The Beatitudes and Politics, Part 1: Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit: for Theirs Is the Kingdom of Heaven

 

A couple of days ago, on the commute home, I was listening to an NPR news story that covered presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaking at a Christian school.  The students were thankful for his visit, but there seemed to be an automatic assumption by the students that they could not be good Christians and vote for Sanders.  I thought that odd, because my Christian values push me towards candidates like Sanders (although on a few select issues the other side of the political spectrum appeals more).  It got me thinking, is there a way to accurately measure a candidate's political positions against the doctrine of Christ?; is it all a matter of interpretation?; or is it a little of both?

Now, before proceeding, I want to be upfront about two assumptions: 1) Separation of church and state and secularism are vital for healthy democracies; 2) There are self-evident, fixed eternal moral truths that are not relative which are exemplified by the teachings of Jesus.  These truths can be rationally tested by creating thought-scenarios and applying them in the same manner Buddhist monks experiment on reality by creating mental scenarios.  Buddha's teachings, many Native American teachings, and I assume many Hindu teachings, as well as the teaching of Mohammad are similar to those of Christ, so it is the perfect principles I'm advocating here, not religious unity.  I chose Christianity as my exemplar for two reasons: a) I'm a Christian; it's what I know best and believe; b) to be blunt, I believe many who profess Christian values in their politics are actually practicing outside their belief system without being aware of it. 

I will proceed simply by using the beatitudes as found in Mathew Chapter 5 of the King James Bible, unpacking their meaning or possible multiple-meanings and applying to current political issues to see how each party measures up on that particular beatitude.  I will also use other scriptures from the new Testament where Christ explains or extends the meaning of a particular beatitude. 

My preferred outcome would not be that one party win or lose, but that people realize they are perhaps not as partisan as they thought.  We have become so good at waving political banners, we've forgotten how to think before we vote.  But, we'll see.  Who knows, I may have to do some mental adjusting.  That would be a good thing.  A static mind is a dead mind.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

If poor here has its usual definition of "worse than expected or desired," than "poor in spirit," to my thinking can mean one of two things:  a) to be  literally suffering spiritually; or b) to have the humility to be teachable--to desire a spiritual tune-up.

I tend to think it means both.  Christ is providing comfort.  Your heart is aching, but fear not, I am here.  If that is the case, the reward for that suffering is automatic.  "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven."  No application needed.  Instant help and mercy for the broken-hearted.

The second meaning requires work to obtain "the kingdom of heaven."  Poverty here is not a negative condition but a desirable goal.  It is the humility necessary to remain teachable, and not all will obtain it because their egos will get in the way.

It seems clear to  me through other passages that Christ means both, particularly in passages dealing with judgment:

3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

 4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

 5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

 6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

 7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

 8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

 9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

 10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

 11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

 12 ¶Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.  (John 8:3-12)

Here he applies both meanings of the beatitude.  The woman is violated in multiple ways: 1) A sense of privacy has clearly been broken; 2) a double-standard (sexism) is in place as it takes two to commit adultery, but only she is brought before Jesus; 3) her sins, unlike those of the scribes and Pharisees have been publically exposed.  As a result, she is anguished.  He feels her pain and instantly absolves her sins:  Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

The scribes and Pharisees, on the other hand, fail to meet the other definition of "poor in spirit."  Until he rebukes them, they lack the humility to choose the right.  They take a bad situation and make it worse through a lack of empathy. 

The question is, why does Christ rebuke the scribes and Pharisees and not the woman?  She too has sinned; yet he gives her a blank check (provided she "sin no more".)

I think the answer to that is clear.  The Pharisees were members of a movement towards religious puritanism.  They believed the Torah was the final word of God, adequate for all purposes and all times.  In other words, they were the fundamentalist-leaning clergy of their time.  The scribes were the educated writers, copiers and bookmen, many of whom were members of the highest legal administration in the state.  In other words, the Pharisees and scribes were the power-holders of their time; the woman, we may assume, had no economic or political clout.  It's not so much that the woman is innocent, but that she is disadvantaged.  The scribes already have their reward; he is assuring her that if she changes, she will have "the Kingdom of Heaven."  That is where justice comes in.

It is not hard to apply the lessons of this beatitude to the political issues of our time.  At first I was going to analyze specific issues and rate each of the party's performance on that issue based on the outcome.  But, I think I'll avoid that.   Instead, I want to formulate for myself the questions I should ask when voting on either issues or candidates.

1.  Does this proposition or candidate I'm considering allow people a reasonable path to redemption?  In other words, does it assert the right of everyone to a fresh start or a new beginning?
2.  Does this proposition or candidate I'm considering hold those in power accountable for their elevated social stature?

These questions are not partisan.  They are not based on interpretations of scripture.  They are literally derived from the first beatitude, "Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit: Theirs Is the Kingdom of Heaven" found in Mathew Chapter 5 and the account of woman taken in adultery found in John Chapter 8.













 

Yahweh or a Roll of the Dice Down the Alley Way: A Universe of Justice or Chaos (Atheism, Buddhism, Bull Conner, Christianity, Equality, God, Hinduism, Justice, Martin Luther King, Myanmar, Pain, Suffering and U2)

 A gloriously wet day after a good rain

It is a gloriously wet day after a good rain.  The lawn mower hums; Lloyd, my brother, has come down to mow the lawn at the trailer without me asking, which is great as I'm not able to do it myself.

Pain is a hard burden to bear.  Idleness isn't easy either.  Earlier, I tried to get out in my garden, right out the sliding glass door, but after placing three flowers in the ground, it became apparent that I needed to return to my recliner or bed.

At first, I chose the latter.  I put on U2, hoping to slide into sleep.  But, instead I found despair.  It had been lurking in the big, showy irises by the pond, along irrigation ditches bubbling through the oaks in the front yard, under the suds in the sink full of dishes, under the pile of clothes on the bathroom floor--all the things, I'd like to do today, but can't.

Illness is a hard thing to write honestly about.  It's not uplifting.  I guess with humor it could be entertaining, but there's something dishonest about that--like putting makeup on a corpse and placing it in a suit.   I know we do that at funerals, but I've never been too fond of it.  When my dad died, I preferred taking a drive up the Oregon coast, stopping at the Devil's Churn, enjoying the things he enjoyed showing me.

It wasn't easy.  I sobbed deeper than I ever thought humanly possible.  But it was beautiful, and it was honest.  I'm not suggesting funerals aren't.  Each must deal with loss in his or her own way.  But personally, nature is my way of working through life's difficulties.  About a year before Dad passed away, I'd written a poem while imagining my own death:

Hope!

My granddaughter refuses
to look in my casket
at my pale, plastic
flesh,

after my soul has sucked      out.

She sits in the corner on the floor
to the dismay of her mother,
headphones on, tuned out
from the horseshit

they dream up to make me
their vision.

She is totally tuned in
to a song like camphor,
sees a steep hill where wind
blows ferns between
tall trees that seem
to climb out of the sea
churning below,
green.

Somehow, there must be a way to write about illness like that--tuned out from the horseshit, neither wallowing in the pain nor ignoring it.

Life is the Grand Tetons, but it's also a wasp devouring a tarantula, as I found out while working in my garden last summer.  I watched and filmed with horrid fascination.  


Life is only fair in two ways--we all are born and we all die.  Everything in between is a unique experience, an individual path, and only part of that experience is due to individual choice.  The rest, whether by random act or by divine design, or perhaps a combination of both, is not in our hands. Bono is right, where you live should not determine whether you live or die, but it does.  It decides your freedom, your liberty, your wealth. I don't care how good you are at pulling yourself up by the boot straps, you would not be living the life that is currently yours, if you lived in Myanmar (Burma) .

And yet place is just one small factor to the equation of "I."  Parents, genetics, health, the spirit I came to earth with, also contribute, as do what seem to be random occurrences.

Atheism has always been easy for me to believe.  Often, chaos does indeed seem to be king of the universe. Injustice is everywhere.  You don't have go far to find it:

Oh that Rococo Life

Slowly breaking apart
a cranberry muffin,
sucking down the sweet morsels
with over-creamed coffee.

Palm trees sway beyond

the marble-floored lobby
and empty sunken bar
through great Venetian windows,
beyond a great red-tiled patio
and heavy white balustrade.

I read Pictures of the Gone World
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Says here, poem 25 (quote)
The world is a beautiful place
                                           To be born into
If you don’t mind happiness
                                           Not always being
                                                           So much fun.

What the hell, I’ll try it.

The kids are with Grandma.
Marci is in class.
the room is paid for
with one week’s salary.

Nothing to do

but hang out at the pool
and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
look at beautiful
lotion-glowing bodies
from ages 5 to 70,
weighing between 30
and 250 pounds.

Yes, this world is a beautiful place

to be born into.

Though yesterday

when we got lost
in that neighborhood
of duplexes
and run-down apartment complexes
that didn’t quit qualify for a slum
but was part of the working poor world
that I knew for so long,

and I went in that 7-11

to find some way out
of the hell-mood
I’d sank into
and I saw myself behind the counter
in a stupid dehumanizing uniform
with a stupid name tag on it,
smiling back at myself
knowing I’d always be here,
behind some convenience store counter
working eight hours a day
to get nowhere,

I got to tell you

I thought again
the world
is nothing
but a great big turd ball
with all of us swarming over it,
pushing and shoving
for a chance
to bite right in.

Today there are palms outside the window,

rich girls in bikinis,
rich daddy’s in loafers,

and it’s true—

                                The world is a beautiful place

To be born into
                                If you don’t mind happiness
Not always being
                                So much fun.

©Steve Brown, 2013

We think of God as Just, and yet injustice seems to reign supreme all around us.  Perhaps if we are born into or achieve wealth on our own we can pretend it's not so, but I don't think so.  At least in the United States, street crime stays pretty local.  Gated communities are generally a good distance from high crime neighborhoods, and yet they remain sealed off from the world.  At a subconscious level, perhaps the walls are as much for the psychological safety of the inhabitants as for home security. Perhaps they are not needed because of a fear of robbery, but because of fear of sight.  Outside those walls people have less--less goods, less services, less time, less life.

I don't blame the rich.  It's all relative anyway.  I live in a very nice 4-bedroom double-wide modular on 90 acres of forest and scrub land.  I use to drive through neighborhoods on the south side of Juarez, Mexico that were literally built from crates and cardboard boxes.  Compared to them, I'm wealthy.  Some isolate themselves behind gates; I isolate myself on a gorgeous plot of land near a nice Mormon community that has almost no crime and only very small pockets of poverty.  I might as well live in Mayberry.

But that's what makes Justice such an incredible concept.  It doesn't seem natural to the universe and yet we believe in it so profoundly.  All men are created equally--come on!  I know enough about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bull Connor to know they are not equals.  Martin Luther King spoke like a prophet and Bull Connor was just a dumb bigot who had fire hoses violently turned against children.  Equals?  Forget the hind sight of history, forget being right or wrong, in less than 12 seconds Bull Connor clearly demonstrates he is rhetorically, linguistically, and intellectually inferior to King.  There is nothing equal about them.

And yet King's whole life and message are about justice and equality--a message rooted directly in Christianity, and indirectly in Judaism and Yahweh in world awareness, ultimately the god of law, justice and equality.

In our time, regardless of how hypocritical Jews or Christians may be at times, it is impossible to separate justice, equality, Judaism and Christianity from each other.  They are all bound together in the notion that the universe is not relative, that there is an order, a balance, and fairness, equality, right and wrong are part of that plan, and when that balance is destroyed by evil men, justice must be employed to right the wrongs.

And yet even nature, to a believer the handy-work of God himself, seems clearly cruel and unjust, everything living off the suffering of others in an eat or be eaten world.

How does the believer reconcile this?  Why even try?  Why not just accept that life is unfair, get on with it, enjoy what you have at the moment, and don't worry about the fact your mother can no longer walk, or that your child's one friend seems to have a lot of unexplained bruises, or that the homeless man under the interstate bridge where you park might not be an actor with a get-rich scheme after all?

The fact that even some of us worry about these things to me suggests there must be a God.  Why did Martin Luther King, Jr. go to the mountain top?  Why did Moses?  Why did Christ?

What makes some men and women care enough about justice to die for it--especially those who already have more than their peers?  Martin Luther King, though black, certainly was not at the bottom of the social latter.  He could have been content enjoy his privileged education and ministry. What about Moses?  Egypt wasn't all that bad for him.  And Christ--well, he was God, not that bad of a gig in the social order of things, and yet he was willing to sink below the most vile sinners that justice might be served while simultaneously, through grace, spiritual equality was maintained between small-minded men like Bull Conner and spiritual giants like Martin Luther King, Jr.  Why?

Things are not so complicated when we think outside our mortal shells.  Injustice and inequality are not so unbearable if life is a classroom and we are aware we signed up for certain lessons. Pain, though still unpleasant, gains meaning in this incredible riot of free-wills, from microscopic bacteria and viruses to the leaders of nations, when we feel in our fibers there is a plan.  With an omnipotent eye, even the class bullies, like Bull Connor or Adolf Hitler can be forgiven if we know each person is on an individual journey.  This is how men like Bull Conner and Martin Luther King, Jr. can truly be equals: they each have divine potential, each are fluid spiritually, learning as they go, both in this life and the next.  The Hindu and Buddhist concepts of karma are not that different from that of the justice Judaism and Christianity--somehow all human cultures have a concept of justice and equality intrinsic to who they are, despite it apparently not being natural to either nature or civilization.  For me, that is the greatest proof that there is an intelligence behind what to us often appears as chaos.

And it is that divine light that drives us, despite very real world knowledge of pain and suffering, to sing a new song against all odds.