“I’ve a little shadow that goes in and out with me, and what can be
the use of him is more than I can see.
He’s very much like me from the heels up to the head and I see him jump
before me, when I jump into my bed.” So goes the opening stanza of Robert Louis
Stevenson’s poem, and we’re going to look at our shadow, for we all have one.
And to help us, we are going to turn to the story of Jesus being tempted
by Satan.
In the
New Testament Satan appears as a distinctive personality! But, we don’t talk much about Satan any
more do we? The more sophisticated
of us have gotten rid of the devil in favour of the abstraction evil. But we still find ourselves describing
some things as “devilish” or “satanic” do we not?
The idea of Jesus being tempted by Satan is disturbing to some people. Yet according to the Gospel story he was thrown into a crisis in the wilderness and won his way through. “Tempting”, of course is a bigger word than we normally think. It includes what we might call the idea of “Testing”. This kind of temptation or testing isn’t designed to break us down, but to build us up, not designed to make us weak, but to make us strong. It’s not just a testimony to our human vulnerability, but also to our glory.
The circumstances of Jesus’ temptation are worth noting. For one thing the text says that Jesus was led into the wilderness. That is, he didn’t go by choice. How many times we are moved into situations by a power over which we have no control? Think of some of the situations that you have been in in which you did not and would never have chosen. You were moved into them, you were driven.
And this temptation takes place in the wilderness. It was a wasteland, barren, bleak, largely uninhabited. And Jesus was alone without his normal means of support. For you and me the wilderness isn’t a place, but a condition, a state of mind, a state of being; the feeling of isolation, of being cut off, even though we live in the midst of thousands of people, of being unrelated to them, a feeling of hopelessness, confusion, futility, a sense of bleakness, and above everything else, dryness. We can be anywhere. It may be a prolonged hospital stay. It may be a sustained period of business failure. It may be a relationship that is painful. It could be many things. We can stay right where we are and be in the wilderness that Jesus was in. And it’s when we feel most alone that the test comes.
Also note that Jesus had just experienced an emotional peak at his baptism in the Jordan. The Spirit had descended upon him. God’s affirming voice had been heard. “You are my beloved Son”. And it’s with us as it was with Jesus. After a moment of high elation, a moment of great success, the test comes. For one moment, we’ve no fear of it; we’re equal to it, not in the sense that we’re proud of our ability, but we know we can do it. Then almost in the next moment we’re sure of nothing, we don’t feel adequate to anything.
The shadow – isn’t far from the light!
One thing more: Jesus is tempted to use his great Spirit-given powers wrongly. Are we not tempted too, at the point of our gifts, our strengths, more than at the point of our weakness? Tell me, what is your greatest strength? That’s the thing to watch! The person gifted with great charm and personal magnetism can be a terrific manipulator. The person gifted with words, can, in his or her spellbinding, bounce words of the wall in such a manner that they mean anything and therefore nothing. The person with a vivid imagination can flee from duty into fantasy, or project his or her untamed imaginings on other people. Where we are gifted, we need to post a double watch. Bright lights cast strong shadows.
It was
Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist, and son of a reformed Church pastor, who helped
us understand the shadow side of our
personality. “The contents of the shadow” says Jung, “come from our own
personal unconscious.” Early
memories, forgotten experiences, are there. The shadow is that
part of us not easy to recognize.
It’s like the dark side of the moon, you know it’s there, it has to be
there, but you never see it. It’s
a side of the personality that can affect us mightily without our being aware
of it at all.
Recognizing the existence of the shadow is not a pleasant task. It requires moral courage and serious effort. The darker side of us is present and real in every one of us. Because it is usually unconscious, it cannot be educated. It’s strongly emotional, and these emotions have a kind of possessive quality. The shadow is autonomous; it runs on its own engines. Have you ever exploded in anger at someone you really love over an event that was really insignificant? Later on, you would have said to yourself, “Why on earth did I react like that?” Or have you done something unkind and later, stunned, have you said, “I can’t believe I did that”!
Your shadow was pushing up through your conscious life the way a mountain in the sea builds up and finally appears at the surface through volcanic action. The island that results may appear to be idyllic and beautiful, but don’t forget that it was hot lava, which built it.
Did Jesus have a shadow? He was human. He must have had a personal unconscious area of his experience. He was a child. He was a boy. He was a teenager. He must have had memories to deal with too. Things could not have been all sweetness and light in the home of Nazareth. We know that he had four brothers and at least two sisters who didn’t believe in him until later. But in the wilderness temptation, he deals with the shadow and doesn’t yield to it; he wins the mastery over it. However, the story in Luke ends with this remark: “Then Satan left him for a season.” Why not for good: simply because his whole ministry included struggle with darkness. As John’s Gospel says “Light was coming into the world and the darkness has not overcome it.”
End Part One
Dr. John
Sullivan
Former
Officer
Canada
& Bermuda
<)))><
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