A while back I wrote a piece about replacing “us” in the Lord’s Prayer with “me” to make it personal. I did not like what came out of the resulting substitution. However, when we discussed temptation the other day in our Bible study, I began to wonder how the phrase “Lead us not into temptation” fit in with the concept that God does not tempt us, yet we are tempted to sin all day long.

I was hoping that I could read a bunch of translation of the Lord’s prayer in the Bible and find an amalgamation that made sense to me similar to how I study Job these days. My first step was to find the two places in the Bible where the prayer appears and go to Bible Gateway to read some. They have a large number of versions available for anyone to use.

I actually read some of the Wikipedia entry on the subject and found it had a lot of data and that of course many, many people had studied these verses over the past couple thousand years. I found there that the version I memorized is included as ecumenical prayer by the Catholic Church almost word for word. As I grew up Methodist, I rarely think of the Catholic Church as aligned with what I believe in such detail. Not that I know what the term “ecumenical” means or any of the rest of the details of being Catholic.

One thing I learned was that the Lord’s Prayer had been divided up into seven petitions and the sixth one is the temptation part. Supposedly the Greek word that comes to temptation is “peirasmos”, but I saw some of the Greek words in the prayer and have no idea how the got “peirasmos” from what I saw. Back to the limits of my mind to understand other languages. They included references to French versions, Italian versions, comments by a Spanish speaking Pope, and on and on.

When on Bible Gateway I first looked up Luke 11:2-4 and then Matt 6:9-13. Matthew 6 is longer and closer to the full Lord’s Prayer, but the prayer is obviously not a direct extraction of the scripture. I knew that, but I never really thought about it until I read some data from the Vatican website about the prayer. I actually like that better.  The version in Luke is short and the differences between the two confirm we do not have a “litany” to follow, but a basic formula that Christ gave us to use for praying. I definitely “follow the script” when I use the Lord’s prayer every morning, but I have seen many reference to the formula in “how to pray” guides.

So where did this lead me? The most consistent translation was “Lead us not into temptation.” No surprise, but it was the same in a whole lot of versions I read. The concept I liked the least was where it was rendered “Do not let me be tempted.” I felt that was a wimpy thought process that asks God to keep us in a bubble. We need to be tempted, we need to resist, and we need to grow our ability to resist as opposed to grow weak by not being tempted.

What I actually want God to do when I say this phrase every morning is to remind me that He will provide a way out for me for every temptation I face and that I will be wise enough to see it and to resist the temptation. I see a cookie that is bad for me. I do not like most cookies, so if it is one of those kinds, I am not really tempted. If it is chocolate chip, then I am tempted. I want to eat them, I like eating them, and yet they are bad for me and I should not eat them, and I know if. But sometimes I do. I ask for God to give me and show me a way out.

Another aspect of this phrase was a rendering of lead us not into “hard testing”. Again, I do not think we should be asking that. Another was close to mine in that it is “Do not let us yield to temptation.” I am not sure how that can come out as a translation so much as a modification removing the “lead” part altogether. Another was “rescue us from tribulation”. My mind projects tribulation as end times and this would be asking to be raptured before that time. I can align with that, but still lead vs rescue is hard to get behind.

The other aspect of these phrases I saw was the rendering of “evil” as “the evil one”. I can easily see the translation bit allowing that, but I again think blaming things on the devil is a cop out. I believe the actions of the devil in our lives are to highlight temptation and falling for his leads are just falling for our own sin nature.

When I pray each morning “deliver us from evil”, I am asking God to keep me safe from robbers, killers, other governments, and those “evil” things that are external to me, as opposed to the internal issues of temptation.

So, if I could change any of the Lord’s Prayer, I think I would want to change “Lead us not into temptation” to “Lead me away from temptation”. It is a simple change “not into” has the same basic meaning as “away from”. The is no changing of the firm words of “lead” or “temptation” and since I have lived by the phrase “It’s all Greek to me.” It does not conflict my understanding of any of the actual Greek words.

Not into and away from are English word groupings to convey what I feel is the same thing. And it gets away from the tricky theological concept of God leading us into temptation. I never thought He could do that, so why would I ask Him to do something I felt He would not do anyway. Especially if this was something that Christ told us to pray in the first place knowing so much more about what the Father would and would not do.

I am going to try and change my morning prayer to use “away from” instead of “not into” and see if I can make a habit and if it makes any difference in my thoughts and actions when praying and relying on my prayer during the day. Maybe it’s a mental exercise in nothing, but maybe I align with how the Holy Spirit leads me anyway.