism, therefore, simply employs a different strategy in order to attain the same ends as neo-liberalism.  First, neo-conservatism convinces its adherents that they are good, righteous people who deserve material goods and prosperity.  In order to attain this prosperity, they engage in neo-imperialistic activity through warfare and opening free trade markets for multinationals in majority world countries.  Like liberals, they carry identifying markers.  These markers mandate access to overabundance.  The neo-conservatives woo their constituents to sleep with talk about piety: anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-drug, etc.  Major divergence between neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism comes in domestic policy.  Since the neo-cons are agaisnt so much, they cut taxes and devote the remainder to imperialism.  Hence, they appear more interested in wars for resource acquisition and neo-colonialism.  Neo-libs, when they enter office after the neo-cons do not alter this spending (hence, Obama's expansion of military spending); instead, they spend on social programs in complement to their imperialistic, capitalistic agendas.  This keeps socially minded folks at bay while the real damage occurs beyond their vision.

I say all this to demonstrate one thing: the ways in which we orient our lives affect policy.  The need to look hip, to own throw-away possessions such as Ikea cabinets and cell phones that last one year, to own a car, to live in a nice house causes the government and corporations to organize themselves in certain fashions.  The U.S. does not destroy entire cultures and people groups simply for the sake of greed.  Greed derives from demand.  When people supply a major demand and make boatloads of money, they cannot (or do not), like the rich young ruler in Luke, give up their wealth simply to solve the issue of injustice, especially when they believe the true injustice is that homosexuals cannot wed.  Our main source of resistance comes outside the realm of this operating system.  Why?  How?  Since the system itself demands loyal adherents defined by consumerist cravings (if it did not, how would the government maintain its strength?), we cannot expect tweaking the system to achieve the desired result.  In the end, what is most important to them, profit, will win out.  How do we resist?  We get rid of the demand.  We become uncool.

Another group exists beside the saved-by-faith-environmentalists, the hybrid-drivers, and the bikers.  We are very few.  We walk.  As we walk, we mourn the death passing us by on the roads.  Our tears are for both the people in their cars, isolated and in a hurry, and for ourselves as we breathe in the carbon monoxide expelled by them.  Our mourning is for those who are exploited, oppressed, and killed for the sake of putting so many cars into our society.  More importantly, we represent a group who knows the way to sustainability comes in social justice tied directly to personal piety.  The problem is, this is not cool.

Our society prescribes worth and value through appearance and possessions.  The result of this value-system can only be seen in melting glaciers, growing deserts, famines, and economic disparity.  The answer to this cannot come by investing more trust into a government who wants nothing but the extension of this value-system that keeps them in power.  We need a new devotion to social justice that does not expect the government to care for the vulnerable.  We need a new value-system that relies on small communities providing services organically without the desire for profit.  We must become uncool.  We must refuse to partake in the systems that make cool what it is.  I do not think my thoughts on this are over, but I will leave them here. Peace!

-ben adam

A Dirge Over the Sins of Andrew Jackson and Others

I wrote this poem last year on July 4th.  A friend of mine wanted me to post it, and I need to get back into writing poetry anyway.  Here it is:

Seattle suburbia feels like a morgue.
Yes, a morgue, not a cemetery;
this is no hallowed dead sanctuary.
It is a massacre
a genocide, and the only memorial
is the cities
named after those who died.
People say slavery was evil, inhuman,
and the grandchildren of those dragged
from Africa demand reparations.
Do not panic white folk!
We donated the desert
to the first American nations.
Land of the free; home of the brave?
By our forebear's aggression who is free?
me and you?
Those under their oppression
what can they do?
They can build casinos and make poor men rich.
They can kill deer, bear, and cougars.
They can drink alcohol
and toil on the land,
but it is hard to grow corn
when your soil is made of sand.
What have you done you liberal, white Seattlite
driving in your car
drinking coffee at the stoplight?
You practice justice by voting for light rail,
but your gentrification only builds another ghetto.
It seems the final solution was never let go
while you hate quietly inside your million-dollar condo.
Next time you wake up
remember who died
for your home's foundation:
Seattle
Tacoma
Snohomish
Issaquah
Sammamish
Tukwila
We live in an abomination.
A morgue.

Reflections on Walter Wink

On Monday this week, I read, from cover to cover, Walter Wink's The Powers That Be.  I meant to read it for some time now.  Since N.T. Wright populates my entire reading list (I have finished five of his books since December), I decided to interrupt my Wright project with a little liberal theology, and I must say, I loved it.  For the past few days, I reflected on this work, and these are my first few impressions about it.

This book represents a simple summary of Wink's The Powers Trilogy.  Essentially, Wink distilled his scholarly work into an accessible volume for laypeople.  He fulfills what my professor Dr. Rob Wall calls his responsibility to scholasticism and to the Church by doing this.  I appreciate his efforts.

First and foremost, Walter Wink is an activist.  He makes this very clear by telling stories about his days in the Civil Rights Movement in the '60's and his work against South African Apartheid.  Like all writers, Wink responds to the problems he sees in current systems.  More precisely, he writes to give theological weight to the solutions of these problems.  With activism as his platform and theology as his instrument, Wink argues for the Church to commit itself to complete non-violence as a centerpiece of its faith statement.  The lines of his argument are as follows:

The main problems Wink encounters derive out of his activist stance.  He concerns himself with what stands in the way of the effective liberation of those who suffer.  To Wink, the barrier to liberation is, what he calls, The Domination System.  The Domination System is nothing new and can be seen all the way down through history whenever one group of people oppresses another for the sake of greed and self-interest.  Wink realizes The Domination System is an evil, demonic animal which requires sustenance.  The food of this beast grows in the corresponding corollary to The Domination System: The Myth of Redemptive Violence.  The Myth of Redemptive Violence provides The Domination System with a narrative that can be reproduced in an infinite number of ways which convinces all involved in The Domination System (oppressor and oppressed alike) that without The Domination System the world would collapse and only the violence perpetrated by it can save us from this fate.  The Myth looks roughly like this: a powerful being or system has caused harm or distress to a certain other being or group; from within the oppressed group, a powerful being or system arises to defeat and kill the oppressor, ending the reign of terror; as a result, the victorious protagonist becomes the ruling victor who creates a space in which the liberated can live free and in harmony; but eventually, the once righteous liberator becomes the dominating oppressor, beginning the cycle all over again.  This Myth, seen from the Babylonian creation myth to today's children's cartoons, maintains silent ubiquity by coercing its adherents into believing it is normative.  This omnipresence, Wink argues, is so pervasive it even infiltrated the way in which ancient Hebrews conceived of G-d; thus, it produced vast amounts of violence in the Hebrew Bible as the will of G-d.  Jesus interrupts this Myth, and exposes it for what it really is: legalized immorality.  He paints Jesus in an activist light as one who courageously revealed the truth about the one true G-d who has no part in The Domination System.  Oppressive structures killed him for his insolence, and the early Church only half-way understood his purpose.

Hope, for Wink, in the face of The Domination System, comes in a two-step process.  First, Wink holds the worldview that spirit infuses everything.  From the Pentagon to a preschool, spirituality mediates within all structures.  Thus, the spirituality of everything can, as all spirits can, be redeemed.  Some of these things which can be redeemed, such as the law, need simple or complex recreation; some others, such as Nazism, sexism, or racism, require total abandonment.  Our first step in redemption is clothing ourselves in what Wink deems an "Integral Worldview".  Once we recognize this worldview to be the case, the second step in the process of redemption occurs through Divine and human collusion manifested as direct non-violent action against The Domination System.  This, after all, was what Jesus did and what later Christians would fail to understand as they drifted back into oppressive, demonic structures.

My reaction to Wink's argument is both positive and negative.  First, I fully affirm his view of a ubiquitous system of dominance that oppresses others for its own gain and sustains itself through the telling and retelling of an indoctrinating myth that convinces people of its indispensability.  Furthermore, I 100% agree with the conclusion concerning non-violence.  If we employ the logic of the Myth of Redemptive Violence against oppressors, we simply insert ourselves into the cyclical destruction of The Domination System.  Meanwhile, we will fool ourselves into believing we are creating freedom or newness (just as the Myth prophesied we would).  Hence, the only conceivable way to escape the Myth's all-encompassing hold is to step outside its operating parameters and do what it least expects: non-violence.  Jesus, in my perspective, demonstrated this way of life in the most exemplary way.  Wink and I cohere at this point.  Finally, I share Wink's Integral Worldview.  In general, Wink's largest conclusions are those that I affirm.

My dissension with Wink comes in his nuances.  Primarily, we disagree in the extent to which The Domination System must be abandoned.  He states clearly Nazism represented a spirit which should not be redeemed but abandoned.  Whether or not you agree with his worldview, nearly everyone would agree with him on this point.  Nonetheless, the government in the U.S., which has committed genocide against dozens of tribes, afflicted entire people groups under slavery and then Jim Crow, cripples the poor beneath the military-industrial complex, and fights multiple explicit and secret wars around the world, belongs in the category of redeemable which he makes clear by insisting he is a devoted patriot.  I cannot agree with Wink here.  If the purpose of the nation-state exists to defend its artificial borders from would-be assailants, we can see, by observing the U.S. and its hyper-militarized fetish, where such logic takes us.  Nationalism and the good of the state must be abandoned.  Subversive love of G-d and neighbor must replace it.  Secondarily, Wink's biblical scholarship is inconsistent and jumbled.  He writes off the Epistle to the Hebrews as complicit in The Domination System, yet he maintains the authority of some Pauline texts.  He exegetes gospel passages, yet he limits their interpretation to his own agenda.  As a result, Jesus looks less like G-d's decisive act in history to deal with sin (or The Domination System) in its fullness via non-violent activity and more like a failed social activist like Martin Luther King Jr. or Ghandi who at least understood what the latter two had in mind during their movements.  Consequently, he denies the Trinity, and damages his argument in the process.  Even though I still agree with his final conclusion, by refuting Jesus' divinity, Wink only allows Jesus to be one who teaches us how G-d is.  Instead, by holding Jesus as the second person of the Trinity, we see, in his non-violent, direct action against the powers that be, the very way in which G-d chooses to reveal G-d's self.  Not only, then, would this add theological substance to Wink's argument; it would add an ethical mandate for Christians to follow suit.

Finally, Wink believes the future of Christianity does not lie in debates about salvation and justification but in our ability to live out G-d's all-embracing love through peaceable means.  I believe this to be half true.  All the bickering about who is in and who is out creates a dynamic in which we forget Jesus is Lord, and we recreate him as life-jacket.  Jesus is the King, and it is time we started living by his kingdom edicts.  However, we must have faith that Jesus is Lord.  Faith and obedience are therefore two sides of the same coin which is the Gospel.

How we live this out will eternally be under argument; Wink gives us a useful guide tool.  The Church's days of domination are over.  Time has come for us to pick up our crosses and follow the Lord.  Peace!

-ben adam

An Anabaptist Renewal of Lent

Luke 4.1-13 is a difficult passage for me to read.  I have a history of being a slacker.  Sometimes I take pride in laziness, especially when I am rewarded for it.  One of my favorite stories to tell about this is from my Junior year of high school French.  The teacher absolutely loved me since I was a personable guy, and I took full advantage of this by indulging in a loophole in his grading system.  Anytime someone raised their hand to speak in French, he gave them 1 point of extra credit which was not calculated into the final grade until the end of the semester.  Needless to say, I spoke a lot of French that year.

As the semester began to end, I was teetering on the verge of a B with a 91%.  I procrastinated to the extreme on two projects that were due just before the end of the semester.  I had a workbook which I was supposed to be working all year and a large, fairly simple translation.  I stayed up very late the night before they were due, but I did not finish.  I handed in my workbook two-thirds complete and my translation three-quarters complete.  Combined, they were worth over a third of my final grade.  I felt defeated, lousy, and fearful.  I was going to get a B (maybe even a C) in one of the easiest classes I had ever taken, and my parents were not going to be happy.  A knot was in my stomach as I waited to see my grade the next week.  I knew I needed to tell my parents about it before they got the report card so I checked the grade posted outside the French room the day grades were up.  Lo and behold, I had not dropped from an A to a B.  I jumped from a 91% to a 103%!  My teacher factored in all my speaking during class as extra credit, and this propelled me from the grade I actually deserved to an A+.

Sadly, I later learned many of my friends in the class earned lower grades since they were unable to speak during class due to my outspokenness.  Also, I did not learn what I needed to learn because I rushed on my projects and left them incomplete.  This is what we encounter in Luke 4.  The devil is tempting Jesus to speak up in class so he does not have to do his homework.

In Luke chapter 3, Jesus receives baptism from his cousin John (v. 21), and afterward, the Holy Spirit comes upon him (v. 22).  Luke 4 picks up at this point after being interrupted by Jesus' genealogy.  Luke presents the setting: Jesus is being led around in the wilderness by the Holy Spirit (v. 1).  One of the most important parts of Luke is that it possesses the most dense and intricate uses of the LXX by any of the 4 gospels.  Immediately, the heritage of Israel should be conjured in our minds.  40 days in the wilderness aligns Jesus with Israel's 40 years in the desert (Deut. 1.34-40), Moses' 40 day fast on Mt. Sinai (Ex. 24.18), and Elijah's 40 day flight to Mt. Horeb (1 Kgs. 19.8).  Many want, at this point, to pit the devil against the Holy Spirit here, but nothing in the text suggests this.  If anything, the two are in collusion with each other.  The word used for tempt in v. 2 means more or less "challenge", and it is always directed at G-d or Jesus in the gospels.  It connotes a proving of oneself (if one passes the test).

In v. 2, the 40 days end and Jesus is starving.  The devil comes and offers a simple proposition.  This portion of the narrative should not be confused with Matthew's version.  In Matthew, the devil asks Jesus to turn stones into loaves (4.3).  The plurality connotes manna.  The devil, in Matthew, tempts Jesus to take on the role of a welfare king feeding all of Israel.  In Luke, the temptation is simpler: "If you are the Son of G-d, feed yourself."  We hear echoes of this later in the chapter in v. 23 when Jesus says to the people of Nazareth, "Doubtless, you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself'," and it comes up again when Jesus is on the cross while priests, soldiers, and the man dying next to him scoff, demanding that he save himself (23.35b, 36-37, 39).  Jesus did not come to feed, cure, or save himself.  He came to show us the Way into G-d's Kingdom, and stone into bread is insufficient.  An act of self-salvation is not a part of this Kingdom.  Jesus tells the devil, bread is not enough.

The next temptation is another we must not confuse with Matthew, for in Matthew, this is the 3rd temptation.  Looking at Matthew can really help us here.  Most people are used to thinking that the devil tells Jesus that the authority and glory of the kingdoms of the world belong to him, the devil.  However, only Luke mentions this.  Luke must be trying to indicate something by this addition.  Most read this with Constantinian eyes, assuming that G-d gave the devil the authority and glory of the nations.  This is unmerited.  Luke 2.1, which reads, "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered," says who has authority over "all the kingdoms of the world" (4.5).  Caesar does!  Who gave the devil this authority?  Caesar did.  This becomes quite obvious when we read Psalm 2.7-8.  G-d says, "You are my son" and "I will give you the nations".  Since Jesus is G-d's Son, logically he expects to receive authority over the nations.  Bowing to the devil is not how Jesus is to earn this power.  Jesus cannot be the king of the world if he bows to the power of Caesar.  Thus, he refuses.  Instead, he so rattles the cages of the emperor that he is killed, and by the power of G-d, rises again, victorious.  This is the lengths to which Jesus' faithfulness takes him.

We saw a temptation to abuse Jesus' status to save himself, we saw a political temptation to expediently achieve the goal of bringing G-d's Kingdom, and finally, we see a religious temptation.  The Gospel According to Luke is always pointed toward Jerusalem.  It begins and ends there; starting at 9.51 Jesus sets out on a long ten chapter journey toward the Holy City.  We find a foreshadow of this journey here as the devil leads Jesus to Jerusalem.  Of the three, this is the most somber temptation.  Luke's all Christians of all times know that when Jesus gets to Jerusalem at the end of his journey, the highest part of the Temple, the priests, will, in fact, cast him down, but there will be no angels to protect him.  What we see clearly here is the devil suggesting that Jesus could avoid the crucifixion if he merely tests G-d's protection.  Jesus refuses to do this.  Instead, his choice is to trust that his death will result in his resurrection, whereupon G-d's Kingdom will be in its full glory.

Alas, the devil, not "defeated" but "finished", leaves until another opportune time.

What do we take away from this today on the first Sunday of Lent?  Though I have not been Anabaptist since birth, I was raised in the broader tradition of the radical reformation.  We, the radical reformers, have, for centuries, steered clear of the Church calendar, but gradually, we are making our way back toward it.  I believe this is a great thing.  It provides us more common ground with our liturgically-minded brothers and sisters.  In turn, this allows us to challenge their long outdated views on war, the Church's relationship to government, Baptism, etc.  What I think we have is a responsibility to put a prophetic critique on the dominant view surrounding the Lenten season.  Lent has become a time in which Christians give up a "vice" which is superfluous or mildly damaging to their well-being.  They do so in order to commiserate with Jesus' suffering.  If we approach Lent with such an attitude, we commit several major flaws.

First, we fail to recognize that only in a culture of extreme excess is it possible to sacrifice what is superfluous to ourselves.  Most people in this world do not have the luxury of indulging in what might be damaging or useless.  Second, we approach Lent existentially.  We do not give up our vices for the sake of others; we give them up for the sake of ourselves.  Finally, we look at Lent as temporal rather than permanent.

Jesus' temptation story addresses these problems head on.  First, Jesus' story begins in a place of scarcity and depletion.  Lent is therefore not a time of sacrificing a small piece of excess for a moment in time.  It is a season in which we thrust ourselves into scarcity so that our faithfulness might be tested.  Are we willing to quit earning easy extra credit and start doing our homework.

Second, Jesus is given the opportunity to make himself powerful, but he refuses.  The temptations Jesus rejects are rejected not for his sake but for others'.  During Lent, we should not rededicate ourselves to the Kingdom of G-d for the sake of our own salvation.  We should do it for the sake of others' well-being.  What is detracting you from loving your neighbor.  Perhaps, it is the temptation to indulge in the power and glory of the kingdoms of the world.  Perhaps, you fear the cross of caring for the vulnerable.  Refusing the devil's enticing offer is hard.  Lent is a time when we work extra hard to do this.

Third, Jesus is tempted 40 days in the wilderness, but it is the final 3 temptations that define his ministry.  After refusing them, he does not return to them.  That is, he does not worship the devil after rising from the dead.  Similarly, what we sacrifice for Lent should not be something we want to return on Easter Sunday.  Jesus resurrected; our bad habits should not follow suit.

Finally, Jesus gave up many things that appeared good: bread, authority, and rescue from suffering.  In short, he refused to speak in order to avoid his homework.  Are we willing to give up that which might be good to us?  Can we even identify the parts of life that appear good, but are in fact compromised by the devil's tempting.  When we accomplish this task and we rigorously work, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, to rid ourselves of these "good" things, we naturally look not at Lent, but we maintain our attention on the coming day of resurrection, Easter Sunday.  When those temptations are refused, we celebrate our own new life as we celebrate our Lord's!  No longer afflicted by the scourge of what appears good but is in fact a deceptive shortcut, we live in the glorious light of the resurrection with the hope and assurance that Jesus is King!  I pray we do so with courage and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Peace!

-ben adam