But Deliver Us from Evil

When pride is overcome, we cure a symptom of our separation from God not its root cause. We are like the frog born at the bottom of the well, who is unaware of the larger world that exists beyond the walls of his home. These walls are what psychologists have come to call the ego, and the well itself what Jesus (lacking our modern lingo) called the pit, where the fire (i.e. our desire) is never quenched. (1) It is what some have called our “original sin“. Yet “sin” is the wrong word. For sins are connected to choices. And we did not choose to be placed in the well–although it is our choice whether or not we remain there.

The well is better described as our original condition. And Jesus’s entire ministry was about teaching others to overcome it. Asking us to abandon our egos though is a tough sell. Because while we know that egoism leads to pride, hate, violence, theft, adultery and every evil under the sun, (2) we also believe that our egos define who we are. We think that if we lose our ego, we will lose our identity; and we are offended by those who suggest otherwise.

This offense that we take is registered in the Gospel of John during the story of the Last Supper–the last fellowship for Jesus before he crucifies his ego, abandons the well, and experiences full consciousness in Christ. At the dinner table, the disciples cry out against the “harsh doctrine” they are being taught. (3) Their shock is not over the eating of the flesh and blood of the Son of Man (as those are just metaphors), but that in becoming “united” with Christ that they will lose their sense of self.

We, like the disciples, consider our egos as being solid and permanent. That is the devilish illusion. For if we look back upon our lives, we find that the person we identify as “me” changes as we grow. The middle-aged man or woman often looks with strange fascination toward the person they were at eighteen, just as the senior does toward their middle-aged self. Sometimes we cannot even believe the person we were yesterday!…

This is an excerpt from Chapter 11 of the book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Testament Gospels). A faith book especially suited for Progressive Christianity workshops, Bible Study Groups, Unitarian Christians, and all who seek a richer life. The book’s SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious) meditation is richly supported by over 200 Gospel book citations.

Buy the Trade Paperback from our Bookstore for $15.99

Buy the full PDF eBook Now for $4.99

To read the next excerpt of The Lord’s Prayer Book, please go to The Lord’s Prayer – Understanding God Time.

The Kingdom, The Power, & The Glory

For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Forever, Amen. The Lord’s Prayer began by grounding us in our relationship with the Father, and it ends now by solidifying our faith in that kinship. We have already talked about how the kingdom, power, and the glory of God are played out within the living hour; but most of us are not satisfied with this daily bread. We want to know that there is a divine plan, with a definitive beginning and end, that’s been arranged by the Father.

Our desire to see the culmination of God’s plan is what led Jesus’s early Jewish followers to believe that he was an earthly messiah. And it is what fuels today such false beliefs as the rapture and Jesus’s second-coming out of the clouds. Without an end-game in place, we find our faith under assault, (1) as we try to make sense of a world filled with horrors, suffering, and loss. Yet it is precisely this lack of knowledge in God’s final act (like our uncertainty in what happens to us after we die) that creates the condition which rewards those with the faith of but a mustard seed.

If we are to acquire that life giving faith, and get glimpses of the Father’s divine plan, we must take a “big picture” view of our lives and the history of the world. This means letting go of human time and entering God time. With human time we focus on beginnings and ends, and see time as a product that can be saved, lost, and spent. And we view morality within the limits of those human constraints. But with God time we are dealing with a cyclical ebb and flow that cannot be pinned down–and where moral reckoning occurs on a timeline that far exceeds an individual lifetime.

Our life in Christ is beyond beginnings and ends–which is why Jesus says that he existed before Abraham (2) and his words will live on even after heaven and earth pass away. (3)

This is an excerpt from Chapter 12 of the book The Living Hour: The Lord’s Prayer for Daily Life (with New Testament Gospels). An SBNR faith book especially suited for Progressive Christianity workshops, Bible Study Groups, Unitarian Christians, and all who seek a richer life. The book’s SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious) meditation is richly supported by over 200 Gospel book citations.

Buy the Trade Paperback from our Bookstore for $15.99

Buy the full PDF eBook Now for $4.99

To read thoughts on the current state of Christianity from a Progressive Christian and Unitarian perspective, please go to: Where is Our Joy?