True North: Temptation, Formation, and the Small Corrections That Shape a Life

A ship can be pointed almost exactly toward its destination and still never arrive.

Imagine leaving the West Coast for Hawaii, roughly 2,500 miles away. Suppose the navigator sets the ship's heading just one degree off course.

At first, the error is almost meaningless.

After 10 miles, the ship is only about a fifth of a mile from where it should be. After 100 miles, less than two miles. There is no crisis. Hawaii is still ahead. The crew may have no reason to believe anything is wrong.

But the ship keeps sailing.

After 500 miles, it is nearly nine miles from its intended track. After 1,000 miles, more than seventeen. By the time it has traveled 2,500 miles, that original one-degree error has placed it roughly forty-four miles off course.

The mistake never became larger.

It was still only one degree.

What changed was how long the ship maintained the wrong heading.

That is a useful way to think about temptation, sin, character, and the Christian life.

Temptation Is Not the Same as Sin

Proverbs 7 tells the story of a young man being drawn into adultery. But the chapter is interesting because Solomon doesn't begin with the adultery.

He begins much earlier.

The young man is described as being “void of understanding” (Proverbs 7:7). Then:

He has not yet committed adultery.

Then the woman approaches him. She speaks to him. She entices him.

Those things happen to him. The existence of temptation is not itself his sin.

This distinction matters because temptation is unavoidable.

An attractive person catches our attention. Anger suddenly rises. An opportunity for dishonesty presents itself. A terrible thought crosses our mind.

The appearance of the thought is different from our response to it.

There is a meaningful difference between asking:

What is this? Why do I desire it? Should I do it? Why would this be wrong?

and beginning to ask:

How could I do this? When could I do it? How could I avoid being caught?

The precise words aren't the important part. The change in the will is.

At some point the mind stops examining the temptation and begins helping it.

Proverbs describes that transition:

He yields.

Then:

The outward act follows an inward surrender.

Temptation presented a direction.

Eventually, he chose the heading.

The Final Sin Usually Isn't the First One

This makes Proverbs 7 much more than a warning against adultery.

The young man's adultery doesn't begin in the bedroom.

Before that, he lacks wisdom.

He approaches her corner.

He chooses the road toward her house.

He remains there.

He listens.

He yields.

He follows.

The dramatic sin at the end of the story is the visible culmination of many earlier decisions.

This is probably true of many serious sins.

Murder rarely begins when someone picks up a weapon. It may begin with resentment, then cultivated hatred, then dehumanization, then fantasies of revenge, then intention.

An affair may begin long before physical adultery—with an inappropriate confidence, a conversation deliberately prolonged, secrecy introduced into a relationship, or emotional boundaries quietly moved.

The final act gets our attention because it is dramatic.

Wisdom looks backward and asks:

When did the heading change?

Why Scripture Says to Flee

This also explains something that can initially sound like weakness in Christian teaching.

Scripture repeatedly tells us to flee temptation.

Joseph doesn't remain with Potiphar's wife to demonstrate his moral strength:

Paul tells Timothy:

Why flee?

Why not stand there and demonstrate our character?

Proverbs gives a sobering answer:

Strong men.

The biblical response isn't:

Then become stronger than those men.

It is:

Learn from them.

There is no virtue in unnecessarily placing ourselves in circumstances where our willpower must save us.

We get tired.

We become lonely.

We get sick.

People we depend upon die.

We experience grief, fear, humiliation and exhaustion.

Sometimes several of these arrive simultaneously.

We cannot guarantee that tomorrow's version of ourselves will possess today's strength.

Wisdom therefore doesn't ask:

How close can I get without falling?

It asks:

Why am I walking toward the edge?

Where Stoicism and Christianity Part Ways

This exposes an interesting difference between Stoicism and Christianity.

Stoicism offers something valuable: discipline your judgments, control your responses, develop virtue, and strengthen your character so that circumstances do not control you.

There is considerable wisdom there.

Christianity also values discipline, courage, temperance, endurance and character.

But Christianity is deeply suspicious of confidence in our own strength.

Peter provides a striking example.

Before Jesus' arrest, Peter declares:

Peter believes he knows his own character.

Then circumstances change.

Jesus is arrested. Peter becomes isolated and afraid. The confident disciple who believed himself incapable of abandoning Christ denies Him three times.

Christianity accounts for something every human being eventually discovers:

We cannot always be strong.

And Christianity has an answer for what happens when we aren't.

Grace.

Paul records Christ's words:

Christianity doesn't merely teach us how to become stronger.

It teaches us not to make an idol of our strength.

And when our strength fails—as it eventually will—failure need not be the end of the journey.

Peter was restored.

We Are Always Being Formed

There is another interesting connection here.

Physical training works through gradual adaptation.

We don't become strong by walking into a gym on the first day and attempting the heaviest weight we can lift. We progressively challenge ourselves. The body adapts. Yesterday's difficult weight eventually becomes today's ordinary weight.

Good habits work similarly.

So can therapies such as CBT. Appropriate challenges can be approached progressively until situations that once overwhelmed us become manageable.

Character develops much the same way.

We practice honesty in small circumstances.

We practice generosity when the amount is modest.

We practice forgiveness over small injuries.

We pray when life is good.

We develop disciplines before the storm arrives.

Small acts accumulate into habits, and habits help form character.

But the opposite process works too.

Neglect also forms us.

So does compromise.

So does repeatedly indulging resentment.

So does dishonesty.

So does lust.

Vice has progressive overload too.

Something that initially troubled our conscience can, through repetition, become ordinary.

We are always practicing becoming someone.

But Don't Confuse Training With Temptation

There is an important distinction.

If growth requires challenge, why flee temptation?

Because appropriate difficulty and unnecessary temptation are not the same thing.

Someone overcoming anxiety may progressively confront situations that frighten them.

Someone becoming physically stronger progressively increases resistance.

But someone recovering from alcoholism doesn't progressively increase exposure to whiskey to strengthen his resistance to alcoholism.

Train the weakness. Don't rehearse the vice.

Christian discipline prepares us for battles that cannot be avoided.

Wisdom keeps us out of battles that never needed to be fought.

God as True North

This brings us back to the ship.

If God is true north, the Christian life isn't a perfectly straight voyage.

There will be storms.

Currents will push us.

Other ships will force us to maneuver.

We will make navigational errors.

Sometimes circumstances beyond our control will move us considerably from where we expected to be.

The important distinction may therefore be between position and heading.

A person can be far from where he ought to be while finally heading toward God.

Another can appear very close while quietly heading away.

That gives us a useful way of thinking about repentance.

Repentance is a change of heading.

It doesn't pretend we haven't traveled where we've traveled. It doesn't necessarily erase the earthly consequences accumulated along the way.

But it turns the ship.

Grace means that even someone who has sailed hundreds of miles in the wrong direction can look again to true north.

The correction begins from wherever we actually are.

Check the Compass Often

Perhaps this is one reason Christian disciplines matter so much.

Prayer, Scripture, worship, fellowship and honest self-examination are not simply religious obligations.

They are opportunities to check the compass.

Where am I?

Which direction am I traveling?

What currents are pushing me?

What have I begun rationalizing?

What seemed wrong six months ago that now seems normal?

Am I moving toward God or merely assuming that I am?

Small course corrections are inexpensive.

Large ones hurt.

And the mathematics of navigation gives us a sobering lesson: a tiny error maintained long enough can produce an enormous separation from the intended destination.

The young man of Proverbs 7 did not suddenly find himself at the end of the road.

First:

Eventually:

Between those verses is the tragedy.

He had opportunities to correct his heading.

He continued.

The Christian Life Is a Life of Correction

Perhaps spiritual maturity isn't reaching a point where we no longer drift.

It is becoming quicker to recognize the drift.

We shouldn't expect ourselves never to be tempted.

We shouldn't assume ourselves strong enough to withstand every temptation.

We shouldn't deliberately sail into storms simply to prove the strength of our ship.

We train.

We develop good habits.

We build character.

We flee what wisdom tells us to flee.

We endure what cannot rightly be avoided.

And when we discover that we have drifted, we don't despair over how far away we have traveled.

We find true north again.

Because the great danger isn't necessarily being one degree off course.

It is remaining one degree off course and convincing ourselves that no correction is necessary.