Beatitudes or Be-Attitudes?

This involves a very selective reading of the Bible of course, as is well evidenced by the one publication that I purchased online, coming from this end of the church - The Positive Bible by Kenneth Caine. I found the online add for this publication to be irresistible. It promised to give me a Bible that had "all the good stuff" in it and ... "nothing else"!

From the inside cover, "Turn to any page in this book. You will be greeted with a Biblical passage that offers hope, help, and encouragement. It is a simple concept, but one that may have a profound influence on your life." Indeed, it also claimed that it would allow me to "read the whole Bible in about an hour", which is an indication of the fact that there is a lot of the Bible, as traditionally composed, that is left out.

The Gospel of Matthew, in The Positive Bible, begins with the Beatitudes (most of them, at any rate). Why? Because they list the attitudes that we need to adopt if we are to live a positive, happy and successful life.

I have a real problem with this (in case you hadn't worked that out).Why? Mainly because I run a website and an online newsletter with around 3,000 subscribers, many of whom write to me each week, and speak to me about their struggle to find the key to “releasing God's blessings” for them.

Those who know me well might wonder how persons of this mindset ever came to be on my mailing list, but these are good people - sincere Christian people, many of whom are better persons than myself, no doubt. Yet contemporary Christian culture has sucked them in to believing that God's greatest desire is to make their life and their business successful, in the normal secular sense of the word.

I care about these people. I care about the fact that someone has sold them a lie that is almost bound to lead them to spiritual disillusionment. And I care about the fact that this lie is often associated with other rubbish, such as a political agenda that tacitly supports the oppression of the Palestinian people.

Let's be clear about this today. The Lord Jesus does not promise to make us rich or successful (in the worldly sense of the word) anywhere, ever! On the contrary, the general picture we get in the New Testament is that those who are loyal to the Kingdom of God will pay for it in this life. Ironically, nowhere is this made more clear than in the Beatitudes!

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

Now the first thing that needs to be said about these Beatitudes is that they are not attitudes. Being a “peacemaker” is not an attitude. It’s a lifestyle. Similarly, being persecuted certainly isn’t an attitude.

What about being “poor in spirit”. Is that an attitude? I’m not entirely sure what it means to be “poor in spirit”. Christian scholars are still debating the matter. Maybe it does just mean being humble. But the word “poor”, in the original language of the Bible, tends to denote those who’ve been crushed by poverty into destitution. Maybe this is why Kenneth Caine, in The Positive Bible, actually decided to leave that particular Beatitude out.

The second thing that needs to be said about these Beatitudes is that they don’t actually tell us what we are supposed to be. They actually are not prescriptions at all.

I don’t mean to be pedantic, but the beatitudes are given in the indicative, not the imperative. They are descriptions of people, not exhortations to be something. They are in fact all descriptions of the disciples. All eight groups of persons mentioned - the poor, the meek, the persecuted, and so on, are in fact the same group - the disciples.