Beatitude Balderdash

Hi there, happy Monday, and welcome to the blog.  The blog which will have a certain Latin flair to it today.

Now, Latin, as you all know, is the basis and backbone for our language, our mother tongue.  We are entwined with Latin and it is inseprable from us.  We can't get away from the very deep Latin roots that run through everything.  A great number of english words have their roots in Latin words, which makes it rotten to play Balderdash with someone who knows Latin, which means that they can sort of cheat.

But a Latin word that you all know, if you're in church, if you have read your Bible ever, is Beatitude.  Beatitude is a Latin word for blessing, did you know that?  When Jesus begins each section of the Beatitudes, he starts out, in the Latin Vulgate by saying 'Beatis.' That's the way you say blessed in Latin.  You may have heard it in the sense of the beatification, which is the last stop on the railroad before sainthood.  If you've been beatified, then you are well on your way to becoming a saint, and you will be referred to as 'blessed Garth Huber,' or what have you.

But there's another Latin term that you're going to need to know, or rather one that you already no doubt are well aware of.  And that Latin term is quid pro quo.  That is, if you do something for me, I will do something for you, and vice versa.  And that's the basis for most of our interactions with each other.  This is what we're sort of all about, and this is what we do as humans for the most part.  Most of our relationships with other human beings are based on this principle, in which we do things for each other, and that's how it goes. And some primatologists have framed morality in this sense, that we can observe the apes as creatures who can practice this same kind of exchange with each other.  They can do this, they can scratch each other's backs, both literally and figuratively.

And we, human beings, because we operate with quid pro quo, we translate that over to everything else, as well.  Including to our relationship with God. We treat our realtionship with God in the same way, feeling as though if we do the right things for God, if we treat him well, then he will treat us well as well.  We feel as though if we do the right thing, we will be rewarded.  If we keep God's laws, if we do that for him, then he will bless us.  Blessed are we if we do what God wants us to do.  And certainly, reading through this passage from the Gospels, you can get the idea of how you ought to interact with God in the same way.  Quid Pro Quo, right?  If we are in these camps, if we are sorrowful, or if we hunger for justice, or if we are meek, then we will be rewarded by God for our efforts.  And that's how it works because that's how it has to work.  That's how all the other relationships we have work, so that's how this one has to work.

But wait a moment.  If you had a system with God worked out in which you were to do good things so that you might be blessed, well, then you'd be in a bit of a fix, wouldn't you?  Because, my friends, you are involved in yet more latin phrases.  You are involved in more latin phrases than you want to be.  You're involved with a latin phrase that affects you more than you'd want.  You're affected by a phrase in Latin that Martin Luther brought forward to describe the human condition, where he

called us 'simul justus et peccator,' at the same time sinner and saint.  And this is what drives all the misery of the earth, this is why the exchange that we would expect to get us a better place with God doesn't happen.  This is why we don't have the life we feel like we deserve, because we are simultaneously saint and sinner.  We know what we ought to do, we are well aware of what we need to do, and yet that ends up being the hardest thing to do.  We are in every way like Saint Paul, who knows what he wants to do, and yet doesn't do it.  We are people who know what the right thing to do is, we have it in our hearts and in our minds, we know how people should act, we know how we should act, and yet we don't live up to our own standards.

Look, I know how tempting it is to look at these beatitudes, and to try to see ourselves in it.  We look at these beatitudes and want to see ourselves as the meek ones, as the ones who are hungering for justice, as the ones who are long suffering and attempting to make the world a better place. We want to look at the beatitudes and say 'how long, O Lord, until I receive my reward? How long until I am given my release from this time of effort and struggle?  How long, O Lord, until you recognize how great of a job I'm doing, and bless me with your goodness?  How long indeed.  The trouble with the beatitudes is that we all see ourselves in them, we all see ourselves in the beatitudes, we all see ourselves as the meek, as the sorrowful, but we don't see ourselves as sinners.  

And this is why we're in the state we're in.  We all think we're part of the solution, and none of us believe that we're part of the problem.  We see ourselves in the beatitudes, but not as the sinners that we are.  It's always someone else's problem, and we never really figure out that the problem is most likely ours to begin with.  We have memorized the beatitudes, but we have forgotten that we are simul justus et peaccator.  And that's why the quid pro quo doesn't work.

But the Bible was never about quid pro quo to begin with.  Never was.  Sure, we thought it was.  Sure, we assumed that it was all about that, but it never really was.  The work that God did, it was never quid pro quo.  If you look at his arrangements with the people, if you look at how he does things with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob, and so on, giving them blessing with nothing expected in return.  He offers them a space, a land, descendents, security and a future, and doesn't ask for anything in return.  None of God's deals require us to do the right thing to get in. The greatest of these is salvation, where we are given the forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting. And what is required of us?  Only trust in the promise.  Only belief in what Jesus says.  Only faith and trust in the words of Christ who tells us that he goes to prepare a place for us.  And we all have someone in our lives who has gone to be with God.  We all have someone in our lives who has departed this life, who has gone to be with God, and who has entered paradise.  And they did so because they had faith in God, because they clung fast to that promise.  Not because they did anything amazing, not because they stuck to God's laws so well, but because they were redeemed by God, bought by his blood, and given his grace.  They were blessed by God because he loved them, not because they had done the right thing.  They are justified sinners, which is how they have earned their place at God's side.

So, then, how do the beatitudes work? How do they work as things that seem to carry blessings alongside them?  Well, they do have blessings attached to them.  They mean what they say, when they say that the meek are blessed.  It means what it says when those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed.  Because they are.  This will seem strange, I know, because I just spent this time telling you that God doesn't bless you more because you do better things, which is true.  So how are you blessed?  You are blessed because God has told you how he wants to bless you.  He has instructed you through this book, through this misunderstood, unread book, what you should be doing.  And if you skip it, you miss the blessings that are there.

Think of it in dental terms, yes?  The dentist will tell you to floss.  The dentist will tell you that flossing is the best way to go about things, that if you don't floss, then you will have a bad time in the future with your teeth.  The dentist will still clean your teeth, will still fill holes, whether you floss or not, but the flossing isn't there for the dentist's benefit, it's for yours. That's so that you might have a more solid mouth, better health, and fewer problems.  Seems so simple, and is so rapidly conflated with other things, but here, in the beatitudes, God isn't telling you how to earn salvation, but he is instead telling you that this is how you can see his blessings. For most of our lives, we spend all our time with our hands full, with our time crammed full, and too occupied with ourselves to see God at all.  We lose sight of him, and of his blessings, because we are so occupied with ourselves, our achievements, our stuff, everything, that we can't see that God is trying to bless us all the time.  We just can't see it.

Think of those who have fallen asleep in the faith, those who have passed away, those who have died.  Think about how they are right now, which is fully and completely blessed by God, living in a space without tears, without suffering or sadness.  They

are blessed by God, have been given the grace and peace and rest that only God can give.  We find it easy to see that God blesses our loved ones who have fallen asleep in the faith with rich and abundant blessings, even in their hour of greatest weakness, but we find it hard to believe that he could bless us in our hours of weakness here on earth.  But it is no different.  Only different in your mind.  Our weakness is an opportunity for God's strength to be known to us.  We see him most clearly when we have nothing cluttering up our lives, getting in the way.  When we are meek, when we are humble, then we see God's majesty.  When we are worn down, we are picked up by God.  When we are reviled by others, we feel God's love.  In our weakness, God's strength is made known.

PJ.