Reflection on The Prayer (3)
(Entire Prayer to be found at https://www.divinetruth.com/www/en/html/index.htm#prayer.htm)

“…and not the sinful, depraved and subservient creature that false teachers would have me believe.”

It sounds harsh doesn’t it? Do I feel like I have been treated this way?  Who are those false teachers?

I would like to disregard this part of the prayer and say it is not relevant to my particular situation. I would like to stay with the soft fuzzy, “I am Thy child” phrase.

However, I know that I’m missing something important if I do that.  The very fact I want to skip over it suggests that there is something in there for me.  I don’t like the feeling that I have been treated harshly, as if I am sinful and so on.  And this tells me that I recognise this feeling.  I recognise feeling that I am sinful and subservient; in particular, try as I may to behave otherwise, I treat myself this way.

Where did this come from?  I have heard that ‘false teachers’ refers to the people who most influenced me in my early life, starting with my parents. When my children were young I certainly treated them, and all children, as subservient to me. When I was young, we were brought up with this idea of Original Sin, an awful religious teaching that damns a person before they even have a chance to discover who they are. This idea, as I saw it through my mother’s eyes, has me striving and praying endlessly, while knowing that I will never succeed in being free of sin. Running a race I can never win. 

The Prayer tells me that this is not true. I was created perfect. Inside the very imperfect person I am, there is someone who is perfect. In that case, I want to ‘unwrap’ the layers of what went wrong, what I have done wrong, to unravel the knots and find me. 

Very often I feel that moving a mountain would be easier. It would, actually. Then I remember that this is not a task I am expected to do alone. This is something that God will do everything to help me with, but not by clearing away all the wrong as if by magic, or worse, by the mythical spilling of blood by another in order to wash away my sin.

Just as with the approach of Restorative Justice (https://www.rpiassn.org/practice-areas/what-is-restorative-justice/) if I own, at a deep level, the damage I have done, then I will be motivated to change, from the heart. I am told, and I firmly believe, that God waits for this heartfelt desire in me to ‘sin no more,’ and knowing this fills me with hope and gratitude.

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom, for me and you

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world.