Taking the Time to Make a Difference

Just the thought was disconcerting. I was loading up 20 bags of Cypress mulch outside a store a few days ago. The clerk who had sold them to me had asked if I wanted help, but I had told her I would do it myself. As I was loading the bags of mulch for our garden, the disturbing thought came to me that no one was watching me to see how many bags I would take. It would be wrong, of course, to take an extra one, but it might be easy. I could fit only 10 bags of mulch into the trunk, so I started loading the next 10 into the back seat. I could close the trunk, I thought, and no one would know how many bags I had put there. I was almost finished when the clerk came out of the store toward my car. I said “Hello” and asked her if she wanted to count the bags I had taken. She just shook her head and continued walking past me toward the fast food store next door, on her late afternoon break. I finished the loading, closed up the car, and drove away. As I did, I realized that the only reason I asked the clerk if she wanted to count the bags was that I had been tempted to take more than I had paid for. The fact that I had even listened to the whisper of that temptation bothered me. Did that ever happen to you?

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As I write today, one of my e-mail messages comes from someone who says he is General William Kwasi of the Interpol Protective Committee, who is contacting me from Ghana because my e-mail address is on a boy’s consignment box containing $16 million in U.S. currency. He wants me to send him enough money to buy a diamond cutter so he can open the consignment box. Needless to say, I am not tempted. A share of $16 million in an Internet scam does not bother me. A “free” bag of Cypress mulch, worth $1.99, is a troublesome temptation. All temptations are not equal.

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I was reading an article the other day in the newspaper of the Houston Catholic Worker. It was an interview with a Jesuit priest working with an AIDS ministry in Africa. What struck me was a comment about the distinction between curing and healing. Much of the Western World’s approach to health care is concerned with curing – finding a drug to stop a raging disease, putting a cast on a broken bone, and so on. That, as I understand it, is curing. Healing, on the other hand, is an effort to make things whole, in the body, and in the family. That’s what Jesus did – bringing the lepers and the blind and the lame to wholeness – a wholeness not only within their own bodies, but also within their society. “Go show yourself to the priest,” he said to the lepers.

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The thought struck me that “Thou shalt not steal” is a kind of cure for a society. It is an intervention within the body of the community. It is a useful way to keep order, to stop an evil from being done. What Jesus brought to humanity, however, was a desire to heal us. On the Mount of the Beatitudes, Jesus called us to seek righteousness and peace, to be merciful and pure – to be whole. "Beatitude is a possession of all things held to be good, from which nothing is absent that a good desire may want.” St. Gregory of Nyssa said that, back in the fourth century. Wanting an extra bag of Cypress mulch is a sign that personal beatutude has not yet been achieved. I said that, just a few days ago.

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Temptation happens. What’s in your bag? The Christian response has more to do with the wholeness of the Body of Christ than with the fear of being caught or punished. Take the time to reflect on how you respond to temptation. If you have children, ask them why Jesus would not want them to take away another’s good things. You should ask yourself that same question, too.

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