Last week I said that Satan is the rivalry that exists between people and that his work is that of making false accusations and making a mess out of all human relationships both personal and political. I explained how these conflicts arise because we imitate each other's desires. So it becomes likely that we compete for the same things. This is the kind of scandal that the bible speaks of when Jesus said of Peter that he was a scandal to him. Temptation is, wanting something that belongs to someone else. Peter wanted Jesus to live his life instead of being the son of God and that was a seductive choice to Jesus.

Peter refuses to accept Jesus teaching that he must die. At one level we could excuse Peter. We might say that Peter was simply trying to encourage and support his friend. But the gospels tell us that Jesus was constantly tempted to step away from his calling to die on the cross. Jesus must have shared his feelings with the disciples about how he wished he could have avoided the cross and instead to seek popularity by working miracles, and to use that popularity to gain secular political power and so rebuild the world into the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus could have gone down as the greatest humanitarian in history if he made the wrong choice. This temptation to do it his own way or the usual human way was with our Lord all the way to Gethsemane.

This exchange between Jesus and Peter points us toward a truth that exists between all of us. This exchange reveals the nature of temptation as it arises out of the structure of human community around defective desire and competing wills. Peter, Jesus' best friend was in a great place to tempt him. Clearly those whom we love best are best able to impose their wills on us. Peter seems to be saying, "I love you so much I don't want you to have to suffer like that," and at the psychological level that is indeed what he says. Peter is saying, "Not your will Jesus but mine be done!" "You imitate my desire instead of me imitating your desire. Let me win this contest of wills and you will thank me, because I know better than you what is best for you, and it does not include an imminent horrible death! Peter is also saying, I love you and you cannot betray that love by leaving me!" These are powerful words of temptation. Peter is using the noblest and best human sentiments we have, deployed in service of defective imitation, to try to get Jesus to follow Peter rather than Peter follow Jesus.

Jesus' answer teaches to us a proper understanding of temptation. Jesus does not answer, "Not your will Peter but mine!" but rather, "You speak the things of men and not of God." Peter's wonderful expressions of love are the highest sentiments we human beings know, but in this instance they are the words of the Satan. (This use of Christ like attitudes against Christ is, by the way, the defining mark of the anti-Christ. He is the mirror image of Christ, exactly like the real thing until you realize that the image is in reverse, as in a mirror! This also explains why people claiming that Christ controls their decision-making can sow such horror all around). Peter at this moment is not just "like Satan" but is Satan or anti-Christ, an instance of temptation as scandal in the sense of the crisis of rival wills, presenting itself as an expression of love.

Jesus never got caught up in this kind of seductive rivalry. Jesus does not oppose his will to Peter's but rather listens for the voice of his Father. Jesus does not enter the realm of the Satanic conflict of human will and desire but rather points the way to the place where only God's desire rules. Jesus does not try to win in the realm of Satan but rather deliberately loses and thus makes present the Kingdom of God. This is what he means when he says, "If any one would come after me let him deny himself and take up his Cross and follow me. For whoever would save her life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels' will save it. For what does it profit a person to gain the whole world (read, "all the kingdoms of the world which Satan controls") and forfeit one's life? For what can one give in return for one's life? (Mark 8:34-37)"

Jesus tells us the meaning of his Cross: it is to give up one's own desire in favor not of the other's but of God's desire, one's own will in favor of God's will, one's own ambition to rule the world in favor of God's desire to establish His Kingdom. Concretely this means that I must turn my desire from the imitation of the other to the imitation of Christ, as Christ imitates not his friend and rival but his heavenly Father. I must imitate Jesus' imitation of God. Turn away from inner-worldly rivalries of desire and submit to the desire of our heavenly Father. In this way alone do we turn away from temptation.

This is the demand of Jesus that few people ever meet. Most of the time we are ashamed of Jesus, because he died, rather than fought. We are ashamed of Jesus because he imitates the love and generosity of the Father and not the rivalry and parsimony of the human world, where the coin of exchange is crime and punishment, loss and gain, defeat and victory.

So what is temptation? It is whenever and wherever we are seduced to desire and made to feel unworthy if we do not share the desire of the beautiful, successful and heroic people who are held up as models. We love them and we hate them; they set us free and they keep us in bondage. Temptation is whenever we look at another instead of just trusting that our best efforts are good in and of themselves.

I do not think we can free ourselves from the power of this defective desire, we cannot deliver ourselves from the scandals of Satan; but Jesus can set us free. I do not think that Jesus would ask us to deny ourselves and take up the Cross and follow him unless he is willing to provide the spiritual resources to do so. So he gives us the example of his own life before God and his obedient death. Our task is to imitate Jesus each in our own special way. Jesus had to be himself and Peter needed to follow like Peter. The Holy Spirit defends us against the false accusations of Satan and the false choice of imitating each other and the spirit empowers us more and more to listen for the words of God and follow them rather than the words of Satan, even when the latter come through the lips of our friends and loved ones.

I cannot say anything more about resisting temptation. Each one of us must wrestle with temptation every moment of every day, but we are not alone in that wilderness. Jesus has gone ahead of us to prepare the way for us. Jesus has conquered Satan and lifted the burden of temptation. Now all that remains is for us to let him lift our particular share of that burden and to prevent us from temptation and deliver us from evil. (The line in the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation" reads in the original Aramaic, "Do not let us be led into temptation.")