Here’s
an old one that I heard when I was a religious studies student:
"Make me one
with everything," says the Buddhist to the tofu hot dog vendor.
Then, after
getting his tofu hot dog, the Buddhist hands the vendor a $20 bill.
The vendor takes
the money and begins helping the next customer.
The Buddhist looks
puzzled and asks the vendor, "Where is my change?"
The vendor
replies, "Change comes from within." —Liam Gorman[i]
The
truth is that change does come within, and that inner change makes you one with
everything. But you don’t have to be
Buddhist to know that—that’s what Jesus’ Beatitudes are all about. Today we will finish our study through these
eight key attitudes we need to have in order to be all God made us to be. With a change in our inner attitudes, we use
a different lens through which to view the world. When we begin to see the world through a lens
of blessing instead of a lens of bitterness, our response to the world
changes. And once our response to the
world changes, then bit by bit the world begins to change around us.
When
we talk about the Beatitudes, we often miss the fact Jesus gives us these
sayings in a specific order. That’s
because they aren’t a random list, but a continuum of Christian growth, that
happen in three stages.
The Internal Stage: The internal stage of
Beatitudes involves changing our attitudes.
The first step is being poor in spirit. This means recognizing our own
spiritual poverty. Only when we empty
ourselves can we get to the next step of mourning our own sin.
The second step is mourning. This happens when spiritual
emptiness shows us our own faults, flaws, and failures, and when we grieve
those things enough to make changes in life.
The third step is meekness. This only comes after we get
honest with God and ourselves about how sin grieves us and the Holy Spirit, and
entering a time of repentance. Without
these prerequisite steps, we tend to think of ourselves more highly than we
ought, and can never be humble.
The fourth step is hungering and thirsting for
righteousness. This comes
only after a person has developed meekness.
Without first obtaining meekness, people are too self-indulgent to
hunger and thirst for anything but their own gratification. But when a meek person relishes
righteousness, Jesus says they will be filled.
The External Stage:
This happens
when believers move from internal beliefs and changes of attitudes (changing
the lens through which they see the world), to external actions (changing the
way they respond to the world.)
The fifth step is mercy—something that only a meek person can practice. Having the strength to bring harm to their
enemies, they choose to keep it under control and bring blessing instead.
The sixth step is purity of heart. The word pure comes from the
Latin purus, which means "unmixed."
Until a person has practiced mercy, they cannot truly say that they have
an undivided heart. Unless he reaches
out to his enemies in love, he maintains a sense of "I'm right and you're
wrong, and I'm better than you are." Mercy defeats that kind of attitude,
and allows a person to grow enough to move past the divisions in his heart, and
on to purity. Then, having reached a point of mercy and purity, the growing
believer develops a greater desire.
The seventh step is peacemaking. People with undivided hearts
seek not only personal restoration, but communal wholeness. Like Jesus, peacemakers are willing to put
themselves at risk in order to bring reconciliation. But this isn’t always the most popular of
stances. When you change your response
to the world this much, it begins to change in response to you. And often those changes aren’t the most
pleasant. This brings us to the next
phase.
The Sacrificial/Transcendent
Stage: This is the stage
where few dare to tread—because it often results in personal loss for the sake
of the common good. But for those who
venture down this path, tremendous blessing awaits.
The eighth step is persecution. This is
the highest level of spiritual growth, when you grow so Christlike that the
world ceases to honor you and wants to do away with you instead. In John 15:18-19, Jesus says, "If the
world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the
world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world,
but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." Jesus also says, “Blessed are you when
people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you
because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for
in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew
5:11-12).”
This
stage is called sacrificial because it reminds us that there is a price to pay
for spiritual development. People
intuitively know that the world won’t long put up with peacemakers—because the
world loves its conflict too much. This
is why the world kills the peacemakers and prophets. But this stage is also called transcendent
because these are people who know that “change comes from within,” and that
this deep-level change makes us “one with everything.” While peacemaking means sacrifice, it also
leads to transcendence. Peacemakers are
called “children of God,” and those who are persecuted for righteousness
inherit the kingdom of heaven.
Ghandi once said, “If we could change ourselves,
the tendencies in the world would also change.
As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world
change toward him…we need not wait to see what others do.”[ii] He was definitely right. In allowing himself to be persecuted, and in
teaching peaceful activists to allow themselves to be beaten and imprisoned for
the sake of peacemaking, eventually the occupying British government began to
see its own inhumane treatment of Indians.
In time, the crown’s own sense of conscience made it change its behavior
towards Indians. Without a revolutionary
war, India won its independence, by sheer force of conscience. But of course, not everybody wanted that kind
of harmony and resolution. Because the
dark world hates the light, Ghandi’s peacemaking got him assassinated, and he
stepped boldly into the role of martyr for the cause of peace.
When Jesus spoke the Beatitudes to his disciples on
the mountainside, he called them to a radical love. He invited them to change the way they viewed
their world—from a lens of bitterness to a lens of blessing. When we do the same thing, we change the way
we perceive the world around us. Then,
at least, OUR world changes. If we
persist in this blessing and love, the natural outgrowth is that our attitudes
will turn to actions. And our actions
will change the world. How much do you
really want to follow Jesus? Do you want
to be a follower, or just a fan? If you
follow him—if you live like him—you can change your world.
[i]
Hudson, Hayley. “16 of the Most Profound
Jokes Ever Told.” June 6, 2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/profound-jokes-2014-6. May 21, 2018.
[ii]
Morton, Brian. “Falser Words Were Never
Spoken.” August 29, 2011. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/opinion/falser-words-were-never-spoken.html. May 21, 2018.
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