by Roman Del Bosque

Created on: October 13, 2010

God and temptation: mutually exclusive or not? 

Some believe that God is incapable of tempting us into doing wrong, for the Creator wishes that we only do what is right, they say.  Then there are those who believe that it is God that does and controls everything from behind the scenes, including the act of causing us to do wrong in our lives.  Of course, there are also those who do not believe in God at all, the atheists who claim that God does not exist, and, therefore, is not responsible for the wrong we do in life.

So who is right?

Perhaps none.  Maybe all.  Life is a complicated process, we all will agree, difficult to understand and even impossible to explain.  Thus, who in our lifetime can possibly have or know the correct answer in this matter?  The only thing we can be certain of is that at the present life is the greatest mystery confronting our lives, not only in the present but such was the case also in the past and undoubtedly in the future to come as well.

Still, we do ourselves no harm to offer conjecture on the subject.  Who knows, in some serendipitous and perhaps strange way, we may arrive at an adequate explanation, even if only by default.  For now, however, conjecture is probably the only thing we have to go on as regards this matter.

That said, I offer the following conjecture, which is based solely on my personal interpretation of God in relation to temptation.  This is meant only to stimulate the mind and in no way is this meant to be the correct explanation to a most perplexing situation.  However, perhaps in doing this we may arrive one day at some modicum of truth.  We can at least try.

So let us get started.

Since the essence of God must be inherent in all things in the universe in order for such things to even exist, then it must be the case as well with the concept of temptation.  We know that temptation is real because it is a reality in our lives; however, the question is who does the tempting?  Is it God or is it some other force?  

Nothing, of course, prevents God from tempting a person to do wrong.  However, the important question to ask regarding this notion is: For what purpose?  Why would God want to tempt us into doing wrong when all along—with most religions anyhow—we have been taught to believe that God represents only what is good and right in the world.

Certainly God can do whatever it wills and we know this. 

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