This is the second and final part of a two-part article. Find the first part here.
It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures. (Simone Weil)1
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil (Luke 11:2–4)2
In a way that strongly resembles what we are discussing as regards to ponēron, the preceding line, “Lead us not into temptation,” doesn’t mean “Please don’t put tempting things in our path.” “Temptation” is quite a bad translation of the Greek verb peirazdein, for which we now have a suitable contemporary translation: “to beta test.”3 Peirazdein is to test in the manner of testing a hammer to see whether or not it might break. “Don’t test us to destruction.” But isn’t that what living does? We are not talking about a test with an examiner, or being tempted versus not being tempted, tested now and then: being “led into being beta tested” is what seems to be going on all the time… part from the fact that people are not tools at all! Their tool-being is called slavery. “Don’t treat us like tools or software.”
In this sense “Do not beta test us” is quite like the Commandment “Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test” (Luke 4:12). The verb shows up when Jesus spends forty days in the desert. The request also comes close to Deuteronomy, where the Hebrew verb is nâçâh or nasah (“to try”).4 Don’t treat God like a hammer or a slave or an app. The link with the next line of the Lord’s Prayer is palpable: “Don’t treat us like tools, but deliver us from…” What? From ponēron, which fundamentally means from toil.5 This is a plea not to remain enslaved.
It is in the key of mastery (hence slavery) to hear the lines as “Don’t tempt us, but instead don’t put tempting things (feminine, poneirai) in our way”: the clue is that this is a tautology. It is as if God is hard to convince, that we are insisting on something. “Stop us from going wrong, from malfunctioning… don’t put a tempting thing in our path, because we might grab it.” This phrasing assumes that we want to do bad things and that God’s job is to restrain us: to master the masters. Thomas Jefferson might have prayed this way: “Don’t put the tempting enslaved person in my way, or I might have to assault her.” – “Put the proper labels on the public toilets, or someone might rape someone” says everything about the speaker, and nothing about a trans person. “Give us enough self-control not to murder anyone today” doesn’t sound very inspiring.
But “Please don’t treat us like instruments — in fact, rescue us from …
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