I have studied the Bible going on 15 years now and every time I open it I find new things that astound and amaze me about it.
For example when instructing his disciples on how to pray, Jesus was very specific in how he did that. In fact his prayer is so precise as it is almost formulary.
A formulary is a precise set of instructions on how to preform a particular task.
The Lord’s Prayer, also called the “Our Father” and the “Pater Noster”, is arguably the most venerated prayer in all of Christendom.
Two forms of the Lord’s prayer are recorded in the New Testament: a longer form in the Gospel of Matthew [6:5–13] as part of the Sermon on the Mount, and a shorter form in the Gospel of Luke [11:1–4] as a response by Jesus to a request by “one of his disciples” to teach them “to pray as John taught his disciples”.
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,on earth, as it is in heaven.Give us this day our daily bread,and forgive us our debts,as we also have forgiven our debtors.And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Matt 6:9-13
Over the years I have puzzled on how this prayer was structured and worded.
I recently talked with a communications specialist with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about the Lord’s Prayer who suggested that the prayer is much more than it appears on the surface. I should add that he requested I not use his name in this report for privacy concerns.
In other words, what he was saying is the Lord’s prayer follows a very precise “communication model.”
A communication model follows 5 general rules:
1) An information source, which produces a message (the supplicant).
2) A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals -(the human brain).
3) A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission (the prayer method or formulary).
4) A receiver, which ‘decodes’ (reconstructs) the message from the signal (God).
5) And lastly a destination, where the message arrives or ends up (in this case with God himself – Where – who art in heaven).
He said the Lord’s prayer follows closely that type of communication model.
For those non scientific types like me, he likened it to a “telephone call.” It must have both a sender (the supplicant), the person placing the call and a receiver, the person receiving the call ( in this case God).
In order to reach the right party you must first have a correct address or “phone number”…(you do this by following the correct formulary or method involved) – lest you risk it being your call being mis-dialed or reaching the wrong party.
It must contain a channel, or conduit – in this case “the human brain.” And it must have a ultimate destination or address…(Heaven) etc. etc.
I didn’t understand all the complexities of what he was exactly getting at when he started expressing this in very complex mathematical formulas and equations. So he attempted to explain it to me that way.
“In mathematics, an equation is a formula of the form A = B, where A and B are expressions that may contain one or several variables called unknowns, and “=” denotes the equality binary relation.”
“Although written in the form of proposition, an equation is not a statement that is either true or false, but a problem consisting of finding the values, called solutions, that, when substituted for the unknowns, yield equal values of the expressions A and B. Historically”, he added “equations arose from the mathematical discipline of algebra, but later become ubiquitous…”
In this case he appeared to be apply all this to this set of instructions on how to pray? Which only sort of made sense.
“Equations” should not be confused with “identities”, he continued “which are presented with the same notation but have a different meaning: for example 2 + 2 = 4 and x + y = y + x are identities (which implies they are necessarily true) in arithmetic, and do not constitute a values-finding problem, even when variables are present as in the latter example…”
“The term “equation” may also refer to a relation between some variables that is presented as the equality of some expressions written in terms of those variables’ values. For example the equation of the unit circle is x2 + y2 = 1, which means that a point belongs to the circle if and only if its coordinates are related by this equation.
Most physical laws are expressed by equations, by the way”, he said. One of the most famous ones is Einstein’s equation E = mc2…Got it?”
“OK so what your saying is that all this apply somehow to the Lord’s Prayer? But I have never hear of such a thing before?”, I said.
He said “nobody has…”
I finally just had to stop the guy and admit he lost me at the word “equation.”
Needless to say that this man has studied this phenomena in great detail, and has a doctorate in science (so he must know what he’s talking about?) and suggests that the Lord’s prayer is a precise communication model we need to follow in order to establish what he calls “a direct communication link with God.”
That last part certainly got my attention!
An analogy being someone, for example “picking up a telephone and dialing a specific phone number combination to get the right party”, he continued.
Head still spinning I said: “I can’t say I really understand all this so well, expect to say that when you follow Jesus’s exact model of prayer – you can’t go wrong – right?” Right – see you got it! Actually I am not sure I do…
Today however many people both in and out of the church adapt prayers in all sorts of ways, including doing things not specifically commanded or exampled by Jesus. Such as adding Jesus name in there or at the end of their Lord’s prayer and/or by passing the Father name altogether.
Like Jesus somehow made a mistake and needs to be corrected when reciting the Lord’s prayer?
Recently I was in a church where they recited the Lord’s prayer complete but added in Jesus name at the end of it. Which I am not sure is correct and could interfere with the precise communication model this man was discussing, simply because it wasn’t in the formulary or set of instructions.
Of course many people will argue that I am being too technical in this.
Well they may be right! I really don’t know…then again they could be wrong. Until I know for sure, or get a chance to ask Father Peter over at my church about all this I will choose to follow the exact wording of Jesus in all this, l think. Something I have been doing for some time now – with no problem.
See article: The secret prayers of Jesus https://groundreport.com/the-secret-prayer-of-jesus/
See related article; The secret teachings of Jesus https://groundreport.com/the-secret-teachings-of-jesus/
See article: The secret teaching of Jesus: Alms https://groundreport.com/the-secret-teachings-of-jesus-alms/