A War Over the Lord's Prayer


The economics of religion always amazes me. Who pays for a small army of people to argue about unimportant details in mythology?  I suppose there were arguments about which Greek gods were sleeping with which Greek goddesses. Maybe unimportant arguments in Christianity should not surprise.

The Pope has ruled that from now on Catholics will recite the Lord's Prayer changing from "lead us not into temptation" to "do not let me fall into temptation." The latter is better, says the Pope, because it is Satan, not God, who leads us into temptation.

This little change was called "breath taking" by Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Convention. Mohler said it is a terrible change because the original version came right from Jesus. While Mohler would like to think someone knows for sure Jesus said such thing neither Mohler nor anyone else knows what Jesus said about anything. No one who wrote the Bible said, "I was there and heard him said this."

One wonders why Jesus would have not wanted to tempt people when God himself tempted Eve. This makes the rewrite all the more amusing.

While the Pope did not address debtors in his comments, I've always wondered why the "prayer" instructed the faithful to forgive debts. Is not there a moral hazard if people go into debt knowing those they owe will not expect repayment?

Really, I should not bring up an important issue like repaying debts when the amusing question about "temptation"is still in play.

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