I’m puzzled about the part of the “Our Father” prayer, where it says “…and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”
Why is that in there? Isn’t that like taking your car to an auto body repair shop and asking them not to dent your car, but instead to take out the dents? Ok, stupid sounding analogy, but you know what I mean. Why is that part in there?
I go to a private catholic school and we were explained that specific passage. “But” is another word for INSTEAD. So in other words you are asking god not to lead you into temptation rather to be delivered from evil. In simpler terms, “lead us not into temptation, but (instead we want you to) deliver us from evil.”
Yes, I know that. What I’m asking is, why is it in there?
I’m not sure I understand the premise of your question. Is it that God could not possibly be the author of evil, and therefore that in asking God not to lead them into temptation Christians are being at best redundant and at worst blasphemous, or am I misunderstanding what you’re getting at entirely?
(And I predict I’ll be seeing this thread in my official capacity soon, but maybe you’re just asking about a point of grammar.)
So it says (what appears to be) the same thing over and over… what is the problem?
It is worth noting that in some accounts Jesus says "But deliver us from the evil one.
IIRC Jesus constructed that prayer from various quotes of (what Christians now call) the Old Testament.
I’m assuming your question is “aren’t they both the same thing”. I would say no.
“Lead us into temptation” is “don’t tempt us to do evil things”
“Deliver us from evil” (or “the evil one” … thanks Mangetout!) is “save us from bad things as a result of others’ evil”
I could be wrong. It’s been known to happen 
Being multilingual sometimes gives insight in these analyses…
The Spanish version of the Paternoster/Lord’s Prayer:
No nos dejes caer en tentación
“Do not let us fall in to temptation”
i.e. a prayer so that the believer is strengthened to resist temptations
The next can have alternate readings
“”(mas/y) líbranos del mal"
“(but/and) free us from the evil”
a prayer against external evil, but not as clear as the previous line
(Spanish adds the definite article to use “mal”(evil) as a noun instead of an adjective).
Here’s the Catholic Church’sofficial catechism interpretation of the meaning of the various parts of the prayer; I notice that they give support to the interpretation of “deliver us from the evil one”:
I think that JRDelirious gave me the answer I was looking for. What I was asking about was, why are we asking GOD not to lead us into temptation? I thought it was his very nature to lead us away, not into. Asking God not to lead us into temptation seems redundant and pointless. Also, if we have to ask him not to, then it seems to imply that he does.
But if a more correct translation is “do not let us fall into evil” then it makes sense.
I hope that clears things up. I couldn’t think of a more simplistic way of saying that because when I tried a more simplest approach, only JRDelirious seemed to understand what I meant.