Hunger and Thirst for Justice

There is little about the 4th Beatitude—“Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness”—that we get right. Let’s start with our concept of “righteousness.” We have made it a general term for “sinlessness.” “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). This is the verse I was told to...

The Power of Meek

Nobody likes to be called meek. In a culture that values the assertive, the decisive, and the forceful, meek seems weak. Weak is indeed what we think of when we think of meekness, but there is a big difference between the two. Weakness is lacking power. It’s wanting to do something but unable to pull it...

Mourning Comfort

When Job lost everything—his children, his livestock, his wealth, his health, literally everything—his wife comforted him by telling him to curse God and die. Yay marriage! Then his best friends told him not to curse God, because it wasn’t God’s fault at all. It was Job’s fault. He must have done something...

What Makes a Person “Blessed”?

The Beatitudes are not prescriptions on how to be blessed. “I need to be poor in spirit (or just plain poor) so I can be blessed,” misses the point and leads to some interesting interpretations of how to live the spiritual life, and can sometimes lead us away from properly understanding what Jesus is...

Do I Want to Be Poor in Spirit?

Why in the world would anyone recommend that we should seek to be spiritually poor? I’m intrigued by the many interpretations of Jesus’ first Beatitude (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”—Matthew 5:3) that present spiritual poverty as necessary to salvation. This line of...

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