In August, I had been reflecting upon the Lord's Prayer. The goal for me was to bring my own thinking to bear upon one of the most oft said prayers in the Christian tradition. I recognize that many have gone before me and many will come after me. But I find it helpful to engage prevalent Christian scriptures and prayers at different times in my life, because it allows me to see how I have changed. As I make another round of Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical spiral I notice how my reading of the same text has progressed and matured depending on my current disposition. When I came to the last line of the prayer however, I began to face a kind of blogger's block because the themes of this last line are so difficult. Matthew 6.13 puts it: "and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Luke's version of the prayer only includes the first part, "and lead us not into temptation."  On the surface it appears to be a straight forward request to avoid temptation and deliverance if we do have to face evil. The difficulty arises as we face the fact that people who follow God in the biblical narrative inevitably also are led into contexts and environments of temptation and testing, e.g. Job and even Jesus himself. How are we to reconcile their lives with this prayer?

On the one hand we could say that sometimes people who claim to follow God, in fact, aren't being led by God at all, and so that is why they face evil. This is the line or argument some of Job's detractors take. I suppose sometimes this is true, but then there are the counter examples like Job himself. Job is a good example of a man led through terrible temptation and faced radical evil.  The story leaves us in an ambiguous and problematic understanding of whether it is Satan or God who is ultimately responsible for Job's plight. It is clear that the adversary, Satan, asks if he can tempt and test Job in the first part of the book. God does not test him, but, insofar as God is all powerful, we have to wrestle with his ultimate responsibility for Job's suffering. 

The same problem of theodicy arises when we note Jesus's temptation in the wilderness in the early part of his ministry. The scripture is very careful with the language here. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to face the temptation of the devil (Luke 4.1, Matthew 4.1). The Spirit leads Jesus into the temptation, and again it is the devil who actually does the tempting.  But, why does the Spirit even lead Jesus into the context where he has to face his adversary?  Does this not contradict the prayer he asks us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation?" 

So how do we reconcile the dissonance between the examples of a Christian life which faces temptation, and this call to pray not to be lead into it?  I would suggest that we don't. We have to assume that the deserts and wildernesses of our lives are truly uninhabitable places that we cannot live and would not try.  So we accept the thrust of Jesus's prayer.  Of course, we don't pray that we enter into temptation, just as we don't pray that evil befalls us.  Evil is evil and it is always evil and always something to be prayed against. 

But note the language used here.  "Deliver us."  The Greek word here for deliver is rhuomai and means something akin to drawing close to. It's not for the avoidance of evil that Jesus asks us to pray, but that we would be drawn close to God and delivered from it.  And this, it seems to me clarifies just what temptation is and how it functions in Christian life.

I think if we really reflect upon the experience of temptation we have to admit that it is exhausting.  I'm not convinced Jesus nor anyone else for that matter is made stronger by facing temptation. This isn't to say that facing temptation doesn't in some way make us wiser, but that is very different than saying that we are strengthened by it as if it teaches us self-reliance or something. Self-reliance isn't a value in the scripture, if anything, facing real temptation exposes our weakness and ultimately our need for God. Is this not the heart of the twelve step prayer?  First, people have to admit that there are things in this world stronger than they are, but that all such temptations/powers are relativized by the strength and power of God. 

In this sense, Jesus's prayer reminds us that temptation is never a good thing in and of itself. When we are led into temptation and the trying wildernesses of our lives we face them much as Job did, in a state of dumbfoundedness. Jesus's prayer therefore has to be heard in light of Job's. "Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him" (Job 13.15). In other words, because of the example of Job and Jesus's own temptation, we are forced to grapple with Jesus's prayer amidst the inevitability of temptation. Though we face it, yet we must hope in God.  This isn't to say we cannot ask why or argue our case.  It's just that asking why isn't always very helpful.  We know that temptation is to be avoided.  It's not fun and when we enter into the wildernesses where we find ourselves more vulnerable to evil, we all intuitively pray that God would draw us close to his strength and power.  

Jesus's prayer therefore reminds us of a basic truth about ourselves which echoes the wisdom we gain by facing temptation: we are not invincible. It forces us to recognize that there is evil in this world and that we must turn to God to overcome it. In this sense, we must reiterate that God is God of all. There is nothing outside of God and no dualism which we can attribute to any other power, being or thing. Augustine's understanding of evil is important here. Evil is a privation of good. We do not give evil existence in and of itself, but rather, that it is the negation of existence.  Temptation is thus something akin to hanging over the abyss, like Manfred on the Jungfrau. The choice is to turn to God, or to fall into nothingness. In facing the nihil, we come to appreciate what our true relation to God is. It is precisely because God is Lord of all, that in the end, we have to trust that it is God who is leader and lord over temptation. We trust therefore, that it is to God that we can turn for deliverance from evil.

This takes us back to the posture of the Lord's Prayer overall that we have been discussing throughout our commentary on each verse.  It is to God that we come in prayer.  It is to God that we rely and the model prayer Jesus gives us is marked through and through by this posture of humility. We may face temptation. As people who decide to set their lives under the command and leadership of God we find ourselves suspended over the nihil, just as Jesus and Job were. God gives us over to the wilderness at times, and for that we can only hope and pray for deliverance. 

Jesus's prayer is ultimately therefore a call to wrestle with God. When we face evil, we inevitably must ask God why he allows such negations of his goodness to persist in this world.  Why is there still war and hunger?  But more importantly, why do we often seem so powerless to stop it?  Why do we fail to live up to our own standards of peace and justice? In the end, it is always difficult to tell whether our strife and plight is our own doing due to our own folly, or if somehow God has drawn us into a difficult time for a reason that is his own.  It makes little difference really.   When we face difficult trials all we know to do is pray that God leads us away from them and draws us close to himself.

To be honest, I am not sure if maybe I am in one of these desert times right now. The prospect of finishing a PhD in philosophical theology ends not with a concise conclusion, but with a gut wrenching cliff hanger. Where do we go next? What is the future going to hold after all these years of study? The Lord's Prayer continues to echo through the very core of my being. "Our father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil." At this point in the Roman Catholic Mass the priest continues, "deliver us oh Lord, from every evil," just to reiterate the point, and it is a point that is most important in the wilderness times in our lives. And then, the prayer takes us back to its beginning, "For yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory forever. Amen." This part of the prayer is thought to be a later addition not found in some early manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel. It doesn't really add anything to the prayer when we consider what the first few lines already say. But it is a helpful reminder as I finish my reflections upon the Lord's Prayer, that the context of the prayer is always the power and glory of God. No evil, no temptation, and as Paul says in Romans 8, no height nor depth, can separate us from the love of God. It is fitting indeed that we conclude on this point. And again, as Paul says earlier on in this same chapter in Romans, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." - Romans 8: 28.