THE LORD'S PRAYER

The Lord's Prayer just needs an editor
Obviously Christ had never heard of the inverted pyramid style of communication
By MARIANNE MEED WARD
Toronto Sun

Oh, what a stir such a few words can cause, and we're not talking about fightin' and cussing' and hollerin' words, either. No, the offensive words in question (all 66 of them) discuss such salacious matters as forgiveness, avoiding temptation and having enough to eat.
The words come from the Lord's Prayer. But to hear a group of parents and students in Saskatchewan talk about them, you would think we were discussing a restricted movie. The prayer is not for children, a human rights tribunal heard last week, so please order public schools to end the mandatory morning recitation.

The prayer apparently discriminates against non-Christian students, and even threatens their self-esteem, a psychologist testified. Although anyone can be exempted from the ritual, that's small comfort to students, who are afraid to be singled out. Being "different" is about the worst indignity a child can endure, second only to being forced by mom or dad's paycheque (or good sense, as the case may be) to play with generic action figures rather than Star Wars toys.

Ontario, the cosmopolitan, world-class province that it is, sniff, has already gotten rid of prayer in public schools (as have the, um, cosmopolitan, world-class provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba.)

But apparently, the Saskatchewan Act of 1905, which joined Us (the rest of Canada) with Them, allows religion in the public system. As the key argument for retaining the Lord's Prayer, that's pretty weak. Laws can be changed (hello, has anyone in Saskatchewan being paying attention to the Supreme Court for the last decade?). But maybe all the prayer needs is an image makeover (or an editor) to make it suitable for today's children.

The beginning is a little slow; obviously Christ had never heard of the inverted pyramid style of communication, and was in no hurry to get to the point. The prayer starts: "Our father who art in heaven/Hallowed be thy name/Thy kingdom come/Thy will be done/On Earth as it is in Heaven." Though wonderfully poetic, that's a bit obscure, which is fine if you're a theologian and have your whole life to ponder the meanings of "thy kingdom" or "thy will" or the functionings of Heaven as they should be applied to Earth.

Furthermore, the blatant sexism of "our father" will never do, and is probably offensive to single-parent families with absent daddies.
But the really good parts come next anyway, so maybe the whole dilemma can be solved with some slicing and dicing.

"Give us this day/Our daily bread." The sentiment could be emblazoned on bristol board and adopted as the motto for the school lunch program.

"Forgive us our debts/As we forgive our debtors." Now this bit might help to counter the "you tease me, I shoot you" code of ethics that has popped up in schools.

'Contextualization'

"Lead us not into temptation/But deliver us from evil." This is pretty good, but might need some ahem, "contextualization," as the theologians would say, to make the text relevant to today's kids. Without sacrificing much of the original intent, we could recast this section to something like, "And lead us not into the malls, where we will waste our formative years yearning for overpriced garments and computer gadgets, not to mention get in the way of precision shoppers practising the 'get in, get out' approach to purchasing/But deliver us from the crass materialism that passes for meaning in our spiritually bereft culture."

We could end the prayer there, because it just blathers on about "kingdom, power and glory." Problem solved.

Mandatory recitations of anything offend our notions of freedom - until, of course, we remember that all of us have been and often still are, forced to read, recite and regurgitate material we don't agree with (one thinks of the corporate drones forced to study Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as if it were holy writ.)

Reciting the Lord's Prayer won't save our children. But they should be exposed to its ideas.
Offensive? Maybe. Revolutionary? Absolutely. But discriminatory? No.