Quote:
Originally Posted by Taltarzac725
Matthew 6:13 - Wikipedia
Now does God lead us into temptation or do we lose God's directions? Hard to know from the various translations of the words.
Or, is it Satan that misguides us? Or one or all of the Seven Deadly Sins?
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From Wikipedia, but in line with scholarship on the topic: “Yahweh, the god in pre-exilic Judaism, created both good and evil, as stated in Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." The devil does not exist in Jewish scriptures. However, the influence of Zoroastrianism during the Achaemenid Empire introduced evil as a separate principle into the Jewish belief system, which gradually externalized the opposition until the Hebrew term satan developed into a specific type of supernatural entity, changing the monistic view of Judaism into a dualistic one. Later, Rabbinic Judaism rejected the Enochian books (written during the Second Temple period under Persian influence), which depicted the devil as an independent force of evil besides God. After the apocalyptic period, references to Satan in the Tanakh are thought to be allegorical.”
While there are some references to a figure we now call Satan in the Old Testament, some of them are thought to be referring to some king who thought he was as powerful as the gods. Around the time of Christ, there were new writings that claimed that evil came from this demonic figure, but this was not the majority view, and the idea of Satan as the fallen archangel in constant opposition to God and as the father of evil gradually developed in Christianity over several centuries.
The view of God as one who tempts us to do evil, expressed by Jesus in the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, which is in turn the chiastic heart of the Sermon on the Mount, was right in line with the general beliefs of Judaism in his days. It was a conservative viewpoint. A great many Christian church leaders from many denominations have accepted the words of Jesus here as truth, repellant as the idea may be.
If you doubt me, check out the Wikipedia page on “Unconditional Election,” which begins like this: “Unconditional election (also called sovereign election or unconditional grace) is a Calvinist doctrine relating to predestination that describes the actions and motives of God prior to his creation of the world, when he predestined some people to receive salvation, the elect, and the rest he left to continue in their sins and receive the just punishment, eternal damnation, for their transgressions of God's law as outlined in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. God made these choices according to his own purposes apart from any conditions or qualities related to those persons.” What this means is that before the creation of the world, it pleased God to decide that someday you would be literally born to go to hell, and no amount of prayer or repentance or churchgoing or giving your heart to Jesus or claiming to be born again will change that. If you are okay with that teaching, you probably won’t be too upset by the idea that it is God who leads us into temptation, not Satan. Perhaps this is how he assures our damnation if he has decided to damn us. This is a minority Christian view today, but it IS what the Puritans and Pilgrims who came to our shores, supposedly guided by God, chose to believe.