The Lord's Prayer

Question:

I am really confused about this. Just moved from West Virginia to Florida and every Unity we've been to sings the Lord's Prayer every Sunday. I cannot sing it because it seems to be the opposite of everything I've learned. If evil doesn't exist, why pray to be delivered from it? And why pray for forgiveness of sins (debts, trespasses) ... I'm just really confused. While the congregation is singing it, I close my eyes and sing "I Am Free, I Am Unlimited" to myself.

Comment:

Yours is not an unusual perception. I am attaching an extensive interpretation of the Lord's Prayer I hope will help you feel more comfortable with it. One thing I would suggest is that you release the idea of 'praying for' and see those statements as affirmations. We are affirming what we know to be spiritually true. We forgive as we are forgiven. We are released from the power of 'evil' (some Unity centers substitute the word 'error') as we know and claim our own innate spiritual Power.

Blessings!

Rev. Ed

COMMENTARY ON THE LORD'S PRAYER by Rev. Ed Townley

It is difficult to encompass in one brief response the whole of the Lord's Prayer. As with all our appreciation of the power of the Bible, we have to approach it with fresh eyes, and an open heart. If it was important to Jesus—and Jesus is the guide, Way Shower, and perfect example of the Christ expression we are striving to be—then there may well be something powerful and important there for us. And, indeed, I believe there is.

The Lord's Prayer, first of all, is not a form of pleading or beseeching addressed to a distant God. It is a clear and simple affirmative prayer, in perfect and powerful alignment with Unity principles about the nature of God, our relationship to God, and the creative spiritual work that is ours to do.

“Our Father who art in heaven.”

This is an immediate and radical restatement of our relationship to God—not as a distant, awesome Power to be approached in fear and trembling, like Dorothy and friends standing before the image of the Wizard, but rather “abba,” poppa—intimate and familiar (except that in Aramaic the reference is neither male nor female). Vibrationally, it connects us to the creative energy of the entire universe. And that energy is within us—as Jesus tells us it is elsewhere in his teachings—existing in us as divine potential.

“Hallowed be Thy name.”

The vibrational energy of the name for God is sacred. It vibrates within us in the “sacred place of the most high.” We “hallow” that name by allowing its vibration to define our very being—and by seeing ourselves as temples of God’s energy.

“Thy kingdom come.”

In Aramaic, this phrase is "teytey malkuthakh." Teytey describes a bridal chamber, site of union and fertility. Malkuthakh comes from an ancient name for Divine Mother; it refers to a womb. The overall image in Aramaic is that we nurture and give birth to the kingdom of God within us.

“Thy will be done,

In earth as it is in heaven.”

God perfectly expresses in that sacred womb within me. With this affirmation, I choose to let the inner possibility and the outer manifestation be the same. In Aramaic, the word translated as “will” more accurately means “heart’s desire.” Again, we are agreeing to—and taking responsibility for—a creative, intimate union with God.

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

This is the first actual prayer request in the prayer—we here shift our focus from God to self. It completes a kind of contract: I will birth your heaven and you will see to my needs. “Lachma” in Aramaic is both “bread” and “understanding.”

“And forgive us our debts,

As we also have forgiven our debtors.”

The Aramaic word means “failures,” “mistakes,” as well as “secret debts.” The tense is important: We must have forgiven others before we can claim our own forgiveness.

“And leave us not in temptation,

But deliver us from evil.”

I think this is the clearest rendering of a line that doesn't really make sense in the traditional English translation ("lead us not into temptation"). It is absurd to think God might lead us into temptation. The Aramaic phrase is rather “don’t let us remain in” temptation. And the word for temptation means "unripeness."

“For Thine is the kingdom

and the power and the glory,

for ever. Amen.”

This, of course, may not be original—it isn’t in earliest translations—but it does follow accepted Jewish form in closing a prayer. The Aramaic might more accurately be translated as “Through you the kingdom, through you the energy of life, through you the harmony of all things.”

This only touches lightly on the metaphysical depths suggested by this deceptively familiar prayer. I would suggest Prayer of the Cosmos by Neal Douglas Klotz—and perhaps, immodestly, my own book The Secret According to Jesus—if you want to delve a little deeper.