Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 27: “The Beatitudes.”
You probably know how many Commandments there are. And also how many Deadly Sins. What about the Beatitudes? How many? And, actually: do you even remember what they are?
The basic is that they are part of the two sermons that Jesus gave, and the name of one of which you may remember as well: the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain. The Beatitudes are sayings of Jesus, and often interpreted as the New Testament “response,” so to speak, to the law of Moses in the Ten Commandments.
There are eight or nine Beatitudes in one sermon, and four (which are repeats) in the other. The first one, the Sermon on the Mount, is described in the gospel of Matthew as follows:
5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.
The Beatitudes
He said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
(Matt 5:1–12)
I’ll comment on these before I have a look at the remaining four. First, in a book that’s reputedly inspired by God, it’s a little weird to me that even two millennia later we are talking about eight or nine Beatitudes. There are generally said to be eight, but then there’s that last one, like an encore or coda, that sneaks in at the end:
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The other Beatitudes are not only “official,” so to speak, but they’re often described as poetic, whereas this last one is wordy and rambly and kind of not on point.
And so there are a couple of other things also that I notice about the main eight. First is that if these are poetic, then a pretty low bar is being set for poetry. Yes, there’s symmetry, but you’d get that even if it were just a simple bulletted list. “Blessed are the” at the beginning, and “for” in the middle. Wow, that’s some poetic imagination.
The second thing is that the various rewards after the “for” part are all more or less the same. Is having the kingdom of heaven (numbers 1 and 8) any different from seeing God (number 6) or being a child of God (number 7)? It’s what editors call elegant variation—using different words to say the same thing, on the misguided premise that exact repetition is somehow wrong or unseemly even when you mean exactly the same thing.
Given that, if I happened to fall into any of those favoured and beleaguered categories, I would have a couple of questions. Like, when you say that we will see God or be his children, you still mean that we’re going to heaven, right? We won’t just see him for a minute and then be thrown into hell? And the one about having the honour of being considered his child. Sure, but will I just be abandoned anyway, like by a deadbeat dad?
The other fates are simply satisfactions or solutions for the specific thing that has been torturing you on earth (for example, “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … will be filled”). Two of them stand out as exceptions though:
1. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” There may be some low-grade poetry here, but there’s no logic. Yes, great job with the symmetry again, but if a person is merciful on earth, it doesn’t follow that they are going to need mercy when (or before) they get into heaven. In fact, you wouldn’t be crazy to assume that a merciful person is likely a pretty decent person, so they won’t have done much bad to be shown any mercy for. Since Jesus is the son of God, and as the cliché goes, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, if I were merciful I’d be worried that there were some kind of casuistry going on, like, say, God is going to be extra hard on the merciful and really ding them for some sins that others get a pass on. The God of the Old Testament was tricky like that, and maybe the son is the same.
2. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” This one seems like a blatant dismissal, as if Jesus is saying, You were meek on earth and so we’re just going to leave you all here while the rest of us good people are having the time of our lives in heaven. And you’re meek, so we know there won’t be any complaining.
So let’s take a look at the four beatitudes from the Sermon on the Plain. As I mentioned, except for one, they basically are just repeats of the Beatitudes from Matthew, just worded differently. These are in the gospel of Luke:
20 Looking at his disciples, he said:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
22 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.
(Luke 6:20–22)
The outlier is number three: “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” There’s not a lot to comment on here: it’s pretty undeniable that that’s an improvement in status.
There’s more to this sermon, though, including a small grouping of “woes” which are just the opposite versions of the Beatitudes, for example, “Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry” (Luke 6:25). More symmetry, yes, but I don’t quite see the point.
The one final and overall comment I’d make about the Beatitudes, in spite of their lovely name, is that they are highly selective. There’s no attempt at all to be comprehensive or to address the most important issues of a person’s life. They also have the feel of a stump speech. You can kind of hear the crowd cheering at the end of every “for you will be …”. A bit sad really. Jesus trying to rally the cause and increase the number of his followers with a bunch of lame and in some cases dubious promises. I half expect him to end with a statement about how he will bring inflation under control by increasing interest rates.
And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for a transcript, sources, and contact information. And please join me again on Monday.