It is not my place to disagree with any Pope when it comes
to faith or morals so what follows is a theological disagreement with the
recent change that has been made to “Lord’s Prayer”.
Pope Francis has recently approved a change to a phrase in
the “Lord’s Prayer”. He changed the phrase, “do not lead us into temptation” to
“do not let us fall into temptation”. His reasoning behind that is that God
would never lead us into to temptation and he would never tempt us himself. The
problem here, it seems, is that scripture does not seem to support that idea.
The first place to start is by looking at the prayer itself
in the language it was written. Did we misinterpret the words as we have done
in other places? In this case the answer is no. The original Greek does say,
“do not lead us into temptation”. So
we do have the right translation.
So, the next question we have to answer is if the Pope is
correct in stating that God would never lead us into temptation. Does scripture
support this idea? Again, the answer is no. Let us remember that the word
temptation is synonymous with the word trial. A trial and a temptation are the
same thing, at least scripturally.
The three synoptic gospels are very clear when they describe
the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted by the devil.”
– Matthew 4:1
“Immediately the Spirit impelled
Him to go out into the wilderness.” – Mark 1:12
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led
around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the
devil.” – Luke 4:1
The spirit in these passages is the Holy Spirit, or
God. So it is very clear that God does lead us into temptation. He is not the
one doing the tempting. If God did the tempting it would be entrapment for he
knows exactly where we would fail.
In fact scripture is full of references of God
testing man. God tested the Israelites for forty years in the desert –
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for
you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I
may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction.” – Exodus
16: 4
“You shall remember all the ways which the LORD your God has led you in
the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to
know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”
– Deuteronomy 8:2
Why would God lead us to temptation? It isn’t for
his sake. God knows our weaknesses. He knows where we will sin if tried. God
allows us to be tested so that we know where we are weak. We cannot grow in
holiness if we do not know where we need help. When you purify gold you heat
the metal until it melts and then the impurities can be removed. Temptation and
trial do much the same thing to us. It allows our impurities to surface so we
can ask God to help us purge them from ourselves. When we say no to temptation we
strengthen our free will and it becomes easier to resist the devil. Temptation is
only a bad thing for those of weak wills who cannot resist. Resisting a
temptation is the spiritual equivalent of going to the gym and running on the
treadmill. The more you do it the easier it becomes. This is also the same
reason we fast.
My real rub to this change is that the Pope has
changed the words of Jesus. As stated at the beginning of this harangue, three
of the four Gospel writers give us the text of this prayer as handed down by
Jesus himself. In the original language used, Greek, they use the words, “lead
us not into temptation”. In fact every
translation used by the early Church, to my knowledge, wrote the words that
way. If Jesus wanted us to say, “let us not fall into temptation” I think he
would have used those words somewhere.
For any Pope to change the words Jesus gave us to teach a theological
opinion that is not scriptural I believe to be in error. Now, Pope Francis did
not do this on his own. He only approved what has been in the works for almost
twenty years. I cannot claim to know the mind of the Magisterium so I look
forward to reading the commentaries that are sure to come.
