Deliver Us From Evil

When Christians pray I wonder what they think they're doing. The New Testament clearly states that Jesus wanted his followers to avoid synagogues (and by extension churches and chapels) and praying in public. More specifically he said to pray alone, in a closet and to only use the prayer commonly known as The Lord's Prayer.

I wonder if any one of the mumblers have ever stopped to examine that prayer. For me it's a list of requests, or even demands, made to their god. So let's see what you think.

The common Lord's Prayer goes like this:

Our Father, which art in Heaven

Hallowed be thy name

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done In Earth

As it is in Heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from Evil

For thine is the kingdom

The power and the glory

For ever and ever

Amen

I apologize to every non-believer who just read that, because as we know God sees and hears everything, even if you don't say it out loud. :)

Which brings me to my first point about prayer. Why would an eternal, benevolent being who is all-knowing and all-seeing need anyone to pray to them. The idea Christians (and all theists) have about their god is that he (it's always a he) can see and hear everything we say and do at all times. There's no thought we can hide from him and nothing we want, hope for, dream about or need is missed by this ever present CCTV-wielding god. So why are they bothering to pray at all?

Christian apologists will tell you that they are doing it to become closer to god, yet their god is inside their head, so how exactly do they think they can get closer? Another apologetic is that they get to show thanks, or increase their connection to their god, or even move one step closer to Heaven. Their god knows if they are thankful without them having to say so. Arguably their staying verbally silent cuts down on the amount of work their god needs to do, so staying schtum would be better. Again, they can't get any more connected to a god who is always hovering around. The getting closer to Heaven is a bit of a doosie. God's Will is paramount, he chooses who goes to Heaven and who doesn't, and has decided this long before the person was ever born... so a few mumbled words saying thanks for a nice meal, which farmers, retailers and cooks provided, or their favourite team winning a game/match/test isn't going to do anything to change that.

So why pray? It's totally pointless... unless of course the pray-er doesn't trust their god's power, or abilities.

Anyhoo... back to the Lord's Prayer itself.

It starts with a fairly standard 'you're god and you're awesome' sort of schtick but then the next few lines are quite telling.

"Thy kingdom come
Thy Will be done on Earth 
As it is in Heaven"

These lines assume that God's kingdom on Earth is on its way and what he wants will happen here as it has always been done in Heaven. What would be his purpose of creating a new kingdom on Earth when he already has the perfect set up in Heaven? Is it something to do with the Nephilim? Is it about the angels wanting to have sex with mortals all the time? Does god have to keep them apart, just in case?

"Give us this day our daily bread"

Provide for us... give us food every day. The presumption here is that it goes beyond bread; perhaps into money, fame or success. At any rate, this is the first request/demand.

"And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us"

We are good people. We're tolerant and forgiving, so we'd like you (god) to be forgiving of our sins, mistakes and crimes. So what's the suggestion here? I would like to think that it reminds the person to be more like their god, and be good to others, but I think on face value it is a request that the god be as good as the person. The basis of the Christian faith is that you should accept Jesus as your saviour or you'll burn in a fiery lake, so since that's the only real qualification set out by the Bible for guaranteed entry into Heaven (or God's new Earthly Kingdom away from rutting angel types) anything else we do is irrelevant*.

An important note is that the original lines from Matthew 6:9-13 state "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors", but this must have been inconvenient to a church which preached that Christians owe an eternal debt to their Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil"

I believe this is a demand which has more to it than meets the eye. God is being asked to lead people away from the evil of temptation, but this reveals a lack of dedication to the cause. It places the emphasis on their god to lead them away from situations they themselves should be avoiding. This is a prayer which abdicates the person from their responsibilities. If they don't sin then everything is copacetic, but if they do then God clearly didn't want to lead them away from it and so, by extension, he wanted them to do it.

What if the line is a darker one, which the early Church fathers were using, by placing these words into the mouth of Jesus, to disguise the real character of their god? The Bible makes it perfectly clear to us that God created evil before he created mankind and the whole Garden of Evil... sorry Eden... thing was a set-up to make us feel that we're to blame for his anger at God's own failings.

I'll explain.

The tree which Adam and Eve were warned not to eat from was called "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" which immediately raises the question, how could anyone be aware of something which didn't exist at the time? So, evil preceded mankind, or at the very least was created at the same time. An obvious point to anyone who bothers to read between the lines. Apart from this, God states that he created evil, but the common consensus is that he created it after the Fall, so it was man's fault. If read the way I've stated it though a case could be made for the events in the Garden to be part of God's plan, which makes the Fall an pre-meditated excuse to put mankind in the firing line.  If the serpent in the story was Satan, as some have suggested, we see from later on in the book that Satan was in God's employ which places his sudden appearance in the Garden in a whole different light.

So, this line could clearly be a request to God to stop him using us for the Evil he intends to commit. Could it be an admission that God's default is to put us in harm's way? Is it a line born of the fear that it is God's intention to direct us to sin?

The last lines of this prayer are yet more praise and 'aren't you wonderful' nonsense before the traditional ending borrowed from paganism's ritual "If it is willed to be."

So, in my view, this prayer is a solid request to provide for the person saying the prayer. It's a prayer which stems from a fear of an unknown future and it smacks of resentment born of knowing that we're better than the god who controls us.

So the next time you speak that prayer, or hear someone else speak it you should be suspicious. Be suspicious of your, or their, motives for wanting to say it. Firstly it shows a lack of faith in their god and secondly I believe it begs God to prevent them from turning out just like Him.

At the very least it should give you pause for thought.





* see my future post on the human soul (link to be provided later)