target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_47383b80-1d13-56ef-b77f-db718e7bc647">19 Some may argue that the existence of modern communication technology—in particular radio, television, the Internet, and social media—has so radically changed public communication that the example of Jesus, whose primary method of communication was in direct personal contact with his audiences, is no longer relevant. This is not the place to address this concern fully, but I would suggest that one of the major effects (and problems) with modern communication technology is that while it greatly broadens the ability of the source to reach multitudes of receivers, it tends to depersonalize the relationship and increases rather than decreases the distance between source and receiver. Consequently, modern communicators using modern technology will be more believable and effective if they embody the truths they are attempting to communicate, have fully immersed themselves in their receivers’ world, and employ to the maximum extent possible the conceptual frameworks and vocabulary of their audiences—the distinguishing characteristics of Jesus’ incarnational communication.
1.2 THE FIRST TEMPTATION:
FEED THEM AND THEY WILL FOLLOW
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil … The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God,
tell these stones to become bread.”20
The Temptation
The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by evil personified is referred to directly by three of the Gospel writers and alluded to indirectly by the fourth (John). The event occurred at the very outset of his public ministry. Whether one interprets the Gospel writers’ description of it literally, as most Christians do who believe in the literal existence of a spiritual being (Satan) dedicated to the destruction of human beings and the work of God, or one only believes that the event described by the Gospel writers was some internal struggle that occurred in Jesus’ mind and imagination, the story is immensely instructive to anyone preparing for spiritual or political leadership, especially at the beginning of a public life.
The temptation may of course be interpreted as a straightforward attempt by Satan to get Jesus to sin—literally, to miss the mark. It is therefore instructive to anyone facing temptation to do something contrary to the revealed will and purposes of God. A subtler interpretation is that the temptation was a devious and clever attempt by the forces of evil to influence in a very destructive way the entire direction and character of Jesus’ leadership and public influence—to get him on the wrong track—at the very beginning of his public ministry. It is this interpretation that is particularly relevant and instructive to anyone contemplating and preparing for spiritual or public leadership today.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Perspective
and Interpretation
The interpretation of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness that I (and many others with political interests) have found most illuminating and helpful is that of the famous Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, as described in his last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov.21
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in 1821, nine years after Napoleon’s ignominious departure from Russia. He died in 1881, thirty-six years before the Communist Revolution, the character and evils of which he predicted with great insight. His father was a military doctor and serf owner, extremely cruel and constantly drunk, who was murdered by his serfs when Fyodor was eighteen years of age. Fyodor then joined the army and served in it for four years, where he acquired many bad habits—in particular excessive drinking, womanizing, and gambling—vices that plagued him for the rest of his life and kept him in constant trouble and poverty.
Dostoyevsky lived at a time of intellectual and political turmoil in Russia. He joined a socialist group agitating for reform and at age twenty-nine was arrested and charged with sedition. He was sentenced to death by a firing squad, but at the very last moment the tsar commuted the sentence to exile and hard labour in Siberia. He spent the next nine years there, mainly in the company of murderers, robbers, and other criminals. As he grew older he was subject to violent epileptic attacks, while his gambling and drinking habits kept him constantly on the brink of personal disaster. Some of his best writing was done in a fevered frenzy to pay gambling debts.
For all of his character flaws, however, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a literary genius with an extraordinary interest in and insight into the nature of good and evil, especially evil.
This interest and insight is particularly evident in his four most important novels, the last and greatest of these being The Brothers Karamazov, completed just one year before he died.22 It is the story of a dysfunctional family headed by an alcoholic and lecherous father (likely modelled after Dostoyevsky’s own father) who has four sons, all of whom become involved in a murder. The four brothers are Dimitri, who symbolizes the flesh; Ivan, who represents the intellect; Alyosha, the youngest, who represents the spiritual; and Smerdyakov, the illegitimate son who represents the insulted, the injured, and the disinherited.
In a famous chapter entitled “The Grand Inquisitor” the intellectual Ivan challenges the spirituality and Christian commitment of his younger brother Alyosha by telling him he is working on a poem set in Spain in which Jesus returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. In the poem, Ivan imagines that Jesus is immediately arrested and imprisoned by the church authorities on charges of heresy—of adding to what he had said of old, which in the opinion of the church he has no right to do. One dark night, the Grand Inquisitor himself visits the Christ to interrogate and lecture him, arguing that Jesus’ greatest mistake was to ignore the advice of that “wise and dread Spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-existence” (Satan) when he met with Jesus in the wilderness.23 If only Jesus had heeded that advice (“the temptation”) and based the direction and tenor of his leadership upon it, the work of the church would have been so much more successful, and humanity would have been so much happier and more fulfilled.
The First Temptation: Feed Them and They Will Follow
And so the tempter comes to Jesus and says, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”24
From Dostoyevsky’s perspective, what Satan is really saying here is that if you, Jesus, really want human beings to give you their allegiance and follow you, you should only appeal to their most immediate and urgent physical needs. Feed them! Give them bread—real, tangible, edible bread that they can see with their eyes, hold in their hands, and put in their mouths. Do that and they will follow you by the thousands. But don’t go offering them some kind of “heavenly bread,” which it is apparently your intention to do. Don’t go talking to them about deliverance from spiritual hunger and offering them spiritual freedom and nourishment—they won’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about and will reject rather than accept your leadership.
In the picturesque language of the Grand Inquisitor, Satan’s meaning was
“Thou wouldst go into the world … with some promise of freedom which men in their simplicity and their natural unruliness cannot even understand … But seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a flock of sheep, grateful and obedient.”25
The Grand Inquisitor says, “Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?”
