Cranky Bubba Spells Out His Take on the Sermon on the Mount

So what I am saying is this: Jesus says we do not have to live in frustration with an incomplete and unsatisfying effort at righteousness. If we will treasure wisely, count the cost, put off what does not get us where we want to go, put on what we need to get us where we need to go, and then actually live out the righteousness we have pursued, then we can be who we were intended to be. Sounds like a bunch of pre-marketing to me, but let’s give it a run through and see what it sounds like.

Jesus was tempted in three fascinating ways and did not fail. When he passed those challenges he went on to bless others. With that, he even when farther; he equipped apprentices to do the same. Finally, he even spelled out for all of us how his way of life works in comparison to the fruitless do-gooder efforts.

Blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed! Jesus actually believes life can work, and that it is book ended with a promise to live under God’s rule: the Kingdom of the Heavens. The eight fold blessed will later serve as a mnemonic device to help us remember the structure of his way.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs’ is the Kingdom of Heaven. Specifically, get all happy when your righteousness is of the variety that infuriates people the way the prophets ticked people off. Think about it: salt is only as good as it is salty. If you are mixed in your character (some righteous, some sell-out) you are as useless and clumped up as salt with crud. Toss it, ain’t no good for what it was intended. That of course, is why nice guys in the church can be pathetic and subject to embarrassing diversions into awkward sin or just miserable internal conflict. Get on with it or get over it. That is the choice.

And if you do get on with it, why? So you can be self-satisfied? Does anyone light a lantern just to burn off the fuel? Lanterns are fired up to give light, to make a difference, to shine outwardly. Likewise, the whole point of personal righteousness is beyond personal purposes: it is to serve God in his kingdom and for his glory. You are to get lit up with righteousness to show God’s character which has frustratingly been shrouded by the foolishness of man worshipping the creation and the illusion of personal autonomy. Burn brightly and people won’t just fixate on you, they might even see that there is a God who not only creates us with the desire not to be wasted and meaningless, but even gives us the way to be useful and fulfilled in him.

Jesus made it clear that he was not undoing the history of revelation in the Law and prophets, rather, they finally were able to be spelled out so that even the dull (i.e. his own apprentices) could get it and get on with it. In fact, the very smallest details are to be brought forward into actuality, not suppressed into obscurity or dismissed arrogantly as pre-modern (or, Lord forbid, pre-postmodern @$!!!?) error. Essentially, if you can’t even have Pharisaical righteousness, much less what lies beyond their efforts, then there’s no way you are going to get close to experience life with God in charge of the very air around you (the Kingdom of Heaven).

So, let’s look at the issue of murder: don’t do it. It is bad. “Got it” you say. Really? Are you sure you aren’t as clueless as stoner who thinks owning a baby alligator would be radical, dude! Essentially, if you are fiddling with justifying anger and contempt you are on the growth curve projection to not only go to Folson but on to Gehenna itself! That puppy ain’t gonna stay a puppy!

Instead, how about practicing the opposite of deleting problem people (verbally or viscerally)? How about actually valuing ‘would be wretches’ as if they were made in the image of God and capable of being redeemed? Don’t worry if it seems weird, the angels peer on our redemption process with profound befuddlement. But try it. Put your gift to God down and actually track down your brother that is ticked at you and try and reconnect. Then, once you have connected with God’s image right around you, go back and try again to have some bona fide connection with the unseen God that transcends almost everything, maybe even our hyperbole.

In fact, make it a practice to be proactive to resolve issues with people. If you fail to counter the trend towards defensiveness, contempt, bitterness, anger and eventually rage, your gonna lose and it won’t be pleasant.

O.K., let’s look at what we look at. The standard line is don’t sleep around. Fair enough. That is more righteous than being someone deserving of the affectionate title ‘dog’ as in “Whassup dog!” But is not getting it on with her the righteousness that satisfies, or is it just the kind of indecisiveness that makes you wonder if you really are a man? Does it tempt you to live vicariously through cinematic stud heroes? Goodness, get past it! How? Get to the source. If the problem is really in your eye, hand, thang or whatever, start hackin’. Before you get out the dull rusty blade of guilt and self-contempt, think for a minute. Your body just tells you what the options are. Don’t blame it. The problem isn’t in any of your dismember-able parts.

For example, some guy gets married legally and is careful to divorce legally, maybe even with generosity in the settlement process. Righteous! You know, Jesus says that you undershot how connected you really got. The law of marriage was just to spell out what was deeply connected in marriage, your lives. Let’s take the issue in another way. Keep your oaths? Don’t rely on externals, be they boastful claims and promises, matrimonial statutes or physical boundaries. The real issue is integrity. Is yes actually yes, or just sorta? Is no actually no, or maybe? Is there any salt in your character that is pure and unmixed?

If there is some integrity, and you are committed to peace, what do you do with it? Do you just limit the damage you do to the world? If someone jabs your eye out, blind them back but stop there? Just don’t make things worse and mind your own business? Is that God’s righteousness? No. God actually chooses to love, and in loving he becomes vulnerable to the nasty responses of the ‘not yet loving’. God is generous all the way around. If our generosity is profit driven, how is that an infusion of hope for this world? You could go anywhere and find ‘nice people’, at least relative to their own interests. The righteousness Jesus is talking about is actually the character of God our Father. He expects us to grow up (telios, be complete, mature, perfect, full grown, actual [not just potential]).

Right. I want to grow up and be more like the God who made me in his image than unlike him. But how? Jesus’ number one tip: don’t be a show off. Seriously. If you are getting affirmation and accolades for being awesome, and then a bunch more because you follow the praise of men with “no, really, all the glory to God” then you really have reason to question your own motives and appropriately God’s choice to reward you (he is not going to reward you for seducing people to immortalize you with their obsessive flattery).

Money is a good and obvious trap in this regard. Why do some people give? Jesus says some folk give so that they look generous. Not good. If you can avoid the kick-back of people knowing you are giving then maybe you can trust that you are actually doing right stuff for some other reason than being a poser / ‘nice guy’. Guard your right actions such that there is no real conflict of interest and God will reward you for actually caring about right and wrong more than your own reputation.

Prayer is a touchy subject here. Two-faced people sometimes compensate for, well, God knows what. They pray really exotic, powerful, turbo, warrior prayers. They get what they deserve, the admiration of the gullible. If you want God to reward your prayer life, actually do it to him without an audience. Seriously, stop babbling like a circus freak and say something meaningful, like: “You alone are God, so I trust you for my food, my relationship problems and my battles with sin and evil. Thanks God!” The part about asking help with relationships is super important, because again, how we deal with those made in God’s image whom we see is a dominant factor in God’s appraisal of how he deals with us.

Money and prayer are reasonably common; let’s go hard core. Let’s say you are all undone, broken, etc. etc. about something. One solution is to cash in by being really dramatically traumatized, refuse to eat and publicly share your laments such that attention and reassurances swamp your troubled frame. If so, enjoy the rewards from the groupies, its all you’re getting. But, let’s say you really are grieving about something. How can you be serious without being a player to the gallery? Just practice basic hygiene and appropriate social boundaries (since the solution isn’t in hugs and affirmations). Then, cry out to the unseen God in a way that those who aren’t unseen do not see. Don’t worry, he can see what is unseen, and seeing that you really do have a need that is bigger than the blues, he will comfort you.

Ultimately the issue is about values. Again, we aren’t talking the little stuff that seems so big in nice church society. We are really talking about what you make efforts to collect. If your collection is not safe, you are not valuing as well as you could. Rather, treasure (even deeper than value) stuff that cannot be stolen because it is hidden in God’s domain. When your heart’s desires are hidden with God, where do you think your heart will be?

The trick to this one really is perception. If you are focused on what is good, then you will be overflowing with goodness. If your eye is on what is not good, then you will be eaten up with what is bad. Again, if the best in your system is already not good, but bad; then how bad is your system’s ‘bad’ in reality? Super-bad!

Jesus urges us to calm down. Life doesn’t need our fretting to make it any better. As we have found out and forgotten repeatedly, worrying seldom helps us even with the basics of food, shelter and clothing. Besides, is that really what life is about? If so then shopping would be enough to deeply and truly satisfy us. Besides, look at nature. There is a system that fundamentally works even for stuff that is just background to us. If we are foreground, not just to us, but even in God’s picture, then do you not think that he, and not your worrying, is the hope? He knows what you need, and most of all you need to be more like he intended than how you are living. You need to experience him in charge of everything around you.

Guess what happens when people think they’ve gotten it? They rush out to fix everyone else. (I even got excited and starting writing and teaching this stuff more eagerly than applying myself!) But judging others is not going to help, it actually increases the ways in which we get evaluated. So, don’t seek to find fault with others when the critical issue is your own tragic shambles of a semi-righteous life. Move on from the half-***ed version of your so called life and maybe you will actually have something useful to offer some poor splinter impaled brother. Then again, don’t think that if your meddling is not about faults, just offering pearls of wisdom, that you are doing any better. An unsolicited bit of advice is as welcome as a string of pearls given to pigs. If the pigs are wild boars they might even enjoy goring you more than trying on your pretty string of niceties.

What we need to do is be personal: just treat God like you would want to be treated and ask. If you ask, seek and knock God will work with you. Don’t you like it when your kid just comes right out and says what he is after instead of mumbling or manipulating? And if you can get all generous, don’t you think God could do at least that well? That is why God’s Law can be summed up so simply, just be a person who treats others persons the way that you as a person would like persons to treat persons (not as complicated as it sounds, really).

There is a way of life, but you are not going to just stumble across it. It is specific and really requires that you pay attention. Lots of folk miss the path and end up really bad off. Unfortunately there aren’t a whole lot of people who do find the way of life and walk on it.

If you are looking for a guide don’t be fooled. Marketing can trick you, actually look at the product. What is produced tells you about the producers. Just because they, or you, or anyone else, says “I’m totally on board with Jesus and I even do exactly what he does (specifically miracles and preaching) it doesn’t really mean all that much. It is not so much what you say about Jesus, it is what Jesus says about you.

So, if you actually read this with a willingness to see if it is God’s way, then do not forward to everyone in your inbox with a threat or a promise (please!). Just stop the stuff you’ve bee trying to do to live right and actually base your decisions on what Jesus said is the way to survive. Life is hard (you aren’t crazy). And you will get blasted by stuff you cannot control. If you have been established in Jesus’ way, you will withstand the hurts and hardships the way he did. If not, it’s going to be ugly.

Jesus finished making his point and the people said, “Whew, he ain’t like the guy on t.v., is he? He sounds like he actually knows what he is talking about.”