Attempting to define what the good life is and how to live it was the primary pursuit of the great philosopher Socrates. Put another way, the quest is to determine what is the proper way to live life. This weekend I was reminded of the importance of this question at a beach retreat at St. George Island. Jim Divine, the pastor of Watermark Church in Tallahassee, was the retreat speaker. The Beatitudes were the focus of Pastor Divine's comments during the first session.
The Beatitudes are Jesus' declaration of the personal virtues, actions, and patterns of life that, when present in a life result in a person being blessed. The term blessed in the greek means "large or long" and "happy", so the term appears to mean that the greatest degree of happiness goes to the person who does each of these things. The next question then is what does it mean to be prounced to have "great happiness." Happiness is contingent on how a person's life is being led and the circumstances of that life. This is not to decry happiness, for it is God's will that our happiness be contingent on our circumstances. For instance, the happiness that is experienced in heaven is contingent on the circumstance of our being in the presence of God. Different circumstances and different actions lead to different types of happiness and different reasons why a person is happy.
Here, Jesus is speaking of the greatest happiness, and thus the virtues and actions listed here are those that lead to the greatest happiness. Because God is good, the happiness that is being spoken of here is a happiness that stems from goodness, for the greatest happiness cannot be contrary to the nature of God, who is good. If happiness is good, then the greatest happiness is found in the person of God. Thus the greatest happiness for each of us stems from the character and characteristics of God and being in the circumstance of being in right relation to God. This encompasses all areas of life, and all good things: being loved by and the love of God, love of and being loved by family and friends, enjoyment of God's creation, and much more. Thus, the teaching that Jesus is giving regards those virtues and characters of life that, when enacted in all spheres of life, lead to the greatest degree of happiness.
In the next post in this series, I'll take a look at the first four of the beatitudes and analyze what each instruction entails, and nature of the blessing that corresponds to that virtue or action.
No comments:
Post a Comment