“And He
lifted up His eyes on His disciples, and said:
‘Blessed
are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed
are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
Blessed
are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
Blessed
are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn
your name as evil on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap
for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven...’”
Luke
6:20-23
Rejoice
when hated? Take pride in poverty, hunger, and sadness? Of the many teachings
of Jesus, the “beatitudes” are some of the most beloved, but, quite frankly,
also the least understood.
The
entire Sermon on the Mount stand as one of the few philosophical statements
from Jesus that receives almost universal acclaim as being “good”, even to
those who think very little of the man who gave it. Critics who cast endless
dispersions upon those who follow Christ, regularly concede that there is some
value to be gained from these particular teachings. And yet, unless one
believes that Jesus was the Son of God, the Beatitudes amount to nothing.
How can
any of these statements possibly be accepted by those who do not also accept
Christ? How can anyone holding fast to a humanist worldview, believing in
humanist philosophy, hold any regard for a sermon that makes an absolute
mockery of all human ideals and utterly disregards the observations of human
philosophy? The stream of seeming contradictions that make up the Sermon on the
Mount absolutely cannot be appreciated by any true philosopher of man, and it
should prove positively idiotic to the social Darwinist.
The
poor humanist cannot possibly believe that there is anything “blessed” about
their poverty, and they certainly cannot believe in the foolish promise of, not
just financial security, but an entire kingdom! The hungry humanist demands
bread now, not some casual promise of
future sustenance! The mourning humanist cannot imagine how anyone could
possibly offer the promise of future laughter!
And,
worse, Matthew’s gospel adds something even more profoundly foolish to this
list of blessings: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons
of God,” and, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Humanist
like these words; they repeat it to themselves over and over, reveling in the
gentle warmth of their sentiment; they might even quote them from time to time
to support their own arguments. But make no mistake—these statements are
absolutely absurd! The meek may be praised, but no rational human could believe
that the destiny of the meek is that of conqueror! Not even the greatest writer
of fiction could make believable the image of a meek, passive monk conquering
the throne of the earth by the force of his gentleness. That the meek might
inherit the earth is something that everyone would like to hope for, but which
only the Christian can truly believe.
Human
nature, as the honest philosophers point out, does not lead toward meekness. It
is not to glorify poverty or hunger. It is certainly not to rejoice in
persecution or hatred. The honest philosophers of man—Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn
Rand, Jean Paul Sartre are among the few—admit the truth: without God there is no
real value in meekness. The destiny of the peacemaker is destruction at the
hands of the warmonger; the poor and hungry must necessarily die to make way
for those more fit to live. Peacemakers will inherit nothing but the right to
be trampled underfoot by the warmongers. This is how things have existed for
thousands of years, and the truth shows no signs of changing any time soon.
Christ
alone knew that the path to human happiness was for men to behave contrary to
our nature; thus, in Christianity, the poor (Matthew adds “poor in spirit”) and
hungry truly are blessed, even though the rich might have the power; the
peacemakers truly are blessed, even though the warmongers trample them under
foot; the meek truly are blessed because of the promise to inherit the earth,
even though today it is without question that the proud and the haughty that
rule our nations and command our armies. The humanist may like to preach only
peace and love, but the reality of the world is that peace and love are
weaknesses; the will to achieve power and the willingness to ignore the plight
of our fellow men is what allows for success in the world. It is impossible to
deny the truth that survival does, in fact, belong to the fittest—and there is
really no context in which the poor, the peacemakers, or the meek could be seen
as the fittest.
The
beatitudes do not amount to “good ideas by a good man.” How can one possibly
find value in the promise of inheriting the Kingdom of God without first
believing in God? How can one believe in the promise that the mourning shall be
comforted when they can simply open their eyes to the reality of this world and
see the countless despairing, uncomforted individuals dying each day? I do not
believe that the evils of the world ought to lead anyone to reject God; but I
strongly believe that they ought to be enough to convince us to reject the
foolish notion that Jesus, if nothing more than a human philosopher, had good
ideas.
As a
human philosopher, Jesus Christ demonstrated an absolute inability to
understand humanity; he was no better than any seminar prophet or self-help
guru of the 21st century. As the Son of God, however, Jesus Christ
offered humanity the only real hope it will ever know. The beatitudes amount to
either terrible, delusional ideas of a man who never understood his own species
or they amount to the true words of a God who alone offered the miracle of
saving men from themselves.
