The Beatitudes are Not Virtues

A little rant about our relentless tendency to try and turn the Beatitudes into nice ways to be, when that's not what they are at all

“Happy are those who are hopeless, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”

That’s how the Common English Bible translates the first of Jesus’s Beatitudes in Matthew 5. Most translations name them as “the poor in spirit.” But I like “those who are hopeless” because it is closer to the real meaning of the Beatitudes.

We get the Beatitudes wrong ALL THE TI…