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Monday, November 01, 2004
Don't Go There!
"Lead us not into temptation," says the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:13). Do you suppose God would tempt us if we didn't plead against it? Now, there's a concept to conjure with.
As if God were like a father who leaves a 6-pack, car keys, and a gun out in plain view of his hormonal son. Or a mother who gives her adolescent daughter a makeup kit, salsa lessons, and a year's supply of birth control pills. Yikes.
Lets hope the prayer means something else. I'm sure it does.
After all, Jesus did ask us to think of God as our Father in heaven.
So God cares for you and me like a perfect parent, loving us through and through. And God's infinite wisdom and power make that love work for us just the way it should.
Jesus' theology is nothing if not practical. I'm convinced he's saying God will lead us away from temptation, saving us from every kind of evil.
Picture the cliff-hanging road just outside Yosemite National Park. Who in their right mind would ride the edge, playing Grand Prix hero? No, we hug the shoulder where the slope runs uphill instead of down.
Real faith looks for protection. It doesn't presume on God; it doesn't invite unnecessary testing.
Yet real life does involve some necessary struggles. I'm thinking of Jesus' three temptations when he fasted all alone in the desert -- testing his spiritual readiness and strengthening his gifts for full-tilt ministry. (See Matthew 4:1-11)
The Bible says God can't be tempted and will never tempt us either (James 1:13). But God does let trials come that test our faith (James 1:2-4). We might even be glad sometimes when the going gets rough. The same way steel is strengthened when it's tempered, faith can become even more faithful when put through real-life trials.
It's no accident that this prayer includes deliverance from evil. Every resisted temptation frees us all the more from giving in to the next one.
I love the irony, then, that every trick of the devil is a potential bullet into the toe of his own Hush Puppy.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:12 AM
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