“Blessed are the poor in Spirit” are Jesus’s first words in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3). And although Jesus made this quite clear throughout his life, we still largely turned Christianity into a religion where the operative agenda was some personal moral perfection, our attaining some kind of salvation, “going to heaven,” converting others rather than ourselves, and acquiring more health, wealth, and success in this world.
Perhaps Christians should focus on the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Plain, from the Gospel according to Luke. I suspect there are many who do not know them, have never heard of them.
