Why is it that the word temptation is so rarely used now?Everyone experiences temptation, serious or trivial, in their day-to-day lives (my day often starts with ‘I want to stay in bed a bit longer but I know I ought to get up and go to work’). But if everyone knows about temptation, why is the word, and the understanding that lies behind the word, missing from so much serious discussion of human behaviour?Why is it assumed that people are bound to act in accordance with their natural impulses?The Oxford Companion to the Mind (published in 1987), for example, has no entry for Conscience or Temptation.How can one begin to understand the mind if one ignores the reality of conscience and temptation?

Human beings have many natural wants and impulses: some of them can be described as noble and godly; some are, by any standards, bad; and many of them are morally neutral.This is part of our natural make up and can be seen, perhaps less clearly developed, in other animals. Animals can display behaviour that we would describe as kind (towards an infant of another species, for example), and behaviour that we would describe as cruel (when an aberrant individual systematically kills infants of the same species, for example). Such behaviour may have nothing to do with practical self-interest (there's no need to accompany the evolutionary biologists in their ingenious but, frankly, unbelievable logical contortions), but the animals are following their natural impulses. They cannot make a choice, whether or not to follow these impulses.For ahuman, a generous act may be the expression of a generous impulse, or it may reflect the ability to overcome a natural meanness.For an animal, it can only be the former.

Books have been written showing how similar humans are to other animals, and indeed it is fascinating to observe the many similarities, but let us not forget the ways in which we are different. One of the most important ways in which we differ is that we have a sense of right and wrong.We are able to form opinions about our own behaviour and the behaviour of others.We show these opinions in a great deal of our daily conversation, often just in the tone of voice or the way in which we recount what someone has been doing. 

So much secular commentary on human behaviour today seems to me to be seriously flawed because it does not recognise the potential for conflict between two fundamental aspects of human personality: our natural emotions and impulses, which at times may be unpredictable and uncontrollable, and our understanding of right and wrong.To assume that people are bound to act in accordance with their natural impulses is to deny our humanity, for it is one of the greatest glories of being human that we do not have to be slaves to these impulses.We have the power of choice.Through our innate conscience and through the exercise of thought and will power, we are able to recognise temptation for what it is and resist it if we wish.It is one of the tragedies of being human, of course, that we sometimes fail to restrain our less noble impulses.

We are all alike in experiencing temptation, but we are all different in the particular blend of natural impulses and restraints that make up our individual personalities.We are told in the gospels not to judge other people.This is not because it doesn't matter how people behave: we all know that there is a difference between good behaviour and bad, and that it matters.It is because when we see faults in others we are recognising that they are human, like ourselves.We cannot tell the power of their temptations, nor can we tell what resources of will power they may possess to enable them to resist.The old saying, 'Love the sinner, and hate the sin' shows a great understanding.It has been said, with some truth, I think, that many oftoday's commentators turn this ancient wisdom on its head: they love the sin and hate the sinner.

Reproduced by permission from The Lantern, the parish magazine of Keyworth and Stanton on the Wolds, 
April 2000.

© Keyworth Parochial Church Council