Wisdom Wednesday: James Cone on Temptation
“The real temptation is to identify our own interest with God’s and thus say he is active in those activities that best serve our purposes….But we must speak of God and his work, if we intend to join him.”
James H. Cone
This temptation might have as many different forms as there are people who are susceptible to it. It is so, well, tempting to identify our interests and desires with the interests and desires of God, especially when we can describe them with religious, pious, or biblical language.
An obvious way this temptation manifests itself these days is in partisan politics. We think the policies of one or the other political party will best serve our interests, and that settles it. But for followers of Jesus, this doesn’t settle it at all. We should be concerned about the common good, about the needs and interests of the poor, the sick, the suffering, and those on the margins of society. Neither party does this well enough, in my view, but that’s a discussion to be had at another time.
Another way this temptation manifests itself is in our personal lives. We want something — a material object, an experience, a standard of living — and we baptize that desire and our pursuit of it as God-given. Yet all too often it may simply be greed, lust, envy, pride, a desire for comfort, or something else in our hearts motivating us.
A question we should consider, then, in light of Cone’s point, is this: How might we be falling prey to this temptation to identify our interests with God’s, rather than seeking him and his purposes so that we can join him there?
As we grow in virtue we will be better able to answer the above question, and other challenging questions, more accurately and honestly. With this in mind, I wanted to remind you that if you’re interested in trying some practices that can help cultivate the virtue of humility, the 10 Day Humility Challenge is designed to help you do just that:
To purchase the challenge for $10, email me and say you’d like to do so at mike@michaelwaustin.com (I use Venmo or Cash app). I’ll email it to you ASAP.