The Wilderness - Part I

A picture of the City of London - where they make big piles of money! It may not look like the wilderness, but I would argue that maybe it is.

I was talking to a student yesterday who was telling me how she was certain that there was no God. She happened to be looking at a poster about philosophy that I have on display which explains that philosophy asks the Big Questions and one of them says 'What if God does exist?' and also 'What if he doesn't?'.

"That's a very interesting question" she looked at me, very slightly worried.

"I have never thought - what if I am wrong, what if God does exist".

(That was just before her Mum came and picked her up in a brand new Mercedes Benz. ("Oh Lord, won't you buy me...")). Yep, that is a pretty big question for people who have taken the path, as most of my family have, that God does not exist. For them, their life is about material acquisition and ensuring their own comfort. It is probably fair to say that most people in society think that way. That may be rather simplistic as it is also about other things, some very noble and many quite beautiful but to my mind, without God, they are missing the point. Being emerged in materialism and secular values is, to me, the Wilderness. And that is where we all live.

Last night, I was discussing Luke 4. Several things struck about this, the first thing was the contemporary battle that we all face: The devil leads Jesus up to a high place and shows him all the kingdoms of the world 'I will give you all their authority and splendour...If you worship me, it will all be yours'. I thought that summed up so much about contemporary life. We are bombarded, all the time, with images of stuff - desirable things: shoes, clothes, ipods, ipads, cars, houses, holidays, glamour, fame, wealth, riches. Now, clearly, the intention of the people who are spending millions on promoting their goods to us is that they create in us a desire to have them. That is how retail and marketing work.

I came home, one day, having been to John Lewis - the department store full of 'desirable' things; I looked around my house and felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction that my living room was nowhere near as beautiful as the ones they had displayed in the shop. My husband reminded me that, of course, that is exactly what they want you to feel! They have gone out of their way to create a dissatisfaction with your lot and therefore a desire to have more or newer or shinier 'stuff'. We look at it and we are tempted by it. Then, if I imagine someone saying to me - you could have all of this, all of this and more. You can have it all....Well, that is what these adverts and our culture sells us all the time. If you make these material goods your priority, you could spend your life in pursuit of them and, as the devil said to Jesus, it will all be yours.



When I worked in the City earning lots of money, I was surrounded by people to whom money was extremely important. Consumer satisfaction is a transitory state, it changes all the time. So everyone would be comparing their latest versions of whatever cars, bags, shoes they had just acquired. The obsession with money and stuff is certainly not exclusive to the City, however. If I ask most of my students what they want to do when they are older, the vast majority will say that they want to make lots of money and be rich.

Of course, as we know, when Jesus was faced with temptation like that he answered 'It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only'. Jesus was quite clear on this subject, he warns elsewhere that you cannot serve both God and money. He warns us to 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions!' I don't think he means that you can't have any money but that you must not be worshipping it or falling into greed. This is difficult because the people around us are, of course, absorbed by our material culture and I am certainly not immune to it! You and I may find ourselves standing there with the devil (we'll come back to him later), going 'hmmm, yes, I would quite like all that stuff please'. This is our daily battle in the wealthy West: to follow Jesus' example and worship God, not all those lovely things in the shops. Even the really good stuff.

So, here we all are, out in the Wilderness, facing our tests. Question is, what are we going to do in response?