The Common Good
September-October 2000

Does God Tempt?

by Maryse Mikhail | September-October 2000

THE SENTENCE IN the Catholic English version of the Lord’s Prayer "and lead
us not into temptation" has always irked me ("A Prayer for All People," by
Michael Joseph Brown, ...

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THE SENTENCE IN the Catholic English version of the Lord’s Prayer "and lead us not into temptation" has always irked me ("A Prayer for All People," by Michael Joseph Brown, July-August 2000). I silently replace it with the Catholic French version: "Et ne nous laissez pas succomber a la tentation."

Why would God lead us into temptation? God so loved us that he gave us the full liberty to choose how to act, but he also gave us the gift of reason, the capacity for knowing what is good and what is evil. Therefore God most surely would not "lead" us into a temptation to do evil.

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