The Temptation to Deny Jesus

When I was a boy, I worried that I would deny Jesus by saying the wrong thing about him. Now, I’m aware that I’m far more likely to deny him by acting in ways that betray his ways and his will.

In the church of my childhood, an occasional visiting preacher would ask “courtroom questions”:

                If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

If you were sentenced to death because you refused to deny Jesus, would you remain faithful before the firing squad or in the electric chair or would you compromise your faith to save your life?

Versions of that second question usually came up in the guest preachers’ lurid descriptions of the end times: scary jumbles of the mark of the beast, Soviet Communism, 666, the Emperor Nero, the Trilateral Commission, the tribulation, long-haired hippies, disciple-devouring lions in the Coliseum, the Antichrist, and pointy-headed liberals. Those preachers warned us that we lived on what would soon be “the late, great planet earth.”

For weeks after one of those end-times preachers blew through our southside suburban Atlanta church, I’d cry and pray myself to sleep at night. I was in elementary school. I loved Jesus. I wanted to be faithful, but I worried that I’d give up my faith to save my skin.

I had dreams of soldiers showing up at my school to round-up anyone who had a maroon Gideon’s New Testament, or who wore a Royal Ambassadors’ pin (something like Christian Boy Scouts), or who saved allowance money to support foreign missionaries. In one scream-inducing nightmare, a bayonet-wielding soldier severed the head of my beloved cocker spaniel, Trixie, and threatened that I was next unless I said, “Jesus is cursed.”

As a boy, I thought that denying Jesus would happen in a singular decisive moment. Now, in my late 60s, I realize that denying Jesus happens decision-by-decision when my actions (or inactions) deny what Jesus taught and did.

Jesus shared friendship and hospitality with people whom the wealthy and powerful had shoved to the bottom and to the margins. He taught and demonstrated that violent means do not lead to peaceful ends, that fear will never generate love, and that revenge doesn’t serve divine justice. He said and showed that only servants can be trusted with power, that the safety of vulnerable children is a sign of responsible authority, and that abundant generosity reflects a healthy spirit. Jesus’ ways were shaped by his love: for God, for neighbor, for self-in-God, and for enemies.

Tomorrow, the First Sunday in Lent, many churches will reflect on Jesus’ wilderness temptations by Satan. One of them was to bend the knee to the Evil One in exchange for an untroubled path to worldly authority and glory over the kingdoms of the world. “If you, then, will worship me,” Satan said, “it will all be yours.” In the desert of trial, Jesus said to the Deceiver: “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'”

It would be a mistake to think that Jesus faced this temptation only once. It came to him over and over, as he decided, under the continuing pressures of opposition, misunderstanding, and violent threats, how to remain faithful, above all, to “the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). We live in a time when many followers of Jesus opt for authority and glory, power and celebrity, even though it means doing what Jesus never did: striking expedient compromises with evil. For us to resist such alluring bargains, we need the community of Jesus and his friends to put steel in our backbones and love in our hearts—to help us remember that only the God Jesus loved is worthy of our worship and obedience.