Micah 6:1-8 Ps. 37:1-18
1 Cor. 1:18-31 Matt. 5:1-12
In the Bible, the Beatitudes reside on a pedestal of defining the highest state of "spiritual" living, even an impossible standard to achieve.
And it is rather comfortable to keep them on such a pedestal and admit that only the heroic ever come close to living with such advanced sanctity.
I think that rather than keeping Beatitudes on such a pedestal, that we should look at them from the various subjective vantage points of the oracle of Jesus to whom they are attributed, the recipients for whom they were originally delivered, and for the many other readers who have read these exalted words from many different living conditions.
I think that any of us with sanguine minds needs to acknowledge the insights which was expressed by Nietzsche about the Beatitudes, namely, it is slave morality. It is a lifestyle prescription for those who have been forced into the life of oppression. There is something disturbingly wrong about all of the inferred conditions which would make the lifestyle of the Beatitudes as necessary.
The lifestyle of the Beatitudes are a recommended Christ-like martial arts style of living for how oppressed people can live winsomely with their masters so as not to rebel and live in open revolt and be killed.
The Beatitude conditions should really deconstruct them for us in poignant ways. First by decrying the oppressive conditions which require that oppressed people live in such winsome servile ways for their own survival.
We should have our own reading dishonesty about the Beatitudes deconstructed if we live more in the comfortable lifestyles of the "masters" than the lifestyles the "slaves." We are highly dishonest if from our comfortable lives we pretend to have an intimate identity with the very condition which generated the Beatitude lifestyle.
Let's be honest about what a healthy and salutary life means. It means freedom from a downcast spirit, it means freedom from mourning, it means freedom from persecution, it means living in peace, it means not having people speak evil of you, it means having enough of the resources of the earth to survive, it means having enough to eat and drink, it means to live with people who practice forgiveness, and it means to be and have people who discern God's presence.
For the original recipients of the Beatitudes and for the many oppressed people in the history of the world, including the many oppressed people by people who have claimed to be Christians, the Beatitudes was a survival discourse to live with the worst conditions of the inhumanity to humanity.
We in our modern and Enlightenment Era have presumed to change the human condition with forms of government which have had the goal of ameliorating the blatant realities of the master/slave dialectic. We have proclaimed the value of the individual within democracies where people have a greater equal status to control their own destinies so as not to have to live as slaves of other.
As much as we may think that we have achieved in the advancement of human rights for all, we have not prevented the perpetual return of the deliberate or unconscious exploitation of those who have power, wealth, and knowledge over those who do not have power, wealth, or knowledge.
So, how can we now re-read the Beatitudes in our post-modern era with projections of how Christ as a Good Shepherd might be manifest through us, who have a substantial degree of wealth, power, and education?
First, we should be active in every way possible to eliminate the master/slave conditions of class warfare and of the exploitation of the weak by the strong. In short, we should be working to eliminate that very conditions which required the heroic virtues of the Beatitudes as being but the winsome living habits of slaves before their masters.
To receive the Spirit which drives Beatitude living, while we are not oppressed, means that we work to encourage and refresh the spirits of those who are dis-spirited. we work to comfort those who are mourning the harmful events what what has happened in their lives. We work to make peace, not to ameliorate the wealthy and powerful to "treat people better;" rather we should make peace the basis of all relationships. We should do self work to clarify our motives so that we might see the divine because we have checked our egos at the door. We should stand against all bias, prejudice, and injurious speech and make empathy the principle of living together. We should find what is "right" beyond our own social setting which privileges our own affinities. We should learn forgiveness and mercy as the code of surviving among imperfect people trying to surpass themselves in future states of perfectibility.
In short, for those who have the relative comfort of adequate power, wealth, and knowledge, we should channel the Spirit of the Beatitudes in the perpetual task of overcoming the master/slave dialectic which always tempts people hell bent on the will to power, especially the will to power over others.
Or as the prophet Micah wrote: We should do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before God. Amen.
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