July 27, 2010: Faithful In Little

"It's a good thing I can't be tempted by money," I said to my mother, as I explained how I was bypassing a potentially lucrative job offer in order to be a missionary in South America.

"Of course you can be tempted by money!" she said.

I held my ground: "No, I really don't think so. If somebody offered me a million dollars to shove aside my plans to translate the Bible, I'd refuse it without a second thought."

"Oh Paul," she replied. "The devil is not going to tempt you with a million dollars. He is going to tempt you with a hundred dollars."

For 25 years now I have been calling to mind that soundbite of motherly wisdom because I have seen it prove prophetic time and time again. It is unthinkable that I would ever take a seven-figure bribe, or embezzle a vast sum, or defraud a deep-pocketed man. I can't see myself doing that. But I can waste small amounts on needless indulgences, and I have succumbed to the vice of giving less than I should. The devil chips away at my financial virtue in chunks of three figures or less.

Mom's insight into "small sins" came to mind the other day during a discussion among believers about whether we would have the courage to profess Christ if a gun were held to our heads. Of course no one knows what he would do in such a situation, but I maintained, "Actually, I think we'd all pass that test." It's big and stark and obvious, like the million-dollar payoff not to be a missionary. If we were told, "Deny Christ or I'll shoot you!" we'd respond, "Then I guess you'll have to shoot," and we'd wait to behold our Lord when next we opened our eyes.

But can we endure lesser trials? To me that's the really interesting question - not whether we would overcome some spectacular hypothetical temptation but whether we - in fact - fend off the little temptations that hit us every day. You could take a bullet for Christ, but can you take a little social ostracism, or rolled-eyes contempt, or belittling patronage, or offended morality? (Yes, offended morality. Sometimes I think that nothing makes a man want to hide his faith more these days than the accusation that his biblical view of sexuality is cruel.)

I certainly don't want anyone to regard me as dumb or mean or deluded or judgmental or socially inept. The devil knows my sensitivity in those things, and so he won't tempt me with a gun-to-the-head denial of Christ but rather with challenge-to-the-ego silences about Him. Such betrayals of Christ are not blatant and verbal and obvious, but quiet and subtle and hard to notice. They are among those tiny missteps that Satan loves to provoke, as the demon Screwtape explains to Wormwood in C. S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters":

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.

(It goes without saying that Lewis did not regard card-playing as sinful; he was just using it as an example of a device - even one that is innocent in itself - that could be used to turn a soul away from God.)

Jesus said, "Whoever is faithful in little is faithful also in much" (Luke 16:10). It occurs to me that the reverse is not necessarily true. There are people who can do great and virtuous acts but who stumble badly over the smallest of pebbles. John McCain, for example, refused to be released from a North Vietnamese prison because his fellow prisoners would not be released with him. His courage was worthy of a medal. But then he came home and chased a skirt and dumped his wife. What a cruel, undisciplined jerk.

I think that as Christians we need not concern ourselves with big splashy tests of virtue: the million dollar offer, the gun to the head, the battlefield call of duty. Pay attention instead to the small challenges to obedience that are right in front of your eyes today. Prove faithful in those, and the big things will take care of themselves. Pass the hundred dollar test, and the million dollar test will be no temptation at all.