Beauty: Those Who Ache for the World to be Made Right

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 

for they will be filled."  (Matt. 5:6)

"Blessed are those who ache for the world to be made right; 

for them the government of God is a dream come true."

(Brian Zahnd paraphrase)

The author of "Beauty Will Save the World" says that those who feel most threatened by the Beatitudes are those for whom the present situation in the world is most beneficial. "In other words, if you are a citizen of a modern-day superpower and generally like the way the world is arranged, you're probably going to initially feel more challenged than blessed by the Beatitudes."

Zahnd points out that the Greek word here that is commonly translated "righteousness" con

tains both the concept of righteousness and justice. Because English translations use "righteousness" far more times than "justice" is unfortunate because it has allowed us to "shrink God's comprehensive justice to the realm of individual spirituality and private piety."

But in this beatitude Jesus is talking more about social justice and His government than He is about personal spirituality. Both matter and both go together, but it's important to understand that this is a political beatitude. "Jesus challenged both the politics of Caesar and Herod...He did so with his own politics - the politics of love, which define the kingdom of God. To think that Jesus was not political is to ignore the fact that Jesus was executed by the state for political reasons. (What Jesus was not was an adherent of any of the existing political movements.)"

God's kingdom is God's government (i.e., God's politics). Jesus' politics transcends the present-day partisan categories of "right" or "left." Neither conservatism nor liberalism represents the politics of Jesus. The politics of Jesus is the Sermon on the Mount, and we need to understand as modern Americans that we are the Romans with all their privileges and status. 

So does this mean we should feel guilty about being privileged? Not necessarily, but we should ache over the conditions of injustice in our world, or as the author says, "we should break free from the prosaic delusion that everything is okay." One example of injustice in our world is this: for every child who dies every day of hunger, the nations of the world spend $176,000 on security...at the very least we should ache and pain over this and the many other unjust realities in our world.

"In the fourth beatitude Jesus blesses those who ache over the pervasive injustice and deep brokenness of our world...blesses those who refuse to keep looking at the world through the rose-colored glasses of self-delusion...they long for the beauty of Christ's justice to save the world."

Next is the fifth beatitude: "Blessed are those who give mercy, for they will get it back when they need it most."