Human Nature and the Beatitudes

“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 21^st 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.