The Easy Way v. The Right Way

This past week I met with a group of guys that I do Bible study with and we discussed passages from the beginning of Genesis. In looking at the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve, the question arose; doesn't it seem like this whole thing is rigged? Why make a perfect garden and then put a poisonous tree in the middle of it? It made me wonder again, as I have in the past, whether the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was something that God never meant for them to have, or simply something He didn't mean for them to have yet.

Last summer, our family went for lunch at Austin eatery Shady Grove. Shady Grove has a grassy area out front that is fenced off from the street and perfect for little kids to run free in. I took my son, Harry, who was then 2, out to play. As soon as I set him down, he immediately sprinted for the one place he couldn't go -the parking lot. I picked him up and told him that he could play anywhere on the grass, but not in the parking lot. I set him down and watched him quickly run for the parking lot. I picked him up again and reiterated that he could play anywhere he liked, except for the parking lot. After setting him down a third time, I immediately realized that he was going to have to leave this little Eden. He did so kicking and screaming.

Now, it's not that parking lots are inherently bad places, they're just unsafe for kids. Lots of things that are ultimately good (a glass of wine or sex) are things we keep from children. If you experience these good things in the wrong way, they cease to be good things.

Juxtapose the temptation of Adam and Eve with the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Once again, the tempter is Satan. Once again, he tempts with food and with the desire to be like God. Once again, the things he offers aren't inherently bad things. Satan's trick is sometimes to tempt us to do what is wrong. Oftentimes, maybe more often, he tempts us with getting the right thing in the wrong way. 

Satan is an "ends justify the means" kind of guy. And Jesus continues to say to Satan that the how and why you do something is as important as the what you do. 

Satan is king of the quick fix and the easy out. Jesus continues to call us to a right way that demands difficulty and sacrifice.

A therapist friend of mine once told me that the key difference between those who are addicts and those who aren't is that non-addicts will pray for the strength to endure pain, addicts simply want anything that will stop the pain.

In John 16:33, Jesus makes a rather intense promise; "In this world, you will have trouble." Not you might. You will. He doesn't follow this up by saying, "but if you take this pill or fudge this detail or quiet your ethics just a bit..." What He says is, "but take heart, I have overcome the world."

Jesus' promise isn't that His Way will be the easy way, but that it is the right Way. If we follow Him, we cannot be people who will do the wrong thing for the right reasons or get the right thing in the wrong way. We must be wary of those who place the words "necessary" and "evil" too closely together. We must resist the temptation to use Satanic means to reach Christian ends. If we don't, then the ends themselves will cease to be Christian and the way we follow will not be His Way.