Never tempt God

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WITH all the assurances that God will take care of everything, especially when we are in most need of help and mercy, etc., we might be tempted to think that we can do anything, including intentionally doing bad things, since God will forgive us anyway.

This is what tempting God is all about. We would be testing his patience and limits. We fail to realize that God’s abundant and gratuitous goodness, his ever-available mercy and all the graces that he is eager to share with us, is meant for us to get closer to him, to love him more, to do a lot of good in accordance to his will and ways. They are not meant to spoil and corrupt us, thinking we can just do anything.

In the Bible, there are a number of cases of tempting God that, of course, ended very badly. The Israelites, for example, tempted God multiple times, questioning his presence and provision, leading to consequences like fiery snakes and 40 years of wandering. (cfr. Ex 17)

There was also the case of the couple Ananias and Sapphira who tempted God by lying about their donation, leading to severe consequences. (cfr. Acts 5) Of course, Christ was tempted directly by the devil who was immediately dismissed. (cfr. Mt 4) We have to be wary of the dire consequences that tempting God can cause. It can lead to loss of faith and spiritual dryness.

What we should rather do, given God’s overwhelming love for us, is to try our best to love him in return. His love for us should teach us how to love in return, how to love him and everybody else in return.

And if we really want to be in love, let’s fill ourselves first of all with the source of love who is none other than God. “Deus caritas est,” God is love, as St. John says, indicating the ultimate essence of God. And since we are his image and likeness, we cannot be other than men and women full of love, of God’s love.

We have to be wary of distorting this fundamental truth about ourselves by simply generating our own kind of love that will always be limited, highly conditioned, effective only under what we consider to be favorable conditions.

We have to make the effort to feel the love of God for us which he pours on us abundantly. That’s simply because unless we feel that love and get moved by it, we cannot manage to love as we ought to love. Let’s always remember that Christ himself commanded us to love one another as he himself has loved us. Christ makes himself the standard and source of our love.

Otherwise, what may happen is that we may just rely on our own self-generated kind of love that can only do so much. For example, our self-generated love would not know how to be patient for long with trials and sufferings, how to love and be merciful with those who give us trouble. It would be a love that tends to tempt God.

Everyday, we should work out this need of filling ourselves with God’s love, since this does not come to us automatically. In the first place, we have to contend with our human and natural limitations that simply cannot cope with the fullness of God’s love.

This is not to mention that we are also burdened by the effects of our sins and weaknesses, the environment of temptations and other conditionings that would make us not only insensitive and resistant but also hostile to God’s love.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com