To Be Blessed

Recently, I was reading the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 6: 20-31).  The Beatitudes are the address by Jesus to his disciples in which Jesus tells them who is blessed.  The address opens with, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”  Jesus goes from there to include others who are blessed – the hungry, those who weep, people who are hated on account of the ‘Son of Man’.  Considering this passage, I realized that I didn’t have as full a grasp on what it means to be blessed, as I would like.  Generally, I know that to be blessed is a good thing, but what does it actually mean for the person who is blessed?

Some versions of the Bible use happy in this passage rather than blessed.  However, to my mind, 'happy' does not capture the full meaning of blessed – happy sounds like a passing thing which is contingent on external conditions.  However, blessed seems to have a sense of a deeper state.

The earliest reference to blessing in the bible is in the creation story.  God blesses the living creatures and says, be fruitful and multiply.  He then blesses humans and tells them the same thing – be fruitful and multiply.  So, it would appear that to be blessed means you are going to be fruitful in life which at that time meant having many offspring.  Later we have the rather infamous case of Jacob – that patriarch of the church, stealing the blessing from his brother Esau – not great family values there.  One commentary noted that the meaning of the blessing that Jacob stole:

was to grant leadership to the one who received it, with Jacob becoming the head of a powerful family and nation, and with nations and brothers bowing down to him. This included not only material wealth but also spiritual significance and the continuation of God's covenant with Abraham, a legacy Jacob would carry forward. 

The covenant between God and God’s chosen people included God’s promise of land and offspring.   In effect, to be blessed, at least at that time meant to be fruitful and multiply as in the original blessing. 

So, in this case what does it mean to be fruitful?  This can have the meaning of receiving material prosperity i.e. having lots of material possession and material wealth.  This kind of meaning has led to the mistaken theology of the prosperity Gospel in my view. 

I believe that Jesus used the term blessed in the framework of the Beatitudes to describe the inner quality of a faithful servant of God. This blessedness is a spiritual state of well-being and prosperity—a deep state of peaceful contentment that cannot be shaken by external events such as poverty, hunger, or conflict because God is present with us through these difficult times.  We are blessed by God, therefore, we can be blessed by God in all things but not for all things.

May you be blessed on your journey. 

 

Whose Prosperity Do We To Serve

Victoria Osteen, who is the wife and co-pastor of mega-church pastor and televangelist celebrity Joel Osteen, has raised a lot of eyebrows in Christian circles by her recent statement.  Victoria Osteen has been reported to have said:

When we obey God, we're not doing it for God...we're doing it for ourself. Because God takes pleasure when we're happy. Do good 'cause God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God, really. You're doing it for yourself because that's what makes God happy.

This is obviously wrong on many levels and particularly when you consider what Jesus Christ taught and what Christians generally profess.  How do you reconcile this with statements such as, turn the other cheek, go the second mile ,  and of course the beatitudes such as blessed are the pure in spirit and the meek shall inherit the earth, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the poor.  I probably don’t need to go on.  The statement by Victoria Osteen smacks of the prosperity Gospel which holds that, “financial blessing is the will of Godfor Christians, and that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will always increase one's material wealth”.   The Osteen’s are apparently big in the Prosperity Gospel movement (if I can call it that).

The basic problem that I see with this theology is that it gives free reign to the ego and all that the ego desires.  Humans can easily fall into the hubris of creating God in our own image rather than what we are told in Genesis — that we were created in God’s image, male and female He created us.  The ego is our great gift from God and an integral part of being created in God’s image.  The Ego is an integral part of what makes is conscious beings and knowing that we are Children of God and not the centre of the universe.  However, the ego also wants to keep things in our lives just as they are.  The ego hates and resists change.  It wants security and comfort.  As Richard Rohr noted, “if there is one thing that the ego hates more than anything else, is to change. I know that if I keep meditating, it is going to change my worldview, my priorities, and my preferences”. 

That is what we called to do.  We are called to put God ahead of ourselves and to try as best we can to do God’s will and not our ego’s will with my priorities and my preferences.  The Prosperity Gospel emphasizes the importance of personal empowerment, holding that it is God's will for his people to be happy.  I believe God does want us to be happy.  However true happiness for people comes when the ego is in service to God and not in maintaining our self-interest.  I will close with quote from Br. Robert L'Esperance, Society of Saint John the Evangelist, “In the Christian worldview we’re not at the center of everything. God is the center of things: God and God’s creation, of which we’re a small, wonderful, privileged part. John 10:10 reminds us that Jesus, not overconsumption, is the way to “abundant life”.”  Blessings.