beatitude #1: how do you see yourself?
"What’s wrong with the world? I am.” — G.K. Chesterton
The beginning of every journey is the most important part. Why? Because your first steps set the direction. And if you start out going the wrong direction, it doesn’t matter how far you go, you’ll never get any closer to your goal.
That’s why the way Jesus begins the Beatitudes, his plan for human flourishing, is so important. In this first Beatitude, Jesus points us in the direction that we need to go to flourish, by challenging the assumptions of the secular approach to flourishing.
Jesus begins his teaching on human flourishing with a short and strange phrase:
Flourishing are the poor in spirit because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus wastes no time challenging the assumptions of the secular approach to flourishing by telling us: if you want to flourish, you have to see yourself as poor in spirit.
When we hear this first Beatitude it’s hard not to wonder: what does being poor in spirit have to do with human flourishing? But Jesus chose his words carefully, and in this Beatitude, he’s forcing us to reflect on a simple, yet searching, question: how do you see yourself?
part 1: how do we naturally see ourselves?
From a young age, our culture tells the exact opposite of Jesus: if you want to flourish, you need to see yourself as proud in spirit. Why is seeing yourself as proud in spirit so important? Because it’s only the proud in spirit who have enough self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-belief to excel at the secular approach to flourishing.
Our culture does everything it can to make us proud in spirit, thinking that this is the way to ensure that we’ll all flourish. We’re constantly told to believe in ourselves, quit listening to our doubts, and as Henry Thoreau put it, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!”
And so, our culture tells us that if you want to flourish, you need to be:
Self-confident: you need to believe that you are special.
Self-reliant: you need to believe you know best.
Self-determined: you need to believe that you can do whatever it takes.
Self-sufficient: you need to believe that you have everything you need.
Self-promoting: you need to be your own advocate of how awesome you are.
It’s these people, according to our culture, who are the ones who succeed in life: they make the most money, marry the most attractive people, gain the most status, and develop the power to build large personal kingdoms and live life on their terms.
A recent Apple commercial displayed our culture’s mindset perfectly. The ad, entitled “Greatness,” shows picture after picture of famous men and women, while a narrator describes the traits these people had that made them so successful:
There's a certain kind of person who doesn't take no for an answer. They don't walk in quietly. They parade in. Trailblazing. Eyebrow raising. Status quo breaking. Grazing greatness. Braving hatred. And taking up space. They'd rather defy the rules and amaze. There's a certain kind of person, who doesn't wait for greatness. They make it.
This is our culture’s constant message to us. It’s everywhere you look, whether you’re scrolling through Instagram, listening to a podcast, or reading a popular book, like Jen Sincero’s recent best-seller: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. This book reads like a proud in spirit manual, encouraging the reader to believe that:
You are the only you there is and ever will be. Do not deny the world its only chance to bask in your brilliance.
The Universe is totally freaking out about how awesome you are.
You need to go from wanting to change your life to deciding to change your life.
This is the proud in spirit message to flourish in a nutshell: if you ever want to flourish, you need to believe in yourself and get to work!
the core beliefs of being proud in spirit
So why is it so important in our culture that you see yourself as proud in spirit? Because of the two core assumptions that form the foundation of the secular approach to flourishing:
You are capable of solving all of your problems on your own: Our culture believes that human beings are capable of all of our problems. That’s why you need to be proud in spirit: you have to believe that you are capable of solving your problems, fixing your life, and flourishing through your own efforts.
Our culture believes that it is on an inevitable march towards progress, and with enough time, money, science, and education, we’re told that we will eventually be able to solve every problem human beings face, including death, and create a flourishing society for all.
Your biggest problem is a lack of self-esteem: since human beings can solve anything they put their mind to, the second assumption states that if you’re not flourishing, then your biggest problem is low self-esteem: you’ve given up, become discouraged, and lost the belief that you are capable of building a big enough kingdom to satisfy all of your desires.
This is why our culture is so obsessed with positive thinking, daily affirmations, and empowering and inspirational content. Our culture tells us that if we could just convince everyone to love themselves and believe in their ability to solve all of their problems, then we could create a world where everyone flourishes. You have to believe, like the poet William Ernest Henley wrote, that “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
These two assumptions create the utopian optimism in humanity that forms the foundation of public dialogue in our culture. We hear these assumptions from:
Corporations, who tell us that if we work together, believe in the power of human ingenuity, and buy the right products, that there’s no problem humanity can’t solve.
Educational Institutions, who tell us that this coming generation of young people will finally figure out how to solve the world’s problems and create the utopia we’re all looking for.
Politicians, who promise that if we elect them and enact their political platforms, they will lead us into a future age of unprecedented prosperity and flourishing.
Every year we’re told that we’re sitting on the cusp of flourishing and that if we just keep working, we’ll get there soon. But yet, year after year, generation after generation, we’re still beset by the stubborn problems of human existence.
so why aren’t we flourishing?
So what’s going on then? Despite huge increases in wealth, technology, and life expectancy over previous generations, our proud in spirit culture seems to be flourishing less and less each year, as we experience more and more brokenness, conflict, hatred, and pain.
Why is this, though? Because the constant encouragement to be proud in spirit doesn’t help people flourish, but rather enables them to act more boldly on their most unhealthy attitudes and desires.
David Brooks said this about our proud in spirit culture in an essay in The Atlantic:
"Know thyself," the Greek sage advised. But of course this is nonsense. Truly happy people live by the maxim "Overrate thyself." They are raised by loving parents who slather them with praise. They stride through life with a confidence built on an amazing overestimation of their own abilities. And they settle into an old age made comfortable by the warm glow of self-satisfaction. Each of these people is a god of self-esteem, dwelling on a private Olympus.
Brooks pinpoints the ultimate effect of being proud in spirit and why it doesn’t lead to flourishing: it causes us to think we’re a god, the center of the universe, and the only person who matters. This fuels our beliefs that we are all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful.
Contrary to our culture’s opinion, having a proud in spirit, god-like view of yourself doesn’t create more flourishing but rather destroys our ability to flourish. Why? Because it causes us to:
Believe that we always know best: Proud in spirit people become infatuated with the idea that “I always know best,” especially in any self-anointed area of expertise. Whether it’s parenting, personal tastes, or national policies, they think that they possess a unique moral clarity on every issue, and that life would work if all of their beliefs and opinions were elevated into law. They deny that they have any weaknesses, blindspots, or flaws, blaming all of their problems, whether personal or societal, on other people.
This leads to a culture filled with people who are divisive, cruel, and combative towards anyone who sees things differently than them. They reject, belittle, and punish, whether formally or informally, anyone who’s not as enlightened as they are, causing our culture to break down and divide. On top of this, since no one will admit they are wrong, there’s never any headway made towards fixing any of our problems, since “It’s all their fault, not mine!”
See the people around us as competitors and potential threats to our kingdom: Since the proud in spirit see themselves as the center of the universe, the pursuit of our kingdoms is the most important thing in the world. They believe that success is a zero-sum game: others need to lose for them to win. This causes our society to be full of tension, conflict, and war, as our quest to build our kingdoms causes us to battle against each other for superiority, whether that's between two coworkers, two countries, or two people driving next to each other during rush hour.
This causes us to become anxious, worried, and obsessed over how our kingdom is doing, so we spend our time thinking, scheming, and dreaming of how we can beat out others to win in life. Everything becomes a power struggle, creating a toxic culture where people use and manipulate each other for their self-interested gain.
Our morality becomes selective: Since the proud in spirit see themselves as God, they get to personally decide what’s right and wrong. They’ll obey the written and unwritten rules of society when it helps them build their kingdom, but will break them anytime the rules keep them from getting what they want. After all, if our desires are inherently good, the important thing is that we get what we want in life, regardless of what it does to other people.
This thinking causes us to hold others to a high standard of moral behavior, but then have no problem with lying, cheating, stealing, and tearing others down, as long as it helps our kingdom progress. We rationalize our immorality away, telling ourselves “I had no other option” or that “I deserve to catch a break sometime.”
Proud in spirit thinking creates such a toxic, fractured, and combative culture, where people trample over each other in pursuit of their own kingdoms and will do whatever it takes to hold onto their sense of superiority. If we ever want to flourish, both individually and collectively, this way of seeing ourselves has to go.
Part 2: Jesus’ challenge to our proud in spirit culture
Jesus wastes no time, though, confronting our proud in spirit culture by telling us: true flourishing can only be found by seeing yourself as poor in spirit and receiving God’s kingdom.
Every human being naturally hates this idea. We all think that there’s no way Jesus’ teaching could ever lead to human flourishing. Many secular people believe that in this first Beatitude, Jesus is telling his followers to hate themselves and think they’re worthless. They don’t see being poor in spirit as the foundation of flourishing, but rather as psychologically damaging spiritual abuse.
But that’s not what Jesus means by poor in spirit. After all, God tells us throughout the Bible that we’re created in his image with eternal value and infinite worth. So what then does it mean to see ourselves as poor in spirit?
so what does it mean to be poor in spirit?
To understand this first Beatitude, we need to ask what Jesus means by the word poor. When Jesus told the crowd that they needed to be poor in spirit, he didn't use the Greek word for poor that referred to the working poor, to the people who had very little but were able to scrape by.
Instead, Jesus chose the Greek word that was used for beggars. Beggars are more than just poor, they're the broken and the destitute, people who have no possessions, food, money, or home. A beggar is someone who has admitted that they can’t get by on their own, so they do the only thing they can: they beg for help. They’re completely dependent on the mercy of others.
When Jesus tells us that we need to be poor in spirit, he’s telling us that we need to see ourselves as a spiritual beggar. A spiritual beggar is someone who recognizes that they have rebelled against God, made a mess of their lives, and admit that they are broken and helpless. So they do the only thing they can: they beg God for his mercy and love.
The British preacher John Stott described poor is spirit like this:
To be poor in spirit is to acknowledge our spiritual poverty, indeed our spiritual bankruptcy, before God. We have nothing to offer, nothing to plead, nothing with which to buy the favor of heaven.
This is the key. You don’t become poor in spirit by doing something, such as making yourself humble or thinking you’re a terrible person, but rather by recognizing your spiritual emptiness before God. You have nothing of value to offer God to buy his favor or blessing.
the offensiveness of Jesus’ teaching
Let’s be honest. This is an offensive idea to our modern ears. No one naturally wants to admit that we are spiritually bankrupt before God. That’s why human beings spend our lives building our kingdoms; we want to point at our job, education, success, lifestyle, looks, possessions, family, religious virtue, and morality as proof for seeing ourselves as proud in spirit.
But the Bible says otherwise. As Isaiah writes: All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. Even our best deeds are still stained by sin, and don’t do anything to commend us to God.
The reason for this is because of our sinful hearts, which are full of desires contrary to God. Even when we do good things, because of the deceitfulness of our hearts,1 we do them for the wrong reason, to show that we can flourish apart from God.
This has been going on since the Garden of Eden. Like Adam and Eve, all of us tell God: “I don’t need you to flourish.” We chafe at the idea of relying on God, and want to be our own god, so that we can be in total control of our lives and world. As Charles Spurgeon said, “The hardest thing the hardened sinner has to do is admit his utter bankruptcy and unworthiness.”
But while we try to cover up our spiritual bankruptcy through confidence, accomplishments, and the size of our external kingdoms, deep down, we’re all broken. Everybody is sinful. Everyone has evil desires in their heart and experiences emptiness, meaninglessness, and a sense of being adrift.2
how do you become poor in spirit?
So how do you come to see yourself as poor in spirit? You have to encounter God and truly experience him. While proud in spirit people compare themselves to others, poor in spirit people compare themselves to God through the:
Greatness of God: poor in spirit people compare themselves to the greatness and glory of the God of the universe. In the same way we feel small when we look at the mountains or the ocean, a true encounter with God will show us his majesty, how small we are, and how wide the gap is between us.
Law of God: poor in spirit people compare themselves to the holiness and purity of God’s law, which allows us to see the spiritual poverty in our lives. When we meditate on God’s requirements, to love him with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, as well as our neighbor as ourselves, we should see how far we fall short of his law and how we cannot obey his law in our own abilities.
Character of God: poor in spirit people compare themselves to the life of Jesus, the man who perfectly lived out God’s law and character in real life. Comparing ourselves to Jesus keeps us from turning God’s law into an abstract list of commands to keep, and instead shows us how far we fall short of God’s ideal.
It’s only as you encounter and experience the holiness, character, and attributes of God, the Holy Spirit will increasingly convict you of your sin and open your eyes to the reality of your spiritual poverty. This is what happens every time in the Bible when someone encounters God, like with:
David: When God told David that his heir would establish an eternal kingdom he responded, “Who am I, Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?”
Isaiah: When Isaiah experienced a vision of the glory of God, he cried out, “Woe to me. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Mary: When the angel told Mary that she would be the mother of the Messiah she said, “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.”
Peter: When Jesus showed his divine power through a miraculous catch of fish, Peter fell at Jesus’ feet and exclaimed, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”
Whenever anyone in the Bible encounters the holiness, character, and greatness of God, the reaction is always a recognition of the person’s spiritual bankruptcy.
so why aren’t we poor in spirit?
Unfortunately, many people, even those who go to church, never become poor in spirit. Why? Because instead of comparing themselves to God, they spend their lives comparing themselves to others.
They are like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable in Luke 18, who comes before God and says, “I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.” He feels quite proud of himself, because he’s kept his life together and is somebody God should like having on his team.
The tax collector, however, refuses to even approach the temple because he is comparing himself to God. Instead of congratulating himself, he recognizes his spiritual emptiness and cries out to God for mercy.
While religious people like the Pharisee will admit they have some problems, they believe that they can fix their problems and can create a flourishing life on their own. They reject Jesus’ call to be poor in spirit, and instead follow their own Beatitude:
Flourishing are the middle class in spirit, for Jesus will help them become proud in spirit.
I’ve heard so many sermons that follow this type of thinking. They use the gospel and the promises of the Bible NOT to help people repent of their sin and be born again, but rather to build up the audience’s self-esteem, so that they can go out and live a great life. After all: you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you!
But this middle class in spirit message has all the pitfalls of the proud in spirit message. It just turns Jesus and Christianity into another system in which you work harder and harder in order to save yourself.
so why do we have to be empty?
You will never truly flourish, though, until you see yourself as a spiritual beggar and admit your emptiness before God. Why? Because if we spend our lives pleased with our own kingdoms, we will never be interested, much less admit our need for God’s kingdom. Dr. Peter Kreeft describe it this way:
If we come to God with empty hands, he will fill them. If we come with full hands, he finds no place to put himself. It is our beggary, our receptivity, that is our hope.
It’s only when you see yourself as a spiritual beggar who is completely empty and powerless that you will cry out to God for his kingdom.
what changes when we become poor in spirit?
While our culture hates the idea, seeing yourself as poor in spirit and receiving God’s kingdom through the new birth is the only way to flourish. Why? Because in order to flourish you have to admit that:
My problems are first and foremost spiritual problems: a poor in spirit person is willing to admit that their problems are more than just social, psychological, economical, or philosophical; at their root they are spiritual problems. All of these other issues are just symptoms of our core problem: that we’re spiritually alienated from God.
We can create more wealth and build nicer neighborhoods and budget more money for education, but no matter what we do we can’t flourish in our own strength, because we have no answer for our fractured relationship with God.
My problems are beyond me: the second thing poor in spirit people are willing to admit is that their problems are beyond them. They reject our culture’s constant message of self-confidence and self-sufficiency and admit they can’t fix the problems in their lives.
Because we can’t make ourselves whole, even our best attempts at flourishing will only wallpaper over the deeper problems of our lives. We must confess that we don’t have the wisdom, knowledge, and power to create human flourishing on our own, and must give up our mirage of self-sufficiency and self-dependence and replace them with God-sufficiency and God-dependence.
When we are willing to admit that our problems are spiritual ones and that we can’t fix ourselves, we have finally started down the pathway to real flourishing. There’s a 180 degree change in direction: we’re no longer trying to flourish by building our own kingdom, but by receiving the flourishing life of Gods’ kingdom.
It’s only when these two things happen that we can receive God’s kingdom and have access to the spiritual resources we need to truly flourish.
So why do the poor in spirit flourish?
Contrary to everything that our culture believes about the world, it’s not the proud in spirit who flourish, but rather the poor in spirit. Like a water sprinkler in the middle of a drought, the poor in spirit help bring about the flourishing new life of God’s kingdom wherever they go. This is because:
Their lives are no longer about their kingdom: because the poor in spirit find their worth and security through receiving God’s kingdom, they no longer have to obsess over their personal kingdom-building building project. They don’t struggle with the anxiety, worry, and fear of either never building a big enough kingdom, or losing the kingdom they have built. They instead experience a deep sense of wholeness through their relationship with God and find a deep joy in living for His glory and not their own. They use their lives to serve in God’s kingdom and not to seek their own agenda.
They admit their need for the insights and abilities of others: because the poor in spirit recognize their limitations and brokenness, they can stop pretending and admit that they don’t have all of the knowledge, abilities, and answers to solve the complex problems of society. They look first to God, and then to others, for wisdom and insight, which helps them be more effective as they address the problems, issues, and opportunities of our world. Also, when their flaws, weaknesses, and mistakes are pointed out to them, they listen and learn, rather than reacting with defensiveness and animosity.
They approach life with a spirit of cooperation, not competition: they no longer approach the world through the lens of competition, where other people have to lose so that they win, because they aren’t worried about the size of their own kingdom. Because of this, they create lives, institutions, and communities around harmony and unity, not conflict and fighting.
They switch from a life of getting to giving: their lives are no longer centered on getting more possessions, money, status, power, the things that put them into non-stop competition and conflict with others. In God’s kingdom, they instead spend their lives giving to others. They use their gifts, talents, resources, and time to help other people thrive, which gives them great joy and a deep sense of meaning, while helping to create communities that flourish.
They rest in God’s ultimate kingdom: they know that regardless of how much money they make or success they achieve, their ultimate security is based not on their own kingdom, but rather because of their citizenship in God’s eternal kingdom. This allows them to live in peace and without fear, as they trust God with their ultimate flourishing, especially when they go through difficult times.
where do you get the ability to be poor in spirit?
Deep down, there’s only one way to break the power of our proud in spirit culture has over us, while also not destroying our self-worth. And that is through Jesus’ death on the cross. The cross is the only way that you can be humbled out of your pride, while simultaneously ground in glory. The cross tells us that:
You were so sinful, broken, and helpless that Jesus Christ had to come to earth and die for you, but yet you are so loved, valuable, and worthy to the Son of God that he was willing to die a death of shame, torture, and exclusion all so that he could spend eternity with you.
It’s only by letting these two paradoxical facts wash over us that we will be able to see ourselves as spiritual beggars, while at the same time remembering that we are sons and daughters of the eternal God. It’s when we hold these two truths together that we’ll be restored into fellowship with God and experience the flourishing life of his kingdom.
READ THE NEXT POST: Beatitude #2: how are you trying to be happy?
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
When I cleaned apartments in Brooklyn for six years, I saw this first hand. So many of my customers had everything that you could ever want: high paying jobs, beautiful homes, lovely families, and a lifestyle that everyone would envy. But yet all of these things couldn’t create flourishing lives, because it couldn’t touch what was going on inside of them.
This is a FANTASTIC piece, Luke. Thank you for the time and effort invested to bless us with such a rich gospel reminder.