Illusion or reality

Thursday night, I continued to study the Lord's prayer in my basics study and we came across "lead us not into temptation". I asked What is temptation? Silence and then simple words like flesh and sin etc ... What is temptation? What does it look like? 20 minutes later we struggle to a realization of the power and pseudo-authority of temptation and issues of choice and God's will and what that means.

I think discernment is all about knowing where something comes from. What Walter Wink calls unmasking the powers. Temptation is a distraction which takes us away from where we belong, from who we truly are, from our purpose and meaning in life.

Jargon is a deep enemy of meaning because jargon or even more so platitudes drive us into meaningless conversation. It can take us from reality into illusion that everything is right or OK. I posted about Noam Chomsky's concision (here) earlier in relation to mission statements and to be honest I'm beginning to find that a lot of faith talk falls into to the trite and meaninglessness of illusions.

Even the Lord's prayer can become meaningless, jargon, platitudes unless we are willing to grasp at, to reach out, to a relationship. That relationship is not nebulous but concrete because it is personal in essence. That is why we now pray "Our Father" ... and ask "deliver us from the power of the evil one": Reaching for reality asking to be delivered/released from illusion.