MEANINGS AND USES OF THE LORD’S PRAYER

STATEMENT AND CUSTOM

If you want to know what  believers truly believe as  opposed to what their religion teaches, much can be known from just the most recited prayers and /or hymns. 

Most extremely this applies to Catholicism with regard to its Marian cult. The official line is that Mary is not an object of worship, latria, but only devotion dulia, so she is neither divine nor co-redemptrix . However the Mary whose “immaculate heart” will so unbiblically triumph  in the apocalypse, the Mary who never fails to hear a prayer, and who according to the much used Rosary prayers will pray for sinners at the hour of death, has acquired virtual omnipresence and  redemptive powers in line with a full blown divinity. She intervenes in all life along with some message-giving saints and angels who leave the religion sometimes as good as a Christian coloured polytheism.

So prayers speak the popular reality, but in that case, just what might the still often cited and recited Lord’s Prayer tell us about Christianity? Why is this (synagogue style) short prayer so highly valued when it might seem less striking, less sublime than many passages in the gospels and even less clear?

Imperfect translation can be a factor in some of the puzzles, but it is for example not readily  apparent why God should be asked not to lead us into temptation. And there is no agreement whether the final petition asks deliverance from evil or from the Evil One,(the Satan). Even the petition for daily bread is somewhat puzzling – the Greek word translated “daily” is so rare it has raised questions as to the meaning of the text at this point.

The most obvious reason for popular durability is quite simply the prestige  automatically derived  from the fact that  (at least in Luke’s version, less cited  than Matthew’s)  this is how  Jesus  specifically counselled his disciples to pray when they asked him. And if there was nothing else to consider, the introductory “Our Father”  was and remains distinctive  for the religion of Jew and gentile alike.  For both traditions deity was and is mostly remote and not in dialogue. Arguably too, the very brevity of the unexplained prayer adds mystery; it invites speculation  like whether  the Paternoster is a virtual mantra generating its own form of spiritual power. I will very briefly comment on the prayer as given before drawing conclusions about it for us moderns.

BRIEF COMMENTARY

Our Father who is in heaven

The Creator, Israel’s  all-seeing Lord of the Universe is here also declared personal. God is so in a dialoguing way that can be known and shared – “our” Father – by a community such as  the church which will succeed to the disciples who have requested direction on how to pray.                                       

Hallowed be  your name.

Both believing  petitioners and open inquirers will always need some reverence or “fear” and teachability to  realize the meaningful good and God consciousness  disciples  must bring to the world And Jesus here may even be referring not just to the Father but to himself as God within the world, something he needn’t explicitly declare to make the point. From the outset Jesus had angered religious authorities by his declaring forgiveness of sins, a prerogative of God alone. From reverence Jews would come to refer to God as Hashem (the Name).. The sacred covenant name is Yahweh, the One whose voice to Moses from the burning bush utters it; and statements of this kind and partial appearances of the kind were understood by early Christians to be manifestations of the pre-incarnate Christ.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven

True faith and insight cannot be purely passive or hidden. Some degree of engagement with a troubled, often evil world is called for and believers seek guidance about this.

Give us  this day our daily bread.

Bread carries many meanings and associations throughout the Bible. Jesus was born in Bethlehem (House of Bread), was born under the bread and wheat sign of Virgo and would even be called the bread from heaven (Joh 8:35). God fed the desert-wandering Jews  the manna bread from heaven. Bread can also be the food of teaching to be conveyed (Joh 4:25) and so on . It follows that the meaning here could be anything from the immediate needs of poor itinerant disciples to the more spiritual needs of the community that requires regular teaching. Given the peculiar vocabulary it may even be a request that the community will be able to be renewed, participating on earth, just a little,in something akin to the heavenly  banquet. 

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

Trespasses, sins, debts? Sins seems the most likely sense, but sin seen against the background of the Jewish Jubilee year with its remission of debts. This is one of the nearest images to forgiveness for and among humans when ultimately forgiveness is a divine prerogative

And do not lead us not into temptation

God tempts no one and it is wrong to think otherwise (Jas 1:3). But  as “tempt” can equate to  “test” in the bible  (Joh 6:6,2 Cor 13:5) this must be the sense. God has the right to test and examine souls against events, but souls have the right to ask the  inevitable trials of life will not be excessive and destructive of their faith walk.

But deliver us from evil (the Evil One). The evil one, the Satan, is the likely reference especially as the just mentioned destructive power  of  trying events is what as in the story of Job the devil deals in.   

For yours is the  kingdom, the power and the glory forever Amen.

This closing doxology is absent from Luke’s version but is logical by way of conclusion: the dismissal of the Evil One marks and advances the kingdom.

WHAT KIND OF CORE  ORIGINAL BELIEF?

Now for the two questions this brief commentary naturally raise: first, what sort of belief and belief feeling is implied, and second, what is the most appropriate, effective use for this prayer?

I believe claims and assumptions of the prayer tie together and make most sense in the light of a statement of 1 Joh 3:8) “for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil”.The believer, and even unbelievers are to be understood as caught in the web of a cosmic battle in which they must take sides, like it or not, but for which aid is available. The  feeling is serious but not hopeless. There is some affinity for the outlook of the Essenes who were also called The Poor.

One definition of a Christian, often sidelined today, is someone who believes the creed the first of which describes God as “Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible”.

The  invisible world of angels, demons and hidden divine operations is almost ignored today in favour of a scientism which will only deny, not complement, the kind of spiritual and poetic dimensions which allowed early Christians like St Paul to consider nature in turmoil towards redemption. Climate change may not be only the change some maintain, it could as easily be apocalyptic signs ignored.

I mention this idea for the reason the often repeated Paternoster may be less a conventional prayer than a prelude to prayer or virtual checklist for how mind and belief should be focussed in order to pray effectively at all. A hint in this direction is that after the poetic stanza, Matthew’s version is followed by the prose sentence, anticipated in the prayer, that the heavenly Father will only forgive those willing to forgive others.                         

But if the prayer is aimed at focussing mind and spirit, is it possible we are looking at a kind of mantra?

MANTRIC POSSIBILITY?

One is inclined to dismiss a mantric function because Jesus was opposed  to the “vain repetitions’ mentioned before the Paternoster in Matthew (Matt 6:7), He associates them with the prayers of the heathen who imagine  (like the prophets of Baal in Jewish history?) they will be heard for their many words.

Endless or  mindless as opposed to mindful repetition will tend to produce something if only white light. The likes of the controversial Jesus Prayer of the Eastern churches may produce this amid its repeated statement of one’s sinful nature (something which arguably risks inadequately accepting one can be truly forgiven and “justified”). 

The mantric issue may reduce to how one interprets “vain” repetitions. It may even have to be so reduced because noticeably Jesus himself might pray at length (Luk 6:12 records all night) while Paul recommends “ceaseless prayer” to the early church (1 Thess 5:17). Jesus also commended persistence in prayer as in the parable of the importunate widow. (Luk 18: 1-8). At least some prayers are not intended to take no for an answer but may use repetition!

A  COMPROMISE POSITION

I am disposed to take a compromise position on this issue brought to my attention by a couple of factors, one of them some merely idle YouTube curiosity. Someone there claims repetition of the Lord’s Prayer has special effects not least for real healing.  (Unsurprisingly, though, the person involved  did find 500 repetitions exhausting!) Again rather idly it occurred to me to slowly repeat the familiar words to clear a too busy mind..It wasn’t long before I stopped in sudden surprise. Undeniably with no effort on my part my breathing  had become slower, deeper. automatic.

Of course  this  may have been purely accidental, a mere relaxation response (though it didn’t feel like a familiar one but something stronger) and I don’t intend lengthy experiments to be more sure! But the incident opens me up to the possibility of something mantric being involved in a special way, at least for those who are believers enough  in the first place for the words to have some degree of unconscious reverberation.

A great deal that passes for mysticism today inside and more outside Christianity is of the “oneness” kind. In this one identifies with the All and is even absorbed to everything (theoretically, though not considered, with every murderer and wild  animal too!) as the aura and consciousness  expands outwards.

In Christian terms this amounts to a lesser and imperfect soul as opposed to spirit mysticism, the self being a composite of body, soul and spirit. This “occult” anthropology of the person is nowhere fully stated but everywhere biblically assumed – the sexual  teachings depend on it, for example the couple cannot become “one flesh” short of a blending of the soul/aura.

A LOST CREEDAL SPIRITUALITY

To the extent the Lord’s prayer may be mantric, what it may be doing is this. By setting out certain principles material and spiritual necessary to standing within the divine sphere, it helps open and join the soul and spirit functions which have their own rhythms and understanding. I am reminded of a Greek Orthodox priest, not one pushing the Jesus prayer, who proposed that if  you don’t believe keep reciting the creed and you will believe it. How, why, and wouldn’t that be the merest auto suggestion? It could be in weak minds, but otherwise it can be because one’s spirit knows what is true and has its own language to which it responds,

So, the mantric possibility of  the Lord’s Prayer need not be automatically dismissed; but even if it is, at this season of the mystical, Pentecost, I’d say believers should be more open to the value of said or sung creedal statements for the opening of the mind to the divine amid the fogs of purely materialistic perception. Such is or should be part of a currently mostly lost poetry of faith I have now and again unfashionably entered as in this instance

ECHOD: A POETIC FRAGMENT ON THE TRINITY AND CREATION

 

CALVIN ROBINSON SHOCKS CHURCH, WORLD AND GAYS

{This article was published on March 22nd at my gaythoughts blog}

AN UNEXPECTED CONTROVERSY

The recent decision of the Church of England and its archbishop to accept blessings on gay unions (not celebrate gay marriages as such) has sparked yet another major controversy. It is one that has prompted calls for a split from Canterbury  by  some third world congregations who feel scripture and tradition are being radically denied.

Amid all this  a writer, political broadcaster and would-be  priest (but refused orders for his views), Calvin Robinson, delivered an impassioned speech to the Oxford Union against any Christian acceptance of gay marriage ever. The effect has left many reeling for the implications. His statements  have  rendered him almost overnight  a poster boy for conservative Christianity with its  associated frank hostility to gay claims and identity. The first and special shock talk can be heard  here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymbTb2HS5Rc&t=14s

TO BE FAIR

To be fair, Calvin R’s argument is well presented and even comes across as courageously sincere.  Within its terms it’s reasonable enough. It is, or can seem,  “prophetic” in that it reminds churches and gays that Christianity is a way of the cross and repentance, not compromise and indulgence. Besides which, it is insisted the  whole weight of tradition, which should count for something, has always condemned  “homosexuality”…. So if you want preachers, reformers, and prophets functioning in the modern secular arena, what more  could you ask for than this bearer of the Word?  Some  have called the novel outburst “perfect”. But it isn’t really.

TO BE CRITICAL

For a start I would suggest what is needed is some real historical and contemporary understanding of what the gay issue actually has been and is. There have been too many suicides, breakdowns and generally spoiled and confused lives, bullying and discrimination  for anyone to praise “tradition” at all costs. Historically, “tradition” has let saints like Bernadino of Siena have gays burned at the stake. while bullying African Christians have favoured the execution of gays.

If  Christianity is about denial it is also about healing, the two principles need to be in balance and they haven’t been. If gays should repent, then so should the church, but  that’s not part of Calvin R’s call. He might even think of me as woke here but I’m not.                           

For such as Calvin R, tradition gets defended at all costs because conservatives believe “God’s Word” – a term they apply more to the Bible than as, originally, to Jesus as himself God’s Logos –  cannot be questioned. But within reason it can if things are not working out. Even under  Moses, in Numbers 27  the daughters of Zelophehad  petition for a more just ruling for women’s inheritance and have it conceded.  The church has been reinterpreting  scripture ever since the Council of Jerusalem in the first century was concerned with circumcision and  kosher food. It is inappropriate of conservative Anglicans to cite the immutability of the Koranic tradition as some kind of model for bible reading Christians.

Same sex issues exist like a hidden stream in the bible as witness David and Jonathan having a berith (covenant, can read marriage) between them, while the prophet Jeremiah for a variety of reasons betrays a distinctly gay personality and eros (as indicated in a poem on this site).Christianity itself has its own traditions like the one that attaches significance to a close relation of Jesus with John and in medieval times some Eastern churches had little understood ceremonies for the union of brethren.

For conservatives “tradition” as regards “homosexuality” scarcely sees beyond some controversially extreme words of St Paul in especially Romans 1 – as often translated and read it could be thought he blames the same sex attracted for most of the evil in the world! Not only should it be borne in mind  that even the apostle spoke of “seeing  through a glass darkly” in some areas;  but it’s possible believers may risk doing the same on the gay theme. At any rate, to judge from some  earliest Christian writing, which would have known the apostle’s take on the Roman decadence, what is especially forbidden to believers and condemned is paedophilia, sex with boys.

 It is a confusion and rather insulting to maintain with  Calvin R  that all the church is now blessing is “sacred sodomy”. It cannot be sufficiently stressed that gay in many cases describes a whole character and worldview that is present whether intercourse is practised or not (and the often cited abomination verse of Leviticus is first and foremost about temple prostitution such as King Josiah’s reforms banned from Jerusalem). This is why across history  so many creative, original people have been gay. Their difference and special contributions stand to be suppressed (cancelled out) by the kind of religious systems that want no mention of a difference factor and that accordingly imagines to speak in terms of “gay Christian” is only to advertise failed faith and cure, a mark of shame!

TO BE MORE POSITIVE

Where I most agree with Calvin R’s position is his critical position relative to trendy woke and the  related surrender of Christian customs and theology to Queer with its siren calls to “inclusion” and “equality”. These don’t correspond to Christian and spiritual  ideas in those areas, not least marriage. It is largely the equality fetish that has demanded  marriage as opposed to the simple legal union that even the current Pope has recommended. A union would better serve a species of gay vocation to difference while leaving procreation to the marriage union always religiously associated with it. 

Queer is in effect hard left materialistic  and atheistic in inspiration. It lacks acknowledgment of an essential  self or soul that could express  a certain character such as gay; one’s being is a rather community related experiment with many or any possible roles promiscuously realized.

Personally, as in my gaythoughts blog (which should perhaps  have  been called gaytheothoughts!), I have always avoided identity with Queer. And I have arguably paid for that ever since two decades ago a critic pf my book A Special Illumination suggested I was alarmist about Queer. I certainly rightly detected its growing power and potential to mislead. And it is a fact that despite obtaining the  first doctorate in gay spiritualities from any religious  studies dept and having the doctorate published and even  praised by an associate of the then Archbishop of Canterbury as probably the best writing on gay theology, I   have gone almost  wholly unsupported by those persons in the LGBTQI community, not so much as graced with a reply, from leading voices in the religious push to gay/queer acceptance.

By way of excuse for the degree of neglect, one could speculate  some of my writings and statements had been  examined and dismissed as too spiritual and/or “occult” to be considered by academics. So here, in parenthesis, I shall cover a point that can well be stated and clarified, and which I believe to be crucial to resolving the gay and difference problem, at least in religion.

THE SECRET CALVIN ROBINSON DOESN’T KNOW  AND CONSERVATIVES IGNORE

It has been the likes of Jewish Christians such as the late Bishop Hugh Montefiore and Canon Paul Oestreicher  who have speculated that to moderns Jesus could well seem like a type of gay person. My contribution to that line of speculation is to suggest that a) as regards incarnation this makes more theological sense than might be imagined and b) that the matter is even provable.  

If  you maintain with St Paul that Jesus is representative humanity (God’s Logos and male)  but also God’s Sophia (Wisdom  who is female) ideally you need  a formula like that of the earliest German Gay Liberationists, namely a female soul in a male body and vice-versa for lesbians. You also need this kind of understanding to cover other details in the gospels I needn’t outline here like Jesus’ curious (incorrectly translated)  reference to the fool in the section of the Sermon on the Mount on anger harbouring violence (Matt 5 :22).

Sufficient to say when Jesus speaks of those who are eunuchs from their mother’s wombs, he does so at a time when no precise equivalent of the modern “homosexual” existed. The eunuch word could be more lightly and widely used than for just castrate or exalted manservant, it needn’t even automatically signify celibate, in comedy it might hint at gay, but it would somehow signify some degree of out of the family and common way, difference. We should assume Jesus knew and understood that any gay/different condition could be inborn and lasting, not temporary and curable (although of course there will always be people who will change or appear to, another subject beyond present scope).

 The mentioned theological perspective has its own consistency and clarity that doesn’t have to be “proved”. However, in this strange case proof is available. It is simply a matter of how open minded a person is prepared to be about examining and acknowledging the evidence.

I have long maintained that in development of the thesis of notable astronomers Ferrari D’Occhieppo and David Hughes about the Bethlehem Star, it is possible to obtain a still working pattern for Christ’s birth and life. And applying the latest kind of astrology which can employ such as name, place and concept asteroids, one can make the heavens speak with unprecedented accuracy. Go to this article, (https://rollanmccleary.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/new-proofs-around-bethlehem-star-theory/ ) which says nothing at all about sexuality, and attempt to disprove its incredible, statistical probability-defying data which has caught and placed Jesus clearly as a photo. 

EASY DISMISSALS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS

If you can accept the truly astonishing findings, it is neither quite possible nor reasonable to discount all the other data one can add and which would point to Jesus being (on the human side) like some Renaissance genius figure such as Leonardo or Michelangelo who were in essence gay. For  Jesus the asteroid Saris ( Heb. Eunuch) is even conjunct Mercury, the “ruler” of his chart pattern and his image.  When Jesus declared some are born eunuchs from the womb he knew what he was talking about and arguably not least about himself. When Jesus spoke of contempt and anger against gays he also knew what he was talking about. The skies even supply us such details as a racah asteroid in stress aspect to the Part of Sexuality to help fill out a picture (something witnessed or suffered?) in a work as precious in its way as dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In over thirty years I have never gone out of my way to promote any gay Jesus theories. I have never profited from it, nor out of respect for the subject, do I go with any begging bowl to those who should be supportive. There is anyway little point in pressing the claims. I early learned either that the subject mostly engages disinterest or airy dismissal  (neither the gay world nor publishing have been interested) and media is such a landmines-ridden field in treatment of complex subjects, by now I avoid it. Every now and then something or someone crops up as in the case of Calvin Robinson who unwittingly renders apparent how far from a satisfactory resolution for the gay issue the churches remain. And not least because they will not perceive the whole hidden stream that runs through their own bible and traditions.

Just such pointers have nonetheless been a focus of at least some of the articles across recent years on this site…..which I think can at this point be suitably retired from the gay fray. Let true seekers seek and find!