The Lord's Prayer

In Matthew 6:9-13 it is written:

“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 evil:
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”

The Lord’s Prayer is, perhaps, the most famous prayer in the world. It is also a challenge for many adherents to the new thought philosophy as it seems very dualistic in its nature.

We’ve already covered some of the metaphysical metaphors that are utilized in previous parts of the Sermon on the Mount. If we transfer those basic understandings to the very beginning of this prayer, then we begin to know it in a different way.

So I ask, who is the Father? Perhaps a better way of considering this is to ask, WHAT is the Father. We have previously established that the Father is the infinite creative source. There is nothing separate from the infinite, and that is how we can understand the second part of the phrase. Heaven is the inner realm of cause within each of us. So “Our Father which art in heaven,” can be metaphysically understood as an address to, “The One infinite source of creation which is rooted in our inner realm of cause.”

For those among you who have studied the structure of affirmative prayer, or spiritual mind treatment, as we teach it in Religious Science, you may recognize this, then, as the first two steps: recognition and unification. Recognition of only one infinite creative source, and unification, or identification of each of us being a magnificent part of the infinite wholeness. There is that within each of us which is cause to all that we experience.

For something to be hallowed, is a recognition of its infinite, holy nature. The nature of the Divine is whole and complete. “Hallowed be thy name,” is a recognition of the holy nature of the infinite as an energy, untouched and pure, consecrated. This is the nature of our inner being. There is no separation. Our individualized nature is an energy, untouched and pure, consecrated.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is a statement of mental equivalence. The infinite creative nature, the Divine will, is expressed in each of us. The infinite heavenly idea is formed and expressed on earth as form. The infinite and the relative are exactly the same.

A demand in consciousness produces a result in form. The inner realm (the kingdom) is present within each of us, and always working constructively, in our favor.

Having rooted the consciousness in the established premise of the creative, we then turn to stating our requirement: “Give us this day, our daily bread.” Bread can be understood as the infinite, life sustaining good. To know that it is ours for the asking each day, this is a statement of claiming that very good. It is a statement of requirement unto the divine Law of Cause and Effect. All supply in our lives is rooted in this Law, and all we need do is make our statement of requirement known.

And then there is a statement which may or may not be as familiar in its phrasing depending on the religious tradition which expresses it.

You may have heard, “Forgive us our debts,” which is the translation I have used today. That is a translation used mainly by Presbyterian and reformed traditions of Christianity. Those in the Catholic, Anglican, Episcopal, and Methodist traditions may have it translated as “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It is also possible you’ve heard “Forgive us our sins.”

So which is right? Well, none of them, and all of them. From a pure translation point of view, the words “debt” and “debtors” is most close to the original Greek.

What is important, as always, is the underlying meaning we attribute to this phrase. This is a call to us to personally release any sense of being owed anything, both externally and internally. A way we might understand being owed anything externally is to believe that our piety requires other’s admiration or respect. To believe this is descend a slippery slope to a sense of moral superiority. This is out of alignment with the deepest sense of unity.

A way that we might believe we are owed anything internally, and this is rooted in the deeper subconscious, is to believe that we “owe” ourselves more than our mental equivalent can supply. When we believe that we are owed more than our mental equivalent can supply we may begin to have thoughts rooted in condemnation for the self because we cannot demonstrate more than our mental equivalent.

A simplified example of this can be quantified in this way: if we have a strong mental tendency that we are limited to an annual income of, say, $40,000 that is the limit that we will have placed on our financial experience. We may think on the surface that we are owed more than that, but until it is a deeply rooted belief, we will never demonstrate that. We either beat ourselves up, or we expand our belief. The choice is entirely up to us. In the meantime, we must let ourselves off the hook for the ways in which we consider ourselves limited. Our life is a journey of the uncovering of our perceived limitations, and the expansion of our consciousness to surpass those perceptions of limitation.

Finally, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” It’s all an inside job. Any temptation is, first and foremost, internal. Any perception of evil is rooted first in our mind. So to be delivered from these things is the mental work we do in New Thought. The path of light is at our core, and when we follow the light, we are lifted out of the darkness.

“For thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever.” Simply put, God is ALL there is.

Amen - literally translated means “it is so.”

And so it is.