Into

I love words (if you haven't noticed), even little words. The word into may seem small and innocent, hardly worth mentioning, but even a seemingly innocuous word can lead us toward ideas, toward understanding, toward thinking.


The difference between into and in might help explain my point. If we say that a person walks in a room, we might be saying that he has walked from the sofa to the television (because, I guess, he has lost the remote). He has walked in the room. Or, he might step one foot in the room. We don't know whether he has ever been outside the room and we are vague on how far his travels have taken him within the walls of the room. If, on the other hand, we say that he walks into a room, we know that he has been outside and that he is now completely inside the room. That difference is very important.


For one thing, it is important to for us to see the difference between being outside temptation and inside temptation. When we say "lead us not into temptation," we are asking that we not be immersed in the thing. We are recognizing that it is possible to be outside temptation and that we risk the possibility of being dunked in it. We are saying that we know that temptation is out there and we know that we can be either inside or outside the temptation. In other words, we are suggesting that temptation is a constant hazard, but we are not necessarily always mired in it.


We also have to see that there is a difference between encountering a temptation and being within it. Just as we can stand in a doorway and be in the room without being inside the room, we can also encounter a temptation without being swallowed by it. In our culture, temptations are constant. Yet, just because they are present does not mean that we have jumped into them with both feet, like a five-year-old encountering a mudpuddle. (No, I am not condemning anyone for jumping in puddles. The analogy is meant to convey an image and that is all. I enjoy the occasional puddle as much as the next over-grown child.)

The point I am trying to make about the word into is that, like any good preposition, it is showing us a relationship. (Okay, technically any preposition, no matter how well it is performing its function, will show us a relationship.) Here, the relationship is between us and temptation, and the word is showing that we are asking specifically that we not be led into temptation. This is not saying that we should expect that we will never encounter temptation at all. We are not asking that we not be led near temptation or beside temptation or around or close by or just within sight of temptation. We are asking that we not be led into temptation, and that is a specific request.

We cannot begin to imagine that we can live our lives without encountering temptations. We live in the world, and the world is filled with temptations. I know that some people go to great lengths to hide from the world, to hide from temptations, and I am not going to say that those people are wrong; however, I cannot hide from the world: I am a teacher, and I teach in a public school. I live in a college town. I watch television and watch movies and listen to music. I go to the store. I am out in the world, and the world is filled with temptations. I cannot hope that I will never encounter one of them. But the prayer does not suggest that I should hope that. According to Christ, I am to pray that I am not led into temptation.

Each of us has different "rooms" that we need to stay out of--a bar is not an arena of temptation for me--a strip club would be. I am not saying that I should start hanging out in bars, but I have heard of some effective ministries that have been set in such places. My point is that I know that there are those who could not sit in a bar without feeling that they were within the temptation. I teach high school and college English classes. There are probably those who should not put themselves in such situations. I have known college instructors who have had intimate relationships with their students (but I hope that none of my colleagues have ever done the same with high school students). We have to recognize our own particular weaknesses (and mine are many) so that we can try to avoid stepping into them.

Perhaps we are praying, then, that we can recognize the temptations. How often have we heard someone tell a remorse-filled story and include the justification that he did not know how it had happened? We cannot fall back on the defense of ignorance of the law. We must be pro-active, and that requires that we know what we are looking for. We have to be able to see whether we are inside a temptation. That, I believe, is truly what we are asking for from God: awareness. Perhaps, after all, a bar would be a place of temptation for me. But whatever the place, I have to be cognizant of the temptations around me so that I can avoid becoming immersed in them.

As human beings in the world, we are going to encounter temptations. We cannot live our lives by hiding from the temptations. If we ask God to make us aware of the temptations and to give us the gifts we need to avoid them (strength, wisdom, love, compassion, honor, courage, truth), then we can live our lives--and live them in a more Christ-like way.