The prayer which the Lord taught His disciples to pray comprehends in a summary everything of spiritual life, more than even the heavens can ever come to understand. It contains every rightful human aspiration which men to all eternity can entertain. It is—like all the Old and New Testaments—written in the language of appearances. Yet its words are spirit and are life, full of hidden wisdom which only the humble heart can discern.
When we ask our heavenly Father, "Lead us not into temptation," it is an acknowledgment that nothing happens by chance, but that the Lord's governing hand is over all. He takes account of all things, and makes use even of evil conditions, when they arise, so as to turn their effects into an eventual good. The appearance therefore is that the evils which come upon us—not only the tragedies which result from man's wickedness and disobedience to the laws of God, but also the accidents and misfortunes, the famines and pestilences, for which men cannot be directly blamed, are punishments sent by God. So long as men are evil it is necessary that their first idea of God should be that
He rules with unlimited power, rather than that He is all-forgiving and merciful. Thus the Lord appeared to the Jews to be angry and jealous; and He told them through Isaiah: "I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I Jehovah do all these things." (Isa. 45:6,7)
And now we pray, "Lead us not into temptation. "We know that the Lord, who is Love itself, would never lead us into situations of peril or temptation, and that He is not responsible for the evils which infest us. But we must also acknowledge that the permission of evil is a law of God a law of the greatest mercy, since it allows for human freedom. Evil is never the Divine Will, but human freedom is. Temptations are evils which come upon us from without, and seemingly without our seeking, yet with Divine permission. Temptation is a spiritual struggle, forced upon us by evil spirits. yet the Lord still controls and modifies, restrains and permits, according to His love and wisdom, and therefore we pray Him to protect us against the snares and cunning of the hells. For when we thus approach the Lord for help, the evil of the temptation may be turned into good.
It is man himself, who unwittingly invites temptations. The complex thing which we call the human "heart" presents many contradictions. It may surprise us with explosions of bestial cruelty and uncleanness which staggers our reason, or with generous impulses of which we did not think it capable. For man is only a vessel of life, an instrument responding to the inflowing moods of all manner of heavens and hells. He is a vessel composed of many faculties, degrees, and receptacles. His proprium is in itself wholly perverse and easily inflamed by evil spirits with vainglory and vengence, with sensuality, avarice, envy and lust for power. These evils are indeed tendencies of the heredity that lies slumbering in him until aroused and made his own. Yet over against these, man has also an understanding in which a conscience of truth can be built up from the precepts of the Word and its revealing doctrine.
And doctrine teaches that if man believed and acted from the truth that every good and every truth which is felt or acknowledged in his mind are really from the Lord through heaven, and that every evil and falsity that springs up as his own will and thought are in reality from the influx of hell, he would neither feel pride in the good and thus make it meritorious, nor would he appropriate the evil to himself and thus identify himself with it (DP 320).
It is in order that this saving truth may be impressed upon man's mind that he is permitted to come into states of temptation—in which he feels the conflict of good and evil within him, and thus may recognize that he is neither good nor evil but a vessel receptive of their influx: that he is bonded to neither, but has the freedom to choose what he shall become.
Even when a spiritual conscience has been established as a new will or, as he feels, a "better self," within him, the old proprium is still active, unconsciously influencing his affections and thoughts, causing him to make light of his spiritual responsibilities and turning even the appearances of truth into excuses for his own misdeeds. It is this subtle revolt of the unregenerate natural man which gives occasion for what is called temptation the spiritual temptation referred to in the Lord's Prayer. For this prayer does not refer to the many hesitations, doubts, and tribulations which are caused by the disappointments, dilemmas, and fears of natural life. A man who is devoid of a spiritual conscience feels no struggle between the spiritual man and the natural. If he is harrowed by doubts these concern his self-advantage or reputation, and whatever he decides is from his natural proprium. The remorse he might feel when he realizes the unfortunate consequences of his crimes or vices is not a distress of conscience, but the result of fears and of the conflict of divergent natural affections.
The Writings indicate that in the Christian world today, few are permitted to undergo spiritual temptation; for in a consummated church spiritual truths are so transfused with various falsities that there could be no resistance. Yet it is true that in every religion men can be saved by living uprightly according to the teachings of their church. And if the ambitions of the world come to dominate them the Lord permits that their self-confidence be broken by misfortunes and sickness, and hardships of natural life, so that something of spiritual good may affect them. Such tribulations, however, are not spiritual temptations, but natural trials (AC 762, 8164).
And since we cannot judge of our spiritual state, nor measure our inner strength or know the power of the hells, we must all pray, "Lord, lead us not into temptation." It would be presumptuous for us to invite temptation of any kind, natural or spiritual. We are not to seek contact and intimacy with evil. We are to shun evil and do good, do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. If we court temptation with pride in our supposed power to resist, we are defeated before we begin.
There are those who misunderstand even this simple truth, and who cloister themselves away from the world and spend their time in prayer and fasting. Such do not know that they cannot flee from their own proprium except by forgetting themselves in the sphere of uses to others. It is through the uses of our calling and the obligations of our domestic life that the Lord can best protect us from temptations which we are not equipped to meet. The idle hand and the idle mind are ever most receptive to the influx of evil spirits. Certainly we are to shun pleasures or companionships which we see doing us spiritual harm. Certainly we need to guard ourselves and our dependents from contacts with evils and falsities, which like the leaven of the Pharisees would poison and corrupt our thoughts. "Watch and pray," the Lord forewarns, "lest ye enter into temptation; for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matt. 26:41). Yet where our duties call us, the Lord will protect us. For there He leadeth in the paths of justice and will set a table before us in the presence of our enemies.
A regenerating man cannot shirk the temptations that come to him in the course of duty. If laid on our shoulders we cannot refuse the cross of temptation. "Whosoever will come after Me," the Lord said, "let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me." "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, but a sword..."
But spiritual courage does not do away with either fear or caution. A coward is of course controlled by his fears, while a brave man's fear is placed under the control of his reason. We are allowed to pray that we be excused from drinking the cup of bitterness; but if it is placed in our hands we must say with the Lord in Gethsemane, "Not my will, but Thine, be done." Temptation, or the contact with evil, is never the Lord's will. But the way which leads through temptations, is still the Lord's way.
Because man is infected with hereditary and actual evils, it is indeed necessary for him to undergo temptations in order that his rational mind may be subdued and become spiritual (AE 654:62, 730:31). The lusts of the loves of self and the world can be broken only by means of temptations. Without victory in temptations man cannot be regenerated, nor can he enter into any new enlightenment (AC 5036, HH 194). Hence we are taught that the great multitudes of spirits who are in the good of life according to religions in which there are no genuine truths, undergo temptations in the other life; whereby their falsities are shaken off and truths implanted. And those who are let into such temptations, or vastations of falsity, are all saved. Even those who die as infants and are therefore educated in heaven, are admitted into a species of temptation as they grow up, by being brought into contact with spirits in the world of spirits (AC 3407, HH 342, SD 3548).
Although it is inevitable that temptations must he endured, and must be faced when they confront us, men have no obligation to seek them out. Man has a simpler duty—to cultivate an aversion to his evils because they are against the Divine will and precept. It is on man's life of daily repentance that his salvation depends. His exercise of free choice, his recurrent resistance to the lure of some evil longing and his acts of self-compulsion to do what is just and right and learn what is true and good—all take place in the conscious externals of his thought, and are not what is meant by spiritual temptations. Yet they prepare man for victory.
The real battles of temptation are not fought by man. They are combats between evil spirits and angels for man's soul; and while they go on, man grasps scarcely a thousandth part of the battle, for he is then in so bewildered and obscure a state that he can only vaguely sense the spiritual issues that are at stake. He feels an inward anxiety because he is being let into the states of his evil proprium—into an unbearable consciousness of his faults and of the sins of his past. Evil spirits then suspend his power to think from his own faith and to will from his own love, that is, from his spiritual conscience. They intercept his communication with heaven, insinuate scandals against truths and goods, taunt him with hypocrisy, raise scruples of conscience about unimportant things to accuse him, and take away his delight in truths, insinuating doubts even about the Lord's presence and aid (HD 196).
In this mood he is crushed in spirit, comes into deep despair and even bitterness. And this is aggravated if the temptation is accompanied by ill health, by a loss of honor, or by worldly failures. The keener a man's conscience is, or the greater his inward love for the spiritual things which are endangered, the more grievous is the temptation.
Yet the temptation must run its course. The Lord in His mercy overlooks man's indignations and remonstrances, but He cannot often attend to the desperate prayers of those who are in temptation (AC 8179). Instead He is fighting man's battle in the spiritual world. There His angels draw forth the interior contents of the truths which the man still clings to but only superficially understands. And man, feeling himself forsaken, does not realize that the angels are using these truths of his own faith as weapons in this spiritual combat. For the interior ideas within those truths can meet and defeat the interior evils which the devils have sought to impute to the man—evils such as man never dreamt of but which were lying latent as logical implications within the external evils of which man had been guilty, or as hidden lusts within his unexplored heredity.
In states of temptation, man will not profit by relying merely on prayer or giving up his active life of use. Yet the temptation is not over until he comes to acknowledge that from his own power he cannot desist from evil or penetrate the subleties with which the hells obscure his mind. His pride of self must be broken, and he must see and confess that the battle is the Lord's (HD 187-200).
And the Lord—in His second advent—has now uncovered and rendered impotent the designs by which evil spirits seek to beguile men's minds and extinguish what little sparks of spiritual love may still burn in human hearts. He has provided His church with an armory of faith against the hours of temptation.
For the time is coming when spiritual temptation will again and increasingly become the means of opening the channels of influx from heaven. During temptations, man, being in externals, perceives only the evil things which the spirits inject. But when the combat is past man enters undeserving—into the fruits of victory. His spirit is admitted among angels, and joy and consolation inflow and fill even his natural mind which is humbled and content. His cup of life runneth over. And of him who holds fast to the Lord during temptations, this promise is given: "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem which cometh down out of heaven from My God: and My new name."
Luke 11:4; Isa. 45:1-19; Matt. 10:24-39; AC 6324-6325
