The Christian Life, when lived properly, should feel like one long, afflictive Marshmallow Test.
Surely by this point everyone has seen YouTube clips of very small children squirming around in a chair, in a blank white room, faced with a marshmallow and fifteen minutes of uninterrupted quiet. Eat the marshmallow now, if you like. But if you wait, you can have a second marshmallow. Whoever carried out this brilliant experiment discovered, of course, that the children who could wait for the second marshmallow did better over the course of their lives. They went farther educationally, and made better decisions over all, and, I wouldn’t surprised, probably turned out to be healthier as well.
The Marshmallow Test is a gentle measure of a child’s ability to delay gratification. But it is kind of a nice window into the human soul in general. The social scientist who sets a perfect, plump marshmallow in front of a fidgety three year old and then goes and stands behind a screen to observe what will happen, knows that he is setting a terrible burden of temptation onto the child’s shoulders. Before that moment, the child was carefree and untroubled. But then he comes and sits before the marshmallow and suddenly the weight of cosmos is resting on that plate. He has to sit there and think about himself and about the future and consider the measure of sweetness to be had. He sits and frets, in agony, and only very rarely stays his hand from the single marshmallow, forestalling his longing against the sure and certain hope of the second marshmallow.
It is impossible to watch the squirmy child struggling against time and not see a vision of Eve, stretching out her hand to grasp the plump, delicate, sweetness of the forbidden fruit. The fragrant juice hits her tongue and she suddenly sees, most perfectly, that she has taken all she may now have. There won’t be any more. If she had only waited, and hoped, and forestalled her craving in the moment, to take it herself, to instantly satisfy the appetites and lusts of her heart. That’s what sin is. Every sin is a flinging away of the future for the fleeting pleasure of the moment. I’ll just have this, now. I’m not going to think about tomorrow, and all the tomorrow’s of eternity. In fact, if I don’t have it now, I won’t be happy, I won’t be well. I better just have it.
So there we all are, failing the marshmallow test, grabbing and taking, indulging ourselves and shadowing the conscience against the future. And so we would always remain, except that God knows that we can’t do otherwise, and stepped in himself to be the one to finally say no to the tempting lusts of the flesh. He hunched over in the garden, where Eve had stood up and reached. He crumpled and wept, where she had indulgently eaten. He said yes to the Father and no to himself, where she had hoped that God would never come out from behind the screen to have anything to say at all. And in that great reversal, Jesus purchased back the hope of a sweet and glorious eternity.
Which, for the Christian, feels like a very very very very long second chance at the marshmallow test. Only this time, rather than sitting and struggling alone, since the Father knew that you had already failed, he comes in and sits with you the whole time, during which it feels like he is taking away all the marshmallows, even the ones you had stuffed in your pocket for a little something later.
Consider the pang of grief, the lamentation of these words in Genesis,
“After two whole years, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile,” Genesis 41:1
They always fly out at me in the long, difficult narrative of Joseph’s life. He goes from one big grief laden disappointment to the next. First the pit. Then the slavery. Then the false accusation. Then prison. Then a glimmer of hope to get out. Then “two whole years”. It doesn’t say anything about his state of mind. But from he way that he pleads with the cupbearer to remember him, you know that he’s not what we might call happy. He must have struggled every single day to hope and trust in God, to not give in to the loneliness and disappointment.
And he’s not alone, not by a long shot. That “two whole years” is a nice lament for the experience of every struggling Christian. You know who God is, you know you can trust him. You’re trying to keep your head up. But the substance of all your days is a self controlled, delayed gratification, Waiting. You wait on the Lord. And wait. And keep waiting. And complain a little. And try to grab something to wile away the time–just one marshmallow, just a little something–only to have God take it away and tell you to keep waiting. It can seem pointless, cruel even. Unendurable. Painful.
But, to the one who waits on the Lord, who endures patiently the hardships of self denial, God is faithful to bring into glory. A glory not filled, I seriously hope, with marshmallows, but with everything the heart yearns for–the perfection of the mind and soul relieved of temptation and sin, the restful and satisfying presence of Jesus, and even enough to sweetness and beauty to fill the cup that now feels empty, except to be filled up with trials.
Wait. And keep waiting. Because what comes next is worth all the accumulations of disappointment and deprivation now.
Happy Sunday.
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