Posted on 10/16/2014 2:41:15 PM PDT by NYer
Most of you know that I write the Question and Answer Column for Our Sunday Visitor. And every now and then it is good to bring these works of mine together. An interesting question came in today (actually it is asked quite frequently) and I’d like to give my answer and add just a few things more that wouldn’t fit into the column. First the question, then the answer and a brief elaboration.
Q: Why does the Lord’s Prayer ask God not to lead us in temptation? Why would God do that? I have also read texts in the Bible about God hardening people’s hearts. Again why would God do that?
A: Part of the problem in understanding biblical texts like these comes down to the philosophical distinction between primary and secondary causality. Primary causality refers to God’s action in creating, sustaining, and setting into motion all things. From this perspective, God is the first (or primary) cause of all things, even things contrary to His stated and revealed will.
Thus, if I hit you over the head with a bat, I am actually the secondary cause of this painful experience. God is the primary cause because He has made and sustains all things that are involved: me, the wood of the bat, and the firm resistance of your skull.
As such, God is the first or underlying cause, without which nothing at all would be happening or existing. God is surely opposed to my action and even has Commandments against it. However, given His establishment of physical laws and respect for human freedom, He seldom intervenes by suspending these.
So to be clear, in my horrific little example, God is the primary cause since He is the cause of both me and the bat; I am the secondary cause of my shameful act of violence.
The biblical world was more conversant with and accepting of primary causality. Biblical texts often more freely associate things with God because He is the first cause of all things (without excluding the human agency that is the secondary cause). The Catechism speaks to this reality in Scripture:
The sacred books powerfully affirm God’s absolute sovereignty over the course of events: “Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases.” And so it is with Christ, “who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens.” As the book of Proverbs states: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established.” And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a “primitive mode of speech,” but a profound way of recalling God’s primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world, and so of educating his people to trust in him (Catechism 303-304).
So the biblical world was more comfortable with primary causality. However, with the rise of the empirical sciences and secularism, we moderns are far less comfortable in speaking to primary causality (God’s world) and tend to focus more on secondary causes (our world).
When the Lord’s Prayer says lead us not into temptation, it is not asserting that God would directly and intentionally lead us into temptation, or tempt us himself (see James 1:13), but rather is alluding to the fact that God is the first cause of all things. We are thus asking that God’s providence allow fewer opportunities for us to be led into temptation by the world, the flesh, and the devil, and give us the grace to escape the temptations that inevitably do come our way.
Likewise, texts that refer to God hardening hearts employ similar thinking. God hardens hearts only insofar as He is the first cause of all things. But it is usually we who harden our own hearts. God merely permits the conditions and sustains our existence (primary causality); it is we as secondary causes who directly will the sins that harden our own hearts.
Primary causality is ultimately a confession of the fact that God is at the center of and above all things. God is existence itself and He sustains all things. It is not an untroubling doctrine in that it tends to intensify the questions surrounding the problems of suffering and evil. But even in permitted evils there is the mystery of providence at work. God can write straight with crooked lines and make a way out of no way. He is at all times and in all things provident in ways beyond our telling. Scripture says of the Lord Jesus as the King and sustainer of all creation,
In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe, who is the refulgence of his glory, the very imprint of his being, and who sustains all things by his mighty word (Heb 1:1-3).
And again,
He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col 1:16-17).
Yes, Lord:
Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.
Ping!
The Lord’s Prayer is a short recitation of the 10 Commandments; we ask God to imprint His law on our hearts.
See, that wasn’t so hard...
I am still wondering why I can’t get revenge and only God can get vengeance?
Sometimes it’s the only reason to live.
I don't think the Apostle Paul was playing word games. If Pharaoh's heart was already hard, why confuse the issue by bring the Will of God into the argument?
Otherwise you're left with: "God is in control - except when he isn't"
Delayed gratification is an adult concept (one at which I often fail).
But the answer to why? Because God will do a much better job in exacting the required punishment.
Someone may truly deserve torture, maiming and death. If so, I have confidence that when warranted, God will do a much better job of it than I ever could.
Having said that, I must admit that I oftentimes feel more like the penitent thief on the cross beside Christ: “Lord remember me when you come into Your kingdom”.
Yes - me too Lord - please...
I blame God for everything
It’s just not the best translation. Probably originally Aramaic > Greek > Latin > English. Same thing with ‘Give us this DAY our DAILY bread.’ Translators were not interpreters (Praise God!) and used the best of what was available. For day / daily the Greek word is similar to SUPER SUBSTANTIAL and in Latin it became QUOTIDIANUM, like a year’s worth in one day. Words across languages, cultures and time don’t always fit and that is why we have Holy Mother Church.
A better translation is “Do not put us to the final test.”
Because seeking vengeance is destructive to our souls. thus the saying “pray for those who despitefully use you.” It took me 20 years to forgive my ex-wife for leaving me and moving in with another man and having his child. The lack of forgiveness/wanting revenge in some manner to her gnawed at me and my soul. One day, I accidently went by her and afterward realized that I had had no negative reaction. Will I forget what she did, No; have I released my desire for vengeance/hurt what she did, yes.
Because you cannot read the heart of someone else. Only God can read hearts. He alone knows how that person was raised, what truths, if any, he was taught and how he applied those in his life.
If anyone were entitled to seek revenge, would it not be Jesus Christ, who was unjustly accused and crucified for upholding the truth? We follow His example.
“God is in control - except when he isn’t”
The article answers this. God is in control first and always AND He loves you and gives you free will to love Him back - or hurt Him and those others He loves. That’s why it’s truly FREE will, otherwise it would be crossed fingers behind the back. Secondary causality you have been given control over - and I have. I watch out for you and you try to rob me.
“I am still wondering why I can’t get revenge and only God can get vengeance?”
A little further....God seeks that 100th sheep that left Him...not satisfied with the delightful 99 that stay, as precious as they fully are. If you seek vengence, that 100th dies before he can repent. The 100th is lost, requires a greater level of mercy, not having the longest possible chance to come around of his own free will, as designed, to repent and give Glory to God. And YOU - you need the opportunity to let go and let God, and forgive - for your own true Joy as God designed you to experience. But, you might get to feel regret and repentence still, afterward, if given enough time, just not Joy soeasily due to the added baggage of vengence.
And yet that doesn’t explain why (to me anyway), if Pharaoh’s heart was already hard, why confuse the issue by bringing the Will of God into the argument?
God is not a God of confusion...
Because it will cause you emotional, mental and spiritual harm.
Justice is different then vengeance. Justice can be measured and coolly meted out. Vengeance burns and boils. It eats away at you, stealing the joy, the calm and the peace that is suppose to be in your heart as a child of God.
God does not want you hurt.
Because your vengence will be with mixed motives, and not pure, un-biased justice.
God’s vengence is pure, and only meted out without bias or personal motive like yours.
You don’t know all nor do you see all. He does. Your perspective cannot be fair simply because your persective is tiny compared to His. Nor is your heart or motive pure, for you, like all of us, are a fallen, damaged creature, wholly dependent on His mercy, grace and redemption.
That’s why you need to leave it in His hands.
Justice is different then vengeance. Justice can be measured and coolly meted out. Vengeance burns and boils. It eats away at you, stealing the joy, the calm and the peace that is suppose to be in your heart as a child of God.
God does not want you hurt. ---
We also have to remember that God is not just a bigger version of us. God is categorically different. Since He is the Author of life, he can withdraw life.
We are made in His image. He is not made in ours.
Ask yourself, “If I meted out all the vengeance I could, and got all I wanted, would it be enough?”
Well, would it?
Revenge is sin no matter how good the cause or how we may feel. 1 Samuel 25 tells us about David and his near revenge on Nabal until Abigail interceded.
1Sa 25:33 Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodguilt and from working salvation with my own hand!
1Sa 25:34 For as surely as the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male."
1Sa 25:35 Then David received from her hand what she had brought him. And he said to her, "Go up in peace to your house. See, I have obeyed your voice, and I have granted your petition."
1Sa 25:36 And Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king. And Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk. So she told him nothing at all until the morning light.
1Sa 25:37 In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone.
1Sa 25:38 And about ten days later the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.
1Sa 25:39 When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, "Blessed be the LORD who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The LORD has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head." Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife.
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