This book is a Get Out of Jail Free card and a passport back into the playground.
The aim of this book is to set you free. But free from what? Free from neurosis. Free from the feeling that you have to obey authority. Free from emotional intimidation. Free from addiction. Free from inhibition.
The key to happiness, mental health and being the most that we can be is absolute and unconditional self-acceptance. The paradox is that many of our problems are caused by trying to improve ourselves, censor our thinking, make up for past misdeeds and struggling with our negative feelings whether of depression or aggression.
But if we consider ourselves in our entirety in this very moment, we know these things :
1. Anything we have done is in the past and cannot be changed, thus it is pointless to do anything else but accept it. No regrets or guilt.
2. While our actions can harm others, our thoughts and emotions, in and of themselves, never can. So we should accept them and allow them to be and go where they will. While emotions sometimes drive actions, those who completely accept their emotions and allow themselves to feel them fully, have more choice over how they act in the light of them.
Self-criticism never made anyone a better person. Anyone who does a “good deed” under pressure from their conscience or to gain the approval of others takes out the frustration involved in some other way. The basis for loving behaviour towards others is the ability to love ourselves. And loving ourselves unconditionally, means loving ourselves exactly as we are at this moment.
This might seem to be complacency, but in fact the natural activity of the individual is healthy growth, and what holds us back from it is fighting with those things we can’t change and the free thought and emotional experience which is the very substance of that growth.
One need not be a religious believer to feel that we live in Apocalyptic times. We are reaching the limits of our society to maintain basic cohesion and of our ecosystem to support us. And we see the spread of toxic forms of ideology which emphasise identity and difference in a way which works against the spirit of universal love which might gather us in and set us on a true path. And the pandemic has tended to make us fear each other and to put our trust in a centralised authority which has often proved unworthy of that trust.
Some say that we need to return to Christian values. This seems valid if one takes those values from a non-literal interpretation of the Gospels. There are too many of us who call ourselves Christians while departing from those values - of love and honesty and non-judgement and charity - to expect that holding up Christianity as an answer will win the approval of unbelievers.
I say this and yet the one thing I fall back on to give me some modicum of hope is that Jesus prophesied that the darkest moment would herald his return. I may not believe in a supernatural sense, but a pattern which is central to our greatest story is not to be lightly dismissed, especially when the alternative is a slow painful extinction for the human race and all the beauty in the world.
Some believe that the heart of human psychology is competition. Nature is a competition for food and mating opportunities. But it seems to me that love is the primary grounding of our psychology. The love bond between mother and child is the foundation of our development. Later there are factors which alienate us from that. If our survival as an individual is in peril, if we are feeling the impulse to serve the breeding impulse, and, particularly, if we are in a psychologically insecure state, then this acts as interference temporarily blocking out our more profound nature. But if we meet a stranger in a situation in which we feel no danger to our survival or our psychological integrity, then there is no reason we won't feel a fellowship with them which is a return to the essence of our first way of relating to another human being, but without the element of complete dependence.
Psychological insecurity is the root of our problems. I know it all too well. If my belief system were made up of secure building blocks, then I would not want to see those who think differently proven humiliatingly wrong. Don't we see this in ourselves and others, particularly on the topic of politics. We build our ego castles and hurl projectiles of mockery at those of our fellows. The "other" becomes perhaps a stand-in for everyone who has ever hurt us. We get an outlet for our frustration, but no healing for that hurt.
So is, perhaps, an Apocalypse the last stand of a failing strategy? There is no doubt that business as usual is proving to be a massive failure. If that failure breaks us, will we, in newfound humility, acknowledge the long-denied truth and fall back into our capacity for love?
For a while I’ve been intending to do some more writing about what Christian ideas mean to me as a person who doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Why not have a look at a central text - The Lord’s Prayer? This is found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.
“Our Father…”
I think it helps to draw meaning from this concept of “God the Father” if we acknowledge that it is an expression which originated in a patriarchal culture. The source and guiding principle of the universe might have been depicted as “The Mother”, but in this case it wasn’t, so what we have to ask is “What does the father figure mean to a culture in which a man was considered the head of the family?”
Our parents are the source of our existence. They came together and we were the result. So the father is a representation of the process by which we came into existence.
The father, in such a culture, is also the teacher of morals and the one who punishes us if we depart from them.
I don’t believe in the supernatural, but the term “God” is meaningful to me as a symbol.
First there is “God the Creator”. For me, this is a personification of the creative process of the universe whereby more complex and capable wholes come into existence. Somehow atoms came to be arranged in the meaningful form which allows me to exist as a complex intelligent entity sitting at my computer and typing this sentence. We know a lot more about this process now than we did when the Lord’s Prayer was first spoken, but it is still something worthy of the kind of awe we associate with the term “God”.
Then there is “God” as a motivating force in human behaviour - “God” as love. Here again we have something which brings into being more complex and capable wholes. While love is all too easily subsumed by conflicts of one kind or another - to the extent that there is such a thing as a friendship or a family or a tribe or a community, these are wholes which are greater than the sum of their parts made possible by love. Love being a form of communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity.
“God” is seen as a teacher of morality and a judge. Love is the source of our morality. I believe we have an instinct for it which is born in us, and, if we are lucky, that is reinforced and encouraged by the example of those who love us. While we often suffer from experiences which are simply bad luck, we can also be taught lessons by life. We may make a selfish decision in which we neglect to recognise that our wellbeing rests within the wellbeing of those around us, and as a result life may teach us a lesson via negative consequences. I think “God the Judge” is a symbol for that process. Life could be imagined a bit like a video game. We have a certain capacity for love which can be recharged in positive encounters with others, like picking up power packs, and there are encounters with mischance and with the malevolence of others which may deplete us. There is a chance we may lose our way entirely. Maybe we will lose patience and “go over to the dark side” because it seems easier, less of a struggle. The idea of “God the Judge” is of someone who is keeping the score. Maybe there is no such entity, but our life situation and its consequences are real.
“…who art in heaven…”
To me, the word “heaven” represents a realm of potential which we can apprehend using our imagination. We can imagine what the human world would be like if it reached its creative potential, if love and reason ruled over all. In our world we see “God” as if “through a glass darkly”. Love shines out here and there amidst the darkness, but war and crime and depression and all the rest can easily seem to be the larger part of reality. And foolishness is more common than wisdom or reason. So we have to look to our imaginary vision of how things could be to see “God” clearly.
“…hallowed be thy name…”
“Hallowed” means “made holy”. As I’ve said, the creative principle of the universe is one which allows for the formation of more complex and capable wholes. “Holy” comes from the same source as the word “whole”. So that which is “holy” is that which is “whole” or “of the whole”. To heal is to “be made whole”. “God” is our symbol for all that “makes whole”.
“…Thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”
The essence of the prayer is that the potential for wholeness - through love and reason - be realised in the world as it exists in our imagination.
“…Give us this day our daily bread…”
A plea that we are able to obtain the means to meet our daily physical needs, but this also could be a way of symbolising our emotional needs for hope, inspiration and love.
“…And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”
One of the major threats to wholeness, of the individual or the group, is lack of forgiveness.
Conscience acts as a guide to our behaviour, but a healthy relationship with the conscience requires self-acceptance and the flexibility it makes possible. If our self-acceptance is undermined to the extent that the conscience becomes an intolerable source of oppression, then we can go to war against it. Instead of doing what we know to be the best thing, we may deliberately do the opposite of what our conscience would tell us. This seems to me to be the best way to understand the extremes of human malevolence. There are acts of evil which have a pragmatic purpose. One might torture someone to get information to help one’s own side in a war. But some people commit such acts without such an external motive. How do we explain such sadism? The impulse is the exact opposite of the love impulse. Is it unreasonable to interpret malevolence, of which this is the purest form, as resentment at a conscience which demands loving behaviour when, because of undermined self-acceptance, there is no more love to give? If hatred of the conscience were not a motivating force there would be no point in wasting time, or risking one’s freedom, by inflicting suffering when one could spend that time and effort indulging in sensual pleasure.
So a healthy relationship with the conscience is one in which forgiveness for past transgressions frees us up to do better next time. Self-forgiveness is a major part of self-acceptance. By self-acceptance I don’t mean complacency, because our potential to improve is a key part of what is being accepted. To be self-accepting is to recognise that one has nothing to prove about one’s self and thus be able to open up to intrinsic motivations for doing things rather than ones rooted in maintaining a fragile sense of pride.
And clearly the functioning of human groups require forgiveness amongst their members. It won’t work if there is an imbalance here, with some forgiving all the time and others always being the ones whose misbehaviour is being forgiven. So it is linked : “…forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” (the unforgiving don’t get forgiven) and followed by the next two lines which address the origins of the transgressions which might need to be forgiven.
“And lead us not into temptation…”
It’s all too easy to be tempted by opportunities to seek immediate gratification of some desire even when we know that the longer term consequences will be harmful to both ourselves and others. So there is a plea to limit such tests. Since I’m not looking at this as something involving a supernatural being, I would see this as an intention to develop the spirit of stoicism as an defence against impulsiveness.
“…but deliver us from evil.”
Once again a positive focusing on the power of love, reason and wisdom, personified here as “God”, to heal our malevolent motivations, An opening up to all that might lead us back to wholeness.
This is needed to compliment forgiveness. Forgiveness can’t be expected in the absence of a move toward better behaviour.
“For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.”
The creative principle of life, expressed in inter-human affairs as love, is that through which everything becomes possible. In a limited sense it is possible to defy this principle, but such defiance is ultimately in vain as nothing worthwhile comes to us as a result. Selfishness is ultimately self-defeating, because we have far more to gain by working together for our mutual benefit. In this sense, that which we symbolise under the word “God” is the source of everything wonderful and the ruler of the system of which we are an expression.
I’ve reached a crossroads where I realise that I need to take a stand and make my position clear.
I was telling a Christian friend yesterday that I’ve come to the conclusion that predictions of the rise of an “Anti-Christ” in the Bible refer to the domination of the world by a particular dogmatic cluster which has been described by various people as “critical theory”, “identity politics”, “postmodern Marxism” or “cultural Marxism”. The latter two terms may not be completely accurate, but what matters is what is being pointed to by them, not how accurate the name is.
There are other people who are much better than me at dissecting and critiquing these ideas. I recommend Jordan Peterson or Bret Weinstein.
The reason I have come to identify these belief systems with the figure of the Anti-Christ is that they promise what Jesus promised - an end to the injustices of the world - but it is not what they deliver.
For me, as an unbeliever, Jesus represents a principle of truth, love, non-judgement, forgiveness and generosity. Love - open, honest, spontaneous and generous communication - is the answer. But I believe that the dogma of identity politics, which has spread through our culture, brings lies, hatred, judgement, vindictiveness and selfishness, all the time claiming to fight those things.
When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:
Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.
And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
Matthew 15-22
The “abomination of desolation” refers to offerings give to a false God. To me the significance of this expression is that we are coming to a time when “social justice” replaces love as our highest good. Justice is important, but, by its very nature, it can only be achieved by force and control. Love, the attitude which allows us to treat all our fellows as equal embodiments of the divine, leads us toward healing and a better world for all naturally.
The rise of the “Black Lives Matter” movement has made it all so clear. The cat is out of the bag. We have a movement which claims to be about saving black lives, but it calls for the defunding of the police. Since far more black lives are lost to violent crime than to police brutality, this means it is promising one thing and delivering the opposite. If you point this out you may be labelled a racist. This thought virus is powerful and deadly. The sensible approach to reducing police brutality would be to spend far more money on the police so that they can spend more time training and so that enough police can be employed that it is very easy to fire any police officer the first time they show signs of racism or a propensity to use excessive force. No matter how dissatisfied anyone is with the police, they should be able to realise that any power vacuum created by a reduction in the effectiveness of the police will be filled by violent criminals.
When I went onto Twitter today I found someone who appreciates my writing saying : “If you've ever heard me say that heteronormativity is a product of patriarchy, this is where I got the information from. The book is called "How to Be Free" by Joe Blow.” The following pages of my book were attached to illustrate this.
So here is my crisis. What do I do when I find my writing being associated with that which I identify as the Anti-Christ?
I don’t blame anyone for making this connection. I talk about some of the same things that are talked about in critical theory. I talk about the psychological basis for patriarchy and fear of homosexual desire. But I don’t support calls to “smash the patriarchy” as those in the grip of identity politics sometimes do. I talk of patriarchy mainly in the past tense, because our society no longer excludes women from positions of power.
What about “heteronormativity”? It is defined as “the belief that heterosexuality, predicated on the gender binary, is the norm or default sexual orientation. It assumes that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of opposite sex.”
I don’t really disagree with that. Gender is binary. Biologically there is male and female. There are psychological characteristics which we identify as masculine or feminine. There isn’t some third gender with which we identify characteristics. Of course there are men who exhibit more feminine characteristics and women who exhibit more masculine characteristics, and there some people who have about an even mix. It is like colour. There are only three primary colours. All the other colours are mixtures of those. All gender identities are mixtures of the masculine and the feminine. And heterosexuality is the statistical norm, and heterosexual families are the organisation best suited to producing healthy children - all other things being equal.
None of that is to say that we should idealistically insist on that which may be the statistical norm. There are many ways of doing things effectively in the world.
In my book I posit that bisexuality is the underlying form of sexuality. I arrived at this conclusion as a result of what I learned about our close primate relatives - the bonobos - who engage in erotic exchanges irrespective of gender. Also because we have the biological capacity to share erotic physical pleasure with others irrespective of gender. And because many heterosexuals are uncomfortable with homosexuality, which implies, to me, that there is a contrary desire for it buried beneath the public face. All of this is just speculation on my part.
Another incident which has focused this problem in my mind has been the treatment of J. K. Rowling over her discussion of transsexuality. I read her blog post on the topic, which I found to be remarkably sensible, well-informed, open-minded and compassionate. Yet, she has been roundly attacked. This tells me that we are at a very dark time. To speak the truth in a way which challenges this pervasive dogma is dangerous, but necessary.
Some may think me paranoid to use concepts like thought virus or even demonic possession to depict what is happening, but I think it helps to visualise how it works - the way that it has a life of its own, which operates through people without them being aware of what is happening to them.
I’ve said that idealism is the root of all evil and is a thought virus. Identity politics (lets stick with that term) is the most dangerous form of idealism which has ever existed, because it has spread most broadly to the global community. Religious groups have often done terrible things because of an idealistic insistence on imposing their dogma on others. And communists and fascists have slaughtered millions as a result of their idealistic dogma. If the current lie can be exposed in time, it may not come to that. But I have no doubt that, if not exposed as the lie that it is, this current dogma will lead to even worse horrors and, in fact, the end the human race.
So, there, I’ve explained where I stand. If anyone wants to quote my writings as a way of supporting this dogma, they are welcome to. That is their business, not mine. From the very beginning I’ve renounced what I call “the control strategy”. I take no ownership of my ideas. They are offered to be used as the person receiving them sees fit. To my mind this is how I differentiate myself from what I call “the Anti-Christ”. You will see those who are in “his” thrall trying to control others expression through intimidation or censorship.
I am, and have always been, on the side of freedom and love. "Ye shall know them by their fruits." Matthew 7:16
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7
I often find passages from the gospels a great stimulus to exploratory thinking. I’m not a believer. It seems to me that, to be a believer, is to think that we know what something means. The fact that I may look for meaning in a passage of text, first of all requires a degree of mystery. It is also an experiment. I don’t intend to try, as one might by researching context and language, to make a case for some kind of objective interpretation. I’m treating the passage as if it were a seed that I’m planting in my imagination to see what will grow there. I can’t make any claim for the healthiness of any plant that this experiment produces. I may be gardening in contaminated soil.
The above passage is a mysterious one. No doubt many who thought their faith was strong have asked for things they didn’t receive.
The passage guarantees that the asker will receive and the seeker will find. This sounds a bit like the theme of a Disney cartoon feature - “Don’t let go of your dreams and eventually they will come true.” It may be true that those who give up their dream are unlikely to achieve it, but there are plenty of people who hung onto a dream and came to a sticky end or found themselves mired in debt.
For the time being anyway lets ignore the guarantee. Maybe the guarantee comes back in if we understand the meaning of the passage. Maybe if we do it right, it’s bound to work, but I feel more comfortable being skeptical about that at this stage.
There are three things that it is suggested that we do : ask, seek and knock.
Ask
When we ask for something we describe what it is that we want or at least give it a name.
Unless we are asking for something trivial, we are most likely also admitting an insufficiency in our own ability to supply it.
What do we want? We might make like a beauty pageant contestant and say “World Peace.” But what exactly do we mean by “world peace”? What would it look like? How would a peaceful world need to function in order to maintain that state. What are the barriers which stand between us and it which we need to ask to be removed? The more specifically we can describe what we want, the better chance we have of that description acting as a blueprint that could draw us and others toward it as a reality.
So whether we get what we want can depend on the quality of our asking. If we ask for something which others want as well and in a way which inspires them to action then our wish may be granted.
The creative principle which we see in operation around us - both in nature and in culture - works through the formation of new wholes. Ecosystems are wholes in which the individual organisms interrelate in a way which not only keeps each species alive, but has allowed for increasing complexity both in the system and its most advanced members. In society, individuals come together in families to produce and raise offspring and individuals come together also to form organisations which engage in creative endeavours, such as producing increasingly powerful forms of technology. Individuals create by bringing parts together to form new wholes, for example I’m creating this blog post by bringing together a new arrangement of words.
One need not have a supernatural concept of God to see that bringing some new thing or new arrangement of things into being means opening up to this creative principle - looking outside ourselves, as well as beneath the surface of our inner self, perhaps - seeking the connections which are the very essence of creation.
Our pride may stand as a barrier to receiving the blessing we seek from the creative principle. Maybe we think we already know. Maybe we think we can already do. But if we get down on our knees and admit that we don’t know and we can’t do, then maybe we will be prepared to see a realisable potential we had been missing.
Seek
Seeking is all about looking. It is about paying attention.
Seeking means first admitting that something might exist. We can’t afford to be too cynical.
Only if we pay attention to the people around us and to the systems - natural, social and technological - of which we are a part, will we see the opportunities - the potential new connections - through which what we seek can come to pass.
If we get too caught up in our own personal schemes we lose sight of the power that we can have through our appreciation of the talents of others. Many a talent lies dormant because nobody has called upon it.
Knock
A knock is a determined action intended to call forth a response.
If we want something we need to take some kind of action. We need to initiate it, while at the same time remembering that there is much that we don’t know and much that we can’t do.
We might take action to share our vision. We might ask people what they need. It might involve literally knocking on doors.
***
If I can ask for anything, why not ask for the “Kingdom of Heaven”.
What does this phrase mean to me?
This is a potential which exists within us and within the world to manifest a community characterised by loving fellowship.
Thus, “…your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”, to me, means the realisation in the material world (“on earth”) of the matrix (“kingdom”) of love (“God”) which otherwise only exists in the world of positive potential (“heaven”).
Don’t we want to experience the ultimate pleasure and save ourselves from suffering?
The ultimate pleasure is that of loving connection with others or with the world around us in which we lose ourselves in the experience of being part of something larger. Maximising our ability to savour this pleasure requires a harmonious social environment and a harmonious relationship to the natural environment. Within the context of such a loving community, it would be much easier for us to work together to solve the practical problems which face us.
What stands between us and this potential loving community?
Egotism, greed, prejudice, aggression, despair, resentment… There are so many psychological barriers. There is so much in us which can make us enemies and thus lock us all out of “Heaven”.
Let’s imagine a tyrant who inflicts terrible suffering on his people. He is a fortress made of beliefs and behaviours which hold fear and guilt at bay. Can he acknowledge the common humanity of those he oppresses? No. Because to do so would be to confront his own guilt at having treated other humans so appallingly. Can he take his sword away from their throat? No. Because he fears they will rise up and exact their revenge. He really has no freedom of mind or freedom of behaviour. He is a reflexive pattern of oppression within which the loving being he was when he was born is imprisoned.
This is the extreme, but there is something of that tyrant in all of us. We have our rigid defensive beliefs and our fears which push people away.
The Kingdom is the state of freedom. Imprisonment is what keeps us from that kingdom. We are troubled by other’s selfishness, egotism, prejudice, violence. But these are their prisons. Each of us has our prison which is the source of our suffering and may contribute to the suffering of others. Our enemy is the jailer and not his victim.
So what do I ask for?
I ask not for justice, for justice is something which must be imposed. Instead I ask for the key which unlocks the prisons of the mind of which the injustices of the world are the outward expression.
There is a Christian principle “Judge not that thou be not judged.” Some people no doubt believe that the usefulness of this advice hinges on a belief in God. After all, is it not God who would judge us?
I interpret it differently. If we have a framework of judgement, then we will subject ourselves to that framework of judgement whether we like it or not.
I was thinking about this today as a result of a controversy which has erupted about a cartoon by the controversial Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig.
The cartoon depicts a baby falling out of its pram unnoticed by his young mother because she is too busy looking at Instagram on her phone.
This is a pretty extreme situation. There is no need for anyone to identify with this mother simply because they are a mother with a mobile phone themselves. It is not as if the cartoon is about a baby in a crib looking up accusingly at his mother on her phone. It depicts extreme social media addiction and neglect. If you don’t have a serious social media addiction and you are not a neglectful parent, then it isn’t about you.
But the cartoon has made a lot of people very defensive.
Controversial feminist Clementine Ford responded :
Clearly the cartoon touched a raw nerve. That’s what it was meant to do. If Ford didn’t feel guilty, she wouldn’t respond in that way. But it isn’t a judgemental cartoon. If judgement comes, it comes only from the conscience of the viewer. The cartoon is using imagination to suggest what an infant’s eye view of the world might be. An infant doesn’t know if you are on your mobile phone for work or sharing pictures of him, he only knows that your attention is elsewhere. Leunig is depicting something which already exists in our subconscious, so it is no good shooting the messenger.
Parental guilt is a major problem which exists with or without Leunig’s cartoons. What makes it so insidious is that it is a negative feedback phenomena. The more guilty a parent feels the more they turn inward or need distraction and ego-reinforcement to deal with the pain, and thus the less available they are for their children, which leads to more guilt.
There is also a feedback link between our judgement of others and being prone to judging ourselves. Ford is someone who is known for being judgemental - for calling people “cunt” or “creepy fuckface”. Standing in judgement of men, in particular, is her stock in trade. So, of course, she has a guilty conscience about her parenting. Not only do we judge ourselves if we are locked into judgement mode with others, but the judgement of others may be our way of getting some relief from the torture of our own conscience. Thus it can be another negative feedback loop.
So, once again, we see the need for cultivating unconditional self-acceptance. Only this will unleash our full capacity to be there for those who depend on us, and enable us to respond to the destructive behaviour of others without judgement of the wounded individual who lies behind that behaviour. And it will make us into people who can’t be hurt by a cartoon.
Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, claims that a better translation of the Greek word ήμερος usually translated as “meek” is “those who have weapons and the ability to use them but are determined to keep them sheathed”. Those who take the right path are those who integrate their shadow, who acknowledge the dark side of their nature but do not succumb to it, gaining strength from their encounter with it. He is afraid that we may assume that meek is synonymous with “weak” :
Here is a guide to how the Greek word is generally translated.
Here is some discussion of Peterson’s interpretation.
One problem I have with both interpretations is the failure to acknowledge the meaning of the word “inherit”. An inheritance is something unearned which falls to us. Now it may have been earned in some instances, in the sense that someone may put us in their will because we have been of service to them or we may be written out of a will because we have done something to offend a family member. But none of this is intrinsic to the meaning of the word “inheritance”. The passage doesn’t say “the meek will earn (or win) the earth”.
I think we have to look at the context to get a better understanding.
This is the third in what are known as the Beautitudes. Jesus tells us that eight particular classes of people are “blessed” or “fortunate”. He then tells his followers that all of them are “blessed” or “fortunate” if they are persecuted because of him.
He first claims “blessedness” for the “poor in spirit” and then for “those who mourn”. Clearly these are not those who are blessed with good fortune in the world as it currently stands.
I think that, to understand the Beatitudes, we have to recognise that Jesus was an apocalypticist, i.e. a person who believed that some event was going to occur which would overturn the established social order and usher in some kind of paradise on earth. (I recognise that it is more popular to interpret the concept of a “Kingdom of Heaven” as some ethereal place we go to when we die, but that doesn’t make so much sense to me.)
The Beatitudes make sense in the framework of two worlds - the social world we know, with its injustices, its dishonesty and its oppressive power relationships - and a potential world of honesty and love which lies buried beneath its repressions.
Sermon on the Mount 1 Le Sainte Bible Traduction nouvelle selon la Vulgate par Mm J -J Bourasse et P Janvier Tours Alfred Mame et Fils 2 1866 3 France 4 Gustave Dor Engraving photographed by ruskpp.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 5:3
Perhaps the “poor in spirit” are those who have been very wounded by their experiences of life. They have little spirit left in them. But in a world of love their wounds will be healed and they will be free of oppression. In terms of a transition to the new world, they have the advantage - “the blessing” - of not being invested in the old.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” 5:4
To be in mourning is not a form of righteousness that one pursues. As with being “poor in spirit” it is a disadvantage in the old world, but one which makes us less invested in it. We fixate on loving relationships which we have lost, through the death of the loved one or through a breakdown in the relationship. In a world where everybody loves everybody else, it will be easy to let go of the past and live in the present.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” 5:5
No amount of power or aggression can keep the old world from dying. Terrible destruction can occur. Nothing can necessarily protect anyone. But, only a healthy society will not eventually fall. If such a healthy loving truthful world comes into existence, it will belong to the meek as much as to anyone else. The point is that the powerful and aggressive try to hang onto the world, and, individually, they always fail. They can postpone the new world, but they can never have a world of their own which persists.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” 5:6
Those who long for a world in which we treat each other well, are not invested in a world in which we don’t. So, once again, we have a group of people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain in a transition from the old world to the new world.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” 5:7
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” 5:8
I think this is where we come to what Griffith calls “the innocent”. As very young children we were aligned to the world of love. If God is the creative theme of the universe which is manifested in human behaviour as love, then children can “see God”. This is the source of their “enthusiasm”, i.e. “the god within”. It is the wounds of life, which sow the seeds of internal division and breed resentment, which “hide the face of God” from us. In a world in which these divisions are healed with understanding, everyone will live in full awareness that they are manifestations of this creative force.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” 5:9
This is similar to 5:7. Peace between warring factions is keeping us in the old world. Those who can resolve conflicts are architects of the new world. The reward falls to all, not just to those who behave this way. It isn’t about pursuing righteous behaviour in order to pass a test and get a reward, it is about being a manifestation of a social process from which the whole of humanity benefits.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 5:10
The old world is threatened by honesty and is insecure in it’s sense of its own worth, so those who tell the truth or act in a way which shows up the old world’s corrupt behaviour tend to be persecuted. It is necessary to keep the vision of the new world in mind in order to not give in to this pressure.
Another interpretation could be put on this sentence. Some people are persecuted because of a false sense of righteousness (what William Blake called “Moral Virtue”). A good example might be people who are persecuted for their sexuality. Someone who is in a loving gay relationship is being honest and loving - requirements of the new world - and someone who tries to persecuted them in the belief that they are deviating from righteousness, by not adopting dishonesty and suppressing their love, is part of the old world. The new world is for the person being thus persecuted as it is for all who have been persecuted.
So how does this apocalypse, this death of the old world and birth of the new take place?
What makes the most sense to me is that the human race has always been engaged in a kind of collective improvisation to find the path to the new world. Art, philosophy, religion, science… These are all ways in which our minds and our hearts have been engaged in a process of trying to sort ourselves out. We make mistakes, we strive to learn from them and compensate for them. We examine the world around us and try to better understand where we come from.
Think of us as a computer trying to work out the bugs in its own programming. We can even see this in the evolution of different religions. We can see Jesus as someone trying to compensate for the flaws in Judaism, just as Judaism was an attempt to compensate for flaws in various pagan belief systems. It’s all a part of a process of trying to find something which works. And, in the modern world, we have new abilities and new problems not dreamt of in Jesus’ time.
The advantage we have is that this collective improvisation is taking place at an exponential rate. We can share ideas very quickly and with minimum censorship.
What should we do? Participate in the process. Speak what we feel to be the truth. Listen to the ideas expressed by others and test them for flaws. The conceptual framework of understanding which ushers in a new world will be the one which passes the test of such scrutiny. And we will know it because it works, because it heals conflict and spreads wellbeing wherever it is expressed. “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Matthew 7:16
Every day we see evidence of how rotten the old world is - lies and corruption are exposed. It’s time for the new world to find itself amidst the collapse of the old. It can only grow out of open, honest, spontaneous and generous interaction between individuals. Dogmatic utopias constructed through social programming or the impositions of more laws are part of the old world. We will know the truth by the fact that it sets us free from all that.
