Sandwich Temptations

I like sandwiches; I always have. As a young child growing up in a 1970s-era house covered wall-to-wall in shag carpeting, I often built double-decker bologna and Wonder Bread sandwiches, infused with just the right amounts of Miracle Whip, iceberg lettuce, and American pasteurized processed cheese slices. Perhaps I didn’t grow up healthy, but I was happy.

I won’t touch bologna now, that disgusting rubbery meat product. But sandwiches still intrigue me. If I have a choice between two scoops of ice cream and a chicken salad sandwich, the bread and meat will win every time. It has something to do with those moist, soft carbohydrates passing over the taste buds that does it for me.

You can tempt me with sandwiches, and I might bite. But you won’t be able to tempt me with cigarettes. Ask me to imbibe all night long on liquors or fine wines and I will easily shake my head. I’m just not tempted. Actually, it’s not that I’m not tempted; I’m not even interested.

But some people are. There are people right in my neighborhood who can’t get through the day without lighting up some tobacco or “needing” a swig of a fermented beverage to answer some inner call. They are tempted and they give in, just as I am tempted by sandwiches. But I’ve always wondered why I’m not tempted by the same things that hold others.

This really became clear one day in the late 1980s when I drove from Phoenix to Los Angeles. My car broke down on the freeway near Riverside, California. Forced to make a quick exit, I coasted to the parking lot of the Greyhound Bus station. Having made a 25-cent call to a nearby relative to come rescue me, I sauntered over to a comfy-looking blue fiberglass chair. But before I reached the seat, a boy looking all of 14-years-old approached me and asked if I wanted to buy some drugs. He looked like the type of kid you would expect to sell you drugs, and I spied his overseer in the distance.

Naturally I said “No” and walked away. But in the days following that event, I thought about the ease with which I said “No.” That boy, and thousands like him, make successful illicit drug sales in America every day, waving difficult temptations into the faces of those weak to the call of narcotics. They struggle, yet I don’t. Why is that?

Yet I am not innocent. I feel no shame in announcing to the world my sandwich addiction. But I have my own share of inner wants and desires that are not for public consumption. I am bothered by these inner turmoils and how their temptations have a regular impact on me. Sometimes the volume of temptation reaches level to where I begin to hate myself for having such thoughts.

It’s been two decades since that day in the bus terminal and I am no more skilled at resisting or giving into temptation. But I’ve finally come to terms with my own special set of temptations and why they exist. I now believe that susceptibility to certain temptations is inborn, placed their by God for a specific purpose. While temptation in general may be a test from God to cause me to depend on him, or to keep me from getting a big head, the specific temptations that plague me seem to serve a deeper purpose. I used to look at someone trapped in a cycle of addiction and pity them. But I now feel a kinship with them. I may not understand their special struggle, but I understand the hold it has on them. And I hope that they might just understand me whenever I take another bite of sandwich.