Analysis
The Lord's Prayer
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20130302               Idea of God               Pray in Your Closet (Jesus)

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."
          Matthew 6:5-8

Then the prayer
“After this manner therefore pray ye:‘Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Ã'-mên
          Matthew 9-13

The first set of verses seems to admonish against prayer, any prayer; but certainly admonishes against repetitive chants of prayer like we do in churches everywhere, especially for the Lord's Prayer. I think Jesus says, "Well, if you must pray, then pray simply, from your heart (in your closet) not through your words (in the church or synagogue). The Lord's Prayer is but, at best, an example which became exactly the chant he warned about. I think the prayer just says, "Thank you. and glory be to you". However, something is funny here. The prayer asks, no "demands" in the imperative mood, four things: food, forgiveness, lead us, deliver us. In just the previous verses he admonished against asking God for anything, since God knows what you need. I suspect these demands were added to the pray sometime after the first versions ('Q' sub-document, "Sayings of the Sage") to "sanctify" prayer of servanthood and forgiveness in accordance with long-standing Semite tradition. It seems to me this section of Matthew 6 pretty well "de-sanctifies" prayer, quite at odds with other interpretations perhaps.


Two interpretations of ideas in Matthew 6:10 and elsewhere seem to completely contradict. The following quotes are from Wikipedia, “Lord’s Prayer”. The second set of interpretations are mine.

"thy kingdom come"
Interpretation 1:"The request for God's kingdom to come is commonly interpreted at the most literal level: as a reference to the belief that a Messiah figure will bring about a kingdom of God. Traditionally, the coming of God's kingdom is seen as a divine gift to be prayed for, not a human achievement. This idea is frequently challenged by groups who believe that the Kingdom will come by the hands of those faithful who work for a better world. These believe that Jesus' commands to feed the hungry and clothe the needy are the kingdom to which he was referring."

Interpretation 2:"Scripture teaches that the "kingdom of God is in the midst of you" (Luke 17:21), or "within you" suggesting, in the second of these interpretations, a psychological or spiritual condition of the individual. In this second interpretation, the petition in the Lord's Prayer asks for this inner kingdom—that is, attainment of personal salvation, moral and psychological, and reference to this condition as "thy kingdom" suggests an implicit contrast between it and conditions dominated by selfish egoistic desires."

"thy will be done"
Interpretation 1:“Many people think our job is to get my afterlife destination taken care of, then tread water till we all get ejected and God comes back and torches this place."

Interpretation 2:"But Jesus never told anybody — neither his disciples nor us — to pray, 'Get me out of here so I can go up there.' His prayer was, 'Make up there come down here.' Make things down here run the way they do up there.” The request that “thy will be done” is God’s invitation to “join him in making things down here the way they are up there.”

To which I would follow with the obvious question, "How do we make things here like there?" It seems to me, there are two possible answers to create a binary (hats off to Derrida), both accomplish the same objective of eliminating sin in the world so the world is "perfect" like heaven: one is to eliminate all the sin in the world by death or conversion of all sinners so they no longer sin, perhaps sin even on Mars and the planets around other stars, if sin is found there also, until then God's heaven must remain in heaven, so my duty is to help bring about "heaven on earth" in my small way by killing and converting as many sinners as possible; the other is to eliminate all the sin in the world by saying, believing, accepting either (a) there is no sin or (b) God is perfect and omniscient so if sin does indeed exist it is because God wants it so, EXACTLY so, which means sort of the same as (a). The one requires changing everyone else in the world, the other only one. Which do you think more likely to succeed? Which more likely to make good soldiers to kill for Jesus? for America?