Be Humble

The first two Beatitudes were more about inward attitudes, having a right outlook on your own spiritual state and being rightly upset and grieved over sin and evil in the world and within yourself. The third Beatitude is a bit more outwardly focused, as it has to do with how we interact with the world and people around us. 

Matthew 5:5

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

The word meek, in today’s society, means “quiet, gentle, and easily imposed on; submissive.”

This is somewhat the same meaning that Jesus is getting at here, but with a few important distinctions. We typically think of a meek person as someone who is shy and quiet, like a mouse, someone who is weak, who doesn’t, and can’t, stand up or speak up for themselves or others and who is easily taken advantage of. However, that isn’t really the idea that Jesus was trying to convey. Jesus is quoting an Old Testament verse here:

Poor in Spirit

This week we are getting into the first of Jesus’ teachings during The Sermon on the Mount.

We often have a skewed view of spiritual justice and morality. It is very common to think of your life in terms of a scale; as long as the good things in your life outweigh the bad things then you're going to be ok. However, this isn't at all what we see Jesus teach, and there are actually a lot of problems with this idea. To start with, who defines good and bad? Does each person get to choose for themselves what is good vs. what is bad? What if something I think is good, you think is bad? Does that thing count as whatever we think it is or does it have a universal designation? Even if salvation and spiritual justice worked on a sliding scale of good vs. bad, we would need some definitive measure and designation that is set in place by someone outside of the system.