“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from all evil.”
This is a funny phrase, is it not? Yes, we can justify evil on the basis that without the possibility of error we could have no free will, and no moral autonomy, but why would a just God LEAD people into temptation? Can we not find it well enough on our own?
One of the things it seems to me is often missing from Christian ceremony is an understanding that Christ himself likely had a very abundant and often expressed, mischievous sense of humor.
What MIGHT have been going on here was a sort of inside joke, in which he is asking of God not to serenade him down the pathways he likes to go down anyway.
Again, why would a just God do that?
Let’s talk about karma, by means of getting to that. There is this seemingly common-sensical view of the South Asian (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism I think and Nestorian Christianity) notion of the wheel of reincarnation that bad karma is when bad things happen to you, and good karma when good things happen to you. You are born a male Brahmin if you did good things in that past, and a “foot” (Shudra) or lower if you did bad things. For us Americans, we have bad luck if we were bad people, and good luck if we were good. John Lennon had a song “Instant Karma”, and one reads about “burning off karma” in places smelling of patchouli.
But need this be the case? If the task is learning, then is there any better teacher than difficulty? For those who want to learn about life, can you get any “luckier” than to be forced to endure hard times? The stronger the will, the more learning is possible. Thus, the very strong willed ought, logically, to want the most trouble.
But you can’t go seek trouble and derive the benefits from it. It has to come to you.
What I think Christ was talking about here was something like this: “look, God, I know there’s a truck getting ready to smash into me. I accept that, it is what it is. But can you take that smile off your face? Seriously.”
What is the primal temptation, as I have framed it, and as He might have? Self pity. Is it not reasonable for him–psychologically healthy for him, as a non-masochist–to at least try and petition his way out of the trouble he knew was coming? And failing that, to at least ask that he not be tested as much as he knew was possible.
It could be reframed: please lead me not to my trial, but deliver me from its necessity.
He knew that was impossible. But I can’t help but wonder if he thought encouraging others to pray the same might not at some point help. And I can’t help but think he had a little silent grin when he did it. He wasn’t afraid. He loved life. Troubles only exist when they are there. For those who live well, they are distant both when they are in the future, and when they are in the past. “Take no thought of the morrow; sufficient unto the day are the evils therein.”
This may well be lousy psychology, and is almost certainly unorthodox–and certainly certainly lousy on some accounts–theology, but there you go. That’s what I do. I may slap myself in the forehead in the morning and delete it. I may add to it. Who knows?