“Forgive us our errors as we forgive the errors of our neighbours, friends and family.”
In the Re-Presented Lord’s Prayer, we have suggested the rewording of “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” to “Forgive us our errors as we forgive the errors of our neighbours, friends and family.”
The reason for this change has to do with the fact that this portion of the prayer has many versions of translation: Forgive us our sins/trespasses/debts/wrongs. When we check on the meaning of what sin or trespass or debt or wrong is, we found the words are not synonyms in any sense but they did convey completely different meaning. And of course, the various interpretations seem to take care of the interest of the priests (sins), of the landowners (trespasses), of the moneylenders (debts) and of common folks (wrongs).
This is one of the examples that prove the exception to the theory of inerrancy of biblical texts. No matter what the theologians say, biblical texts are still the products of fallible mankind; it does not matter if a particular text in question is inspired by the holy spirit or the unholy spirit.
From the beginning of this discourse, we have tried to correct some of the common-sense identifiable misconceptions of the God principle. We have tried to show that God is not outside of its creation but it is part and parcel of the created things and beings; that God is not only located in ‘heaven’ but it is everywhere and it is resident inside and outside of everything in life both the visible and the invisible; and that when we imagine God as a father and use the pronoun He/Him, it is the first derailment of a divine line of thought into profanity.
The adoption of false God concepts surely lead us to begin to forward our prayers and pleadings to a god that is outside of ourselves; to an imaginary god that sits on a super impressive or extraordinary golden throne in heaven; and a god to which mortal men must compete keenly for its favour in order to secure the holy reward to sit by its right side. This is the reward the ‘faithfuls’ expect to receive for their many years of labouring in the god’s vineyard of saving many souls from going to hell.
The first sign that religiosity has taken root in a person’s life can be placed to the moment when the use of common sense is turned off completely. This is when a believer of any persuasion (science, philosophy or religion) stopped to utilise the five senses for observation; began to doubt the observations made by his/her endowed natural faculties; allowed sweet talking ‘men of the cloth’ or ‘men in white coat’ to turn reason and rationality upside down; and when a hitherto intelligent person is now totally bereft of both the ability and courage to challenge obvious absurdities when he or she is being hypnotically spoon-fed/forced-fed with gibberish.
It is still very important to dissociate the Teacher of Galilee from the various perversions going on in the world under his ’name’. To my simple understanding, the Teacher of Galilee has nothing in common with the multinational and corporate mega institutions that have taken over the world under the genre of Christian Religion. This assertion will be too difficult to swallow by the throng of believers who are ready to lay down their lives for a lie. But we have to make this observation for the sake of sanity and freedom.
However, this part of the Lord’s Prayer on forgiveness is the core of the Teacher’s teaching and it is a precious gift to the world. The art and the spirit of forgiveness is the central pillar of a spiritual life. This fundamental teaching of forgiving each other’s error is diametrically opposed to the hateful mythology, philosophy and practices of the prevailing religion of the land of Palestine to which the teacher devoted his life to demystify.
Any serious student of life that is led by the spirit of truth cannot but wonder, what does the teaching of the teacher of Galilee has in common with Judaism? How does a New Testament supposedly written to proclaim a new gospel of love, truth and freedom got attached cheek by jowl to a totally contradictory testament of hate under the guidance of a very hideous god that was ever created by the minds of extraordinarily dysfunctional psychopaths?
Be that as it were, the Lord’s Prayer recommended we should meditate on the important subject of forgiving the errors of our neighbours, friends and families when they do wrong things to us either due to errors of omission or commission. Through this, the teacher taught a new philosophy of life that vigorously opposed the hitherto philosophy of the godless priests of the Middle East. He introduced a loving God as father quite different in conception to the fearful monster in vogue. He taught his listeners to embrace god loving as a virtue and to reject the popular notion of god fearing, which is definitely unhealthy for cultivating the rebirth of human souls.
With his teaching on forgiveness, he seems to have distanced himself from the doctrine of hell fire where sinners/offenders are supposed to burn in hell eternally. This new position can be inferred from what he told Peter who inquired, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” The teacher replied, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven!” This is another way of saying, one should forgive neighbours, friends and family indefinitely: ad infinitum.
If a petty mechanical man of flesh and blood who is still spiritually blind, deaf, dumb and crippled is being asked never to hold grudges and to settle quarrel before approaching god in prayer, it is unconscionable to expect the creator of life, the ‘father’ of all creations to do otherwise. This perspective of looking at forgiveness should help us towards the clearing of some of the fear-laden craps programmed into our minds.
These superstitious garbages of “fearing the wrath of gods” planted in our minds from childhood are intended to weigh us down from emerging as a truly spiritual being. A lot of the fear-mongering doctrines propagated by various religious institutions from the Middle East are covert weapons of mass enslavement. Fear is at the base of all man-made weapons that are designed for establishing the kingdom of man on earth and for safeguarding the ruler-ship of covetous men over other mankind.
It is therefore important for all seekers after the truth of life to begin to see all the doctrines of fear, that mankind have been saddled with, for what they are. They are definitely not the dictate or mandatory imposition from any supernatural beings to save us from eternal damnation but they are the creation of power-loving megalomaniacal psychopaths among humanity.
But we need to mention that to forgive each other’s errors is practically impossible without the involvement of the soul being. It is only the soul that has the capacity to be ego-free. A full-blooded person who is ridden with egoistic problems that manifest as the seven identified vices (pride, envy, greed, anger, lust, gluttony and sloth) cannot rise above the dictates of the body.
The irrational demands of the very weak human body are what lead humanity into grave errors of judgment against fellow mankind. This is the reason why the spiritual work to set the soul free must begin in the mind. Using our sense organs for what they are designed for, as tools of sensory perception of the material environment, we can cultivate and plant into our splendidly fertile mind the high-yielding seeds of true knowledge of life. Give it a try.
The result of the knowledge of truth on the mind is similar to what happens when the male and female eggs of living things come together in a reproductive union. The organisms do not have to do anything else after mating. The fertilised egg will develop naturally on its own without any direct conscious involvement of the male or female organism.
This is as well true of the mind. Set the mind on a goal of self discovery after opening all the shutters of the senses to allow the unfettered rays of sunshine of true knowledge to enter the brain and you will surely be amazed with the result. Your mind will indeed become pregnant with ideas and the bouncing baby of freedom that shall be delivered will be nothing less than a soul reborn.
It is only a soul reborn through generous exposure of the mind to diverse knowledge of truth of life that can truly forgive the errors of neighbours, friends and family. The superficial understanding of this truth is the only premise under which a supposedly ‘Christian country’ can raise armies of professional killers of fellow mankind to visit bloody vengeance and atrocious vendetta over all the people or countries they judged as enemies in the world. This is a blatant corruption of the truth of a divine gift of redemption through forgiveness that the Teacher of Galilee taught to the world.
In the Spirit of truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
(Continue at VII)
SAM ABBD ISRAEL 
[…] (Continued at VI) […]