French-speaking Cathbros from next month will start saying the Lord's Prayer differently. Perhaps Frenchies here can illuminate this better than English-language newspapers, but my understanding is that the change is from:
< "Do not submit us to temptation" (Ne nous soumets pas à la tentation)
to:
< "Do not let us enter into temptation" (Ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation)
The French Cathbro Bishops who agreed to this asserted that ever since Vatican II - The Revenge of Vatican, they've been doing it wrong, that the original was blasphemous because it implied God tempted us, which is explicitly slapped down by James (1:13).
All sounds fair enough, innit? Except I sense something more going on here that I have seen in Cathbros on /christian/ too: the notion that God's sovereignty does not extend to temptation.
The phrase "Do not submit us" – and here I am relying on English translations rather than the original French, so cognac-swillers may jump in here – DOES NOT mean "don't do that thing to me, God", it says do not allow me to undergo, in this case, temptation, doesn't it? In English, most of us say something like "Lead us not into", which sounds similar to "Do not submit us", remembering that the Greek for "temptation" better means trials or testing as much as temptation. If we know God does not tempt us, if we regard all other verses in which Christ and his Apostles instruct us to "flee immorality" and evade temptation where we can, then we are praying not for God to stop tempting us, but for Him to keep us, as much as He deems appropriate ("You will be done"), from trials and temptations by sin. Right? After all, 1Cor 10:13 clearly tells us God is the regulator of how tempted we are, and will not permit us to be tempted more than we can bear, right?
Then, is "Do not let us enter", which, by the Bishops' own admission, placing more of the responsibility on we, the tempted, and telling God, "I'll fall, so when I look like it, stop me, please." While not unscriptural in-and-of itself, is it not firmly against the spirit of "Lead us not into"? That is, it removes from the equation God's overseeing involvement in our trials, does it not?
Which brings me back to /christian/. For a long time I have seen a lot of Cathbros and Orthbros – and perhaps only the immature who do not understand their own church's teaching, I accept – argue stridently against the notion that God would permit us to be tempted, or that, under Sovereignty, God allows us to be tempted. Instead, it seems to my reading of peoples' statements that they feel God is an unwilling witness to our temptation into sin, screaming "Why would you do that" yet having no ability to regulate the temptations we face. And, I read this same intent, I think, in the new French wording. "Poor God, He's as much a victim of this world of sin and trials as we are and has no power (or chooses not to, perhaps) to stop the demons ruling this world and making our lives hellish.
Am I misreading?
For, instead, is Scripture not clear that God allows us to be tempted, to undergo trials, for our testing, for our benefit, and, ultimately, for His Glory?
Sources:
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/11/18/new-version-of-the-lords-prayer-in-french-churches/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10379743/Blasphemous-Lords-Prayer-corrected-by-Frances-Catholic-Church.html