Christ's Advice Getting Paid for Charity Work in the Spiritual Incubator

Mat 6:1 Take care that you do not give charity publicly, to be seen by others: otherwise you have no reward of your Father who is in heaven.

Again, Christ tells us that we are "paid" for doing good works. Christ is not teaching unselfishness but an enlightened form of self-interest. Here, he is pointing out that we don't want to get short-changed in this deal by trading temporary "social" rewards for permanent, real ones.

A lot of ideas are coming together at this point in Matthew. God is our Father and we are His Children. We are designed to "grow up" to be like God. The point of our being on earth is our perfection, that is, our maturation or completion as God's children. Earth with all its trials and pains is a kind of incubator for the eternal.

How do we mature? By emulating God as Christ emulated God. We treat the good and the evil with the same generousity. This changes us and tranforms the earth. However, it is not the act alone that changes us. It is our motivation from the act. When we are motivated by earthly rewards for our actions, we do not mature in the process no matter how noble our actions. In other words, we cannot do the right thing for the approval of society and expect to mature from it. We must do the right thing only because it is the right thing.

If the purpose of the world is our personal perfection (and through the perfection, the improvement of human society), we need the pain and suffering of this world as personal challenges. Our response to those challenges in help others is what perfects us. Our choice of the spiritual over the material and the eternal over the temporary is what counts.

Can we legislated morality or charity? Christ teaches that this would be counter-productive. It is our choices that matter. If morality and charity are compulsory, we gain nothing from them. When God created this world, he created suffering as both an illusion and as a challenge. Some suffering, such as the loss of little children to early death, is only an illusion, since, from God's perspective, death is just a transition, not an ending. Real suffering, such as pain and hunger, are a challenge, a challenge for us to act to improve the world, not through coercion, but through personal choice.

Mat 5:34 But I say to you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

Christ is specifically forbidding people to bring God into promises that we make to other people. We are being inherently dishonest if we claim that God is going to somehow vouch for our honesty.

Mot making promises to other people also recognizes our human limitations. We cannot promise any specific outcome from our efforts. Our intentions may be good and our efforts honest, but the world doesn't necessarily answer our bidding. A promise to others in the name of God is, on some level, claiming divine power that we do not have. We can say we will do something or not, but promising that it will be done is, on some level, making a promise in the name of God.

Specifically, Christ is saying that "heaven", that is, the universe, is the region of God's power, not our own.

"Swear" is omnuo (omoô, omnumi), which means "to swear," "to promise," and "to threaten with an oath."

"Heaven" is ouranos, which is "heaven," "the universe," and "the sky."

"Throne" is thronos, which is "a seat," "a chair," "a seat of power," and, metaphorically, "a king's estate and dignity."

God and the Process for Completing Humanity

Mat 5:48 You will then be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

The term used for "perfect" here is teleios, which means perfect more in the sense of having been perfected, that is, being complete and finished. In animals, it means full-grown. Applied to professionals, it means accomplished or trained. Interestingly, when applied to gods, it means all-powerful, specifically having the ability to fulfull prayers. When applied to prayers, it means being fulfulled or answered.

So another translation of this line could be, "Then you will be complete as your Father in heaven is all-powerful."

This is perfectly consistent with what we have said earlier in the sermon about Christ promising the completion of all things. We and our world is a work in progress. Before going through the commandments, Christ says that his purpose on earth is ginomai, that is, "to fill-up" or "to complete" not only the law but all things. He then goes through the process of filling out the traditional laws. This in turn is tied to the last beatitude, when he says that we will be hounded or persecuted for being dikaiosune, that is, in a state of perfection. The he ends this section of his sermon by promising that when we love our enemies, we will be finished and complete.

Though it is not apparent in it English translation, this section ends where it begins, with the promise of our perfection as human being.

What is interesting here is that perfection is relatively easy for human beings. It doesn't require superhuman intellect or strength. It doesn't even involved obeying every law. In the end, it only requires that we hug our enemies.

Have You Hugged Your Worst Enemy Today?

Mat 5:47 And if you embrace only your brothers, what do you do better than others? Do not even the tax-collectors do this?

How often do we hug those who hate us? Today, we ask, "Have you hugged your kids today?" Christ sets the bar a little higher, asking,"Have you hugged your worst enemy today?" Not only is this psychologically difficult, but it is a physically challenge as well. Our enemies don't trust us to get that close. Hugging our children is natural and effortless. Hugging enemies is clearly something more challenging.

Christ teaches us that we must deal with evil on a personal level. You cannot get more personal than hugging someone. Our reality is physical. Hatred is a creature of the mind. A hug gets us past our mental constuctions and back to what is real.

In Greek, the word translated here as "embrace" is aspazomai , which describes the hug that we give someone when we greet them or separate from them. It is not only a hug, but a token of affection. It is sometimes translated as "welcome" or "salute" but the idea is really hugging one another, physically feeling their closeness and warmth.

Today, a lot of churches have a hugging session toward the end of their services. I personally have never been that comfortable hugging strangers. It feels at once meaningless and gratuitous. However, hugging an enemy isn't meaningless. It is intense. We have a close, personal relationship with our enemies. Hugging our enemies puts us back in touch with the physical humanity that we share with them. The difference between this religious practice and Christ's words shows us how much more demanding Christ is that Christian religions.

Christ's View of Tax Collectors

Mat 5:46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you get? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

The term, telones, translated as "tax collector" or "publican" is a little different that our idea of a government worker. These "tax collectors" collected rent on land from farmers that were essentially share-croppers. In Christ's time, the owners were all the aristocracy, the nobility. So in a sense, the government owned the land and these tax-collectors worked for the government, but the government wasn't about serving the people in general, but the interests of the elites. Historically, these tax-collectors or rent collectors were notoriously corrupt. As middlemen and managers, the elites trusted them to know who should pay what, but these tax-collectors readily took bribes from farmer for setting the "appropriate" rents on property.

But notice that Christ doesn't suggest that we love others out of the goodness of our hearts. He says specifically that we do this for a reward. The Greek word for reward is misthos, which literally means "wages" or "payment." So we love our neighbors, not out of some selflessness but because we expect a payment from God for doing it. This is important! All kinds of social moralizers go on and on about how we should be selfless and sacrifice ourselves for the "common good." This is not what Christ was teaching. He taught that we should do what is difficult but because doing what is difficult is more rewarding, in the long run, than doing what is easy, what everyone does.

However, Christ contrasts the kind of payment we expect from God with the kind of payment a corrupt officials expect. What is the difference? The reward that we get from God isn't a bribe because it isn't immediate and we don't know exactly what to expect. A bribe is, by its nature, quid pro quo, this for that. But God's reward for loving our enemies is taken on trust. We don't know either what that reward is or when we will get it.

Perhaps, loving our enemies is its own reward because it makes us happier than hating our enemies. Perhaps we are rewarded by creating a better world for us and our children. Perhaps we are rewarded in the afterlife when the scales of justice are truly balanced. Perhpas all of these are true, but it is the "perhaps," the fact that we take it all on trust that makes all the difference.

The Justice of Heaven

Mat 5:45 That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

While others are asking why God allows evil people to prosper, Christ takes a step further than any normal person would go. Rather than explaining or apologizes for God's treatment of evil people, Christ says that we must emulate it. While normal people get confused by trying to apply human standards to God, Christ ups the ante by applying divine standard to humans. So much for us testing God. Christ makes it clear that the purpose of reality is for God to test us.

So how does this make sense? From the time people first began to believe in a good and just God, they questioned how the world could be as it is. Why does God allow evil to exist? Worse, why does God allow evil to prosper?

The answer, of course, has to do with the purpose of the world, the purpose of our lives. The possibility of evil is the price of freedom. If we are to be truly free to choose or reject God, reality must not favor one course or the other. The world is created in a perfect balance of ambiguousness. Faith is neither demanded or disproven by science or experience. The rewards of faith are always internal, apprehended only by the individual sujective consciousness. Those rewards have and can have no objective proof. We cannot test God.

However, God can test us. The rule is that we are not allowed to judge others. Since we cannot know people's inner minds, we cannot treat people according to different standards. We cannot have one set of rules for those who are good and another for those who are bad. The rules of love are the only absolute.

Does this mean that people cannot punish evil-doers? One again, Christ gives rules for individuals, rules that deal with our personal choices. Individuals cannot pursue judging people. Societies can and must. Individuals cannot pretend to have the authority of law simply because they are following God. However, it is understood that the result of social law, public law, will not be true justice. Christ takes plenty of shots at the court system to make it clear that we cannot depend on the law punishing the guilty and freeing the innocent. The imperfection of social justice is the imperfection of human knowledge of the truth written large.

Christ is telling us, that no matter what advances we make, human society and the state will always be imperfect. As individuals, however, we can aspire to perfection, aspire to emulate God.

Loving Those who Hate and are Hated

Mat 5:44 But I tell you, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who revile you, and persecute you;

Jesus is the ultimate contrarian and that is part of his power. Again, the word used for "enemies" here is echthros, which also means the hated and hating. So, we give love to the despised and despising. Eulogeo is the word used for "bless," but it more accurately means "praise." We get the word "eulogy" from it. So we praise those who call down curses on us. We do excellent things for those who hate us. We offer prayers for those who abuse, threaten, harass us.

This statement works on many levels. First, it is a prediction for the future about how the Christians would be treated. From its beginning to the present day, dedicated Christians, like Jews, have been a target for persecution. When people choose to become Christians, they must choose to become a member of a group that will be reviled by others.

How are Christians suppose to react to this hatred? They are suppose to absorb it, take it in and transform it into its opposite. Christians are the natural cures for the hatred the permeates and proliferates the world.

In thinking about hatred in the physical world, I am reminded of a nuclear reaction. A person gives off a nucleus of hate. That hate strikes those nearby. They respond by throwing off more hate. In a reactor, given enough proximity, the reaction builds to an explosion. In the physical world, hate generates more hate, which builds to an explosion. This is the nature of a chain reaction.

In an increasingly more heavily populated world, every thoughtless, frustrated, or hostile act becomes a trigger creating a chain reaction with terrible consequences.

In a nuclear reactor, rods of carbon are used to dampen the reaction. Inserted between the fissionable material, the carbon absorbs the nuclei, preventing the chain reaction. In the real world, this is the role played by Christians. Not perfectly, but enough to transform a deadly environment to a benign one. Enough to prove the power of spirit over the physical.

This brings us back to the role that Christ played personally in history. He accepted suffering willingly to demonstrate this principle. In returning love for hate, he served as an transforming example of the power of spirit. He was the ultimate catalyst, transform the world from one type of place to another. In accepting death, he transformed it to life, not only for himself in resurrection but for the whole world.

This transforming power of Christ's sacrifice continues to have a real affect on the world, not matter what your personal philosophy. The entire world is heir to its benefits, whether they realize it or not.

"Pray" is from proseuchomai, which means "to pray for," "to offer vows for," and "to worship."

Christ on Hating the Hated and the Hating

Mat 5:43 You have heard that it said, You shall love your neighbour, and hate your enemy.

Notice that in the first part of the verse, Christ doesn't refer to the prophets, the law, or even the ancients as the authority for hating our enemies as he does for the other commandments. He says instead that this is something regular people say. Biblically, this is accurate. There is only one reference that I can find for hating enemies, Psa 139:21-22, and even that verse doesn't talk about hating personal enemies but rather hating those who hate God and it doesn't command that we do. The author only expresses his own emotional reaction.

Christ is completely accurate in describing this as a common social viewpoint how we should think about our enemies even if it isn't a Biblical teaching. However, in the original Greek, what Christ says even more interesting.

Matthew uses the word, echthros, which is translated as "enemies," but the primary meaning of the echthros is "the hated." So, what Christ is saying is that we are taught to hate those who are hated by others. The "hated" might be individuals who are social outcastes or "the hated" can be a social group, a despised minority. So the pure sense of what Christ is saying here is that we are pressured by society to hate those who others around us hate. This is a very natural human reaction.

This gets more interesting because a secondary meaning of echthros is "the hating," that is, those who hate us. This is another common human reaction to others. When someone hates us, for whatever reason (and we may not even know the reason), our natural reflex is to hate them in return. People who are professional haters, declaring their hatred for others, are also very easy to hate. Misanthropes are not the popular people, for some mysterious reason.

"Hate" is from miseô, which means "to hate," and "hated."

"Enemy" is from echthros, which means "the hated," "the hateful," and "hating."

Does Christ Want Us to Give to Those who Won't Work?

Mat 5:42 Give to him that asks you, and do not turn away from him that wants to borrow from you.

The Greek word used for "give" here, didomi, means not only to give something to someone, like a gift, but also to give of yourself. The Greek for "ask," aiteo, mean to ask for things for your use, asking someone to do something, and begging.

When I am confronted with able-bodied people on the street, begging, I am torn. I know that most of these people are on the street out of choice. They stake out lucrative corners and make enough money through begging that they don't have to do anything productive for a living. The question is: does Christ want us to give to them?

The answer is clearly yes. I don't believe that Christ meant this for his own time, when only the ill or widowed begged. I believe that he meant this and all his statements for all time. However, does this mean that we must give these people what they want, which is money or money for drugs and alcohol, or what they need, which is something else?

I think both the wording and the entire thrust of the Beatitudes that we should give these people what they need. Notice, that Christ doesn't say that we should give these people what they ask for. He has been very specific until this point about what to give. In the previous verse, he say if someone wins your coat, give them you cloak also. But here, the instruction is for us not to turn away. We need to recognize that there is a problem and that there .

People who are begging obviously need something. In Christ's time, they needed food, money, or a job. Today, those who are begging need help of a different kind. Their poverty is not physical. It is spiritual. Since the major point of this sermon is that spiritual is more important than physical needs, I think you could make the case that people today are in worse shape than the beggars of Christ's lifetime.

Since Christ's was speaking for all time, he leaves it to us not to turn away. Instead, our obligation is to figure out what these people need and how to give of ourselves to get it to them.
This is a lot more difficult simply than handing over a few bucks. As a matter of fact, I maintain those that hand over a few bucks rather than face the spiritual poverty in this type of begging are poor Christians, looking for an easy way to turn way. They are exactly like the self-satisfied Pharisees of Christ's time, who did everything for surface reasons, to feel good about themselves, and miss the real point of those practices.

Christ the Business Guru: Give Customers More than They Expect

Mat 5:41 And whoever compels you to go a mile, go with him two.

As we continue on Christ's lesson about giving more than expected, I am reminded of a basic principles: give customers more than they expect. As we have said, his advice about turning the other cheek and giving an opponent your cloak are aggressive actions not passive responses. Isn't it interesting that Christ's words 2,000 years ago are now common business wisdom for making money? What seemed for 2,000 years as couter-intuitive and an act of sacrifice is now recognized as a way to find success in the material world.

What does this tell us about all of Christ's lessons? Has Christ changed the world so his lessons now work on a materialistic level? Or are we just coming to realize that what he taught really works, both spiritually and materialistically, and has since forever?

Our actions communicate ideas more loudly that words. Another important idea in this section is how powerful actions are for communication tools when compared with words. Words are important because they shape our worldview. Christ makes this clear in his early statements on taking oaths. However, words are never as important as actions. This is why Christ teaches us to pray quietly but act boldly.

"Compel" is from angareuô, which means generally "to press into service." It specifically means to press into service as an angaros, which is a mounter courier. From the Aramaic word for "a letter."

Does Christ Contradict Himself on the Courts?

Mat 5:40 And if any man sues you in court, and takes away your coat, let him have [your] cloke as well.

This verse seems at first a simple extension of Christ's previous statement about turning the other cheek. However, just fifteen verses ago, Christ told us to stay court under the threat of losing all our money. Now, in seeming contradiction, he says that if we go to court, we should give our opponent more than they actually win. Is the financial threat of going to court a concern or not?

It is looking at this type of surface issue that drive us into the heart of Christ's meaning. Yes, both statements concerned court. Yes, one was concerned about losing money in court and one says not to be concerned about that. However, both statements are concerned with our private relationships with individuals rather than our social, legal relationships with them.

In both statements, the message is that government cannot solve our problems with other people. Government doesn't work on a materialistic level and government never works on a spiritual level. Before or after taking problems to the government, we are still left with the more important task of working problems out with others on a personal level. The only difference is that using the government is always going to be more expensive materially.

In the earlier post, Christ's lesson was that we should work problems out with individuals privately before we go to court. In this lesson, his concern is that we put our individual relationship above our financial interests after we go to court. In the earlier lesson, we are taught that having good relationships with others is important to our physical well-being. In this lesson, we are taught that having good relationships with others in more importan that our physical well-being. The ealier lesson offered a materialistic reason for doing what was right spiritually, saying that there was no conflict between the two. This lesson says that doing what is right spiritually is more important than our materialistic concerns.

"Sues in court" is from krinô, which means "to pick out," "to choose," "to decide a dispute," "to adjudge," "to estimate," "to interpret," "to decide in ones favor," "to bring to trial," and "to accuse."

Did Christ Teach That We Shouldn't Fight Evil?

Mat 5:38 You have heard it said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
Mat 5:39 But I say to you, Do not resist evil: but if someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him as well.

This is one of the most famous of Christ's saying, but it also largely misunderstood.

The first verse expresses our basic concept of justice, that the scales of justice must be balanced. Christ rejects this notion that individuals can calculate what is "fair" or stop people from making mistakes.

The term tanslated as "evil" here means "burdened by labors" and "worthless." It doesn't mean "evil" as such. While he specifically tells us that was cannot oppose what is worthless in others ("resist" is from the Greek anthistêmi, which means "stand against something, especially in battle), he doesn't tell us to back down from evil.

By turning the other cheek, we are actually ignoring behavior that we see as worthless. We are saying that physical pain just doesn't matter. We are saying to our attacker that they lack the power to hurt us. This is consistent with Christ's message about physical pain being temporary. It is only the spiritual, the eternal that matters. "Turning the other cheek" is a defiant act, risking the physical for the sake of the spiritual.

Why doesn't Christ counsel us to back down from worthless attacks? Again, the issue is what is important. Always, Christ puts the spiritual ahead of the physical. If we back down from evil, we lose something of ourselves. We are showing cowardice. Turning the other cheek is the ultimate statement of courage. While running away diminishes us, standing up to power and accepting the consequences increases us.

Does this lesson mean that governments should not pursue and punish criminals? Of course not. Christ was concerned about how we as individuals treat other individuals. Only individuals have souls. Christ's focus, especially here in this first sermon, is on our spiritual development. States and governments do not have souls. States and governments can try to balance the scales of justice, but that isn't Christ's concern. The biggest temptation is that we abdicate our personal responsibility to morality leaving these issues to the government. This is the same as abandoning our spiritual development. Morally, we need challenges to prove our spiritual courage. As a society, we must fight evil, but on an individual basis we must use encounters with evil to demonstrate our spiritual courage.

"Resist" is from anthistêmi, which means "to set against," "to oppose," "to contrast," "to match against, or "to give in return."

"Turn" is from strephô, which means "to turn about," "to turn aside," "to sprain," "to twist," "to return," "to convert," "to twist about," and "to turn over in one's mind."

The Evil in Promising by What We Can't Control

Mat 5:37 But let your word be, Yes, yes; No, no: for anything more than this is evil.

Christ ends his section on swearing oaths by saying that we must just say, "yes, we will," or "no, we won't," and leave it at that. The question is: why is it evil to do more than this? It is foolish, perhaps, but why is it evil? Or, going back to the Greek, why is it ek poneros, "of evil?"

These are the kinds of questions that are the most interesting in studying Christ's words. They get to the heart of his view of the world. As we study them, we find that his thinking wasn't impossible to understand. Even though his statements have multiple good interpretations, all these interpretations together paint a consistent view of the nature of reality that we find nowhere else in literature.

One interpretation of this line is that we make oaths because we are motivated to take oaths by our own doubts about our ability to fulfill them. Like a salesperson that uses the word "honestly" most often when he isn't telling the truth, the offering of an oath to support our words is in itself evidence of our own doubts. The "evil" that Christ is referring to is our own doubts.

On another level, this line is also a warning to us about our need to suspect deception from others. Words are just words. When people swear, it doesn't prove anything about their honesty. As a matter of fact, it should make us suspect their honest.

However, on a deeper level, the true evil here is a mistaken viewpoint of reality. From our viewpoint, we are the most important person in the world. Perspective means that everything close to us is big and everything far away is small. We are the only consciousness we are directly aware of. From our own unique perspective, we are each the center of the universe.

From this perspective, it is easy to swear on other thing in the universe that we have no control over. What right do we have to swear on heaven or earth, anyway? We don't control heaven or earth and our swearing doesn't affect either. As Christ points out, we really aren't even in control of the hairs on our own head. This sense of control is false, coming from our false sense of universal self-importance.

So what Christ is telling us here is that an objective reality exists. We do not control it. It is wrong and evil to think that reality is a subjective experience. When we do this, we raise ourselves up to the level of God, the true center of the universe and the true seat of consciousness.

More on Swearing Oaths: Everything Belongs to God

Mat 5:35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.
Mat 5:36 Neither shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black.

In all ancient civilizations, a line was drawn between heaven (the realm of the gods and the eternal) and the earth (the realm of humans and the temporal). People would make their vows and contracts based on the gods, heaven, and the eternal, since they recognized that those promises carried more weight. Since Jews were forbidden from swearing on the name of God, they moved to other areas: the earth, (the source of their sustenance) their cities (the source of their social pride), and even their own bodies. All of these were more important that mere words and so they became the basis of contracts and oaths.

Why was Christ against this? The reason is obvious if we look at Christ's words in the Gospels. The focus of Christ's mission is changing our perception of the universe. He was announcing the end of the idea that "heaven" alone was the kingdom of God. His purpose was introducing the kingdom of God to earth. His mission was no less than transforming the world and our perception of it.

Here Christ uses the discussion of oaths to point out that everything on earth, including our civilization is not a product of humans. The world and even our cities are the product of forces much bigger than ourselves. We live in a human created society, but the laws by which we have been able to build this world are from God. We are just fooling ourselves by thinking that they are not gifts from God. Actually, raising up the physical is another form of idolatry, worshiping what we have built by our hands rather than recognizing its basis in the eternal.

Probably the greatest example of this is our own bodies. We talk about our bodies as our own, but we control nothing about how our body works. If it required our understanding to digest food, we would quickly starve to death. Fortunately, our bodies work on "their own," which is just another way of saying that they work by the power of God.

As a cancer survivor, I am more aware of this than most. My body is a gift. Its health is a gift. We live by God's mercy and grace alone. To act or think otherwise is to be the biggest kind of fool.