“… for theirs is the knowledge of happiness!”
If we are going to look for the common theme which runs through the Beatitudes, it would be that through these simple lessons, Yeshua is mapping out points on the path to happiness. The apostle Paul writes of the ‘natural man’ and the ‘spiritual man’ in his first letter to the Corinthians. Between these two states of being lies the path that we are invited to take, the path to happiness: moving from the state of being referred to as natural man to the state of being referred to as spiritual man. This is the path that Yeshua is describing, through the Beatitudes. The truth which we learn on this path is made clear with each verse; that true happiness is rooted in the spirituality that we are learning to live out in the midst of our daily lives.
In the first of the Beatitudes, the spirituality has long been ignored, because of a simple error in punctuation. But the missing comma, which representing the pause in Yeshua’s oration, has not only caused the spirituality of the verse to be ignored, it has also caused the verse to be misinterpreted and woven into the church’s dogma of our unworthiness. But when we restore the missing punctuation mark, we can begin to understand the spiritual reality of learning to be happy with what we have, with a minimum of temptations, and how this can be a good thing.
The second Beatitude doesn’t seem to point out spirituality either, yet even the church acknowledges that when the body of our loved ones stops living, their spirit continues on to a better place. While it is normal to mourn the the loss of the loved one, the nature of being human (the state of being a natural man as we pointed out in “What is wrong with this story”) wants us to grieve this loss as if they aren’t in a better place. “It tries to get control, to make us feel bad, so that our attention will be turned from serving God and others,” by trying keep us focused on the grief and sadness of our loss. But if we are able to move beyond our mourning, we can return our focus to the sense of joy which our service to the Father gives us.
The third and the fifth Beatitudes help us remember that we must actively participate in the life we are living. This participation is defined by being with, helping, and having compassion for those around us. The fact is that the people around us may not appear to be challenged as much as people who are starving, or homeless, or sick and dying. But regardless of the circumstances that our neighbors find themselves in, we can find ways to help them.
The fourth and sixth Beatitudes are also similar, and they are also based on a sense of spirituality that we don’t always recognize at first glance. But it is in our spirituality that we recognize this truth: our success and failures are not measured by what we do. The successes or failures of what we do are measured by the motivation with which we undertake these actions.
The seventh Beatitude continues this discourse on spirituality by giving us an understanding of the true nature of spiritual man; that the spiritual man is a part of God. And finally, the last Beatitude helps us remember that not only is the transition to spiritual man challenging, but that we can expect no support from the world around us, (though we can expect support from God) as we seek to move into the ‘higher self’.
So Yeshua sat down, and taught the people. With these eight Beatitudes, He taught them about the knowledge of happiness, He taught them about the spirituality of man, and He taught them, that they too, were a part of God.
Grace and peace to you all,
Paul
