The Our Father

2000 words, 10 minute read

Our father,

who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name!

Thy kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven!

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us;

and lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil, Amen!

Everyone knows the Lord’s Prayer. The version quoted in the Gospel of Matthew (6: 9-13) is probably the best known 50 words in all Judeo-Christian scripture. Yet when Roman Catholic children first learn this prayer, they don’t call it the “Lord’s Prayer”; they call it the “Our Father” in recognition of the prayer’s personal tone and pastoral focus. Attention is drawn to the compassion of a father rather than to the majesty of a Lord.

This tiny prayer is a cyber-wonk’s dream. The density of information is out of this world, quite literally! One way (not the only way) to parse this prayer is as three stanzas of three verses each, followed by a surprise ending! (3 x 3 = 9 + 1 = 10)

The first stanza concerns the identity of God and the nature of our relationship with him; the second stanza has an eschatological focus, while the third is concerned with every day social relations. We are all so familiar with this prayer that we may not always notice these sharp thematic breaks.

In the first stanza, we learn that God is “our father” – not just the father of the cosmos or of Israel or of Jesus, but the father of everyone, our father – not just  “the maker of heaven and earth”! The role of father is very different from the role of creator. 

As creator, God establishes the conditions necessary for existence per se, including our own existence; he is the ground of our being. But as father, God also enters into a personal relationship with each of us. This is the incredible heuristic power of Judeo-Christianity: God transcends the World and yet he is immanent in each member. 

Next, we learn that our father is in heaven. Transcendent and therefore eternal, he is not subject to the corruption and death characteristic of the spatiotemporal realm.

Finally, we acknowledge that God’s name is holy. In the ancient world, a person’s name was not just ‘her handle.' A name defined the person’s role in society; in God’s case, it defines his role in the universe (which is his ‘society’).

This is why Moses (Exodus 3) was so concerned to learn God’s name. He knew the Israelites would ask and would not follow him until they knew…and knew that he (Moses) knew. Knowing a name was like knowing a password…or a secret handshake or coded door knock. In the language of philosophy, name was ‘essential,' not ‘accidental.'

God does not disappoint. He tells Moses that his name is YHWH (“I am who am”). God’s ‘name’ defines him as unique. Obviously, one and only one entity can answer to the name YHWH. Only one being can be Being itself. Some philosophers have gone so far as to assert that Ex. 3:14 is self-evidently true and therefore ‘proves’ the existence of God; but we’ll leave that one alone… at least for now.

God’s name is certainly ‘holy’ (or hallowed): it is by definition unique and that makes polytheism an oxymoron. 

The second stanza of the prayer is eschatological. While the first stanza reveals the ‘primordial’ state of things, this stanza presents the ‘ultimate’ state: God’s kingdom comes, God’s will is done, and the boundary between heaven and earth disappears. 

As stated in the Book of Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (22:13) Our first stanza identifies God as the ‘Alpha Dog’ while the second stanza confirms that he will be ‘the last man (sic) standing.'

But these stanzas provide no hint of how we are to get from Alpha to Omega. Rightly so! The first two stanzas are visions, not a parenting guide, a political platform, not a legislative agenda. We still need GPS, and fortunately, the third stanza provides just that!

This stanza is concerned primarily with daily life, the spatiotemporal realm. We have already been introduced to Alpha and Omega; here is where we learn the rest of the alphabet, i.e. everything in-between (aka the Delta).

As ‘father,' God has a care to provide for and protect his ‘children,' and it is very specific: feed me, forgive me, protect me! What child has not uttered these same petitions at one time or another to his own father? And what loving father has not granted these petitions, when appropriate, to the best of his ability?

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matthew 7: 9-10)

In this stanza, we learn that our primordial relationship with God and God’s eschatological vision for the universe are relevant…and not only in the transcendent realm. Here we learn something key: we are co-creators with God, first in the temporal realm, but ultimately in the eternal realm as well (‘on earth as it is in heaven’). 

We ask God to give us ‘our daily bread’; but here we can step up too. In the spatiotemporal realm we can function as God’s agents by giving ‘bread’ to those in need. Likewise, when we “forgive those who trespass against us," we also do the work of God (mercy). 

Finally, “Lead us not into temptation” refers to the level of care God has for each of us and that we in turn must have for one another. We have a duty of care, a duty to protect others. Each of us is ‘our sibling’s keeper’… and ‘our neighbor’s keeper’ as well.

“And who is my neighbor?” a student of the law asks Jesus. His answer is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Does it take a village to raise a child? Heck no, it takes a cosmos!

And now for what you’ve all been waiting for, the finale! Earlier I promised you a ‘surprise ending’ (remember how The Sixth Sense ended?). Now you’re wondering whether you’ll be let down, once again, by an overhyping author. Will you be disappointed? Yes, probably, you will. But should you be disappointed? By no means! 

But enough with the suspense; here’s what you’ve been waiting for: 

“But deliver us from evil. Amen!”

First of all, this petition seems redundant; and it is! After all, didn’t we already pray for that when we asked God to provide for us and protect us? But something much deeper is at work here!

While neither Jesus nor the Evangelists knew the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they were all keen observers of the natural world. They knew that ‘all things must pass,' and they were familiar with texts like Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity.” They understood the universality of mortality, they understood change. (After all, 500 years earlier Heraclitus had articulated Ephesian cosmology: Everything flows!

Today we understand ‘change’ as ‘entropy’ and we know that every ‘change’ works to increase the overall entropy of the universe. (Entropy is the measure of disorder.) 

Consider the cosmos: “In the beginning…the earth was without form or shape (maximal disorder)…Then God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light…God then separated the light from the darkness (order)…Then God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters to separate one body of water from the other’ (order)…the water under the sky was gathered into its basin and dry land appeared (order)…God created mankind in his image…male and female he created them (order).” (Genesis 1)

Whether you prefer the model of creation known as ‘Genesis’ or the modern version known as ‘Big Bang,' it is clear that ordering per se is synonymous with the creative act. Big Bang or Fiat Lux, take your pick, entropy is at an all time low. 

Then, call it Original Sin or Thermodynamics, the entropic process begins. From the instant of cosmogenesis, entropy inexorably increases; order decreases. At some time in the far distant future, the universe will reach or approach a state of maximal entropy; all order will be lost and, effectively at least, the universe will cease to exist. “You cannot count what is not there.” (Ecclesiastes 1: 15b)

Order is denotatively synonymous with Being and therefore also with Good. Where then does that leave evil? If order is good, then entropy (disorder) must be defined as ‘evil’. Entropy is ‘evil’, not in itself but because it erases what is Good, i.e. Being, which is intrinsically good. But that is the reality of our temporal world. 

We relish the marvelous things we experience as entropy unravels the mysteries of creation for us; but we dread the inevitable consequence: Nothingness. According to Stephen Hawking, no friend of theology, entropy is just another word for time (and vice-versa). Time is the true “destroyer of worlds” (Bhagavad Gita). From the perspective of a purely temporal world, death not only terminates our existence…it erases it!

The only intellectually honest emotion then is despair. The opposite of faith is not doubt, which is unavoidable, but despair. (Yes, despair also negates hope and love.) Unless…reality also has a transcendent (eternal) aspect. 

The finale of the Our Father asks God to deliver us from evil. It is the climax of the greatest prayer ever written. We are asking God to free us from the otherwise inevitable ravages of entropy. We, like the Psalmist (Psalm 23), are asking God not to let our existence be erased. We are simply asking for eternal life, that’s all!

To be clear, it is not enough for God to provide for us (‘feed’), to treat us mercifully (‘forgives’), and to protect from the whips and snares of the material world (‘lead us not’); we also expect him to grant us eternal life. Cheeky Monkeys!

Any self-respecting God would surely smite at us…and feel good about it! But very, very fortunately, our God just happens to be in the eternal life business. “Who’d a thunk it?” (Hairspray) 

“If that’s all you wanted, you should have said so. It would have saved me the trouble of feeding, forgiving and protecting you all these years.”

Eternal life is the ultimate gift, the only gift, the ‘pearl of great price,' the difference between being and nothingness (sorry, Sartre). But spoiler alert: we don’t need to pace the floor on Christmas Eve worrying that Santa won’t bring us what we asked for…because it’s already purchased and delivered (and not by Amazon).

The incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus delivered us from evil, once and for all. And if we wish, we can re-experience that deliverance every day in the Sacrament of Eucharist. 

In the ontology of the Our Father, everything that happens in the temporal realm is real; and to the extent that anything temporal can be harmonized with God’s values, everything is preserved eternally. The terrible pall of certain and impending mortality evaporates. But we knew that all along, or should have:

“The Lord is my shepherd (father); there is nothing I lack (daily bread) …He guides me along right paths (lead us not into temptation) for the sake of his (holy) name. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death (the temporal world), I will fear no evil (death), for you are with me (deliver us from evil) …I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (eternal life).” Amen.

David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com.

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