Eternity in the Hearts of Men

Would you hold it against me if I were to take a break from the normalcy of my postings and expand on my current musings of the world?

Probably not.

So here goes. Along side The Divine Conspiracy I have been reading much C.S. Lewis. Specifically, I have been going through his Space Trilogy which I never before read. A quick summary of the series would place it beside The Chronicles of Narnia, only the material is much more advanced. Understanding the depths of allegory to which Lewis positions the reader in Narnia via Aslan et al, consider for a moment the same attempt at teaching only aimed at "adult" minds.

I will speak plainly. I would not have understood these books as a child. I would not have understood these books as a college student. Only in my post-collegiate education and journey do I come anywhere close to garnering the philosophical implications of the interplanetary journeys and adventures of Elwin Ransom. Typical to Lewis, very little time is spent on the actual story, while most of the reading leads the reader along a step-by-step understanding of the past, present, and future of the known universe. And beyond.

I've read some literature on Heaven. Randy Alcorn's Heaven is probably the best book to date, but Lewis goes beyond even that. What's more, he does so in the year 1943. It is not until the end of the novel, which I hope not to spoil for you, that we the readers receive a glimpse of the eternal.

The glimpse is such a metaphor, such a beautiful illustration, such a detailed and intricate and remarkable description of what was and is and is to come that I was blown away by what I heard (I prefer listening to Lewis rather than reading him. His writing style welcomes it). I lay down for hours just to ponder what I had heard, just to think on this invitation into Divine Purpose and Providence. It was as though I viewed the mind of God in all His mystery; and like Job I was silent before my maker. And I was satisfied.

Eternity has always been on my heart and mind. Even so, even as an old acquaintance, I do not welcome it for I cannot understand it. No man can. Eternity is infinite, while we are finite. Only pride, arrogance, or greed could make me seek to search the stars and hold them in my gaze. I am but a blip in the cosmos, uniquely created and infinitely desirable to my creator, but not so great as to rise up to His level of understanding. To quote Lewis:

"We do not worship God because He is spirit. We worship Him because He is wise. And good."

Today I realized the sagacity of God. I also realized my smallness as man. My will is not his will. His thoughts are not my thoughts, and they are far superior to mine. Either I accept this, or I spend eternity exerting my will to overtake his as ruler of this universe. I pray always it shall be the former.

Now I think, dear reader, I have spent enough time thinking and writing. Perhaps it is time to go out and be doing. This may be my last posting for quite some time.

Until we meet again, I bid you always good living.

A Tale of Two Tales

Only two verse have thus far been discussed in dealing with the kingdom heart. The first deals with anger and the second with contempt. 

Showing that anger and contempt are such serious maters only lays a foundation for the final move in this first contrast that Jesus makes between the kingdom heart and the older teaching about "rightness."

We are instructed not to be angry with our brother and not to deride him with contemptuous remarks such as "Raca", or, in other words, insert expletive "here", I prefer idiot or moron. But Jesus does not stop here.

Now he states a remarkable "therefore" (v.23) that leads us out of mere negations or prohibitions into an astonishing positive regard for our neighbor, whom we are to love as God loves.

But wait, this is not the point in the Bible where Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. In fact, this is not the point where Jesus tells us to do anything. A new set of laws would not capture how he wants us to be living our lives. To define the way to live by a set of rules would be to place our individual, free selves in a box, one which we would always be looking to escape. Jesus flattens the box and our excuses in one sweep of his hand. He gives examples, pure illustrations of a good and God heart set in motion in the world.

First, you are with the Temple officials before the altar, about to present your sacrifice to God (Matthew 5:23). It is one of the holiest moments in the ritual life of the faithful. The practice was that nothing should interrupt this ritual except some more important ceremonial matter that required immediate attention.

Suddenly, right in the midst of it all, you remember a brother who is mad at you. Realizing how important it is for his soul to find release, and pained by the break between yourself and him, you stop the ritual. You walk out of it to find him and make up. That illustrates the positive goodness of the kingdom heart.

Without making any new laws or dismissing the old ones, Christ has suddenly both freed us from the law and elevated the heart above what used to appear as the most holy, most important feature in all religion. More important than singing hymns or saying prayers or giving tithes or doing good deeds, God cares how our hearts respond to our brothers and sisters on this earth. So important are they in his eyes, that all the ritualistic and glorious deeds we do cannot cover up a heart that is hard and unloving towards them.

This, I think, is what sparked Martin Luther to write what he did and oppose the regime of his day in such an adamant way. This is also what sparked Paul to write that, "Though you can speak in the tongues of angels and move mountains by your faith, yet if you have not love, it is worthless." (1 Corinthians 13) It is also what caused Jesus himself to later say, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'"(Matthew 9:9)


The aim of this illustration - and it is an illustration - is to bring us to terms with what is in our hearts and, simultaneously, to show us the rightness of the kingdom heart.


Willard has caught on to the anti-legalism that Jesus brings to the table. If you have ever wondered why Jesus is always harping on the Pharisees, who are the most religious persons of his day (think pastors, seminary professors, televangelists), is because they so deeply missed the point of what God desires and wants from us in this world. Says Jesus, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." To the extent of the heart, the dikaiosune, we all fall into the second category.


This can be seen in the second illustration Jesus gives, when he tells us to settle matters quickly with an adversary who is taking us to court. Understand that he gives this example precisely after he has told us not to be anger or contemptuous with others. If this is the case, then what have we to gain by a legal battle that may be settled outside of court through a loving heart and genuine care for the other individual?


Jesus here gives us a second illustration of how the kingdom heart will respond. He does not tell us what to do, but how to do it. Indeed, go to court or not - as makes sense in the circumstance. But do whatever you do without hostility, bitterness, and the merciless drive to win. And keep a joyous confidence in God regardless of what happens.

We live unique lives, in a different time and place than anyone else who has existed before us or will exist after us. The beauty of Jesus' words is that they last for all time. They deal with our hearts, and nothing has changed about the human heart in the last two thousand years.


If you find yourself desperately desiring to know God and his will, and if your heart is precisely aligned to love your neighbors and not yourself, then I firmly believe you will cease to find all those "moral dilemmas" through which some saying in the Bible confuses or confounds what you should or shouldn't do in a present situation.


Of course, there is plenty more to living the eternal kind of life now, but that's why we have the other half of this book still to get through. Still, where we are is a great place to start, and even these small steps can drastically change someone's life. As always, Willard summarizes it best:

We do not control outcomes and are not responsible for them, but only for our contribution to them. Does our heart long for reconciliation? Have we done what we can? Honestly? Do we refuse to substitute ritual behaviors for genuine acts of love? If so, we are beyond "the righteousness of scribes and Pharisees" and immersed in God's ways. We can certainly find an appropriate way to act from such a heart without being given a list of things to do.

You Fools

Again I tell you, whoever says 'Raca' to his brother shall stand condemned before the Sanhedrin, the highest court of the land. (Matthew 5:22)

 Today's topic: Contempt for your fellow man.

Contempt is a greater evil than anger and so is deserving of greater condemnation. Unlike innocent anger, it is a kind of studied degradation of another, and it also is more pervasive in life than anger. In anger I want to hurt you. In contempt, I don't care whether you are hurt or not. We can be angry at someone without denying their worth. But contempt makes it easier for us to hurt them or see them further degraded.

I'm sure that this topic arises much in our thoughts today. When we think of serious contempt we drift to racism or bigotry or sexism. These people, we think, truly look down on their fellow man. They look on such others with contempt and speak of them with degradation.

Certainly this is an obvious form of contempt, and we realize it is despicable in most cases. I think, however, that contempt arises more commonly in our society among socio-economic classes or educational background. Jesus spoke of calling people "fools." We would probably throw in a substitute word depending on our background.

"You're so stupid!"

"You're such an idot!"

"Ah, that jerk! He cut me off!"

Our derogatory language stems from contempt, which often sparks originally from anger. We spoke last week of anger and Jesus' instruction to rid our hearts of it. Without anger, contempt can be curtailed before it starts. If we do not indulge anger, we have no need to become contemptuous of individuals in order to express our anger.

But supposing we do become angry, and this does progress into a vulgar or crude degradation of our fellow man. In this case, we have hit them harder than if we'd simply stuck to simple anger.

To belong is a vital need based in the spiritual nature of the human being. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. Just by being what it is, it is withering to the human soul. But when expressed, it stabs the soul to its core and deflates its powers of life. It can hurt so badly and destroy so deeply that murder would almost be a mercy. 

When we speak with contempt towards others, we lower them from their status as human beings. We place them at a lower level, one deserving of our contempt, and then we can happily write off their error as pertaining to their lower status or perhaps mental capabilities.

"Of course he messed up, he is a moron after all."

I need not expand on why or how this leads to destruction. Jesus speaks of a person speaking to another human with contempt as one who is in the dangers of the fire of hell. Consider for a moment the pro-Nazi propaganda that allowed our European ancestors to exterminate entire groups of people, simply because they no longer thought of them as people. Or perhaps they did think of them as people. Normal people. While they were advancing the super-race, which somehow rose a level above the humanity of yore.

Jesus knew what he was talking about when he condemned contempt, anger, and derogatory language.

Jesus is giving us a revelation of the preciousness of human beings. He means to reveal the value of persons. Obviously merely not killing others cannot begin to do justice to that. By no means is he simply giving here three more things not to do, three more points on a "list" of things to be avoided. Certainly we are not to do them, but that is not the point. 

Jesus points these things out to call attention to the hearts that produce such things. Think about it, a heart that is filled with contempt for fellow man cannot be at that time filled with love for him. So we must stop the contempt of our hearts. But do not cease there. Simply not harboring contempt will not solve the problem. Filling one's heart with love, on the other hand, will.

When I treasure those around me and see them as God's creatures designed for his eternal purposes, I do not make an additional point of not hating them or calling them twerps or fools. "He that loves has fulfilled the law." (Romans 13:8)

Again, we find in Jesus' sermon the overarching theme of possessing the Kingdom Heart. A loving heart does not break the law, simply because to love means NOT breaking the law. 

For all their necessity, goodness, and beauty, laws that deal only with actions, such as the Ten Commandments, simply cannot reach the human heart, the source of actions. "If a law had been given capable of bringing people to life, then righteousness would have come from the law." (Galatians 3:21) But law, for all its magnificence, cannot do that. Graceful relationship sustained with the masterful Christ can.

If you have been reading these posts the past few weeks, you will see how everything has come together under one unified message. Even in this simple statement of "do not call a brother 'Raca'," Jesus is laying down the foundation for true living of an eternal life.

You thought it was just a list of things not to do, didn't you? That is part of the Divine Conspiracy.

Anger and the Wounded Ego

Anger and the wounded ego: a close encounter with human kind.

I spoke yesterday on anger as a natural, though not necessary, emotion. Today, we discuss anger indulged.

Anger first arises spontaneously. But we can actively receive it and decide to indulge it, and we usually do. We may even become an angry person, and any incident can evoke from us a torrent of rage that is kept in constant readiness.

We have all known this anger at some point in our lives. Anger that, when accepted, takes away our will to act as rational or even emotional beings. Such anger takes away our humanity, for our decisions are no longer our own. We seek retaliation; we seek justice.

Anger indulged, instead of simply waved off, always has in it an element of self-righteousness and vanity. Find a person who has embraced anger, and you will find a person with a wounded ego.

Such an elevation of self causes this type of anger to become the new ideal worshiped within us. Our lives can no longer be about serving God or serving others, for anger pushes all of that aside in an effort to exact the price it demands. Indeed, many go so far as to believe that if their anger is not satiated, the world cannot continue working as it has. We think to ourselves, "How, in such an unjust and perverse world, can we possibly survive?" And therefore we give in to anger.

All our mental and emotional resources are marshaled to nurture and tend the anger, and our body throbs with it. Energy is dedicated to keeping the anger alive: we constantly remind ourselves of how wrongly we have been treated. And when it is allowed to govern our actions, its evil quickly multiplies in heartrending consequences and in the replication of anger and rage in the hearts and bodies of everyone it touches.

Keep in mind, you do not have to be an outwardly angry person to be tragically affected by anger. The most devastating anger is the anger that is bottled up inside for years, slowly tearing away at relationship after relationship, never letting healing begin, never being dealt with for lack of an obvious target.

Such anger is anger of the heart. It is to this that Jesus speaks, I believe. Our grudges. Our resentments. Our "woe is me". When we give in to anger, when we indulge it, we break the first commandment by placing ourselves on the throne to be worshiped instead of God. And we drop immediately out of living an eternal kind of life.

In the United States there are around 25,000 murders each year. Most of the murders occur after long periods of open rage and threats, and many involve multiple murders of innocent bystanders. None of them, or only a negligible number, would have occurred but for an anger that the killers chose to embrace and indulge.

We live in a society that tends to think most anger is justified.

"He harmed you!"
"She totally went behind your back!"
"You got there first, what were they thinking!"
"You can't let them get away with that!"

Always we are asked to call upon our sense of self-righteousness and justice in an attempt to free this world of such unbearable wrongs as these. Emotion is used to fuel the fire and drive us on to the finished product of gleeful vengeance. And often this is exactly what happens.

Initially it begins on the playground with getting even. Eventually it ends in law courts around the countries. Broken families. Crippled companies. Burned villages. Anger causes it all. And still we cling to it as though it is some life blood of our existence.

But there is nothing that can be done with anger that cannot be done better without it. The answer is to right the wrong in persistent love, not to harbor anger. To retain anger and to cultivate it is, by contrast, "to give the devil a chance." He will take the chance, and there will be hell to pay. Anger always comes at a high price.

You might wonder at the possibility of such an existence. I tell you again, as I have before, that living a life where you do not indulge anger in your heart is impossible. That is to say, impossible without God working inside of your heart to change it from the corrupt nature it has come to possess. Begin living with a Kingdom Heart, and you will find yourself blessing those who persecute you. You will answer violence with peace. You will seek to love your enemy.

Jesus starts here. If you desire to possess his Kingdom Heart, begin by ridding your heart of all the anger that currently blocks him out. No more grudges, no more winning, and no more life being all about you. You'll be amazed at the difference it can make.

In the Caldron of Anger and Contempt

God must be using this blog in his own way. What originated as a means for me to express my thoughts on this life changing piece of literature has turned into an enjoyable read for a few people. To date, 300 readers have stopped by to visit. Thank you for your readership. I hope it has impacted your life in a positive way.

And now for something completely different.

Double, double toil and trouble;
    Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
                                            ~Macbeth

Recall from our previous discussion that we are looking at the Kingdom Heart or the dikaiosune of an individual. Today we begin with Jesus' first example of what that looks like in a person's life.

The first illustration of kingdom dikaiosune is drawn from cases in which we are displeased with our "brother" and may allow ourselves to treat him with anger or contempt. 

You may wonder why Jesus chooses anger as his first topic of the application of his sermon, or you may think it a perfect fit. I have often seen pride as the most corrupt version of the human heart, and perhaps anger is the result of pride, at least the anger and contempt that Jesus speaks of. Either way, it is a good beginning.

When we trace wrongdoing back to its roots in the human heart, we find that in the overwhelming number of cases it involves some form of anger. Close beside anger you will find its twin brother, contempt. Jesus' understanding of them and their role in life becomes the basis of his strategy for establishing kingdom goodness. It is the elimination of anger and contempt that he presents as the first and fundamental step toward rightness of the kingdom heart.

Eliminate anger? Is that even possible? Contempt, perhaps yes, but is not anger a natural and unchangeable response of human emotion? Is it not like asking me to stop sneezing or cease from crying? Perhaps it is. We, as a culture, or at least males as a gender, have been trained and conditioned not to shed tears. We as a Christian culture have been trained not to let anger show. This is not to say we've stopped anger in our hearts any more than it is to say we've stopped sadness because we cannot see the tears.

Pointing to the moral inadequacy of the commandment not to kill as a guide to relationships with others who anger us, Jesus goes deeper into the texture of human personality: "But what I say is that anyone who becomes intensely angry [orgizomenos] with those around them shall stand condemned before the law." (Matthew 5:22). He uses the same phrase as the old teaching applied to murder.

Jesus always looks at the inside. He always scans the heart. In his eyes, it is not enough that we hold back our anger as we might hold back tears. If we bottle it up, if we possess it for our own, then our heart is not his, and we are just as guilty against our fellow human as though we had gunned him down in cold blood.

I do not think he is referencing here the simple reaction of anger that often spawns unsummoned inside our minds.

In its simplest form, anger is a spontaneous response that has a vital function in life. As such, it is not wrong. It is a feeling that seizes us in our body and immediately impels us toward interfering with, and possibly even harming, those who have thwarted our will and interfered with our life. The primary function of anger in life is to alert me to an obstruction to my will, and immediately raise alarm and resistance, before I even have time to think about it.

That makes sense. God created us and made in us the feeling of anger. Jesus himself felt it at certain times. Of course, his anger was in resistance and obstruction to God's will, something we are far too likely not to notice trapped as we are in our own little bubbles of life.

If that were all there was to anger, all would be well. Anger in this sense is no sin, even though it is still better avoided where possible. Headaches are no sin, but do we really need them? But the anger that is among us is much more than this and quickly turns into something that is inherently evil.

This is the bubbling cauldron to which the title of this post references. This is the intense anger, the purposeful anger, to which Jesus references. This is anger at its deadliest and most sinful. This is anger dwelt upon and anger unleashed.

It spontaneously arises in us when our will is obstructed, but as a response toward those who interfere with us, it includes a will to harm them, or the beginnings thereof. Some degree of malice is contained in every degree of anger. That is why it always hurts us when someone is angry at us. 

I feel I must halt here for the day, for to give this subject its proper attention would require much more writing than the average attention span has time for. I shall conclude my studies anger tomorrow. Be warned, the caldron is about to bubble.

Engines at the Full

Welcome back, dear reader, to a conclusion of this past week's theme. We have been studying Jesus' focus on the inner self, or perhaps more precisely, on an inner state of being. Originally dubbed "dikaiosune" [die-kah-yo-soo-nay] by Plato, it was thought to be a desirable quality or state of being. We have heard this termed as "righteousness" in the modern language. I am sure we have little idea what it means.

Jesus' account of dikaiosune, or of being a really good person, is given in Matt. 5:20-48. We need to stop for a comment on this special term that plays such a large part in the thought world of classical and Hellenistic Greek culture, as well as in the language of the Bible and in the early form of Christianity.

Aristotle, his pupil, changed the focus to "arete", in our language this becomes virtue.

Of course no contemporary ethical expert would be caught dead discussing "righteousness," though virtue has recently experienced something of a revival in the field.



Dikaiosune speaks to a way of living. In it, we find an answer to the age old question, "What is the good life?" What is it that must be done to feel satisfied with the quality of our lives or the way we have lived.

The human need to know how to live is perennial. It has never been more desperate than it is today. 

While quite true, this still averts the actual question of what is dikaiosune? What does it mean to be righteous or to have righteousness? Is this not the very thing Jesus promises to give? Is this not the very thing God seeks in us? "You shall be made righteous," we are told, but I warrant we have very little understanding what this means.

The best translation of dikaiosune would be a paraphrase: something like "what that is about a person that makes him or her really right or good." 

I suppose we could picture it as the carat of a diamond or the weight of gold. The dikaiosune of a person is his measure against the heavens; it is how he marks up to the Almighty Himself. Interesting then, that not only does God require this from us, but he also grants it to us. In Genesis we find Abraham (formerly Abram) interacting with God on a personal level. What is more surprising than this, is that God does not treat him an estranged being full of sin, as he does with Adam prior to his expulsion from the garden. God speaks to and of Abraham as one who has met the requirements of communing with the Creator of the world.

"And Abram believed God, and it was counted to him for dikaiosune."

Righteousness. God is a righteous God, and he desires children who follow after him in this way. Oddly enough, faith in and a desiring of God provides this righteousness. Abraham had it. Jesus promised to give it. We are asked to seek it.

Later we are told in Hebrews that by faith in God, Abraham obtained his dikaiosune, his righteousness. It was not about a confession of belief or a system of actions, but an inner mindset of trust in and desiring after the One who made him.

Is this something we stress in today's Christian world? Is this something we teach? We so often want children to say they believe in Jesus or adults to serve the poor and the needy. How often do we want humans, of any age, to harbor an inward desire to be as God is. To love mercy and kindness, to seek justice and truth. Not that the other things are not profitable to the individual soul, but surely we must recognize these as a biproduct of God's inner nature.

Dikaiosune is Jesus living in our hearts. It is a fire that fuels the engine of our Christian spirit. A raging furnace, a roaring river, a churning volcano of spiritual energy inside of us, ready to power any act that God might call us to. This is not mysticism, this the reality Jesus preached from Genesis to Revelations. Those who live in God's kingdom, possess the kingdom heart, the dikaiosune of a redeemed individual.

Without the righteousness of Christ inside of us, we will find it very difficult to handle the situations of the everyday in an eternal and eternally good manner. With it, we will rise above what is thought to be humanly possible. Jesus gives six examples where this can and should happen.

1. Irritation with one's associates
2. Sexual attraction
3. Unhappiness with marriage partner
4. Wanting someone to believe something
5. Being personally injured
6. Having an enemy

The next focus of this chapter will be to examine each of these in light of how the world understood them, how a follower of the law understood them, and how Jesus, as a living member of the Kingdom of God, understood them in light of the reality of that Kingdom. Put on the Kingdom Heart, seek true dikaiosune of character, and follow me as we explore that Kingdom in the coming days.

Full Bloom

This chapter deals with the Kingdom Heart. It deals with the importance of the inside as opposed to the outside. Yesterday we talked about the foolhardy approach most people use in attempting to do good without actually trying to be good. I would say a good many of us fall into this category. At the same time, we know that simply wanting to do good is not enough. Eventually people will want to see good in our lives or they will question where the life-changing power of God is to be found.

The question is, How can one keep the law? Jesus knew the answer, and that is why he told those who wanted to know how to work the works of God to put their confidence in the one God had sent. (John 6:29) 

Is it starting to make sense? In order to keep the law, we have to start with Jesus. We cannot do it on our own. We need him. 

He knew that we cannot keep the law by trying to keep the law. One must aim to become the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow. The apple tree naturally and easily produces apples because of its inner nature.

Jesus has the astounding effect of changing the inner nature of the people he has contact with. The people remain the same, but their insides are refreshed and renewed, thus causing their outsides to eventually produce new works as well. They remain who they were, but now their lives are working toward good. 

This is the most crucial thing to remember if we would understand Jesus' picture of the kingdom heart given in the Sermon on the Mount.  


First, our aims must be to become the kind of people from whom good naturally flows. We must not seek to do good for the sake of looking good or seeming good (as I have so often been guilty of in the past). No, we must desire to want the good to be the outcomes in our lives. We must push past our natural, selfish, greedy, adulterous, lustful, raging, angry, contemptuous, judgmental selves and replace such feelings with God's agape love.

Sound easy? It's impossible. That is to say, it is impossible without the aid of the very one God decided to send to us. Jesus enables us to change the inside. He enables us to be good, holy, and perfect.

But only if we allow him to.

In the words of C.S. Lewis, "He can never ravish; he can only woo." Christ will not force himself into our lives in order to change them. Not unless we ask him to. Not unless we seek after him. Not unless we choose to desire to be good. Only then will he enable us to be that which we desire, and again, only if we ask.

Actions do not emerge from nothing. They faithfully reveal what is in the heart. It is the inner soul that we must aim to transform, and then behavior will naturally and easily follow.

This is the amazing message of Jesus' Gospel. He comes to bring us life, eternal life, life to the full, and he does so by changing the very nature we rely on that clings to the lifeless existence we currently inhabit.

Our roots our dead, and we need to be replanted. Our motherboard is fried, and it needs to be replaced. Our insides are all messed up, and we need a surgeon. Jesus is that farmer, surgeon, and repairman to our spiritual lives. Always, it comes from the inside. Always, it requires a change of heart, a conscience and willful decision on our part in order to effect the change we seek to effect.

This change of heart is termed in the Greek Dikaiosune (prounced dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay), and it shall be the focus of our discussion tomorrow. Until then, dear readers...

 

The Law and the Soul

Today's topic concerns the law, or commands of God, and the soul. 

It is precisely Jesus' grasp of the structure in the human soul that leads him to deal primarily with the sources of wrongdoing and not to focus on the actions themselves. Wrong action, he well knew, is not the problem in human existence, though it is constantly taken to be so. It is only a symptom, which from time to time produces vast evils in its own right.


I can't recall to what extent I've discussed this matter before. I will say that I had heard it many times before this book without it ever really clicking. Perhaps it's the copious amounts of "House" that I've watched prior to reading the book, or perhaps it is the newly found wisdom of the preceding chapters, but I suddenly seem to get what Jesus is talking about when he says to "go beyond the goodness of the scribes and the pharisees," to get at the root or cause of the evil.

This, however, does not mean that the law does not matter.

Confidence in Christ is, correctly understood, inseparable from the fulfilling of the law.

Clean the inside of the cup and the outside will also be clean. Jesus spoke those words clearly, but how many of us still go about trying to fix the symptoms of our actions before we take a look inside at our hearts? It's like sowing up a bullet wound without removing the bullet. It's like taking cough medicine when you have the flu. The coughing may stop, but you are still incredibly ill. This illness will show itself one way or another.

If, on the other hand, you are vaccinated prior to being infected, the illness will never show, and the cough medicine need never be administered. At the very least you can give your body rest and consume fluids to flush out the inside. This will help to fight off the virus consuming your life, and once that is gone, the coughing will also cease.

To be sure, law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness.

For anyone who's taken a course in logic, this is a conditional statement. It could be written as, "If one is right then one obeys the law." It is not a biconditional. It is not a two-way street. The law does not produce rightness. Rightness, the quality of living life in the right manner or way or, in other words, in obedience to God's commands, precepts, and laws, is not something obtained by obeying those laws in the first place.

Just as simply believing God exists isn't enough to call yourself a follower of God, so also doing God's commands isn't enough to create a rightness in your life. You must first have the change on the inside that brings about that healthy style of living. A leper who becomes a vegan will remain a leper until his leprosy is removed. Vegan living may then be a positive help to his life, but will likely not help much otherwise in the long run.

This is the beginning of a revisioning of Christ and his kingdom. What it means to be a Christian and what it means to be a disciple of Christ. More on that later. Tomorrow I will be getting into just what it means to "clean the inside of the cup." How do we make our souls clean? How do we know when they are? How do we keep them that way? How does "keeping the law" follow from that?

A lot of questions still go unanswered. I know this was a short piece, but I will be expanding quite a bit on this subject. Check back in tomorrow.







 

Overview of the Sermon

I'm back. I apologize for the lengthy delay. Hopefully it gave you time to catch up on all the posts you hadn't read yet.

My hiatus left us concluding the fourth chapter of Dallas Willard's "Divine Conspiracy". The fifth chapter alone could take as much time as the rest of the book up to this point. Hence I have been preparing for this journey.

As previously mentioned, chapter five of the book deals with the Chapter 5 of Matthew, beginning where the Beatitudes end. We are about to take a look at each section, as a whole, and in light of the rest of the Sermon. Keep in mind, while we talk and discourse about The Discourse on the Hill, that talking in and of itself has very little value.

Almost one sixth of the Discourse is devoted to emphasizing the importance of actually doing what it says. Doing and not just hearing and talking about it is how we know the reality of the kingdom and integrate our life into it.

I cannot help you live out the Sermon on the Mount just as I cannot help you live out the Beatitudes. My hope is that at some point along this reading, you and I will experience a change of heart in reaction to the heart-changing power of God's word. However, do not think that by reading this book or these posts you will somehow be gaining access to the Eternal Life that Jesus promised. You must choose to do what you hear, to live what you read, and to act on what you believe.

Now, here is what you can expect from Jesus' sermon, and a slight preview to what you'll be reading on during the next few months:

1. Background assumption: life in the kingdom through reliance upon Jesus (already covered in the first three chapters)
2. It is ordinary people who are the light and salt of the world as they live the blessed life in the kingdom. (already covered in chapter four)
3. The kingdom heart of goodness concretely portrayed as the kind of love that is in God
4. Warning against false securities - reputation and wealth
5. Warning against condemnation engineering as a plan for helping people and a call to the community of prayerful love.
6. Warnings about how we may fail actually to do what the Discourse requires, and the effects thereof.

Before we go into those pieces in depth, Willard offers us a preliminary warning. Pay close attention to this, and you might start to understand why this book proves so enlightening on the subject of the Sermon on the Mount.

To understand correctly what Jesus is teaching us to do in his Discourse, we must keep the order of the treatment in mind and recognize its importance. The later parts of the Discourse presuppose the earlier parts and simply cannot be understood unless their dependence upon the earlier parts is clearly seen.

Here you can see yet another reason why I've taken some time off before going into this teaching. If you have not read and understood the previous words of Jesus, the availability of his kingdom to all, the entrance into his kingdom, and the desire to reign therein, then you will find it near impossible to take in the expectations that Jesus places on those who live in his kingdom.

Let me put it another way. You will have great difficulty living in Spain if all you speak is Icelandic. No, that's still too far off. It's more like trying to join Facebook without the internet. There is an incredibly large community with all sorts of possibilities available to them, but before you can answer their requests to post pictures and message them and check out your wall posts, you have to be able to join the site. Jesus has asked us to join his Kingdom. It's quite a bit larger than Facebook, but it still requires people joining before they'll be able to access the kind of life that's inside.

Otherwise the Discourse will make little or no sense as a guide to what to do. For they are thinking of their life as the one they now have, untouched by the more fundamental parts of Jesus' teaching, given earlier.

I hope that the Discourse does start making sense to you. I hope that this book opens your eyes to old truths. And I hope you can find yourself living them out in exciting ways. And I'd love to hear about them.

So, dear reader, if you've ever caught yourself pondering, "What does it mean to turn the other cheek? Do I really have to cut off my hand if I sin? How can I be more righteous than the religious elite?" Then have we got a story for you...

See you tomorrow.

The Kingdom Heart

No good tree produces bad fruit, nor any bad tree good fruit... The good person, from the good treasured up in his heart, produces what is good. 
         ~(Luke 6:43)

Welcome to chapter 5, both of the book we are reading and of the Gospel of Matthew. These next few weeks will look at both. As per the title of this posting, this chapter is about the heart. More specifically, it concerns the heart as it relates to good and evil.

We must understand that when Jesus tackles human existence, he does not do so in platitudes and proverbs. Wise sayings are great for general ideas of where to go with life. For instance, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" is vague enough to allow me, if I understand its meaning, to apply it to situations when I feel it applies and ignore it at all other times. 

Jesus does not give us that luxury.
When Jesus deals with moral evil and goodness, he plunges right into the guts of human existence: 

raging anger

contempt

hatred

obsessive lust

divorce

verbal manipulation

revenge

slapping

suing

cursing

coercing

begging

It is the stuff of soap operas and the daily news - and real life. He knows that people deeply hunger to be good but cannot find their way. His aim is to enable people to be good, not just talk about it.

We, the people, have talked about. We have discussed it and dissected it and condoned it and condemned it. We've put it on posters and stickers and buildings and bombshelters. Indeed, in nearly ever location in modern world Jesus' teachings have found their way to the core of the culture.

What Jesus had to say about human good and evil was of sufficient depth, power, and justification to dominate European culture and its offshoots for two millennia.

But how many of us have actually lived his teaching? His famous Sermon on the Mount leaves most readers confused and cringing at the thought of doing some of the activities he suggests. Sell all our clothes? Cut of our hands? Gouge out our eyes? Become salt? Never insult anyone? Tie a large rock around our necks and hurtle ourselves into the sea? Certainly not, you say. Certainly not, I say. 

Jesus' words in Matthew 5-7 are perhaps the most misquoted and misunderstood sentences of the entire Bible. Everyone knows them, and yet no one seems to agree on what they mean. To this point, Willard offers hope.

First, what is now called his Sermon on the Mount should indeed be read as a sermon, as one unified discourse. It is organized around one purpose and develops along a single line of thought in masterful unity. When taken as independent sayings, the various statements the "sermon" contains will certainly be regarded as "laws" dictating what we are and are not to do. If that is all he is doing, they will certainly be laws that are impossible to keep. 

I can vouch for that. In growing up as a legalist and perfectionist, I sought to figure out how to be good and great, beyond everyone else around me. I was much like the rich, young noble who came to Jesus and said, "All the laws I have kept since my childhood, so what must I still do to inherit eternal life?" 

Then I opened to the dreaded Sermon, and my eyes were opened to the impossibility of my task. I was not going to dismember my body. I was not going to sell even what little I had and just blindly give it away. I was going to continue to structure my life around blindly following what I thought were the rules of the good life and hope that that that produced my sought after reward. In the end, I, like everyone else who travels down this path, ran into the obvious conclusion.

The keeping of the law turns out to be an inherently self-refuting aim; rather, the inner self must be changed. Trying merely to keep the law is not wholly unlike trying to make an apple tree bear peaches by tying peaches to its branches.

My outer appearance may have put on the guise of righteousness, obedience, and piety, but my heart never changed. As we shall see in this chapter, the heart is heart of the matter. It is the crux, the building blocks, the capstone, the keystone, the foundation, and the page one on the book of life. 

In the words of Paul, "If I have faith that can move mountains and I give all I have to the poor, it still amounts to nothing if my heart does not love." (1 Corinthians 13)

He goes on to describe such a person as a clanging gong and banging cymbal. Such a person is a loud noise-maker, sure to draw attention to himself, bu unable to ever produce anything of substance or value. He is an apple tree, showing off his wonderful peaches, while everyone around wonders what he'll do when those have all dropped away.

This chapter is about the heart. For me, it's about my heart. For you, it's about yours. Jesus' words were meant for the individual, the seeker of life's secrets. His words will give you the secrets you seek, but you will have to look inside yourself to find the answers. And if you want to produce real fruit.

Living the Beatitudes

I promised you last week a look into how the Beatitudes could be lived out in our lives today. How do they apply to us on a day to day basis? 

You are really walking in the good news of the kingdom if you can go with confidence to any of the hopeless people around you and effortlessly convey assurance that they can now enter a blessed life with God.

This alone provides basis for a new way of living our lives. Just stop and think of all the people you will run into in a given day. The grocer at Safeway. The security guard on the light rail. The guy with headphones who sits across from you. The girl who brings you coffee. Your boss. Your manager. Your best friend.

These people live a life that is human and that is ordinary. Can you confidently walk up to any of them and give them the good news that they can enter a blessed life with God? Do you believe they can? Jesus certainly did. He did more than that. He approached, not the ordinary, but the hopelessly unordinary. He took to the outcast and the outlier, and he told them that they, too, could enter the blessed life of relation with God.

Who would be on your list of "hopeless blessables" as found in today's world? Who would you regard as the most unfortunate people around you?

I mentioned this thought before in the concept of making a neighbor of people that the most common example is the poor and the homeless. However, I understand that not everyone is at a point where they feel comfortable talking to such outcasts as these. Perhaps a smaller step is in order. The outcasts of Jesus' day were all those who didn't have what the rich and powerful had. They didn't have land or power or religious knowledge. Hence they were ostracized. What criteria would we use to form such a list today?

If you judge from what people devote time and effort to, you come to the stark realization that to be fat, have thinning hair or a bad complexion, be wrinkled or flabby, is experienced by them as unconditional personal condemnation. Jesus took time to point out the natural beauty of every human being.

I doubt many of us could do the same. We tend to laugh at the fat ones, the ugly ones, the smelly ones, the drunken ones, the high ones, and those without style or taste. These people can't possibly be blessed in our eyes. Just look at how far off the mark they are. Funny, because I think Jesus would have had something different to say were he preaching his sermon today.

Blessed are the physically repulsive,

Blessed are those who smell bad, 

The twisted, misshapen, deformed,

The too big, too little, too loud,

The bald, the fat, and the old -

For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.

Oh, and we are just getting started. What about the people we haven't brought up yet because, well let's be honest, they aren't talked about in church or in polite company. We can't mention the word Jesus and then bring in:

The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned-outs. 

The broke and the broken. 

The drug heads and the divorced. 

The HIV-positive and herpes-ridden. 

The brain-damaged, the incurably ill. 

The pregnant-too-many-times and pregnant-too-early. 

The overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed.

The emotionally starved or emotionally dead. 

The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid.

Have we gone too far? Have we not gone far enough? What of:

The brutal and the bigoted. 

The murderers and the child-molesters.

The drug lords and pornographers.

The war criminals and sadists.

Terrorists. 

I believe we can all agree with Willard's words here when he states:

Sometimes I feel I don't really want the kingdom to be open to such people. But it is. That is the heart of God. And, as Jonah learned from his experience preaching to those wretched Ninevites, we can't shrink him down to our size.

Living out the Beatitudes as a set of laws seems nearly impossible. Living them out in the way Jesus meant them seems not only impossible but downright insane. At least, it does to anyone who has not experienced his kingdom already. 

Paul's policy with regard to the redemptive community simply followed the gospel of the Beatitudes. He refused to base anything on excellence of speech, understanding, and culture as attainments of human beings. Rather, "I resolved to regard nothing in your midst except Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1 Cor 2:2)

Jesus Christ offers access to the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the heavens, kingdom living, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, a new kingdom heart. Upon receiving this, loving your neighbor, even the homeless, stinking, drunken man on the street corner, suddenly becomes as natural as loving yourself. And loving your enemy, even to the point of terrorists, suddenly doesn't seem the uncrossable void it once did.

Unbelievable? Believe it.

The Personal Ministry of Jesus

Continuing where we left off...

And then there are the pure in heart, the ones for whom nothing is good enough, not even themselves.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. I love the rendering of this classic depiction. For me, it rings a personal note.

 These are the perfectionists. They are a pain to everyone, themselves most of all. In religion they will certainly find errors in your doctrine, your practice, and probably your heart and your attitude. They may be even harder on themselves. They endlessly pick over their own motivations. They wanted Jesus to wash his hands even though they were not dirty and called him a glutton and a winebibber.

Not your average interpretation of "pure in heart," is it? You would imagine that have a pure heart would propel people into God's favor. But that is not and cannot be what Jesus speaks of. The pure in heart are listed with the poor, the persecuted, and the broken. They are broken. They suffer as much as any cripple or beggar, though it is a disability of the heart and mind that ails them. Again, we see a reason why these people would not feel blessed. Yet they are. When Jesus brings God's kingdom to them, they are blessed.

How miserable they are! And yet the kingdom is even open to them, and there at last they will find something that satisfies their pure heart. They will see God. And when they do they will find what they have been looking for, someone who is truly good enough.

How wonderful the Beatitudes suddenly appear when I see in them my own weaknesses. The most troubling and debilitating condition of my own heart lines up against the meek and the martyrs, and Jesus says to me, "You, too, are blessed when my kingdom comes to you."


I had always imagined that I had to become poor or destitute or persecuted or killed before I could finally feel God's blessing on my life. My life could always be "ok", but never perfect (again, see pure in heart). With this new look at the classic lines Jesus quipped, it becomes abundantly clear that I have access to the best life now. I am blessed now. God offers the perfect life, but he also offers an alternative to my perfectionist world view. He offers an eternal life view that far exceeds and outweighs the limits I used to place on life.

Willard continues through

1) the peacemakers

2) those persecuted for righteousness

3) those persecuted for Christ

before concluding his look at the Beatitudes.

Thus by proclaiming blessed those who in the human order are thought hopeless, and by pronouncing woes over those human beings regarded as well off, Jesus opens the kingdom of the heavens to everyone. 

The kingdom of heaven is open to the priests and the pastors. It is open to the righteous and the pure. And it is open to you and to me. Jesus begins his entire ministry with this first proclamation. "Come to me you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28) Not only that, he will turn you into a living heir of his kingdom.

Indeed, such transformation of status for the lowly, the humanly hopeless, as they experience the hand of God reaching into their situation, is possibly the most pervasive theme of the biblical writing. In general, many of those thought blessed or "first" in human terms are miserable or "last" in God's terms, and many of those regarded as "last" in human terms may well be blessed in God's terms as they rely on the kingdom of Jesus.

The truth of the Beatitudes lies herein. We should now feel fairly confident in the purpose of Jesus' ministry. He is proclaiming life changing truths, not bringing regulations and laws. He proposes a new social order instead of new social rules. Now that we know this, how now shall we then live? How do we respond to such revolutionary words?

 We respond appropriately to the Beatitudes of Jesus by living as if this were so, as it concerns others and as it concerns ourselves.

That shall be the discussion of next week.

Kingdom Proclamation: The Specifics

Finally, we come to the individual Beatitudes themselves. Keep in mind that, according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has done only 3 things so far in his ministry.

1) He went out preaching, "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near."

2) He healed the sick, broken, and the demon-possessed.

3) He called those around him together to tell them the good news that the kingdom of heaven had come to them, and they are blessed by it.

This third piece becomes even more explicit when Jesus takes each person where they are at on an individual basis and lets them know how they are blessed. We shall do the same. Before doing so though, you may wish to read yesterday's post so you understand the context in which Jesus is preaching. Let's begin with those who mourn.

Luke refers to them as "the weeping ones" (6:21): men and women whose mates have just deserted them, la parent in gut-wrenching grief and depression over the death of a little daughter; people who have lost their careers or businesses or life savings. So many things to break the heart!

This is what Jesus had in mind when he said, "Blessed are those who mourn." He is not saying that we should mourn and hence gain a blessing. He is saying that mourners are out there, and that they will be blessed; they will be comforted.

As they see the kingdom in Jesus, enter it, and learn to live in it, they find comfort, and their tears turn to laughter. Yes, they are even better off than they were before their particular disaster.

So fret not you mourners, for the night is darkest just before the dawn. And Jesus is the light of the world.


Next we have the meek.

These are the shy ones, the intimidated, the mild, the unassertive. If something goes wrong around them, they automatically feel it must have something to do with them. When others step forward, they shrink back. They do not assert their legitimate claims unless driven into a corner and then usually with ineffectual rage.

I can think of many examples of where the church has asked us as Christians to be meek. Meekness, we are told, will allow God to work. And that may very well be true. It does not, however, equate to a command from Jesus ever to be meek. Growing up, I can remember times when I shrunk from confrontation and situations because I believed in the virtue of a meek Christian. Why risk stepping on toes? Why stand up for what is right? Why not just let God do everything?

Christ does not command this. On the other hand, he does not condemn it. He says that the meek will be blessed, and they will inherit that earth as they partake in God's kingdom. Those who push for themselves least of all will inherit just as much as everyone else. They need not fear or worry.

As the kingdom of the heavens enfolds them, the whole earth is their Father's - and theirs as they need it. The Lord is their shepherd, they shall not want.

God provides for the needs of the meek. He provided for mine. He will provide for yours.


Next, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Those who burn with desire for things to be made right. It may be that the wrong is in themselves. Perhaps they have failed so badly that night and day they cringe before their own sin and inwardly scream to be made pure. Or it may be that they have been severely wronged, suffered some terrible injustice, and are consumed with longing to see the injury set right. 

Note here that Willard does not allow for a positive interpretation on any Beatitude, including this one. Keep in mind the context of Jesus' sermon. Jesus is giving a kingdom proclamation to all around him, letting everyone know that the kingdom is theirs no matter their circumstances. Would he then switch to praise those who are hungry for righteousness as though they alone stand out from the rest? Says Willard:

It is unlikely to the extreme that Jesus would have been doing one thing with the remainder of his Beatitudes and then switch back for these two alone.

No, it makes all the more sense to realize that those who thirst day and night for righteousness, for things to be made right, that they have comfort also in God's kingdom coming to them.

The kingdom of the heavens has a chemistry that can transform even the past and make the terrible, irretrievable losses that human beings experience seem insignificant in the greatness of God. He restores our souls and fills us with the goodness of rightness.

Those who hunger shall be filled. Those who thirst shall be quenched. God's kingdom brings rightness, and for those who hunger for it, they shall be blessed; they need not fear.


And now the merciful.

The merciful are always despised by those who know how to "take care of business." 

Mercy is not a vice. God does not consider the merciful in a state of destitution, although humanity most often times does. We are taught to win, to succeed, to achieve, no matter the cost. Mercy is scorned in business circles and sports ventures and politics and board games. Humanity despises the merciful. "Woe to the merciful, for they shall be taken advantage of."

Yet outside the human order, under the great profusion of heaven's goodness, they themselves find mercy to meet their needs, far beyond any "claim" they might have on God.

God grants them mercy in his kingdom, as he grants all residents. Their mercy does not earn them his, but it does not deny them any advantage either. If their treasure is in heaven's kingdom, the world's threats are meaningless.



This, I think is sufficient thought food for the soul for today. Tomorrow I shall finish the other half of the Specifics. Until then, I bid you good reading.

What Jesus Really Had in Mind

You might find it of interest that we have thrown in a story of the Good Samaritan right in the middle of speaking on the Beatitudes. What does a parable have to do with a list? Quite a lot, in fact. The Beatitudes are not a new list of commands. They are not a collection of do's and don'ts to get us into heaven. We touched on this in an earlier post.

What then does Jesus say to us with his Beatitudes? How are we to live in response to them? 

This is an excellent question, one that is fundamental to this chapter, and Willard is about to answer it in an excellent way.

They serve to clarify Jesus' fundamental message: the free availability of God's rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God's blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God's touch and abundant provision from the heavens. 

Think back to the Beatitudes and all the normal interpretations that have gone with them. Did you ever consider them to be a declaration of the "free availability of God's rule and righteousness to all humanity?"

Here they are again from Luke's gospel (Luke 6:20):


Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,  for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you  and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

To further understand this point, consider the three conclusions one could draw from a hearing of the Beatitudes by those who fall into the "blessed" categories. Consider hearing them if you were poor, hungry, and persecuted. Society has told you that you are the scum of the earth. They have pointed to successful people in life and stated that they are blessed, not you. If that were the case, and Jesus were to give you a declaration that they are wrong and you are now blessed, you would likely conclude the following:

1) No human condition excludes blessedness

Jesus has listed "the least of these" and the worst of these and stated they were blessed. If they're not left off the list, no one is.

2) God may come to any person with his care and deliverance

And why not? He came to you, after all in the form of Jesus and healed your injuries and diseases.

3) God does sometimes help those who cannot or do not help themselves

You are listening to his sermon because you cannot help yourself. You came to hear his message of hope and deliverance from an oppressive political and religious regime. And he helped you.

Anyone could come as well as any other. They still can. That is the gospel of the Beatitudes. 

We shall finish today with that overarching message. Tomorrow, we'll examine each listed Beatitude individually for the sake of understanding precisely of whom Jesus was speaking at that time, and for whom it is applicable today.

How to Make a Neighbor

Today we investigate the parable of the Good Samaritan. You have heard this parable, of this I have no doubt. It is a classic tale of an outcast of Jewish society who shows love to his enemy, even when that enemy cannot ween love from the religious elite of his day. Jesus casts this net into the crowd of people around him in order to demonstrate a key principle of God's kingdom.

In God's order nothing can substitute for loving people. And we define who our neighbor is by our love. We make a neighbor of someone by caring for him or her.

Jesus tells this story after a man asks him to define "his neighbor". The man wanted an excuse or an escape from loving everyone, so he asks Jesus to give him a list. After all, the man knows that the second greatest commandment is to "love your neighbor as yourself." A short and simple list of people to love is the perfect salvation by works. But Jesus is not concerned merely with the man's actions. He does not provide him a list.

Jesus deftly rejects the question "Who is my neighbor?" and substitutes the only question really relevant here: "To whom will I be a neighbor?" And he knows that we can only answer this question case by case as we go through our days.

Jesus cares about our hearts far more than we will ever know. One might say our hearts are the primary thing he cares about. Bear in mind his words when he tells the pharisees, "Clean only the inside of the cup, and the outside will be clean also."(Matthew 23) He speaks here of our intentions, our desires, and our will. Our actions, it seems, are of little value apart from the heart.

In the morning we cannot yet know who our neighbor will be that day. The condition of our hearts will determine who along our path turns out to be our neighbor, and our faith in God will largely determine whom we have strength enough to make our neighbor.

The heart is a strong and stubborn muscle. When we awake seeking to fulfill our goals and dreams and desires, we care little for the well-being of random strangers or close friends. Indeed, I can think of many times in my own life when I awoke and dreaded the thought of going outside for fear that I might interact with others and be forced to care for them and live my day for them instead of myself. Exceptionally selfish? Yes. Unique? Not at all. We all know the "walk the other way" cue our brains give us when we see someone we just don't want to interact with. Or perhaps it's a phone call we ignore. Or a text we just don't look at.


In the story of the good Samaritan, Jesus not only teaches us to help people in need; more deeply, he teaches us that we cannot identify who "has it," who is "in" with God, who is "blessed," by looking at exteriors of any sort. 

The fact of the matter is that God throws people into our lives every day to whom we can "be a neighbor." We do so every time we choose to love them despite our copious thoughts to the contrary. Many times they aren't strangers. They could be old friends or new friends. Family members. Coworkers. Acquaintances. Even enemies. And yes, sometimes, I wager, they are people on the side of the road. The homeless man holding a sign, who would love for you to look him in the eye or give him a bottle of water or simply say hello before you pass him by. God uses all sorts of people. He isn't boring in his lessons.

We must recognize that the aim of the popular teacher in Jesus' time was not to impart information, but to make a significant change in the lives of the hearers.

Jesus gives us opportunities to love those we view as unlovable so that we can experience growth. He wants us to see the world as he sees it. He wants us to drop the labeling and the classifications. He wants us to stop judging people by the outside and begin judging by the heart. Or perhaps simply stop judging in general and start living. 

By showing to others the presence of the kingdom in the concrete details of our shared existence, we impact the lives and hearts of our hearers.

Not only this, we also impact our own lives. I will go further into detail on the matters of the heart in the next chapter. For this one, I need only continue to remind you that for God's kingdom to be at work in your life, for you to begin living THE ETERNAL LIFE NOW, you have to start living as God intended you to live. You can't simply read this blog or read the Bible or listen to a sermon and think what a wonderful person you are becoming. You have to live, and you have to love. And to love, you have to make neighbors.

Won't you be a neighbor?

Correcting Prevailing Assumptions

Within pages 107-109 of the book are simple, straightforward explanations of Jesus' sayings found throughout the Gospels. It jumps around a bit from the sermon on the mount, the main focus of this chapter, but it does so with a purpose.

Willard seeks to show that when Jesus teaches, he does so in order to correct prevailing assumptions of the time. For instance, he takes on the assumptions that God favors the rich by addressing a rich man who loves wealth more than God. This man does not have eternal life. He has not entered the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus does not say that the rich cannot enter the kingdom. He does not say that the poor have an easier job of it. He does say that no one can do so without God's help and that the rich certainly have a hard time of it.

I view this statement as especially relevant in a society as rich as ours today. Do we still have a tough time entering God's kingdom as a Christian nation? Yes, I believe we do. We have a fine time adhering to social traditions and norms that Christianity has presented. Ask a man, however, if he is willing to sell all he has and give to the poor, and he will tell you you're misreading Jesus' words. He will give you his well-educated excuse for why that's just not possible. Then he will continue life, believing he has eternal life because he "prayed the prayer" and so is saved.

These are just the kind of assumptions Jesus was all about correcting in his day. The rich of his time were thought to be blessed. They had God's favor, clearly. How else could they have become rich?

Jesus so wanted his followers to understand God and to experience God's kingdom. He looked at all their areas of ignorance and tried to explain to them eternal truths using concrete examples and everyday instances of spiritual concepts. We call them parables, but they were really just good teaching tools trying to get across a hard to understand point.

You can't love your neighbor if you believe him to be unlovable. You can't follow Jesus if you assume that what he tells you must be for someone else. But Jesus' words are not for someone else. They are for me; they are for you. They are for the present day, the American, the Asian, and the African. They teach you how to enter God's kingdom, and it's nigh well time we started doing so. I don't know about you, but I am sick of living in this earthly world. I'm sick of following my own desires apart from God. I'm sick of reaching for twigs when I could be inheriting the stars. I'm sick of lofty, inapplicable metaphors, too, but unfortunately, like Jesus, I find it difficult to express verbally precisely what my soul craves from this life.

I know it when I experience it. I read Jesus' words, and I know it must be hidden there within, because I can feel my spirit stir. But I simply cannot place into action what my heart declares is true. God's kingdom is so near, and I can't reach out and grasp it. Such is the Divine Conspiracy. Such is life.

I apologize for venting. I'm tired, and it's been a long day. And I've experienced another day when I did not wake up and embrace the kingdom around me. Food tastes so much blander after having tasted honey. Earthly living is so much less interesting after living the life eternal. This is why Christ said we must pick up our crosses daily. It's as easy as opening the car door and stepping inside in the morning. The door to the kingdom is always at the ready. And the ride is far sweeter.

Not on the List

 I shall do my best today to clear up any confusion yesterday when we were examining the Beatitudes taken in context. Thus far we have only examined the first Beatitude. "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Read once more Willard's explanation for why we should consider the spiritual poor to be blessed.

Those spiritually impoverished ones present before Jesus in the crowd are blessed only because the gracious touch of the heavens has freely fallen upon them. But mistranslations remain attractive because they suit our human sense of propriety, which cries out against God's blessing on people just because of their need and just because he chooses.


What kind of mistranslations are we talking about here? Concerning the first of the Beatitudes, you might hear a sermon explaining it as, "You are blessed when you know how poor you are," or, "Blessed are you when you humble your spirit before God." This kind of thinking is precisely what the last posting has argued against. It takes Jesus' words completely out of context, and then mistranslates them to make it appear as though we must do something before we can receive God's blessing.


If all we need to be blessed in the kingdom is to be humble-minded through recognizing our spiritual poverty, then let's just do that and we've got bliss cornered. And we escape the embarrassment of receiving pure mercy, for our humble recognition makes blessedness somehow appropriate.

Was Jesus giving us a list of things to do and not to do in order to be blessed? Many have read it this way. I read it this way. In fifth grade I put on a play that read it this way. The fact of the matter is it misses the point.

And of course this also means that we can very neatly tell people how to engineer their way into the kingdom. Here we have full-blown, if not salvation by works, then possibly salvation by attitude.

Jesus simply was not a do's and don'ts kind of guy. He told stories and pronounced incredible truths about the spiritual world in accessible ways, but he did not give lists. Not only is the usual interpretation contradictory to Jesus' style, it also makes no sense today.

Consider the argument that in order to be happy today you must be humble. That sounds fine, and I'd even agree with it. But follow through that misinterpretation with the rest of the Beatitudes. In order to be happy, you also have to be mourning. You have to be suffering. You can't have wealth, and you can't be in a position of power. In other words, you can't take Jesus' words and directly apply them to your life right now without becoming a weeping, penniless monk in the middle of an anti-Christian country.

Thankfully, this is not the case.

The clear intent of the New Testament as a whole is that Jesus' teachings are meant to be applied now. Instead of denying Jesus' teachings to the present, we must simply acknowledge that he has been wrongly interpreted.

Let's attempt to move forward with a new interpretation. Here we have in clear letter what the Beatitudes are not.


The Beatitudes are not teachings on how to be blessed. They are not instructions to do anything. They do not indicate conditions that are especially pleasing to God or good for human beings. No one is actually being told that they are better off for being poor, for mourning, for being persecuted, and so on. 


Instead...


They are explanations and illustrations, drawn from the immediate setting, of the present availability of the kingdom through personal relationship to Jesus. They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens is truly available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope.


What is heaven like? The poor are blessed. The mournful are blessed. The persecuted are blessed. This is the gospel that Jesus brought. This is the good news.


The Beatitudes simply cannot be "good news" if they are understood as a list of "how-tos" for achieving blessedness. They would then only amount to a new form of legalism.


Jesus, who spent more time arguing against the legalistic ways of the pharisees than condemning "sinners", would never have begun his ministry pointed telltale in the opposite direction. Christianity is not about following a set of laws or a list of rules. It's not about trying to figure out God and then get on his good side.

Christianity is about the heart, in the same way that Christ was about the heart. He healed the people around them, set them free, and then let them know that, in spite of everything they were to society, they were now blessed because they had experienced the presence of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Teaching from the Context

Do you ever read through the letters of the new testament, think you've figured Christianity out, then read Jesus' words in the gospels and feel like once again nothing makes sense? I used to love reading through Romans and Corinthians and the other New Testament writings because they were so simple and straightforward.

Do "A" but don't do "B". People who do "A" are doing well. People who do "B" are NOT doing well. Then I would see if it matched up with what Jesus said, and I'd get something obscure such as "how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, it is like a camel passing through the eye of a needle." And I would be absolutely clueless as to whether I was supposed be poor and living the easy life or be rich and having a hard time of things.

This book has helped to fix that problem. It starts by following Jesus words as they were meant to be followed: in a logical and straightforward manner.

It will help us know what to do and what not to do with the Beatitudes if we can discover what Jesus himself was doing with them. 

Jesus was not walking down Broadway, chatting with a friend, when he was suddenly struck by an epiphany and started quoting platitudes to any man on the street who would listen. And so his message should not be taken that way. It should not be viewed as a dozen lines of pure truth that can be quoted on a dark day to make the storm clouds go away.

Since great teachers and leaders always have a coherent message that they develop in an orderly way, we should assume that his teaching in the Beatitudes is a development or clarification of his primary theme so far: the availability of the kingdom of the heavens.

So far Jesus has kept to a very simple and straightforward message. He preached just two lines in Matthew prior to his Sermon on the Mount.

1) "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near."

2) "Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."

We studied his first line in Chapter 1 (see early blog posts). We haven't gone deep into his message to his disciples, to whom he directed his second line.

So Jesus has been preaching about the nearness and availability of the Kingdom. He has shown this nearness by healing sickness, casting out demons, and treating diseases.

Having ministered to the needs of the people crowding around him, he desired to teach them and moved to a higher position where they could see and here him well. But he does not, as is so often suggested, withdraw from the crowd to give an esoteric discourse of sublime irrelevance. Rather, Jesus teaches his students about the meaning of the availability of the heavens.

His message has been brief and straightforward up until this point in time. No confusing parables, no philosophical questions, and no re-examination of the Old Testament. You can imagine being one of the peasants of the day who strolled out on a Saturday to hear this kindly, blue-collar worker talk to you about this other kingdom and then demonstrate its presence to you by healing all the sick from your village.

Certainly after you saw the lives of those around you be drastically changed, you would want to know more about this kingdom, would you not? Who has access to it? Is it a one-and-done kind of thing? Could it change your life? Jesus, it would appear, saw this curiosity, this "teachable moment," and set about spelling out the parameters.

The context makes this clear. He could point out in the crowd now an individual, who was "blessed" because The Kingdom Among Us had just reached out and touched them with Jesus' heart and voice and hands. Perhaps this is why we only find him giving the Beatitudes from the midst of a crowd of people he had touched.


And so Jesus said, 

"Blessed are the spiritual zeros 

- the spiritually banrupt, deprived and deficient, the spiritual beggars, those without a wisp of "religion" - 

when the kingdom of the heavens comes upon them."

This is not the way many translations phrase Jesus' opening words. We hear, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and we wonder what it means to be poor in spirit. Do you think it means humility? Piety? Do you think these common townsfolk and laborers were the spiritually pious of their region?

Look at the context! Jesus has just healed them; he has just shown them the blessing of the Kingdom of the Heavens, and so he naturally tells them that they are now blessed. I may be going to fast here, but do not fret. I shall be hitting this point home again and again.

Standing around Jesus as he speaks are people with no spiritual qualifications or abilities at all. They are the first to tell you they can't make heads or tails of religion. They walk by us in the hundreds or thousands every day. They would be the last to say they have any claim whatsoever on God. And yet, the rule of the heavens comes down upon their lives through their contact with Jesus. And then they too are blessed - healed of body, mind, or spirit - in the hand of God.

And that is precisely what Jesus tells them. That is the meaning of the first Beatitude. The poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Not exclusively theirs. Not theirs by right or by birth or by deed. But it is theirs, and that is what makes them blessed.

Those poor in spirit are called "blessed" by Jesus, not because they are in a meritorious condition, but because, precisely in spite of and in the midst of their ever so deplorable condition, the rule of the heavens has moved redemptively upon and through them by the grace of Christ.

This blows my mind. In all the mistranslations and misunderstandings of Jesus' words over the years, I've never considered that his words might have been meant, and still are meant, for real, everyday people right in front of him. Shouldn't there be some upper echelon or spiritual plane where this takes us? Isn't he the smartest man in the world? (see chapter 3)

Yes to both of these questions, and because of that, yes to the simplicity of this message. It's like staring at a diamond and realizing that in all it's glorious beauty is a divine simplicity of one single molecule latticed together. In comparing Jesus' words to the apostles', I've been comparing diamonds to gold, and wondering how they could both exist in the same place without presenting a problem. I think I've been suffering for quite some time from a lack of imagination. More on this topic tomorrow.