In All Uncertain Terms

My first memory of the Beatitudes, the nine “Blessed are ______” statements in Matthew 5 that kick off Jesus’s most famous teachings, the Sermon on the Mount, I was in second grade. At the Christian school I attended, we were made to memorize the passage. I don’t remember what commentary was given, though I’m sure there was some. My second grade teacher was my favorite of all I had in elementary school, in part because of how she was able to make the Bible come alive for me. I do know that throughout my childhood, the Beatitudes were put forth as statements of aspirational traits. “Blessed are the meek, therefore you should try to be meek.” Whether overtly taught or merely implied, or perhaps only as a result of my immature hermeneutic, what I internalized was this: the Beatitudes are a list of the sorts of people God likes, and the sort he’ll reward in Heaven. . . And I’m none of these things.

One of the predominant approaches to the Bible with which I grew up is that it’s a collection of stories, laws, and teachings aimed at telling us how to live. It’s an idea that’s still common. A church in my town recently had a sign up that said, “B-I-B-L-E: basic instructions before leaving Earth.” It’s not that this idea is wholly untrue (the Bible does give instructions for how to live life well), but when it’s the main focus, you end up with kids (and adults) like me. I’m constantly striving to finish the checklist of all the ways I’m supposed to act, including having a right heart motivation, constantly failing, and then beating myself up over it. After all, sin separates us from God, right? The more I don’t measure up, the farther I must be from Him, and the more disappointed in me He is. Yes, Christ died to cover those failures, but surely better people are closer to God, right? And we use works (“fruit”) to determine who has been more shaped by the Holy Spirit. As a result, the Beatitudes have always been a source of great shame for me. I’m not meek, nor merciful, nor peacemaking, nor persecuted. I must not be blessed, and God must not like me. I won’t be rewarded. The more I try, the more I fail, too. How can I strive to be pure in heart when my motivations for doing so are to earn God’s approval and get a reward? It’s a doomed project for a doomed person.

Sometimes something in the Bible clicks for me for the first time, and I think I must be the densest person on Earth. There are plenty of reasons biblical stories or lessons may be opaque (cultural and language barriers, for a start), but sometimes the things that suddenly make sense or resonate with me seem like they should have been obvious.

For example: Genesis, particularly the first few chapters, is my favorite place in the Bible to be. I feel as though I could spend a lifetime there and never uncover all the thoughtful and beautiful elements of the story there are to find. When I attended Summit, a two-week long biblical worldview training, in 2021, one speaker captured my attention more than any others. Dustin Jizmejian had a way of speaking and storytelling that, like my second grade teacher, made the Bible come to life. One thing I remember him pointing out in a presentation, that was a new concept to me at the time, is the naming of Eve. Adam was to rule over the animals, and he was tasked with naming them. Jizmejian made note of the fact that it wasn’t until after the first sin and after the curse that resulted that Adam gave his wife the name Eve. He argued that perhaps there was an element of dehumanization here, of Eve’s status becoming like that of the animals.

My husband commented to me once that even though he understands this, the name Adam chose imbues such honor. She was named Life itself, as the mother of all living. I think it’s a tricky thing. On the one hand, it truly is a great honor to be a mother. I have always wanted to be a mom and feel very privileged to parent two young children. It’s the most rewarding and joyful work of my life. On the other hand, many women feel reduced, not elevated, to their capability to bear life. Many mothers feel that they are pushed to the background and lose everything they were by the demands made by motherhood, and many childless women feel they are viewed as having no value because they are not mothers. As with nearly everything in a fallen world, there are good and bad elements, and it’s confusing and difficult to try to sort them out.

Recently I read an article that briefly made mention of the fact that both Adam and Eve, or man and woman, have conflict with their source or origin. Adam was made of the ground and so he struggles and suffers in trying to cultivate it. Eve was made of Adam, so she wrestles with his wishes, but is ultimately subordinate to him. She also suffers in the one thing for which she was named by Adam: childbearing.

Both of these poetic images are plain in the text, even obvious, within an English translation. For whatever reason, even though I’ve read the Creation and Fall narratives countless times, it took someone explicitly stating what happened for me to get it. I hope I’m not the only one so blind.

A similar obvious revelation happened tonight. I’ve been listening to the Bible Project podcast series on the Sermon on the Mount. In one episode, they explain the meaning of the word “blessed” in biblical understanding. They use the synonym “the good life” often, and this meaning somewhat corresponds with an American Christianese understanding. When I hear people use the term blessed, they talk about things that are widely regarded as good. “We were blessed to buy a house,” or “I was blessed with a new, high paying job doing what I love,” or “Your gift was such a blessing to me.”

In neither Jesus’s context nor our own would we say, “Wow, see that woman grieving, mourning the loss of her loved one? She’s blessed.” That’s insane. He was and is still subversive.

Although there is a future promise attached, the “heavenly reward” I sought as a child, Jesus does not use future tense for the beginning of his statement. The mourning will be comforted, but they are blessed. They are, mysteriously, living the good life right now.

The Bible Project takes the Beatitudes three at a time, so in the second triad, they talk about “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” They talk about the word “righteousness” and how it entails more than the Protestant Evangelical imagination conveys. It isn’t just doing the right thing, but being in right relationship with God and humans. The righteousness I was taught had more to do with individual heart and behavior than relational love. This is perhaps an even weightier and more difficult aspiration than my childhood self thought. Not only do I need to meet a list of criteria (which I can’t do), but I also need to have a good, appropriate, and just relationship with both God and every other person I encounter. No biggie.

The tragic thing about all my childhood aiming for and missing righteousness is that I was always getting further from it. In shame, I drew away from God in my inability to measure up, assuming He was angry and disappointed and wouldn’t want me around, and that self-imposed separation worsened the problem, for I was damaging and withdrawing from the very relationship whose health defined righteousness. In Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortlund writes this:

“It is the most counterintuitive aspect of Christianity, that we are declared right with God not once we begin to get our act together but once we collapse into honest acknowledgment that we never will.”

I read this book for the first time five years ago, and twice since, and I still haven’t learned its lessons. I still struggle to grasp that I’m not righteous when I do the right things, but that when I don’t and go to Him, He declares me so by His sacrifice.

Another misunderstanding of my seven-year-old mind is that I took Jesus’s words to mean “Blessed are the righteous.” Since I was never righteous, I would never be blessed. That’s not what He said, though. He declared blessed those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness.” The hosts of the Bible Project podcast discussed the persistent discomfort that comes with hunger or thirst, and how it can even feel controlling and overwhelming. “Can you be hangry for righteousness?” one of them asked. It was then that it clicked for me. If righteousness is both right relationship with God and right relationship between humans, longing, yearning for it absolutely describes me. Watching the news makes me weep, because the injustice in the world is just so persistent and uncontrollable. I impatiently await the day it will be cured, and that feeling is miserable. I  would never describe my life when I feel that there is so much wrong, that I am both victim and preparator of, that is utterly unmanageable, as “blessed.” God does, though. That suffering from wishing for all to be restored is the good life right now. He also promises my longing will be satisfied.

I am not righteous, but God declares me so in Christ. I am not righteous, but I hunger for righteousness. The passage of Matthew that had so long been a source of shame suddenly became an immense source of comfort, all because of long held misreadings. I feel stupid for not realizing it sooner, but I couldn’t be more grateful for the Upside Down Kingdom’s inversions of my expectations of both blessing and righteousness.