Right Being Is More Difficult Than Right Doing

6 Epiphany A February 12, 2023

 Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 119:1-8
1 Corinthians 3:1-9 Matt.5:21-24,27-30,33-37

Lectionary Link

Oswald Chambers, the writer of the popular devotional "My Utmost for His Highest," described the words of Jesus in the beatitudes as Jesus requiring not only right doing but also right being.

By right being, he was referring to the inner life which can be kept well hidden from the public view.  The actions of our lives can often be seen by the public and in our socialization, we are taught to look good in public if we want to impress the audiences of our lives.

In short, we from childhood are taught rote habits by our families and other important mentoring figures. From childhood, we are forced to go to church, to school, and lots of other civic events, even while we may not have always wanted to be doing these civic acts.  We learn lots of rules, customs, and protocols within our society which we learn to do so as not to be embarrassed, even though we may not really inwardly be attached to them.  "I have to act good, even when I don't feel like doing so."

In short, our training teaches us to be good actors.  Playing good roles on the outside even while we have hidden conflict and many counter emotions and feelings within.  In another place, Jesus referred to such religious actors as "hypocrites," which comes from the Greek word hupokrisos.

The Beatitudes expose the fact that people are hypocrites, or actors of doing good things even while the interior life is not always so inclined to be good.

St. Paul believed that the law of highly recommended good behaviors toward God and each other, set us up to be hypocrites, that is, they inform about how we should be in our behaviors but they cannot help us with the tenth commandment, the one about coveting, about wrongly desiring to have and be what we should not want.

And if we are wise, we will submit to our acting training of doing what the rules indicate even if we cannot make our inward desires and our unconscious and subconscious lives of our dreams behave in lawful manners.

The words of Jesus make it seems like hating and murder are equal in their sinfulness, and lusting and adultery are equal in their sinfulness.  But we know that in the actual practice of jurisprudence and social custom, societies cannot treat doing a bad act as being equal to thinking about doing a bad act.

So what was Jesus trying to do by presenting such a high standard of seemingly saying that right being and right doing have equal status in the eyes of God?

Jesus is the one who said, "Be perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect."  And for people to grow in perfection, it means that one's good motives and one's good deeds are in agreement.

Perhaps, we should see the spiritual method of Jesus as revealing the human condition of despair as preparation for the humility of the experience of grace.  It is the kind of despair expressed by the Psalmist when writing, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."

Religions can become societies with rules for members to pat themselves on the back for keeping all the religious rules in front of each other and in member in turn judge harshly the outsiders who don't keep the rules in the same way.

In words of Jesus, our righteousness must exceed the behaviors of certain religious leaders whom he had observed.

"So you think you've made it because you've convinced yourself that you are right doing in your public behaviors, such that you can judge others as being lacking.  Well don't stop with just your outward behavior, look at your inward desire; let God bring you to grace to receive the inward grace, even the clean heart of the Holy Spirit as the one who help us tolerate ourselves on the path of repentance."

The Gospel of the beatitude words of Jesus is a challenge for us to accept our need for grace to deal with our inward lives.  And when we accept our need for grace, we can have the humility to know that such grace is offered to everyone on the path of being perfected in love.

May God give each of us grace as we wrestle to couple right doing with right being as we accept the inner grace of God's Holy Spirit.  Amen.