False comfort
My latest column at Catholic Thing would seem to be on “False comfort” — or, comforts; I was unsure whether to use the singular or plural in the title I suggested. There is a Whole Earth Catalogue of potential false comforts, indeed:
“There are so many ways to derive false comfort from the situation of the Catholic Church today — in Canada, USA, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Britain, &c — that one becomes bewildered sometimes, trying to choose between them. Each is so easy to kick away. …”
On reflection, they are all variations on the same old false comfort, & so the singular was more appropriate. One might call it “worldly optimism.” Those who put their hope in the things of this world are at an intrinsic disadvantage to those who don’t, in the prospect of Futurity. This is something clearly explained through the Gospels, & supported through Epistles, Fathers & Doctors, & in every other orthodox expression of the Catholic Christian faith. But it is not something people readily understand.
That, I suspect, is one of the reasons persons confronting personal, familial, or societal disaster so often turn to God. For that is what it takes for them to get it. There may have been a glimmer of understanding, but it took disaster to bring it home: that there is nothing in & of this world to which we may look with security for salvation.
Which is not to contradict the extraordinary beauty of this world, & the goodness & truth we may well have found here. These things are transient. They are our “intimations of immortality,” but not the thing itself. There are moments, even down here on Earth, when time stands still for us. Often they seem absurd, & thus irrelevant to the lives we are leading. From the “no nonsense” mind they may be dismissed as trivial, as “something I must have eaten,” the way Scrooge rejects his own visitation in the Christmas Carol. The word “sublime” has been used to describe the scenery in such moments, where the word “beautiful” seems no longer to suffice. They remain in the memory, from time but dislocated: as if with no before, no after, only a “during.” I associate them with the light of grace, which shines beyond space & time, into the little box of our creaturely nesting; through its walls. No human born was ever deprived of such glimpses of Paradise; I am convinced by both faith & experience that this is the case. But what do we make of it?
There is one way to turn: towards Christ, & with him through the Cross of Calvary to the Resurrection. But what is the alternative?
A close friend of a close friend recently committed suicide. To the mind of reason, this is “the ultimate subjective act,” in contrast to murder, “the ultimate objective act.” See: T.G. Masaryk, whose pioneering sociological work, Suicide & the Meaning of Civilization (Vienna 1881, translated 1970) was effectively plagiarized but mangled by Durkheim a decade later. Masaryk I think nailed the key feature in societies that were liberalizing, industrializing, & becoming “agnostic” & “post-Protestant.” It was the extraordinary spike in the suicide statistics, to levels inconceivable in any “traditional society.” This was the key indicator of “progress,” as it were.
It is the key indicator for hope in this world, as I have come to realize, thinking back over the list of people I have known, who succumbed to their despair when faced with a disaster beyond their capacity to assimilate: selbstmord, “self murder.” To the older Catholic mind, this was the worst form of murder imaginable. For no greater rejection of God can be imagined.
Conversely joy, & especially joy in real adversity, is the mark of true belief. (“By their fruits ye shall know them.”) We cannot possibly count on happy times, ahead of us in this world; or even on happier times, should they depend on our own contrivance. But if we set our sights farther, it might not be so bad.
I always liked the way C.S. Lewis said it, something like “He who believes in this life and not the next gets neither; he who believes in the next life gets both.”
What gets me most about the current trend is that our kids are murdering themselves. We lost one recently, a wonderful 21 year-old woman, standout student at Northwestern, junior year semester in London, two weeks from returning home for Thanksgiving, hung herself in her room.
I blame London somehow, along with the atheist mother and Northwestern idiocy – it was clear from the testimonials that she had been steeped in the leftist love of neighbor without love of God (see James Schall’s fine piece in Catholic Thing on just this topic).
But London, I think, has turned dark and hollow, at least as I know imagine it. Like the gruesome statues she photographed at the museum of modern art there and put on her Facebook page while, no doubt, she was thinking of what she would soon do.
They say the teen suicide rate has gone up 450% in America since prayer was excised from the schools in 1962.
And of course the murder suicides — which may be the ultimate in nihilistic expression.
It is in the nature of a culture of death to die. The culture part is mere marketing and sales, death is the product. The antagonistic attitude towards Christianity has a lot to do with the product Christians are selling so effectively: life.
Nearly everyday we hear of someone, like that poor man who killed several people in California and is now trying to avoid capture, who tries to make a statement by means of killing. Acts that once were reserved to the very rich or to heads of state are now at the reach of nearly anyone. Go and kill, kill yourself.
If Materialism has proved anything is its being incapable of delivering happiness. At best we hang out in quiet desperation watching our toys, our homes, our cars and wondering what will happen to all that once we are gone. Things turn old so fast and so do we.
To that Christ responds with the immense felicitas of the saints. A happiness impervious to want, to pain, to utmost desolation. What a great mystery. The Materialist sees that as a drug, the opium of the peoples. How else could they see it?
Suicide doesn’t seem to follow a pattern a lot of the time. A friend I used to go BB-gun-hunting with in the 1950s was told by his mother he was to go to summer camp. He said he didn’t want to go, but she thought it would be good for him. He played a touch football match that evening, and said he wasn’t going to any summer camp. He then went home and shot himself with a .22 rifle. I’ve had other friends, including a retired cop, who apparently committed suicide for no known reason.
In Richard Cory, Edwin Arlington Robinson caught very well the bizarre, often meaningless, nature of suicide. There were considerable economic troubles in the late 1890s when the poem was written, but Richard Cory is not mentioned in the poem as having any financial problems. No troubles with women or with depression are noted either. The poor looked up to him as someone who had it all.
In the end of times the whole world goes communistic. It seems increasingly possible that a World Authority will have to nationalize the banks to avoid a huge economic collapse due to massive debt and overgrown Nanny State obligations. I would almost predict that having children will be forbidden and perhaps a few human beings will be produced as needed, via technology as in Brave New World. Euthanasia, death penalty, forced labor camps may become more common. No way to hide. May be that is what Jesus had in mind in his “Little Apocalypse” of Matthew 24 (also Mark 13) when He said: “unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” Truly the elect, the saints of this dark age are to be preserved, otherwise the system would kill them first of all.
Maineman, I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of youth suicide, but claiming a 450% increase since the sixties and implying that it is because of the removal of prayer from schools, is certainly scandalous, but untrue. The teen suicide rate in the US in 1969 was 8-9 per 100,000. Between then and 2007 it gradually increased to a maximum of around 13 per 100,000 in the eighties, and gradually decreased to around 10 per 100,000 by 2007. Hardly the 450% increase that you claimed.
What is interesting is that the increases that were observed between the sixties and the eighties was much higher in rural areas than in economically strained urban cores.
The cause of youth suicide is not as simple as removal of prayer from school, or the breakdown of the traditional family. Even 10 per 100,000 is ten too many, but it isn’t going to be fixed by forcing kids to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
These two powerful essays, sharing the same title, must be read together. There is something uncharitable — because unChristian (Deus caritas est) — about consolations born of (dubious) demographic triumphs. “God desires that all men be saved” — this is not a Gospel to the Remnant, but to all.
The fight of course is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers and princes in high places. And it is these same forces, the rulers of the present age, that have brilliantly and mercilessly seduced us into believing that the joys we experience here and now have their true home in the here and now.
On this belief, what price would one not pay, what price would one not exact from another, to forever secure these joys, here, now, during his only sojourn in their native land? For I am persuaded that so many of our sins stem from the anxious grasping for transient joys, as though they were the natural bounty of this world rather than the relief packages that God sends from a far off land to refresh us on our pilgrimage here below. But relief implies pain, and pain points to the Cross. But the Cross leads to the Resurrection.
“Here we have no lasting home”. If we loved the way He commanded, how could we not share these words of comfort with all those who, mistaking the transient for the eternal, and despairing of finding a lasting joy after the last fleeting pleasure has passed, now seek in suicide the escape from a world that is bountiful no more? How can we not but exhort these parched souls: “Live! So that you may one day live abundantly, sated with the waters from whose spring you were created to drink eternally.”
If this is indeed good news, then it is one that needs to be heard by all those who, in their folly, have pitched their tents here.
“Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” Catholics in remnant communities would do well keep these words of Saint Paul forever before their minds lest they too wake one day to discover they have become as parched as the suicide.
All beautifully written and patiently explained by David.
Yes, indeed, the “ultimate in nihilistic expression”. The medical “professionals” are afraid to label anyone as dangerously insane (perhaps out of fear they might harm their self esteem).
I believe another contributing factor was when Solicitors General became unwilling to sign death warrants or execution orders. It made the world look crazy as well as dangerous when murderers were allowed to live in protected custody while killers of the unborn, and the dangerously insane, were allowed to walk free.
Acartia, I am aware that correlation is not the same thing as causation, except when it is. And I didn’t bother to check on the statistic that I had heard.
Since you prompted a brief search, I found the following:
Between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, the suicide rate among U.S. males aged 15-24 more than tripled (from 6.3 per 100,000 in 1955 to 21.3 in 1977). Among females aged 15-24, the rate more than doubled during this period (from 2.0 to 5.2).
Between 1980-1996, the suicide rate for African-American males aged 15-19 has also doubled.
To be fair, neither you nor I know what the presence or absence of reciting the Lord’s Prayer can or cannot do. It seems very glib to dismiss the influences of that and, especially, of the breakdown of the traditional family as possible causes of what does appear to be a scandalous increase in youth suicide, albeit apparently less than 450%.
To my mind, the gravest evil of the statist-materialist is to deny those at the bottom the comforts of belief in something better. The poor in a materialist totalitarian state are just as miserable in a material sense as any other poor – and maybe more so because of shortages and the lack of human worth and dignity that a tyrannical state requires, but even if (just to make a point) there is no heaven, to remove the expectation and comfort of belief in ultimate justice is to render the miserable hopeless as well. If religion is the opiate and Papa Joe has decreed that you should be starved to death to make way for collective farms, bring on the opiate! What could it hurt? But the thing about evil (and any death culture that grows from it) is the need that its practitioners experience to crush and terrorize and to demand obeisance. Your dignity must be seen to be broken so that the dignity of the party (the chosen, the elite) may be propped up with the pieces. Not only is one not allowed to leave the physical borders of the totalitarian state (may I see your papers?) one’s imagination is required to be present. Evil requires affirmation. Whenever individuals are coerced into affirming what they believe to be wrong, the Lord of the Flies is setting the agenda. To indulge in mass murder is bad, but to plot mass soul death is worse, much worse.
When people believe that all that exists is their life on earth, then suicide certainly becomes more attractive when things go wrong, as they often will with depression, sickness or sudden financial problems. Those who really do believe in God, see that there is another life beyond this one, so they are less apt to kill themselves. Enduring suffering is part of the Culture of Life, not the Culture of Death that the godless (who usually favour abortion and euthanasia) support.
There is still that unknown aspect to suicide, however. Only God really knows what is going on in the minds of those who take their own lives.
Maineman, those numbers appear to be more in line with the ones that I have seen. But what you didn’t mention was that from the ’90s until very recently, the rates have decreased to approximately what they were in the ’60s. My only point here is that people are willing to blame the increase in teen suicide on the decline in faith when the two trends correspond, but when the teen suicide rate drops, the same people tend to be silent.
Does the decline in faith have an effect? I am sure that for some teens, the fear of not getting into heaven may influence the decision, but I have not seen any numbers that compare teen suicides from religious families against those of non-religious families.
But the problem with teen suicide is not the presence or lack of religion. The problem is why they feel that their problems are so serious that suicide is considered an option.
I’ve known two individuals who survived their suicides; let these serve as anecdotal examples. Both would-be suicides were women; both used sleeping pills. One downed the pills with shots of whiskey, one pill at a time; as she went under she occupied herself with thoughts of how everyone was going to miss her and how everyone was going to pay after she was gone. The other swallowed her bottle and then phoned me to talk to her as she went to sleep. Sadness and grief were clearly present, but even more pronounced was a terrible narcissism, a monumental disdain for everyone and everything around them. They were victims less of their circumstances than of their own unrealized expectations that others should recognize them for the precious things they were.
Then we have something like the 1920s stock brokers jumping off buildings after the market crash. The cause was perhaps less the loss of money as the loss of social standing and peers; it was deemed to be too great a burden to bear.
Which is the point, I think: it’s not the problems per se that resulted in despair, disdain, and suicide but the inability to face the problems. The Great Depression, by comparison, saw relatively few suicides; the populace of the time was better equipped morally and psychologically to carry their burdens.
In terms of the psychology of the matter, an era of faith that recognizes the immortality of the soul has infinitely more to offer than one who professes the annihilation of the individual at death. When one recognizes a Divine Being at work behind the machinery of the world, then all problems are passing and limited, and even death is not an ending but a change. Misguided beliefs that death is final or that it ends the suffering can make suicide seem more viable.
I’ve seen stats on the rate of suicides among believers vs. non-believers, but the studies are profoundly flawed. Without exception the people of faith are described along the lines of “someone who attends services once or more a month.” The problem here is that this is foreign to how people of faith view the matter; specifically, a Catholic who goes to Mass only once a month is derelict of duty. I’ve never seen a study that compares non-believers with people who practice their faith as the members of the faith define the thing. My hypothesis is that if one corrected for this error in the research, at least with Catholics, one would find that suicides among the faithful are rare things compared to the liberal, industrialized, and “agnostic” and “post-Protestant” society.
Acartia, I’m suspicious of any contention that the teen suicide rate, or the suicide rate in general, has declined to the cultural “pre-morbid” levels of the ’50s. A drop to the levels of the ’60s doesn’t tell us much about what’s going on, since the ’60s were when things went seriously south.
I started to try to devise the outline of a study that would get us to the bottom of the question of how faith does or does not account for “suicidality” and quickly realized that it would be pretty much impossible to do well.
That being said, I think that your last paragraph above is self-contradictory. The problem is clearly about what life means or does not mean to someone, and that is precisely about religion, i.e. what one has faith in. It seems obvious that a belief system that involves feeling a small part of something much greater than the self would necessarily lead to very different judgements about life and death than one that assumes we are just matter.
One of the doctrines of post-Protestant America might be crudely tagged, “Sola Statistica.” It holds that, in order to understand anything, we must consult a mush of statistics, & no position is valid unless statistics are cited. By this method, most intelligent thought is obviated. In particular, the most obvious & crucial qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) distinctions are omitted from consideration.
Statistics, more than guns, are “the great equalizer.” They put the mindless on a level playing field with the mindful.
The Masaryk book I mentioned made a statistical argument: the dramatic correlation between “industrialization” & suicide rates, wherever statistics could be found. (Thereafter, the suicide rates go up & down, from place to place, for whatever local reasons, but they are now at a far higher level than in pre-industrial societies.) This was part of a larger, extremely intelligent argument about developments in civilization: things like atomization & alienation, loss of faith & the sense of belonging. It was written in an age when sociology was itself being pioneered, & was still an interesting discipline; before it had itself been reduced by this doctrine of “Sola Statistica.”
It is hard to argue with people who throw statistics at you, casually. As the saying goes, “76.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot.” It takes a great deal of time & effort to trace where the statistics came from, how they were gathered & to what purpose, what were the constraints, &c. In almost every case where I have, as a hack journalist, gone to the trouble of tracing to source, I have found that I’ve been snowed. Often, not knowingly snowed, for the person spraying the statistics had himself been snowed.
Constant repetition has made many quite fraudulent statistical assertions part of our post-modern lore. Statistics can give ideas that would appear quite ridiculous, if thought through logically, the aura of “science.” By the time one is in a position to refute them, the conversation has long since moved on. We are then dealing with fresh statistical sprays, working upon the minds of the gullible.
One of the reasons suicide has increased since the olden days is the lack of stigma attached to it now. There is some stigma, but nothing like there was in the past.
I read somewhere that some ancient empire somewhere was experiencing an outbreak of suicides by young girls. Hanging oneself had actually become something of a fashion-driven epidemic. The emperor decreed that any girl killing herself in future would be left hanging until her corpse rotted and fell to the ground. The suicides by girls came to an abrupt end. (Vanity thy name is woman etc.)
In France in the 1700s people who had committed suicide had their bodies dragged around behind a horse through their communities. This was obviously to teach the living that suicide was a disgraceful act. In some communities in Europe, the goods of those who had killed themselves were confiscated by the state.
For Catholics there was almost always burial outside consecrated ground for those who had committed the mortal sin of self-murder. As far as I know, these separate cemeteries no longer exist.
Unfortunately, I can’t see any of the above remedies returning any time soon.
Acartia: “But it isn’t going to be fixed by forcing kids to recite the Lord’s Prayer.”
I accept what you said before this, but your conclusion is wild. Simply wild. Surely you see this?
David, the issue is not about the numbers, it is about the conclusions and correlations drawn from them. With the exception of coroners misidentifying the cause of death, the numbers are quite sound. At least during the last half century. Arguing that suicide rates today are much higher than in pre industrial days assumes that suicides in pre industrial times were accurately identified. Frankly, I don’t know if they were or not.
But I have noticed that the people who dismiss statistics are the first to use them if they think that they favour their argument. For example, those that oppose homosexuality and same sex marriage will frequently use statistics about STDs, promiscuity and average duration of gay relationships. Anti choice advocates are more than willing to bring forward the numbers related to complications from abortions. Those that oppose birth control often bring up the statistical risks of blood clots and breast cancer with use of the pill.
Statistics are just a tool. An extremely valuable tool when properly interpreted, but misleading when not.
But any time that someone claims a consequence to something, they are making a statistical prediction. When you say that the removal of religion from schools will have a negative impact on society, you are saying that these negative consequences will be observable and measurable. If you claim that allowing same sex marriage will weaken the institution of marriage, you are predicting some measurable impacts.
If you are going to criticize the conclusion drawn from the numbers, fair enough. Draw attention to the flawed assumptions, or the flawed sampling techniques, or the inherent bias in the design, but simply stating that statistics is the problem just shows a complete lack of understanding of statistics.
Mister Acartia, you have nearly totally — let’s say 97.39% — misunderstood what I’ve said. Let me rephrase for your edification:
First, I wasn’t referring to flawed statistical studies, per se. I was referring to the use of cherry-picked, oversimplified, dubious, & downright made up from scratch statistics — in “debate.” It is when I go to the original studies that I see that I’ve been snowed.
Second, in each of our social studies, we are looking at whole constellations of phenomena — a very few precisely measureable, the great majority quite intangible. The statistical mindset works on statistics alone. It thus refuses to recognize very large things that are dead obvious.
For instance: the destruction of the traditional family. We can find some stray statistical indicators to show this & that — divorce rates, births out of wedlock, youth crime rates, whatever. But the catastrophe is only vaguely indicated by such things, & each figure may itself be misleading. (To compare a number from 2012 with a number from 1962, for instance: totally different world; totally different social environments & expectations.)
You are looking at a whole society, & human souls, as if we are all part of a machine. That is what AGS appears to be fritzing about: the notion that anyone sane could be arguing that e.g. for such-&-such a rate of forced Lord’s Prayer saying in the public schools, teen suicides will fall by so-&-so much. Surely no one could be so fatuous.
And yet that’s precisely what governments (& economists & social scientists) do: measure inputs & outputs as if human beings were interchangeable parts in a great big machine called “society.” We are not. We have souls. No two human beings are the same. Not even identical twins. Not even the cloned people in our progressive eugenic future.
Acartia, what is “anti choice advocates” supposed to mean above if you are touting accuracy in communication? Can whether a human being lives or dies be defined as a mere “choice”? This is a typical example of dehumanizing language that attempts to disguise or smother what is really being said.
Acartia’s point about stats being used to oppose homosexuality, same sex marriage, and birth control and to support pro-life positions is itself contradictory. What he neglects to mention is that the people behind the efforts he faults are trying to persuade folks who ignore what cannot be reduced to a statistic, or who have indicated that they will disregard qualitative or moral arguments. It also seems hard going to fault the pro-family, pro-life crowd for taking issue with bogus Kinsey numbers when the “10% of all populations are gay” canard keeps showing up. If somebody didn’t try to refute the bogus data with correct information, the misleading information would stand. And as David points out, even that task is a small piece of the whole picture.
David’s point is telling. We are in fact living through a moral catastrophe. It is at once obvious and hidden. It is obvious to anyone with a sense of right and wrong, but hidden because the definitions of what constitutes moral behavior have been continually downgraded to match the decline in public virtue. The process of definitional adjustment has been going on for forty years, but there are highlights.
When the president of the US was caught lying about screwing a young intern in his place of business during office hours, the organs of information (Time, Newsweek, the various Times Newspapers and our glowing box faces) all ran stories that lying was normal and that one’s sexual activities were a private matter. At the critical juncture, to save the job of a political personality, the virtues were sacrificed for temporary political advantage.
Immediately, schoolchildren were found to be practising oral sex on each other because they had been assured by their leader and the responsible adults writing and speaking for the masses that oral sex was not sex, but a kind of an appetizer. The man caught lying about his infidelities was recently feted as father of the year and is now a millionaire and a billionaire and is considered an eminence grise of his party. And he is! Statistics were used to show that everyone lies and the implication drawn out with forceps that ergo – it’s no biggie. Now the government runs on lies. No one is left to say it isn’t right.
There is a shooting of multiple strangers about every week, sometimes more often. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was 7 individuals and it went into the history books. It was done for monetary gain and power. In that sense, it is understandable. Our school and theater shootings and the camp shooting in Scandinavia were done for no other purpose than acting out some sense of grievance. Yet I have seen statistics that show that mass shootings have actually gotten better (meaning less of them) — really?
So far, we have seen gluttony, pride, anger, lust and sloth removed from the list of moral issues. Such are now considered normal and society is asked to accommodate them with wider seats, more deference for the elite, affirmation of sex without commitment or consequence, violent public displays by anarchists wearing masks, and larger entitlement payments for the physically able.
Statistics show that things are getting better in the big recovery and in society as we move ever deeper into Utopia. Our lying eyes tell us otherwise.
But David, you talk of souls.
Acartia is an evolutionist. He has yet to come to grips with the obvious fact, based on nothing statistical, that either man partakes of the absolute or is nothing. As an evolutionist, he thinks that we are better than the humans who came before and less than those who will come after. We are not created equal, as the existence of the soul implies, nor, for that matter, can we have any so-called rights, and only those of us designated by the “progressives” are permitted to pursue happiness. Certainly a child in the womb has no such freedom, as Viscount points out.
Acartia, I don’t think that David was arguing that statistics are themselves a problem but rather that they are a problem when the fallacy of misplaced concreteness is committed.
Well said Maineman, bowing down in homage to statistics is dogma — a pathetic dogma — the dogma of the (I know best) self.
Maineman, as a so called evolutionist, I do not believe that I am better than the humans who came before or less than those that will come after. Evolution has never been about continual improvement. It is only about adapting to changing environments.
But that is off topic. I noticed that the powers that be have demoted me from a Lord to a mere Mister. I must try to redeem my title.
My original comment, which speaks directly to David’s follow-up response, was simply in response to your out-of-the-air statistic that there was a 450% increase in teen suicides. And I admit to have done this on occasion, so I don’t want to appear overly critical.
There are four ways that statistics can be used in a debate: 1) incorrectly reported to make a point (e.g., the previously mentioned 450% increase); 2) intentionally misrepresented to make a point (e.g., David’s cherry-picking); 3) unintentionally mis-represented (interpretation with a bias); and 4) properly interpreted (stating assumptions, weaknesses and biases).
In my mind the most dangerous is number three. The first two do not generally survive even the most cursory of examinations, but the third is much more difficult to address because it is not intentional. For example, you and I may see the exact same trends in suicide rates but, because of our different backgrounds, we may interpret them completely different.
I have never really understood why in our Lord’s prayer there is ” And lead us not into temptation”. Surely God will not deliberately lead us into temptation.
The disciple of Christ though is guaranteed that he will face tribulation and persecution. Facing torture and certain death, it would be tempting to put an end to it before the torturer set about his task. In this context, one should then read “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” makes sense. The greater evils being of attempting to thwart God’s plan, and self murder. Job comes to mind. What if he had put an end to it by committing suicide – Satan would have won..
I would deeply appreciate your thoughts.
DaveP, my own take on that is to imagine myself as a young child waiting to cross a busy road safely and not wanting to be left to cross on my own — unaided — which would be tantamount to being left prey to all sorts of temptations and evil outcomes. And the text, “but deliver, …” etc. is the plea that Our Father swoop us up and carry us safely to the other side. Simplistic maybe but all in line with our need for Grace to follow faithfully in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.
The clause “Lead us not into temptation” is a humble and trusting petition for God’s help to enable us to overcome temptation when He permits us to experience the allurements of evil. God does not positively intend evil for anyone; He does, however, allow evil to occur (1) so that people will have an opportunity to overcome genuine hardship and so earn merit, or (2) to punish bad conduct. That some people endure greater hardships and trials than others is a mystery to those of us who are looking at the world’s tapestry from the back side; God’s justice is intact (Cf. Job), and one day we will pass to the front of the tapestry and see what the Master Weaver has been stringing together (Cf. Judgment Day, when God’s designs are exonerated).
Recall Moses squaring off against Pharaoh, and how God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” The expression is comparable to a colloquialism: what is meant is not that God actively hardens the heart of a man, but that due to a man’s evil proclivities God withholds the gratuitous grace and permits a fellow to be left to his own devices to face his own trials and depraved appetites. It takes the favor of grace to defeat evil, and nobody has a prior claim on God’s favor: God bestows it where He chooses, and he favors men of good will; men of bad character or bad faith forfeit this privilege. As the angels sang at the first Christmas, “Peace on earth to men of good will.”
Thus, “lead us not into temptation” means “do not allow me to face any inevitable evil without your Divine assistance.” We should make this request of God at least every day.
Stephen Sparrow and Toma:
Thank you. Thats been very helpful.
Toma wrote: As the angels sang at the first Christmas, “Peace on earth to men of good will.”
Yes, “men of good will” is also conditional. Does it mean that not all men are granted grace?
Otosus, the last question would have evoked the answer “What is that to you? You follow me!”
Thank you again for your thoughts.