Explain the Lord's prayer

by loosie 19 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  loosie

  Hello all,

  Its been a while since I've posted, I've been swamped. btu a question came up today at work and I could think of no better place to answer that question than here at JWD.

  In the Lord's prayer it says " lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" Ok so the question is why does it say not to lead us into temptation when god wouldn't lead his children into temptation?

  Now In my opinion this is just another typo that proves that men wrote the bible. But I was talking to a die hard believer who's priest couldn't answer her question.

  Any takers?
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  Farkel

  "Our Father in Heaven NOT some "Jehovah", we are praying to you."

  "I hold holy your name, whatever it is."

  "Get the things done on earth and heaven that you feel you need to do."

  "Please let us eat something every day."

  "We gotta forgive, even the jerks."

  "Don't trick us like you did Adam and Eve."

  "Keep the bad guys away from us."

  "I think you are pretty nifty God."

  "Amen."
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  VoidEater

  Well, the Bible doesn't say God will not lead us into temptation, just that He will not lead us into temptation beyond our ability to resist (1Cor. 10:13).

  Therefore, if you find you succomb, it really couldn't have been wrong since you will never be tempted beyond your ability.

  That God is a merry prankster.
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  Mythbuster

  This so odd that this topic is here. I asked the JW I am talking to this exact question. Initially I got a deer in the headlight look, then some flipping through a book and the answer I received was jehovah does not tempt us, what we are asking here is that when we are tempted, by satan, that jehovah not allow us to crack under the pressure of temptation.

  Still makes no sense to me since obviously the prayer is directed to god.

  And as a side note, it doesn't seem to work according to all of the information I have read about paedophilia in the watchtower organization.
• 

  Opus92

  Still makes no sense to me since obviously the prayer is directed to god.

  Very true. I never thought of it that way before.
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  Mythbuster

  This has got me thinking. The first case of God tempting man appears in the first two chapters of the Bible! God creates the universe, places man in a beautiful garden and then places within his reach a tree from which he was commanded not to eat.
  
  Here we have a utopian setup with a sinless man, a perfect world and a God who was physically communing with the man and yet God had to provide the man with an unnecessary temptation. It was unnecessary because the tree of the knowledge of good and evil didn't serve any other purpose than to tempt the man!
  
  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil didn't have to be there since man could have sinned in any number of ways, murdering Eve, for example, thereby removing the fact that God actually caused man to sin by placing a restriction upon him which served no other purpose but to cause him to sin.
  
  The JW I am talking to says that God didn't tempt man, Satan did. But I ask, "Who planted a tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden and declared it off limits? Did Satan plant the tree?" God, being omniscient, knowingly allowed the serpent to push Eve over the line and hence Adam. Therefore, God is ultimately responsible for leading man into temptation. One analogy that comes to mind is that of a father playing with his two year old daughter in the living room. There are plenty of off-limit items for a two year old but one day, he decides to place his unloaded .45 on the coffee table, pulls his daughter over and explicitly tells her not to touch it or she
  will get a spanking. What purpose does that gun on the coffee table serve other than to tempt the little girl? He leaves it there until the inevitable happens: natural curiosity overwhelms her and she touches it. No one would view the father as sane but isn't that exactly what the authors of Genesis have God doing?
  
  When God told Abraham to murder his son, Isaac, that was a test. In fact, the verse actually uses the word tempted! Genesis 22:1-2
  
  God can't be tempted?
  
  An interesting instance where God was tempted is in Exodus chapter 17. The Israelites are complaining to Moses because they are dying from thirst.
  
  What I find interesting about this is that although the people tempted God by saying "Is he among us" or to put it another way, "If God exists, why doesn't he do 1, 2 or 3?", God succumbs to the temptation. Here we have an all-mighty, all-knowing God being coerced to cave in to the people's griping! It is not a case of God being tempted to do something evil, but a case of God being tempted to prove his existence and giving in to the test.
  
  Just some thoughts on my mind.
• 

  glenster

  
  Lord's prayer:

  I think it means the follower, who wants God to lead them through the good and
  bad things and choices of the world, which involves things that can tempt them
  to do bad, things that make efforts to get them to do bad, asks God for the
  strength to resist those efforts.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord's_Prayer#.22And_lead_us_not_into_temptation.22

  The Adam and Eve tree story involves God making a test of fidelity--is it to
  God or for self against God--not tempting them to make the wrong choice, which
  would be the case if His effort was just to have them to make the wrong choice.

  Likewise with Abraham, God tests Abraham's faith. The idea isn't that God
  tempts Abraham to do bad but tests how good Araham was at being abidant to God.
  Abraham began to carry out what God told him to do so God rewarded him for good
  faith.

  It reminds me of another use of the word "tempt"--the JWs leaders stance
  against the mainstream view of Jesus is that it's wrong because the Devil tempts
  Jesus three times and God can't be tempted. But "tempt" can be the effort to
  get someone to do something or the person's own urge to do it. It doesn't have
  to include both the effort to make another do something and the other's consent.
  Someone can tempt another but whether or not they're successful is another
  thing--that's still the choice of the other's free will.

  The Devil doesn't seem to have been sure of Jesus' identity and made the
  effort to have Jesus forsake God three times, which could happen with either the
  JWs leaders' or the mainstream idea of Jesus' identity, so it doesn't support
  the JWs leaders' stance.

  God can't be tempted doesn't mean God can't react at all, such as to faith,
  etc., just that people can't get God to do their will against His will--His
  choices are up to Him. The story in Ex.17 doesn't alter that. Moses is given
  as concerned that the followers, who were out of water, shouldn't try to tempt
  God to go against His will. Moses stays true to God though he's worried the
  followers may turn on him. God supplies them with water, not that it's given
  that they got him to do it against His will as if He wanted them to die of
  thirst. He'd promised them a land to go to.
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  Leolaia

  I think a helpful text is 1 Corinthians 10:13: "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it". The idea here is not that God leads people into temptation directly but that he would provide a way out from giving in to temptation, leaving it up to the person to give in or not. So it is still a test, but God is not conceived as the source of the temptation or the one leading one to it.

  The formulation in the Lord's Prayer is traditional; it is attested elsewhere in Jewish liturgy. E.g., "Lead me not into the power of transgression, and bring me not into the power of sin, and not into the power of guilt, and not into the power of temptation, and not into the power of anything shameful" (b. Berakhot 60b).
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  wobble

  I always thought of it as meaning "lead me away from temptation,do not allow my foot to go in that direction" ,but that was just me trying to make the words fit what I knew.

  I often think that if Jesus uttered these, and other words, He could have been a little clearer, after all there is a whole genre of literature based on the "Hard Sayings" of Jesus,but I guess we suffer from translation being imperfect, and the writers in the first place perhaps not recording the words in quite the way he may have said them.

  Love

  Wobble
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  WTWizard

  It is a nice way to waste about 30 seconds, since God is only going to answer the things that are in it for Himself.