We’re in the middle of looking at the first half of a phrase that Jesus used to introduce his most famous set of teachings.

Now, you don’t have to be a committed Christian in order to examine its meaning and significance, but you probably should be somewhat familiar with his intent and the context behind why he chose such words. In doing so, I’d suggest it becomes easier to get a grasp on what this unique individual, Jesus, was all about.

We left off by identifying a set of contrasts to a thing we can call humility, which itself is a thing that is contained in our selected phrase. If pride is setting one’s self apart from others as a means of feeling pleasure, and narcissism is unchecked pride taken to an extreme, then humility is setting the needs of others before one’s self and deflecting attention from one’s self and, instead, towards other people or things. (There is, we know, a thing called false humility, which is merely the appearance of humility as a means of acquiring admiration.)

Of course, concepts such as humility, pride, haughtiness and narcissism don’t have to have any transcendent meaning. They’re perfectly acceptable to describe human attitudes and behaviors without bringing God into the picture. But to understand what Jesus meant, you really have to do just that: Bring God into the picture. Without God, there is no specific reference point to understand how and why “pride goeth before the fall.”

Which brings us to a very big deal. Perhaps the biggest of all. As I’ve been saying for a long time in these posts (including most recently), in order to really understand something, we need to peel away the layers to get to the ultimate source of the thing.

And, this fundamental teaching of “blessed are the poor in spirit …” is, itself, contingent on an even more fundamental teaching.

We are right to ask,“why is being poor in spirit (humble if you will) so important that it’s called out for special blessing (in this sense meaning something akin to God’s favor)?”

We don’t have to travel far from the opening salvo to his most famous teaching in order to find a line drawn firmly in the sand. Jesus is saying, in essence, If you peel away all of the layers of the important things I have to tell you about God and why I am here and why I’m telling you this stuff, it comes down to this …

Note the answer to the question asked to Jesus by a learned man, “Teacher, what must I do to earn eternal life?”

To which, Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your strength and all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:27.

A slightly different recollection of this is contained in Matthew 22:36-39. The question is asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment?” (A commandment is not an equivocal thing. It’s a must-do, not a may-do). To which Matthew recounts the reply: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Ok. Stop the presses. Whether you accept Jesus as God or consider him merely a moral teacher, this stuff is dynamite. It’s not something any of us can ignore; sort of shunt aside and think, “I’m not into playing with dynamite so I’m going to just head on over to some other less extreme stuff that better fits my world.”

For the record, I really struggle with what he’s saying here. He seems to leave no room for nuance … no exit strategy short of buying into it hook, line and sinker which, I admit, seems basically impossible.

After all, all of our strength, hearts, minds, and soul? All? Everything? How does that work in reality?

And, then, let’s turn our attention briefly to commandment #2, close on the heels of #1: Love our neighbors as ourselves (which basically means to treat them with love as we hope, in all of our dreams and deep desires, that we could be loved.)

Maybe I can get away with throwing up my hands to the first commandment by saying something like, “How am I supposed to love with everything I have, someone or something I can’t even see, feel or have a normal conversation with? But, when it comes to the second commandment, I can’t say that. In this case, at least I know who my neighbors are (or maybe I actually don’t, in terms of my house, but I do know the fellow in the adjacent cubicle at work) and I have to tell you that they are anything but lovable. In fact, I have one or two who are mean-spirited or worse. Jesus is asking the impossible. I can’t help but ignore this stuff. Either he’s setting the bar way too high or his advice really doesn’t have any relevance to real life, therefore I can sideline him as either not-God or a kind of misguided prophet of sorts.”

Where does this leave us? Am I only pulling away layers to find answers which don’t make any real sense?

“What does God want from me, anyway?”

If the “blessed are the poor in spirit” statement is a derivation from the “Love God and neighbors with all you have” statement and the latter is seemingly impossible, aren’t we being set up for failure?

The short answer, of course, is yes.

The longer answer is fascinating and we’ll try to tackle that next time.