191. Why we are tempted
191. WHY WE ARE TEMPTED
Why does God allow us to be tempted?
Christ commanded us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Does God ever lead us into temptation? Isn’t that the Devil’s work?
It is written (Sir 34:11): He that hath not been tempted, what manner of things doth he know?
God’s wisdom orders all things sweetly (Wis 8:1), inasmuch as His providence appoints to each one that which is befitting it according to its nature. For as Dionysius says, it belongs to providence not to destroy, but to maintain, nature. Now it is a condition attaching to human nature that one creature can be helped or impeded by another. Wherefore it was fitting that God should both allow man in the state of innocence to be tempted by evil angels, and should cause him to be helped by good angels. . . .
Augustine says: It seems to me that man would have had no prospect of any special praise if he were able to lead a good life simply because there was none to persuade him to lead an evil life, since both by nature he had the power, and in his power he had the will, not to consent to the persuader (II-II,165,1).
There is an analogy between temptation and pain. Temptation affects the spirit as pain and suffering affect the body. Both are tests, challenges, to be met either well or badly. Therefore both are useful. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel says, “The man who has never suffered—what can he possibly know, anyway?” The author of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) quoted by St. Thomas says the very same thing about temptation.
As suffering can strengthen or weaken the body, temptation can strengthen or weaken the soul. Because we have free will, life is a drama of good vs. evil. It is interesting because it is like a game—a serious game, of course—and not like a formula or a guarantee. If any kind of game is played, it must be possible to lose it as well as to win it.
Temptation comes from something outside the will, either within our being (like the passions) or from other beings (other men or fallen angels). God could have made us autonomous and impervious individuals, like the angels. Instead, he made us vulnerable to both help and harm from others. If we object to this choice of His, we object to our very human essence.
To be tempted is not necessarily to be compromised, to fall, to sin. Innocent Adam and Eve were tempted. Christ was tempted. To be tempted is to be human.
Arnold Toynbee summarizes all of human history in the formula “challenge and response”. God allows challenges, including moral challenges, which are temptations, in order to provoke us to our own free moral responses, to make us strong and heroic.
God also allows temptation to preserve the providential order by which we are helped and harmed by each other; for if we could not be harmed by others, we could not be helped by others either; and if we could not be helped by others, we could not help others; and if we could not help others, charity would be impossible.
God does not tempt us to sin; the Devil does. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God.’ For God . . . tempts no one” (Jas 1:13). But God allows this evil for the sake of greater good.
When we pray “Lead us not into temptation” we do not mean “Stop tempting us” but “Please do not allow great temptations to assail us, because we are weak and without Your special grace we will fail.” It is a prayer of humility.