Wednesday, April 27, 2005

From the page: "Curious. Jesus updated the Ten Commandments in his most famous speech, the Sermon on the Mount. In it, one finds the Eight Beatitudes. Why don't we ever hear about nailing those somewhere? Here's why: It's not simply the law in the Ten Commandments that attracts fundamentalists. Rather, it's the syntax. The authoritarianism of so many "Thou Shalt Nots."

The syntax of Jesus' Eight Beatitudes is not so easy (Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the peacemakers). These words invite the kind of hard questions that Jesus loved to tweak his followers with. How are they blessed? And why? It's just like Jesus to leave us with questions instead of answers."

Here is a link to my favorite book about the Sermon on the Mount

Fox explains in his book: "The Truth turns out to be nothing less than the amazing but undeniable fact that the whole outer world--whether it be the physical body, the common things of life, the winds and the rain, the clouds, the earth itself--is amenable to man's thought, and that he has dominion over it when he knows it."

Easy to say, hard to do.