Pastoral Psychol (2013) 62:671686

DOI 10.1007/s11089-013-0511-2

On Getting away with It: Jesus and the Temptation

in the Desert
Jaco J. Hamman

Published online: 24 January 2013

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract The experience of getting away with something is a well-known personal dynamic, yet it is relatively unexplored by psychodynamic theorists, even though such experiences
impact both persons and society in significant ways. In reading the Gospels, one is left with
the perception that Jesus got away with desirethat is, he withstood Satans temptations.
The essay explores getting away with it in light of Jesus temptation in the desert. Ways
this experience might have formed the person and ministry of Jesus are suggested.
Keywords Authorities . Death . Desire . The gospels . Jesus . Michael Willett-Newheart .
Psychoanalysis . Adam Phillips . Pastoral theology . Temptation

Introduction
Around a table with friends, their ten-year-old son, Samuel, shared that he and friends
engaged in mischief at school and how they got away with it. While the teacher was caught
up in classroom activities, Samuel and his friends sent notes back and forth joking about
their teacher. The teacher never noticed. Samuels comments surprised us all, since it did not
follow the theme of the table conversation and rendered his parents visibly embarrassed.
They promptly rebuked him and made promises of consequences. Samuel, despite his
parents veiled threat, shared his feat with a sense of pride. A sensitive and imaginative
boy, he continued to describe resourcefulness and creativeness as he burst into laughter
retelling the jokes he and his friends came up with. Obviously fond of his teacher, the
mischief caused such tension within Samuel that he could not keep from making a grand
announcement.
Later that evening, before I drifted off to sleep, I remembered something I got away with.
I was ten when I swam in a tidal pool on the southeastern shore of South Africa. We hung
onto a breakwater wall as waves crushed over us. As the water pulled back, a wave lifted me
J. J. Hamman (*)
Vanderbilt University,
411 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37240, USA
e-mail: jaco.hamman@vanderbilt.edu

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over the wall and I got swept into the ocean. Within seconds I was yards removed from my
friends, swallowing water and disappearing under the waves. I knew I was going to die, not
having heeded my fathers regular warnings to respect the ocean. As my friends screamed at
the top of their lungs and I resigned to drowning, another wave picked me up, carried me
towards shore and lifted me back over the breakwater wall. I know that I got away from
death. The theme for this years Group for New Directions in Pastoral Theology conference
is New Directions on Old Connections: Body/Soul, Flesh/Spirit, Self/Other. I am going to
explore this theme through the lens of getting away with it experiences.
As a hospital chaplain and then psychotherapist I often encountered people who shared an
I got away with it story or some version of it. I remember the aged veteran in a
rehabilitation unit. He wondered how many people he killed as the airplane he piloted
dropped thousands of bombs over Nazi Germany. Now closer to his own death, he was
keenly aware that he got away with murder. A woman who remained hospitalized for many
months due to Guillain-Barre Syndrome left the hospital in a wheel chair saying she
cheated death. There was the young man who had an experience of unprotected sex and
after weeks of fear and dread tested negative for HIV/AIDS. A client in mid-life tumbled
into a deep depression, which lasted about two years. No treatment seemed to help. When
the depression suddenly lifted, he said he got away from the black dog that was on his back.
A married woman would tell about her office affair. The affair, she believed, made her
marriage possible. She got away with infidelity. A professionally trained man who was
unable to secure or keep employment would boast how his wife earned a good salary,
allowing him to get away with not being the bread winner and the head of house.
These individuals shared a sense of getting away with murder, potentially dangerous
behavior, death, despair and other experiences. Samuels confession spoke of a desire to
break rules and to be punished, not unlike the desire Sigmund Freud (1957) identifies in his
classic 1919 essay, A Child is Being Beaten: A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of
Sexual Perversions. My own experience changed the way I view my own mortality. As an
adventure motorcyclist, I am deeply aware of the danger my hobby holds, yet have little fear
as I return to motorcycle school with regularity, though I do practice ATGATT (All the gear,
all the time) and I wear a neck brace as well as conspicuous colors to protect myself.
The getting away with it experiences focused upon in this essay should not be
confused with egregious and flagrant abuse of authority and transgression of legal or
ethical boundaries. Our media is filled with Ponzi scheme masterminds who steal from
others or corporate leaders who were unethical in their practices, only to walk away
relatively unscathed. A recent episode of This American Life (Glass 2012), a popular
program on National Public Radio, addressed the theme of Getting Away With It.
Although stories were told of unethical behavior and mischief, one sensed that the
persons told of isolated events, once-off experiences, rather than repeated offences.
Distinguishing the unethical and illegal from the natural pushing against boundaries is
important. If the experience of getting away with it were to be visualized as part of a
spectrum, the situations making headlines in our media would be at the one extreme,
while this paper envisions experiences at the other. While there are differences, still they
nevertheless remain related. Getting away with it, as understood in this essay, can be an
isolated experience that creates enough internal ambivalence that one wants to end the
experience, often by telling about it. Or, it is an experience where survival in an unjust
society determines certain actions, such as persons who disregarded South Africas
apartheid laws to foster relationships across races and to dismantle a destructive system.
Where unethical behavior such as white-collar crime takes place, getting away with it
might not sufficiently describe the dynamics involved.

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This essay explores a common experiencebest described as on getting away with it

and its emotional, spiritual, and relational impact on ones life. First, I discuss the dynamic as
introduced by the British psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips. Next, one distinct experience in the
life of Jesusthe temptations by Satanis revisited, arguing that Jesus overcame/got away
with his desire for hunger, power, and fear of his own death (his mortality). The essay
concludes by reflecting on other experiences Jesus got away with and how that might have
shaped his life and determined the religion that grew around him. The dynamic will not
rewrite how we might view Jesus temptations, but it does add a different perspective to
existing discussions.

On getting away with it

In his book titled On Balance, the British child psychotherapist and essayist Adam
Phillips (2010) has a chapter titled: On Getting Away With It. Phillips asks: If guilt
is the psychoanalytic word for not getting away with it, what is the psychoanalytic word
for getting away with it? (p. 198). Believing that humans are ambivalent and transgressive by nature, Phillips states that by implication, [being ambivalent and transgressive raise] the issue of getting away with something, or avoiding what are deemed to be
the inevitable consequences of certain actions . . . . [T]here is perhaps no stronger wish
beginning of course, in childhoodthan the wish to get away with things (p. 198).
Getting away with it, which can include harming loved ones, desiring forbidden objects,
letting oneself and others down, living out ones desires, or breaking the natural cause
and effect rhythm, often brings conflict into ones psyche. This conflict, Phillips has
observed, often becomes a burden to persons after a period of reprieve as the dynamic
suppresses healthy psychic life. When one gets away with something, the urge to tell is
normal, an act that ends the experience. Some people will wait years before they end the
experience, while others, like Samuel, ended it in days.
Getting away with it is a form of knowing. Phillips recalls how he asked a seventy-yearold man whether he had any children. The man replied: No, I managed to get away with it
(p. 199). The man continued telling, with much clarity and certainty, how children are an
inconvenience and proved very knowledgeable about being a father and parent, experiences he never had. When asked how he knew so much about children, the man answered:
Only people who dont have children know what its really like. Phillips summarizes this
mans experience by saying: There is, clearly, a kind of knowledge borne of the absence of
experience. Getting away with it, we find ourselves in a position of knowing much about an
experience weve never had. Phillips remembers D.W. Winnicott who remarked that only a
man knows what it is like to be a woman and only a woman knows what its like to be a
man (p. 199).
Phillips refers to D.W. Winnicotts essay (1986) insights on the relationship between
fantasy and inner psychic reality in his book Home Is Where We Start From: Essays by a
Psychoanalyst. Winnicott identifies fantasy as a vital part of the unit personality, except
where illness determines that there must be no inside and therefore no inner psychic reality
(p. 189). To have an active fantasy life is a sign of maturity and health, increasing the reality
of actual experiences. In this way, Winnicott writes, everything under the sun can be
found in the individual, and the individual is able to feel the reality of whatever is actual and
discoverable. In health then, Winnicott envisions that a woman can find a male life in
imaginative experiences through identification with males, and vice versa. This leads me
to make the following formulation: to fully appreciate being a woman one has to be a man,

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and to fully appreciate being a man one has to be a woman (p. 189). Phillips paraphrases
Winnicott as he draws on Winnicott to identify the realness of imagined experiences.
Continuing the theme of the imagination, Phillips writes:
So we might imagine, for example, that a child who gets away with stealing something
from a friendthe child, that is to say, who is not caughtknows more about
punishment than the one who is found out. And what he knows more about is his
super-ego; the language, the severity, the obscenity of the self-punisher he calls up by
his act. What he doesnt know about is the experience of being punished and whatever
else by the adults, by his peers, by his friend. He might sayI think probably would
saythat he knows more about the experience he hasnt had, because he has been able
to imagine it. (pp. 199200)
Getting away with it activates ones imagination in a very defined way, for the focus of
the imagination is directly tied to the particularity of the experience one had. The woman
who had Guillain-Barre Syndrome knew about transgressive invasiveness and the veteran
knew about murder. The young man who tested negative for HIV/AIDS knew about a dread
more profound than a moment of orgasmic ecstasy. The once depressed man knew about joy
and happiness. The woman who had an affair knew about faithfulness. The man who could
not find or keep employment knew about providing. Likewise, Samuel knows about keeping
rules and I know about death and dying. Since these different realities have been alive in our
minds, we all became experts of sorts.
The experience of getting away with it thus invites us to think that we might know more
about those experiences we do not have than the experience we do have. To deepen his
argument that one may know more about an experience one never had, Phillips addresses an
adolescent masturbating: In masturbation, one might say, it is as if I have got away with
having sex without having to have sex (p. 200). A teenager fantasizes about a partner,
stimulates herself, and reaches orgasm. Desire reaches a climax without fear of getting
pregnant or attracting a sexually transmitted infection. This act of getting away with it
induces an anxiety that is used by the super-ego to plague the average teen with guiltfeelings. Phillips continues: Perhaps we should take more seriously than we often do how
long we spend in our lives not having sexual experiences but being, as we say, full of
fantasies; knowing more about what we might want than about what we can have.
Adolescence itself is a getting away with it with regard to time: An adolescent state of
mind is one in which we get away with being a child and we get away with being an adult,
Phillips writes. And what one gets away with are the consequences of an experience. The
fantasy of getting away with it . . . is not only an excessive knowingness; it can also be a way
of phrasing the possibility that you dont know the consequences of your actions; a wish not
to assume what the gratification of your wishes might entail (p. 200). When one gets away
with it, one breaks the sequence of cause and effect and assumes that ones act will have no
predictable consequences as all is contained in fantasy. As stated, the experience of getting
away with it is central to childhood. The dynamic, however, continues into adolescence and
even adulthood, as the examples given indicate.
Getting away with it, however, does not only speak to the fantasy of not facing any
consequences or gaining knowledge in the absence of experience. The dynamic also speaks
to authorities:
If you get away with it, does it mean that the authorities dont really love you, dont
really care about their rules, are in fact quite unable to enforce their rules, are secretly
complicit with your breaking themin short, are not all that they are cracked up to be,

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cracked up to be by you and yours? If you get away with it, is God impotent,
absent, or negligent? Cynical or just abiding His time, letting you sweat and
boast, but leaving you unsure? . . . Or perhaps God is merciful, or sympathetic,
or thinks you deserve time out, or time off, or whatever He can do with time to
make it kinder. (p. 201)
Probably more than anything else, getting away with it makes one think of authorities
and the punishment they embody. The problem with getting away with it, of course, is
that one never knows when the authorities might find out. Phillips wonders whether one
ever does get away with it? One can never quite relax for the rules one has transgressed
remain on ones mind, imagining the external authorities and activating the internal
authority, the super-ego. As one engages the authorities, one also remains tied to them.
Getting away with it, however, also suppresses the super-ego in the attempt to make
desire more bearable and pleasure more pleasurable. As such, getting away with it tries to
modify the super-ego, to diminish its power over ones life (p. 203). Since getting
away with it and the activation of the super-ego are such common experiences, the
question is not so much how does one get rid of guilt feelings, but rather, how not to be
stifled by guilt? (p. 203). How can one, for example, fuel ones desire and seek pleasure
without negatively impacting ones own life or the lives of others? As long as the
experience of getting away with it remains active in ones mind, one is being punished
because it preys on ones mind as guilt feelings. Moreover, for some people it seems as if
it is the unpunished acts of life that seem to stay with them:
What is unusual about these not-having-been-punished experiences from childhood
those times when we got away with it, and which stayed with us; these miniature
death-of-God experiences when we were abandoned to our transgressionsis that
people often have a very limited sense of how their lives would have been better if the
requisite, appropriate thing had happened. (pp. 205206)
With only a limited sense of how ones life would have been different if the appropriate
things happened, the limitations of our imaginations are exposed. Some things we just
cannot imagine.
Punishment, one can argue, brings to an end a certain experience and frees someone from
guilt. For the person who got away with it, however, feeling guilty often becomes a refuge,
a retreat, a substitute, a something you had instead of another experience you might have
had (p. 205). The teenager masturbating returns to the experience continuously to feel safe
in her guilt feelings as the veteran flew many sorties in his mind, dropping more and more
bombs on nameless and faceless enemies. This refuge, however, has a cold heart, and this is
one reason why persons want to tell about their getting away with it experiences. The
terribleness of the crime has been subsumed . . . by the terribleness of having never been
caught (p. 206).
As one continues to feel guilty about a getting away it experience, one remains tied to the
authorities, those figures in ones life that place rules to live by. Moreover, one becomes an
authority oneself! When you get away with it, only you know that the world has changed;
you have changed the world without letting it know. Indeed, if you let it know, it wouldnt
have changed (p. 207). In an effort to guard this paradoxical experience weve had, Phillips
argues we enter into a radical privacy . . . a conscious solitude with an unconscious
backdrop . . . . The person who gets away with it is hyper-conscious of one thing . . . but
unconscious of much else (p. 207). In this private world, persons unconsciously choose to
live in a getting away with it manner.

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Phillips believes that people tell about getting away with it experiences, not only to
end the experience and to escape its radical privacy, which comes at an emotional cost,
but people also tell in an attempt to find out what the missing experience is assumed to
be. In general, one can say one discovers freedom in the act of telling, but what exactly
one gains from sharing a getting away experience remains unclear for Phillips. He is
hesitant to name the benefits of telling about getting away with it for he recognizes that
truth is personal and relational:
One of the things that had usefully reconfigured our writing of psychoanalytic theory
now is our unavoidable acknowledgement that we cannot confidently, any more, make
generalizations across cultures, religions, genders, or even perhaps families. All
psychoanalytic theorizing has to have now, a coda, the question: for whom could
these sentences be pertinent or useful. (p. 208)
Phillips ends his essay by stating that getting away with it is especially pertinent to the
immigrant experience, or people trying to live lives they want in oppressive regimes
(p. 210). How can a Muslim immigrant in France, for example, where certain dress codes are
outlawed, get away with being Muslim, he muses? The stakes of getting away with it can
thus be a matter of life or death, or at least spiritual and psychological life or death, even as it
points to ethical considerations.
Getting away with it, as Adam Phillips introduces it in On Balance, describes a psychodynamic experience one first recognizes in childhood, but one that follows us into adulthood. To summarize, the experience:

&
&
&
&
&
&
&
&
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Is a form of knowing, establishing knowledge about an experience one never had.

Sets one up to think about or even seek punishment.
Activates the imagination.
Allows one to get away with no consequences.
Breaks a cause and effect pattern.
Renders one to have knowledge of authorities and ties one to authorities.
Turns one into being an authority.
Ends when one tells of the experience. And,
The experience of getting away with it allows persons to live in oppressive systems.

When one explores with a person the possibilities of what might have been, as can
happen in a therapeutic setting, the ending of the private (and unacceptable) experience can
be mourned and a new future can appear. One can also explore possibilities of repairing
relationships or avenues of restitution.
If getting away with it is a normal experience, even in adulthood, it is safe to assume that
Jesus too had such experiences. In the next section, one moment of Jesus of Nazareths life is
examined, the moment he got way with his desire, from personal need and from the
temptation by Satan in the desert.

Jesus temptation in the desert

With the water still dripping off of Jesus body following his baptism, he is led into the
desert to be tempted by the devil. The temptation narrative, which we find in Matthew 4:1
11, Mark 1:1213, and Luke 4:113, arguably sets up the ministry of Jesus equal to any
other narrative. Literary and source-critical scholars believe that Marks cryptic version was
the literary source for Matthew and Luke. Matthew and Luke, however, seem to know

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more detail about the experience than Mark portrays. Mark, who drew on the Synoptic
source Q (Gibson 1994 p. 25), reduces the narrative to two verses: At once [after the
baptism], the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days,
being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him (The Bible:
NIV, 1984). In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, however, the narrative has more color:
Matthew 4:111
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After
fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
The tempter came to him and said, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to
become bread. Jesus answered, It is written: Man shall not live on bread alone, but on
every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the
temple. If you are the Son of God, he said, throw yourself down. For it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
Jesus answered him, It is also written: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of
the world and their splendor. All this I will give you, he said, if you will bow down
and worship me.
Jesus said to him, Away from me, Satan! For it is written: Worship the Lord your
God, and serve him only. Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
Luke 4:113
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the
wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during
those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. Jesus
answered, It is written: Man shall not live on bread alone.
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of
the world. And he said to him, I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has
been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be
yours.
Jesus answered, It is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.
The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.
If you are the Son of God, he said, throw yourself down from here. For it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you
up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
Jesus answered, It is said: Do not put the Lord your God to the test. When the devil
had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.
The texts of Matthew and Luke vary in a number of ways. In Matthew, Jesus fasts
40 days, whereas in Luke he was tempted for 40 days. Both gospels, however,
portray a close relationship between Jesus and Moses (see Deuteronomy 9:9 and

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34:1). After being tempted in the desert, Matthew describes Jesus being led to the
temple and then to a mountaintop, a direct reference to Moses. Luke, however, finds
Jesus on top of the temple at the end of the temptations as Luke wanted to impress
his eschatology and salvation history (Taylor 2001, p. 32). Biblical Scholars vary
widely as to understanding the discrepancies in these three narratives. Some scholars
argue that the narrative draws on combat myths or eschatological material, whereas
others believe that it draws on testing that sets up a hero, a genre that was common
to Mediterranean cultures in Jesus time [See Garret (1998), Gibson (1994, 1995), Schiavo
(2002), Stegner (1990), and Taylor (2001) for summary arguments]. Schiavo (2002) verbalizes
the tension driving this text: We are dealing with a strange episode in the life of Jesus, which
raises many questions because of its peculiar development lacking external witnesses, and
because of the difficulty of understanding its purpose within the overall sweep of the Gospel
narratives (p. 142).
Gibson (1995) quotes John Howard Yoders Politics of Jesus (published in 1972),
where Yoder writes: Being human, Jesus must have been subject somehow to the
temptations of pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust. But it does not
enter into the concern of the Gospel writer to give us any information about any
struggles he may have had with their attraction (p. 10). The lens of getting away with
it can shed additional light on this private experience Jesus had and possibly remove
some of its strangeness. Here, the getting away part is easily understood, since
Jesus debunks Satan and has a counterargument for every act of tempting. There is,
however, more to the it Jesus is getting away with and the from whom too. Ill
contend Jesus, full of fantasy, got away with his own desires, as I acknowledge that
temptation and desire are bedfellows. There is convincing biblical witness for reading
this narrative through the lens of desire. With desire I mean a wish, want; aspiration,
fancy, inclination, impulse, yearning, longing, craving, hankering, hunger; eagerness,
enthusiasm, [and] determination, as indicated by Oxford Reference Online (2012).
It seems as if, peirasmos, temptation (from the verb peirao, to try), followed
Jesus throughout his life, as Gibson indicates (pp. 2122). Jesus is tempted in the
wilderness, the focus of this essay, but also tempted for signs (Matthew 16:14;
Mark 8:113); tempted in Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:1323; Mark 8:2733);
tempted in being asked about divorce (Matthew 19: 19; Mark 10:1ff); tempted
about paying taxes to Rome (Matthew 22:1522; Mark 12:1317; Luke 20:2026);
tempted in being asked about the great commandment (Matthew 23:3440), and
tempted in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:3646; Mark 14:3242; Luke 22:4046). In
Luke, Jesus is also tempted in being asked about eternal life (10:2526) and
temptations are identified as the backdrop of his ministry (22:28). In the Gospel
of John, Jesus is tempted when a woman was about to be stoned (John 7:53-8-11).
In the Gospels there are twenty-one temptation of Jesus accounts (p. 318). Gibson
argues that there were various temptation traditions that played an important role
in the early Church. Being tempted, Gibson writes, is being probed and proved,
often through hardship and adversity, in order to determine the extent of ones
worthiness to be entrusted with, or the degree of ones loyalty or devotion to a
given commission and its constraints (pp. 5657). Temptation speaks to character
and fidelity.
A socio-cultural reading of the text further supports the close relationship between
temptation and desire. Susan Garrett, in her book, The Temptations of Jesus in Marks
Gospel (1998), writes that the early Christians saw the word peirasmos (temptations) and
desire as integrally related. Garrett writes:

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This ancient perspective can be summarized in this way: seduction afflicts, and
affliction seduces. To the one who is afflicted, the option of apostasy from faith . . .
may present itself like a tempting fruit, ripe for plucking; to the ones who long for
forbidden fruit, desire (epithymia) may burn within like a painful and consuming
fire. Thus affliction and desire pose equally seriousand closely relatedthreats to
the life of faith and obedience. (p. 5)
Garrett argues that the mindset described above was common to the Mediterranean world
and is best seen in James (1:1315):
When tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted
by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged
away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives
birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. (pp. 1920)
By pointing the finger at desire, Garrett continues, the blame for testing/temptation
[points] away from God onto an evil passion or impulse on the human self (p. 20).
In the minds of theologians too, it seems, a strong relationship between temptation and
desire exists. Garrett quotes Dietrich Bonheoffer, who, in his 1937 lectures on Creation and
Fall, writes: Temptation of the flesh through desire and through suffering is at the bottom
one and the same (p. 20). She concludes that trials of affliction and trials of seductionour
fleshy desirego hand in hand for Jesus and his followers. Following Bonhoeffer and
Garrett, theologian Diogenes Allen (2010), in discussing The temptations in the wilderness, echoes thoughts of temptation and desire being closely related when he states that in
the temptation to turn stones into bread, Jesus is tempted to reject a condition set by his
Father, that we are to seek him as beings who must eat, who are vulnerable to starvation, as
beings who are made to desire material good and who therefore become greedy, covetous,
envious (p. 108). Allen continues and suggests that we, like Jesus, can overcome temptation and desire. Jesus quoted Scripture, he sought Gods kingdom, and he lived according to
the essence of being the son of God. The basic message is that we are fragile beings who
can succumb to our desires or injure our bodily selves (p. 111). Our fragile, greedy, desirous
self is confronted by the self-limitations set by Jesus (p. 116). Allen suggests that we, like
Jesus, should overcome our desires.
Preachers too follow this line of inquiry. Howard Thurman (1978), for example, in his
sermon series on the temptations, compares the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world:
The kingdoms of this world spring out of one of the most fundamental and persistent
aspects of personalitythe need for power, power to be able to bring the world of
nature under subjection so that it can become an instrument of human desire; power
over time and space so that wherever I will to be . . . will be under control of my mind
and desire. (pp. 4647)
What Jesus got away with, one can thus argue, is desire. Jesus is tempted by his
own desires for kingdoms, power, immortality, and the delights of food. One can only
imagine how days without food or fellowship enhanced Jesus desire. Of course, Jesus
also got away from personal need: from nourishment, community, and the desire to
live. Whether it is King Solomon in his Song of Solomon, ancient Greek or contemporary philosophers, theologians seeking understanding of the Christian tradition, or
sociologists and economists seeking to address our consumerist culture, desire is
continually explored. Theologian Paul Griffiths (2009) names the tension we experience around desire in terms of derangement:

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After the Fall we suffer from derangement: The word derangement can be taken to have
two apparently opposed meanings. It has the standard sense of removing arrangement,
order, beauty. But we might also use the word to mean enclosing, a restrictinga limiting
of what is properly a larger range. And this double meaning is reflected in the double
derangement of our desires. Derangements in the direction of opennessas when our
desires are set free to wander in an open range without limitsnecessarily cause a second
derangement, this time in the direction of discipline and enclosure. (p. 28)
Desire as derangement is one way of looking at desire, albeit following the rather
negative understanding of desire of traditional Christianity. Desire, of course, is a
complex phenomenon and can be explored from anthropological, historical, psychological, sociological, philosophical, theological, historical, neurological, and economical perspectives. Regardless the view one takes on desire, it seems as if desire and temptation
remain intimate partners.
Of course, psychologists of religion too bring a unique understanding to thinking
about Jesus, temptation, and desire. Surprisingly, not many psychologists of religion
address the temptation narratives identified in this essay. William Hirsch, in his book
Conclusions of a Psychiatrist (published in 1912), saw Jesus as being paranoid with the
40 day sojourn in the desert solidifying Jesus paranoia. Albert Schweitzer discussed
Hirschs views in The Psychiatric Study of Jesus: Exposition and Critique, originally published
in 1913 (see Capps 2004, pp. 100101).
Two recent and significant publications on Jesus, Donald Capps Jesus: A Psychological
Biography (2000) and Bas Van Os Psychological Analyses and the Historical Jesus: New
ways to Explore Christian Origins (2011) do not focus on the temptation narratives in their
arguments. Capps focuses on the baptism of Jesus and identifies the disruption in the temple
as the pinnacle of Jesus ministry (pp. 252260). Capps views the disruption in the
temple as a reparative act. Ending a getting away with it experience by telling about it
also has a reparative function. Van Os focuses on the general psychological, anthropological, demographic, and sociological worlds of the historical Jesus. Likewise,
Psychological Insight into the Bible: Texts and Readings (2007), edited by Wayne
Rollins and Andrew Kille, indicates 516 Scriptural references, but there is not a single
reference to the temptation passages. Furthermore, a cursory look at the works of John
Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, to name just two scholars interested in the historical
Jesus, show a similar disinterest in the temptation narrative in two of their major books.
Borg, in his Jesus: A New Vision (1987) gives a sideways glance at the temptations and
also explains what might have happened to Jesus:
There in a desolate desert area near the Dead Sea, [Jesus] underwent a period of
extended solitude and fasting practices which produce changes in consciousness and
perception, typical of what other traditions call a vision quest. Indeed, the sequence
of initiation into the world of the Spirit (the baptism) followed by a testing or ordeal in
the wilderness is strikingly similar to what is reported of charismatic figures crossculturally. (p. 43)
Stevan Davies, in his book Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of
Christianity (1995), follows Borg when he states that the event speaks to a vision quest,
where a driven, spirit-possessed novice who received an alternative persona (which
happened in the baptism) learn about doing good (p. 63). Despite these few references,
one can argue that the temptation narratives that followed Jesus baptism, the focus of this
essay, have not received much attention from psychologists of religion and from other

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scholars interested in Jesus identity. This is not to fault them, however, because, after all,
one has to be selective with ones scope. I make this point simply to point out that my essay
is filling a gap: I am a scholar with a special interest in psychological questions and, as such,
I am also interested in the temptation narratives, precisely for what they can teach us
psychologically and theologically.
I would like to point that John Miller does pay close attention to the temptation of Jesus.
Indeed, in his book Jesus at Thirty: A Psychological and Historical Portrait, Miller (1997)
refers to the emotional turmoil Jesus experienced after his baptism. (See the Appendix of
Millers book where he summarizes psychological studies of Jesus dating back to 1835.)
Miller asks: What was Jesus experiencing during the temptations? And how can one make
sense of these accounts? He chooses a generally positive approach to understanding the
psychology of Jesus, where others carry a more pathological view, identifying Jesus as
neurotic (Berguer 1923), or narcissistic and grandiose with messianic fantasies (Boisen
1936; Schweitzer and Joy 1948). Addressing the temptation narratives, Miller argues that
the baptism brought Jesus into a personal crisis (p. 55). Miller, who believes in the
historical nature of the temptation narratives, writes:
If my suggestion is correct that Jesus at his baptism (with John the Baptists help)
found his father again, then it is only to be expected that such an experience would
have awakened not only earlier positive feelings toward his father but traumatic
aspects of that relation as well. That such there were is intimated by the likelihood
that Jesus father had died, perhaps during his early teens, leaving him as the eldest son
in charge of his fathers widow and a relatively large family of four brothers and
several sisters. The so-called temptations of Jesus . . . may reflect a critical stage in
Jesus coming to terms with the perverse emotional and ideational consequences of
this tragic event. (p. 56)
In exploring Jesus relationship with his heavenly father, Miller finds parallels to
the inner turmoil Martin Luther experienced as described by Erik Erikson who wrote
about Luther seeing Satan sitting next to him (p. 59). Miller believes that there is
significance in Jesus not succumbing to the temptations: Salvation dawned . . . when
Jesus in humble, loving obedience to his heavenly father, rejected those fantasies of
messianic grandeur set before him by Satan and determined to do only what God
willed for his life (p. 64). Besides gaining insights from Erikson, Miller believes
Jesus is experiencing an Age Thirty Transition as described by Daniel Levinson
(p. 78). Levinsons research showed that acute turbulence in many mens lives during
their late twenties and early thirties is not an abnormality, as sometimes thought . . .
but a recurrent, altogether typical experience resulting from crosscultural factors
inherent to the task of becoming an adult (pp. 7980). While he understands Jesus
through the works of primarily Erikson and Levinson, Miller acknowledges that a
more intelligible psychological model of Jesus still needs to be written (p. 119).
Can the temptations and developmental conflicts specific to the historical Jesus be
better understood? Were we able to do so . . . we might gain a deeper appreciation
and understanding of the message of his life, Miller concludes (p. 119).
Getting away with it, as elucidated by Adam Phillips, may not provide a definitive
intelligible psychological model for us, but it can provide us with another way to
understand the developmental conflicts of the historical Jesus. Furthermore, it can
celebrate the humanity of Jesus as we too can associate with getting away with it. In
the remainder of this essay, I return to the work of Adam Phillips and use getting
away with it as a lens through which to read the temptation narrative.

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Jesus getting away with it

Jesus, led by the Spirit or full of the Spirit, is taken into the desert where he is tempted at a
level greater than any temptations Moses might have experienced. After 40 days in the
desert, he was hungry. Yet he was able to deny his hunger. Phillips writes that avoiding
what are deemed to be the inevitable consequences of certain actions is at the core of a
getting away with it experience (p. 198). Jesus seems to avoid the desire that defines much of
being an ambivalent and transgressive human being. The content of the conversation
between Jesus and Satan focused not only on bread and hunger (Matthew 4:34; Luke
4:34), but also on death and overcoming mortality (Matthew 4:6; Luke 4:9), and authority
and power (Matthew 89; Luke 4:6).
Phillips argues that a getting away with it experience establishes knowledge about an
experience one never had. Following Crossan, Borg, Davies, and others who believe that the
desert experience refers to a vision quest experience, I contend that Jesuss imagination were
enhanced through deprivation of food and water. Jesus was full of fantasies, fantasies that
may have been shaped by deprivation, but also by family tensions as the oldest son to a
mother without a husband. The Satan Jesus was struggling with was the Satan within. What
we have is a kind of knowledge borne of the absence of experience, as Phillips writes
(p. 199). This experience became real to Jesus through his imagination. More specifically,
the knowledge he gained is about desire in general and about bread, authority, and death in
particular. This knowledge shaped his identity.
Jesus life and ministry from this moment forward can be described as a ministry built
around bread, authority, and death (a B.A.D ministry?). Not only would Jesus multiply bread
to feed those that gathered around him (Matthew 15:29; Mark 6:37; Luke 9:10), pray for
daily bread (Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:3), break and pray over bread (Matthew 12:4; Luke
6:4), but also identify himself as bread (Matthew 26:26; Luke 22:19; John 6:25). He became
the staple persons need to survive. Likewise, Jesus taught with authority (Matthew 7:2829,
9:6; Mark 2:10; Luke 4:32), removed the authority of demons and Judeans alike as he healed
persons (Matthew 4:24, 8:16; Mark 1:3234; Luke 4:33; John 8:48), but also named his own
authority (Matthew 9:6; Luke 5:24). Moreover, through the temptations, Jesus gained a
private knowledge about death. He raised persons from the dead (Matthew 9:8ff; Mark 5:21;
Luke 7:12) and anticipated his own death (and resurrection; Matt 16:21; Mark 8:31, 30:34).
These three themes are intricately related.
In her sermon, Temptations, Elizabeth Johnson (2004) summarizes the temptations
Jesus faced:
Satan tests Jesus identityif youre really Gods son, perform a miracle . . . make
bread. If youre really Gods son, push the limits of Gods love . . . throw yourself off
the temple. If youre really Gods son, seize royal power . . . and worship me. But in
each case, Jesus refuses and the devil departs. In the rest of Matthews story, Jesus will
indeed miraculously provide bread with nothing more than a little boys lunchbox
(14:1321); he will indeed abandon his personal safety, trusting in God as he gives up
his life (26:5354); and he will indeed be given every kingdom and authority in
heaven and on earth (28:18). (p. 59)
Through the temptations, the Satan (within and without) takes a back seat and Jesus
gained self-confidence, self-identifying as bread, claiming a personal authority, and losing
his fear of death. Identifying himself as bread that gives life, Jesus knew that bread speaks to
the covenant relationship between God and Gods people. Michael Willett-Newheart, in his
Word and Soul: A Psychological, Literary, and Cultural Reading of the Fourth Gospel

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(2001), plays with the image of bread. Jesus is the manna given by God. Although WillettNewheart writes on the Gospel of John, his reflections are applicable here:
This is the feast I have longed to eat, the bread of self-acceptance, the wine (not whine)
of self-confidence. I am the bread of life, Jesus says. Something both attractive and
repulsive about that saying. I AM. I Am. Jesus, this man who lived, died, ate, drank,
eliminated, says I AM, not, i . . . am but I AM. I marvel at, long for, yearn for such
confidence, such sense of self, such, such, such self-possession, grasp of who he is.
My own ego, lack of self-confidence, know who i am but dont love who i am.
Anxiety about who I am. What do I fear? There is no fear in I AM. I want it. I
want it. (p. 63)
Not only was Jesus full of fantasies in the desert, his imagination remained active after
that as he identified himself as bread, food-stuff. The knowledge gained and imagination
unleashed fueled Jesus self-confidence. It is this very self-confidence that we, as WillettNewheart argues, recognize in Jesus and we find it both attractive and repulsive. WillettNewheart surmises that Jesus lived a breaded life as Lively Bread (p. 52), a life that
most probably began in the desert.
Getting away with it ties one to authorities. Jesus became tangled to God, his heavenly
father. As the expert on authority, he became an authority. Regarding Jesus sense of
authority, Willett Newheart writes that Jesus attempted to sky, and not ground, his
authority as he identifies with his heavenly father:
Jesus has a father complex, or at least a complex father! Now that Joseph is no longer
on the scene, has Jesus projected his ideal father onto the heavens? Jesus, then, is not
just a Sabbath-breaker but a god-father-caller and thus a God equalizer (though the
Judeans themselves call God their father, even though Jesus says that its really the
devil . . .) He must die! (p. 46)
The themes of being an authority and punishment are easily recognized in Jesus speech
and life. The parable of the sheep and the goats is a good exhibit (Matthew 25:3146). Jesus
imagines himself as the Son of Man sitting on a throne, from where he will judge: All the
nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (v. 32). The sheep will be blessed and the goats
will be judged to eternal damnation. Jesus, Willett-Newheart concludes, is cursing and
condemning the accusing scribes and Pharisees, knowingly preparing for his death (p. 68).
Authorities are never far removed from punishment, as Phillips reminds us and as this
parable shows. Getting away with it can set one up to either become a punisher or to seek
punishment as the self-punisher within seeks ways to have the punishment actualized. In
Jesus we find both: he envisions himself to be the punisher even as he accepts the
punishment he believes his father, as THE Authority, is bestowing on him.
Jesus authority influences not only his ministry as he engaged the religious leaders and
raising people from the dead, but also anticipates and prepares him for his own death. Can it
be that Jesus, through the temptations, gained unique knowledge about death, inside
knowledge so to speak? If he gained knowledge without having had an experience, as I
suggest, inside knowledge receives new meaning. As an authority, Jesus engages death.
Willett-Newheart:
[Jesus] speaks to Lazarus. He LOUDLY CRIES OUT (after all, hes got to wake him
up): LAZARUS: COME OUT! Hey you sheep, this is the goodshepherd speaking, and
I am calling you by name and leading you into eternal life. The coming hour now is.

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Do you hear my son-of-God voice? COME OUT, and live! And [Lazarus] does. The
dead man, who is not dead anymore, comes out. (p. 88)
Jesus, having gotten away with it, carried new knowledge about death. He first got away
from death as an infant when a wicked ruler murdered baby boys (Matthew 2). The very next
experience after the temptations was Jesus escaping death when those listening to him in the
synagogue wanted to throw him off the cliffs near Nazareth, but he escapes a fateful end
(Luke 4:1428). As he escapes death, he teaches a widow, a father, and two sisters that life
can overcome death. The consequences of death, it seems, no longer touches Jesus or those
close to him and the pattern of cause and effect (that all life ends in death), no longer holds.
A getting away with it experience ends when one tells of the experience. The narrative of
the temptation in the desert is clear that Jesus had a private experience, for no one else
witnessed the events. Since we know about the experience, Jesus obviously told others about
it and thereby ended the experience. We do not know when Jesus told about his temptation
in the desert, but it is conceivable that he shared this experience late in his ministry, probably
when he read the signs that his own death was imminent and his need for authority
diminished. He dies feeling forsaken by his father (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:4).
Finally, Phillips indicates that an experience of getting away with it can allow persons to
live in oppressive systems. How might the getting away experience have influenced Jesus as
he engaged an oppressive system where the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Roman Empire
were stakeholders? John Dominic Crossan (1994), in his book, Jesus: A Revolutionary
Biography, identifies the ways in which Jesus practiced the arts of resistance (pp. 103
104). As a Mediterranean Jewish peasant, Jesus resisted in primary three ways: First, Jesus
practice of eating, of open commensality, his breaking bread with others, was a fundamental challenge to the honor and shame culture of Jesus day. Second, Jesus resisted
through the practice of healing, which affronted the rulers and guardians of tradition.
And thirdly, Jesus practiced magic, a model of resistance used even today in developing and
third worlds (p. 104). He turned water into wine, multiplied loaves of bread, and raised the
dead. Jesus lived on the boundary between overt and covert acts of resistance. He died along
those same lines, between being found not guilty by Pilate, but guilty by the mob. Jesus
resisted various systems during his life and ministry. This resistance continues after his death
as his followers, now full of fantasy, believe in his resurrection.

Conclusion
The experience of getting away with it is a common human experience. Yet, it is mostly
unexplored. Phillips ends his essay with: Getting away with it, whatever else the phrase
portends, is a way of talking about unexpectable experience (p. 211). Until one tells the
experience, it remains alive and private in ones imagination. A person who experienced a
getting away with it moment and who told about it can be surprised when what is private,
even secret, becomes public. Phillips wonders how one reflects on an experience one never
had, but one that remains alive in ones imagination? Considering possibilities of what might
have been and exploring how ones life might have been different if cause and effect
unfolded in the usual manner can be fruitful exploration. Still, [w]e can never quite be
sure when the possibility for an experience is over; wanting to mourn missed opportunities is
sometimes an attempt to foreclose this unknowable future (p. 211).
If Jesus got away with it, as I argued in this essay, how might it have influenced a
movement built around his person? What message did he send regarding desire, authority,

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and even death? Can it be that, because Jesus seemingly overcame his desires in his ministry,
those who follow him now look downwith authorityon all who seek or embrace or
embody desire, especially persons who are not heterosexual? And can this be a reason why
many Christians have difficulty embracing depression, for example, for they remember Jesus
getting away with despair, continuing on his path after being forsaken by God (Matthew
27:46; Mark 15:34). And how might getting away from death impact a conversation on
euthanasia or suicide, where one does not avoid death, but actually seeks it out intentionally?
These questions, I believe, are logical consequences of reading Jesus through the lens of
getting away with it. The dynamic, however, can inform our lives in deeper ways than
helping us understand the roots of Christianity.
In a world that seems to become angrier and more oppressive every day, where power is
misused and where many persons experience exploitation and vulnerability, getting away with
it experiences can be saving graces. As an act of resistance, average persons can benefit if
counselors and therapists educate persons about this experience. Persons can be encouraged not
to end getting away with it experiences prematurely or be showed how formative these
experiences are in our lives, bringing knowledge that imbues self-confidence even as these
experiences give one a deeper sense of discipline and punish. Moreover, individuals can be
encouraged to differentiate between a denial of embodied desire and getting away with it
experiences. The life of fantasy contained in getting away with it experiences is worth living.
Gratitude I am grateful for the New Directions in Pastoral Theology Group (who met at Princeton
Theological Seminary, October 1719, 2012) for their comments and feedback on this paper and for Dr.
Lewis Rambo, Editor of Pastoral Psychology, for his support of our discipline.

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