I was recently refused admittance to the British Library in London. An ancestor had written hymn tunes and other music, and the only known copies were in their vaults. I had an old reader's ticket, but knowing it was long out of date, I took care to take my passport and other evidence of my identity in order to renew it.
The woman who received me could not have been more polite. Yes, a passport and a driving licence were perfectly acceptable, but to prove that I was who I said I was, I needed one document from list A and one from list B. Did I perhaps have evidence of my address? Not a computer printout, but an original bill, perhaps? I explained that I paid my utility bills electronically, that Swiss driving licences no longer bore one's address. The only document on list B that I could possibly have produced was the renewal notice for my house insurance policy, and I had not thought of taking that to London with me! Hence the refusal.
In these security-conscious days, such events are not unusual. Banks have passed beyond asking one's mother's maiden name to prove one's identity - nowadays they may even demand sworn affidavits with a consular seal on them. Catching a plane is no longer a matter of checking one's ticket and getting on the flight. Criminals and terrorists have become experts at impersonation (curiously known in Britain as "identity theft", which at least hints at the suffering of the person being impersonated).
At first sight, this does not seem to have much to do with the subject of this article, temptation, or with the current season, Lent. Isn't temptation more about luxury chocolates, or erotic encounters, or cheating with our tax forms? The temptations Jesus underwent in the wilderness seem to be of the latter kind - cheating on his fast by turning stones into bread, jumping off a pinnacle to show his miraculous power, gaining authority over people by unscrupulous means.
But in fact the temptations Jesus faced in the desert were not just about doing something he ought not to have done. They were a test to find out if Jesus was really who he said he was. They were an identity test, just as our bank asking us the fourth, sixth and eighth characters of our password, or an airport scanner detecting the Marmite in our hand-luggage, is making sure that we are who we say we are.
When we echo Jesus' prayer "Lead us not into temptation", we are not simply asking God to preserve us from "occasions for sin" - though that is certainly part of what we are asking. We are also asking to avoid the searching and probing that we would need to undergo if God needed to prove we are what we say we are.
The Book of Job is the clearest example of this latter type of temptation. Job's goodness is tested by his property being destroyed, his children dying, and sores covering his body. His response is "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Jesus underwent the same sort of testing during his forty days in the wilderness: "If you are who you say you are, command these stones to become bread", says the Devil. But in fact Jesus proves that he is who he says he is by doing the opposite - by refusing to command the stones to become bread.
We pray that God will not lead us into temptation because we know that we are not who we say we are. Or at least, who we plan to say we are on the Day of Judgment. We know we cannot live up to God's standards. God's scanner does not just check for Marmite in our baggage: it is not even a full-body scanner, but a body and soul scanner!
This Lent, let us by all means avoid the chocolate-cake type temptation, but let us also take the opportunity to examine ourselves, just as Jesus was examined in the wilderness, just as Job's faith was examined. God does not want to judge our faults. God wants to correct us and lead us to the joys of heaven. It is our task to help in this, by laying bare our faults and letting them be healed. Lent is the time to get to grips with this, by tidying up our lives, so that we can be renewed in our resurrected Lord.
HD