SUBTLE DECEPTION

"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." (Jesus, Matt 26:41 NIV)

The February 26, 1974 edition of Insight Magazine told the story of Major William Martin, a British subject who is buried near Huelva on the southern coast of Spain. Martin never knew the great contribution he made to the Allied success in the Second World War, especially in Sicily, because he died of pneumonia in the foggy dampness of England before he ever saw the battle front. The Allies had invaded North Africa. The next logical step was Sicily.

Knowing the Germans calculated this, the Allies determined to outfox them. They decided to give the Germans exactly what they wanted, accurate intelligence on the allied assault plan. Thus: Operation Mince Meat.

One dark night, an Allied submarine came to the surface just off the coast of Spain and put Martin's body out to sea in a rubber raft with an oar. In his pocket were secret documents indicating the Allied forces would strike next in Greece and Sardinia. The Allies had calculated the tides and currents in the area and knew within reason where the raft would land.

Major Martin's body washed ashore, and Axis intelligence operatives soon found him, thinking he had crashed at sea. They passed the secret documents through Axis hands all the way to Hitler's headquarters. So while Allied forces moved toward Sicily, thousands and thousands of German troops moved on to Greece and Sardinia--where the battle wasn't.

That story is a good example of the subtle deceptions involved in temptation. Some observations:

First, temptation isn’t always obvious, doesn’t usually hit us in the face. It is more sophisticated than that. It typically presents itself as what we think we want or need. It comes to us in a crisis of desire or danger, when necessity is upon us and the stress we are under is overwhelming and we’re looking for the solution, the release, the escape, or the fulfillment all at the same time. The Axis needed inside information. The Allies gave it to them.

Second, temptation is rarely hasty. It is unhurried, like the sunrise. The realization that what it offers is there for us, that it’s what we’ve been looking for, isn’t immediate. It is rather a slow dawning, a gradual reduction of rational arguments against error and a slow but sure gathering of seemingly sane, balanced, coherent arguments for it. Little by little the unthinkable becomes the ordinary, reasonable answer to our problem. The information planted on Major Martin slowly made its way up the chain of command to Hitler’s headquarters. Each office that passed it on gave it one more stamp of validation.

Above all temptation feels right. It feels like the natural way out of a difficult, seemingly intractable situation. It feels like “the answer.” The doors are all open. The path is smooth. Cool waters beckon. We want it to be so. The Nazis wanted Greece secured. They wanted to believe what the information told them.

Finally, temptation always makes the alternatives seem harder. There is always another approach, another way to solve the problem or meet the need. But that way seems unnecessarily inflexible, difficult, demanding, more than our resources can handle. The Nazis knew they couldn’t cover both fronts effectively. They had to choose where to concentrate their resources. Operation Mincemeat made it easier to choose Greece.

These are the subtle deceptions of temptation. These are the things to watch for when we pray.