The Lord's Prayer
by
Bishop Hugo Lj. Odhner

    The essential within all religion is to wish for the fulfillment of the will of God. In worshiping the Lord we mean to acknowledge that His power is over all, that His ways are just and true, and that the ends of His providence are eternally good.

    We therefore bow our hearts before the Lord, conscious that the ways of man, if unguided by Him, will lead only toward evil and folly. We ask for strength to put our own will aside and to resist the alluring schemes and projects which our self-intelligence has formed. This may seem to a man like forsaking his delights and sacrificing his very life. But even though he resolved thus to surrender his own selfish will completely to the will of God, this cannot be accomplished by any sudden act or decision. For man can never be entirely severed from his own past; and any changes of state that he might undergo can be effected only by stages and degrees.

    Indeed, the life which man feels within him as his own is not really his. Nor is it ever fully within his own control. Man is but a vessel into which life inflows—an instrument responsive to influences from many sources, some perceptible, some hidden. His emotions and feelings are borrowed from generations long passed on. His thoughts are largely reflections of the opinions of others, and are often adopted by an unconscious mimicry. His moods and motivations, even when they appear to be directly caused by outward circumstances, worldly situations, or bodily states, are reflexes from unseen hosts of spirits and angels. And whatever media are employed—spiritual and natural—the final source from which life inflows is the Lord, the infinite God. From Him it flows immediately into our inmost souls for the maintenance of the human form of our spirit and of our body; and it also inflows mediately through the spiritual world and through nature, which both serve as agencies in His all-provident government.

    In its immediate influx, life is pure and unpervertible. But in its transmission through finite agencies, life is limited, refracted into many forms, determined towards different ends; and often—by a transflux through the hells and through the evil minds of men—it is perverted or misappropriated for ends that go counter to the will of God.

    And it is this perversely determined life which man receives and feels as his own will—as selfish delight. For from heredity the very structure of man's natural mind has become disposed to invite only such influx as will enable him to indulge in sensual delights—in delights that enhance his self-importance and individual gain, in loves of self and of the world. Influx is always according to the form and state of the receiving vessel. And only so far as the vessels of our mind can be changed, only so far can the will of the flesh, the will of man, be surrendered, and a new will be formed which is in accord with the order and intent of the Creator. The promise is indeed given that "he that loseth his life shall find it." Man suffers no loss in doing the will of God, but gains a life more abundant.

    Only the Lord can think and will from Himself. But our doctrine discloses that the essential human is "to think and will from God" (DP 293). And this is possible to man because his thought and his will are not self-derived, but come by influx from others. His mind is formed not only from hereditary tendencies but from constant contact with others. Thereby he comes into a state of freedom and can compare truth with falsity and good with evil, and thus choose that life which he would have as his own choose to think and will from what is of Divine order, or else—from the loves and phantasies of self-love alone.

    Thy will be done! These words were voiced by our Lord in His supreme temptation in Gethsemane, when He was about to relinquish the separate life of His assumed Human. His sacrifice no man can ever measure, for man is not required to surrender the appearances of finite self-life. Man, by patient endeavor, may Surmount and subdue the affections of his own native will; yet he is not asked to put off his finite nature, but merely to employ his God-given faculties for the furtherance of the Divine will in the limited sphere of his own life. The kingdom of God is to be established within the field of man's free cooperation.

    The laws of the Divine providence therefore ordain that the will of God should be disclosed to men by Divine revelation, so that man may in freedom think and will as if from himself, yet from the Lord; for when he acts willingly from the Lord's teaching, he acts and wills from the Lord, and not from himself, yet as from himself (TCR 506). Me acts and wills from freedom, in accordance with his reason as formed from the Lord's instruction and in accord with a perception of the Lord's will. Wherever a human race exists on the uncounted earths of the universe, the Lord's will is in some way revealed, and His order, which is the law of love and charity, the law of reformation and regeneration, is in some manner made clear, according to the needs of each human being and the genius of each race. On our globe this has been done by the inspired, written Word and by doctrine derived from it; a Word differently given to successive churches which have served to promote the kingdom of the Lord.

    It is through the Church that the Divine truth concerning the Lord's will and purpose is being made known. For this reason, the Lord's Prayer voices our petition for salvation in this order: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as in heaven so upon the earth." The kingdom with its message of Truth, must come to show the will of God, that this may be done on earth as it is done in heaven: done by men, in obedience to the revealed Truth, and done in freedom according to the rational sight of that truth.

    Much merely human sentiment has been read into the prayer, "Thy will be done." For men are wont to use this pious phrase as a sign of despair or as a passing acquiescence in conditions as they are, rather than as a rallying cry to more fervent labor in the Lord's vineyard, a call to do battle against the evils which infest us from within and without. In times of anguish and temptation, when the forces of evil seem triumphant, man must indeed become resigned to the fact that even the uninvited presence of evil and the crude necessities which obstruct progress and hamper our usefulness, are permissions of the Divine providence which mercifully prevents the worse dangers which it foresees. But let it not be thought that what is of the Divine permission is what is meant by the will of God which we pray may be done on earth as it is done in heaven. In states of temptation, doubt, and obscurity, man's perception of the will of God is blunted. He confuses what is merely of permission with that which is of the Divine will, and holds the Lord responsible for conditions which are of man's making—often pretending that God countenances or approves the violence and deceit of human ambition.

    This is indicated in the Lord's words to the Pharisees: "Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives. But from the beginning it was not so..." "What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." (Matt. 19:6)

    From the beginning it was not so. In heaven it is not so. Yet there is no contradiction between the law of human freedom (which necessarily involves the possibility and permission of evil) and the law of Divine government (AC 2447). Both are laws of the Divine love. Both are the tools of mercy and compassion. Yet in human life, these laws of order can be separated from good—separated from the Will of God which they contain and then they are turned into rods of iron, into bonds wherein no mercy can be seen.

    But our prayer is, "Thy will be done as in heaven, so upon the earth." In heaven, the inmost end of creation is perceived. The wisdom of the angels consists in understanding the modes by which they can carry this end into effect. The end or purpose of creation is a society of immortal spirits in which all varieties of human values, all the celestial, spiritual, and natural loves by which human happiness is measured, are so wisely subordinated and ordered by a selfless love of uses that they come to constitute a united heaven of innocence and peace—a kingdom of human souls who can receive the gifts of life and respond to the love of their Maker.

    Nothing less than this eternal heaven is worth striving for and praying for. Yet this heaven can never be formed unless the will of God be done on earth. For it is of human spirits, born on earth, that heaven must be constituted. The legends about the creation of a hierarchy of angels before the formation of mankind, are but a part of a Jewish-Christian mythology. It is within human beings only that angelic minds can be shaped. And the process of their formation is called a regeneration, a new birth; implying the birth of a new will within man's understanding, whereby the sensual will can be controlled and put aside and man be ruled by a conscience built up from rational truth and spiritual love.

    Every man, if endowed with something of conscience from a faith in Divine truths, has within him a "heaven" as well as an "earth". His "earth" is his natural mind—his sensual nature that is kindred to the beasts. His "heaven" is his new will or conscience in which the will of God is obeyed. And the prayer of our every moment must be that this will of God (accepted in the idealism and faith of our inner spirit and reason) may be established also in the thoughts and imaginations of our natural mind and in our outer acts and words.

    It is this descent of conscience into the natural realm, which is the chief subject of the Lord's Prayer. Obviously, this conscience cannot extend its rule over man's externals of thought and life, unless it first be truly formed and established; formed by genuine spiritual truths rather than merely moral sentiments; established through a rational faith in the Lord, moved by a love of truth and by charity towards the neighbor. For conscience is not horn with man. It is built by religious instruction. And it is clear and pure in proportion as that religious teaching is not contaminated by man-made dogmas or by one's personal phantasies and the conceits of self-intelligence.

    But religious knowledge—however profound—is not conscience until it becomes activated into a motivation for man's life and usefulness in the world. It must become a living zeal for what is just and right, for what is fair and honorable, for what is good and true. It must seek to promote not only the bodily and temporal well-being of men, but the health of their minds and the safety of their souls and eternal spirits.

    This can never take place except by active and persistent endeavor. It cannot take place without a devout searching for the truth about the kingdom and the will of the heavenly Father, truth from Divine revelation that can penetrate our superficial thoughts and lay bare within us the evils and the cherished falsities which prevent the rule of the Divine will. It cannot take place as long as man indulges in self-pity, or doubts that the Lord has equipped him with the freedom to choose and the power to repent and cooperate in the Lord's work.

    The will of God must not be confused with the voice of supposed necessity by which men are lulled into fatalistic indifference as to the real purpose of life and as to the destinies of society. Such fatalism—with its inevitable attitude of self-pity—leads to spiritual lethargy, which relieves man of the sense of responsibility and dulls the voice of conscience. Necessity which flows from the force of circumstances and the cramping pressure of time and space—does not remove man's freedom but only indicates the alternatives of the choice before him as he strives to make his own will accord more closely with the will of God. (AC 6487, SD min. 4692).

    But in the spiritual world (as also inmostly in the realm of human motives) such limitations of external circumstances do not shackle man's life. When death removes his spirit from the realm of space and time, the restraints of earthly things are swiftly loosened. The will becomes then a powerful and irresistible force, moulding the whole spirit in its image. What terrible powers we might have released here on earth if the powers of our will had been unlimited by time and unrestrained by worldly circumstances! A moment of anger might have killed our friend! a sudden lust for power or gain or pleasure might have committed us to inevitable destruction! It is because of the deterring bounds and bonds of necessity that earth-life gives opportunity for man gradually to form his ruling love in freedom and according to reason.

    After death, this chosen love which rules man's will becomes free in its exercise and expression and guides the development of his intelligence and usefulness under the marvellous government of spiritual laws whereby all spirits are consociated according to their inner character. Our prayer must always he that the will of the Lord may increasingly be done on earth—that liberation from merely natural bonds may be granted only so far as this may be consistent with the freedom of the race, and so far as evil and its license will in time lessen. This is the hunger of every faithful heart: that the time may come when charity and worship, mutual love and the love of truth and use, and conjugial love with its innocence and peace, may find its abode as in heaven so upon earth.