blessed are.....

So we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount in the MDS. Very good study which I am much liking. (Are you allowed to say that in English? Oh, well.) After five weeks we have finally come to Matthew 5:6 which says, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."

I have read and even memorized this passage in the past but I'm seeing it in a new light this time. One thing is that the Greek word for righteousness can be translated either justice or righteousness. It's the same word in Greek. This is also true in Spanish and French. The word carries both the meanings. So the verse could read, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice/righteousness for they shall be satisfied."

Okay I know I'm more interested in linguistics than most people, but this is actually important because it gives the verse a deeper meaning than the English language allows. I usually take it as I need to be hungry to be righteous in my own heart and life. It also means I need to be hungry to see justice in the world around me, to see the oppressed freed and the hungry fed. Deeper no?

Now usually I just think about the first part of the verse and forget the second part. The second part is a promise. Those who hunger and thirst for justice/righteousness will be satisfied. They will be satisfied. Sometimes it's really easy for me to look at my heart and at the world around me and feel like I'll never see justice/righteousness. It's easy for me to feel like it's a lost cause today. Not only in my own heart but in the hearts of everyone in my generation. But here's a promise that those who really want it are going to be satisfied. That's big.

wearing thin

We live in the most opulent, glamorous society that has ever existed. Everything is easy, everything is instant, and everything is available. Why aren't we happy?

I think possibly we are one of the most unhappy societies that has ever paraded the earth. People are depressed in huge numbers. I have so many friends who've been suicidal or even attempted it. I've known a lot of people with eating disorders and a handful of people who've cut themselves. Too many. Why is it that my generation which has everything and more of it than any group of people ever before is the most depressed, most self-destructive, most suicidal ever?

I came up with this theory recently. It may be too simple but I'll give it a shot. What if humanity is nearing the top? Like we are all on this quest together and the things we're looking for are happiness, love, comfort, fulfilment, security, whatever. Maybe we're all looking for these things together. Maybe there's this internal list in all of us. Kinda like Maslow's hierarchy of needs we all learn about in Psychology class. Maybe humanity has advanced so much that we've scratched off most or nearly all of the needs on that internal list. We are coming to the end of the list and there's still this glaring... something. There's something beyond the list we all need.

But we've tried nearly every humanly possible option haven't we? We have security, everything we could ever need to want. We have connectivity and community. We are the most connected people ever. I have a blog, a facebook, a myspace, a cellphone, unlimited texts, email, snailmail, and too many friends to pay attention to. I can hardly get through a class without getting a text. What else are we desperate for?

If this little theory is true and we all as individuals and as a species have this internal list of needs, if we are nearing the end of that list, then maybe the state we are in today could be the results of an underling panic. We've tried just about everything and we are still incomplete somehow. What's going to happen to us if we can't find that thing we need? What happens if we remain needy and incomplete? What if when Jesus said that He is the way the truth and the life He really knew what He was talking about?

a mystery

So there's this mystery I've been trying to figure out this last week. It's really been driving me nuts. Why is it that we have the technology to map the human genome and walk on the moon but we can't figure out how to make NyQuil taste any better than awful?

david

Today was a sad day for the MDS. We have six students and today one of them, David, left for home. His little brother has been in a coma for over a year now and he feels like he needs to be with his family. Life is really impossible to understand sometimes.

I went to the church's highschool with David and he used to be in the housechurch I helped lead. He moved away about three years ago. It's been really good to have him around again this last month. The last three years have been super discouraging and in a lot of ways I don't live by the standards I used to or dream the things I once did. Having David around this last month has remimded me who I used to be, what I used to live for, and why. I had come to think a lot of that stuff back then was fake, just to please people, or me trying to be like somebody else because I thought I wasn't good enough. I was immature, but it wasn't all fake. Thanks David.