The Poor in Spirit
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:3
Selling what you own, leaving your family and friends, and following Jesus is not a once-in-a-lifetime event. You must do it many times and in many different ways. And it certainly does not become easier.
Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey
The first step of humility is to cherish at all times the sense of awe with which we should turn to God.
St. Benedict, St. Benedict’s Rule: A New Translation for Today
Grace
“I’m here. This is all I can do. I made it. Please help me.”
These were the words of my friend Grace, standing in our hallway, drenched with rain, exhausted, and at the end of every resource. We had arranged for her to arrive three hours earlier to stay with us as she tried to sort her life out and get into detox. When she didn’t show, we suspected we would not be seeing her at all. This was not the first time we had been stood up, and it would not be the last. As it got later into the evening we lost more and more hope and got ready for bed. But then the buzzer rang. She had been wandering the rain-washed streets and alleys, trying to decide whether to give in to her cravings or to give in to hope. Finally, she bumped into a street evangelist who handed her a soggy pamphlet bearing the title “Jesus or Drugs: Your Choice.” I do not generally like these judgmental-style pamphlets or the approach of the missionaries who distribute them. But I thank God for this one. She read the bold print and made the choice. It took everything she had, quite literally. She had to walk away from what she knew, let her old self die, and give herself up to whatever God might have in store for her. The image of her weeping in our hallway will always be my default for what it means to be “poor in spirit.” And, therefore, what it means to be blessed.
She stayed on our couch for the next thirty days and had someone from our community next to her every single minute of that time, comforting her, praying with her, eating with her, sleeping on another couch beside her, standing outside in the rain with her during smoke breaks, going to meetings with her, and so on. We tongue-in-cheek called this our “couch program,” something we had begun offering to our friends out of necessity. It started one evening after we had finished an annual mission week with a large group of teenagers, an event that never failed to exhaust our community. As we were cleaning up, a friend of mine came in. He did not look good. “Hey Aaron,” he said, “I know it’s not a good time but . . . I really, really need help. I have no place to go, and I’m drinking a lot . . .” He couldn’t finish. He was a proud man, but his body posture spelled defeat and despair, his head hung low in shame. This was someone whose company I genuinely enjoy, one of the funniest, most well-read, most compassionate people I know. And he was really hurting, really scared, and had nowhere else to turn. We called the detox phone number, but there were no available spaces for at least a week. We have learned that people often have a window of clarity when they are ready to make a change, but if that moment is frustrated, the opportunity can slip away. So I talked it over with my wife and with people in our church community and then asked my friend if he would like to stay on our couch until a spot opened in a recovery program. Community members would stay with him the entire time to make sure he was OK. He agreed, and thus began a season where nearly every month we had a different friend staying on our couch, praying and being prayed for, joining in our family and community rhythm, experiencing transformation together.
The couch program was arduous, but it taught us something very important: as difficult as it was for our community to accompany someone around the clock, it was far more difficult for the person on the couch. Coming into our home, entering a detox or treatment center, confessing that you need help, or making any attempt to let go of your addiction requires a yielding, a surrendering of pride, a release of the illusion that you have it all under control. Poverty of spirit redresses the prideful belief that we can “out-God” God. We want to live without ultimate accountability, but as we learn in the Psalms, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps. 14:1). That verse is not simply a weapon to use against truculent atheists; it is a warning to religious folk who want to presume upon the riches of God’s kindness, forbearance, and patience, forgetting that God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Poverty of spirit means repenting, laying down our arms and our pride, confessing our desperation to the Creator, and then learning the ongoing character of surrender and humility. Abba Isaac the Syrian said that we are blessed when we know our own weakness because this knowledge becomes the foundation of all goodness in us.1
It is no coincidence then that the first three steps in AA and NA revolve around powerlessness and surrendering one’s will to a Higher Power:
Those who have been through recovery know full well that there can be no start without this admission, belief, and decision. If someone is not ready to admit powerlessness over their addiction, they are not yet ready to make a change. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “Half-measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.”3 Like Grace, who stood soaking wet in our hallway, we all must begin by saying, “This is all I can do. I need help.”
PAUSE
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isa. 57:15)
Jesus, the Poor in Spirit
Jesus knew that surrender was the beginning of the blessed life, the foundation of the Beatitude Community. It is why his first blessing is reserved for the poor in spirit and why he continually stresses that we can only gain the new life by laying down the old: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39). The blessing of the poor in spirit means that the divine life is joined to this humble, vulnerable surrender—a connection most obvious in the person of Jesus himself. Humbly born, his life at risk from the very beginning, Jesus lives a fully human life that includes hunger, fatigue, sorrow, and frustration. He relies on the hospitality of others and puts himself and his message in the hands of untrustworthy friends and followers. He does not seek glory for himself but constantly points to the Father. The climax of his mission looks like abject failure from any reasonable human perspective. Yet the cross is the truest revelation of God’s character, though it is the last place we expected to find God.4
Jesus wants to share his kingdom with us, his younger brothers and sisters, but this means we must be united with him in his poverty. Now, Jesus’s poverty is different from ours in that he really is sovereign over all creation, and we just think we are. Jesus had the right to say, “I got this,” but instead he “endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). He made himself poor and vulnerable to open the way for us to be joined with him in the richness of his divine life (2 Cor. 8:9). Our participation in this life comes through the practice of humility, which is our way of sharing the mind of Christ and participating in the Spirit (Phil. 2:1–11). This lens of humility helps us to read Scripture in a new light. Jesus’s teaching on the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31–46 is often used to impress upon Christians the need to care for the poor, the prisoner, and the sick. Well and good, but what if we read that passage from the posture of powerlessness? Matthew’s community were displaced, impoverished, under threat of persecution, and dependent on the hospitality of their neighbors. What if the “sheep”—who do not seem to know Jesus—were those who received these poor Christians and visited them while sick or in prison? What if “the least of these” are the poor followers of Jesus? A church that is poor and vulnerable will find it easier to understand union with Christ (theosis) and the hunger to know him more (epektasis). The gospel is also well-communicated through this lowly position, as neighbors encounter Christ by caring for his brothers and sisters. The same point is suggested in Matthew 10 when Jesus sends out his disciples without money, food, or extra clothes. They are to rely on the hospitality of people of peace for their needs, and those who receive the disciples in their poverty receive Christ.
This kind of blessed poverty and weakness is difficult for the Western church to understand. We have become addicted to the power and privilege we have enjoyed for centuries and are suffering withdrawal symptoms as it is being taken away. But while it is painful, it is ultimately good for us to let these things go. It may help us discover once again what it means to be joined with Jesus as the poor in spirit.
“Wherever there is humility, there is the scent of Christ, the fragrance of God.”5
Death to the Self
Beatitude Community seeks to challenge and enable everyone to unite with Jesus in his blessed poverty. This begins by gaining awareness of how poor we really are. The poor in spirit are the ones Jesus refers to when he says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Matt. 9:12). They are the ones who are willing to admit their desperate need of help. Martin Luther writes bluntly, “God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life only to the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise. In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched.”6 Dying to the demands of the self is a principle found in both Alcoholics Anonymous literature and the traditions of the church. Saint Macarius advises that good fruit cannot be produced by those who rely solely on their own efforts.7 Catherine of Genoa insists that we must give over the care of ourselves to God, the only One who can truly defend us.8 C. S. Lewis writes:
The more we get what we now call “ourselves” out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. . . . The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. . . . Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.9
This is obviously not easy. Dorothy Day, cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement, which formed communities of and for the poor around the world, had a devil of a time learning surrender. During her first stint in jail, when she was not yet a believer, the only thing she had to read was the Bible. Even though it gave her great comfort, she confesses, “My pride was fighting on. I did not want to go to God in defeat and sorrow. I did not want to depend on Him. I was like the child that wants to walk by itself, I kept brushing away the hand that held me up.”10 There is a great illustration of this insistence on independence in the television medical drama House. Dr. House’s addiction to pain pills causes chaos in every sphere of his life, so he is forced to participate in a Narcotics Anonymous group. As part of step 2 he accepts that André the Giant is a higher power than him, and maybe even that André’s ghost has his back, but he still refuses to surrender his will to anyone but himself.11 Our pride is a terrible master. Even as children we struggle and strain against the surrendering of our will. My mother loves to tell how as a toddler I insisted on climbing the stairs without any help, even though I sometimes fell and bashed my head. “I do it myself!” was my rallying cry. Little has changed over the years.
I still struggle to surrender. The surface-level addictions that I contend with—unhealthy eating, lust, anger, workaholism, isolating myself—are masks for my deeper attachment to control. I feel the need to control people’s perceptions of me, to exert control over my living and work space, to have control in my relationships with my wife, my children, my friends, and my church. This does not stem from any childhood trauma or abuse but from a general sense that I am not good enough, that I am not enough. This attempt at control, accompanied by anxiety, is ferociously difficult to yield because it makes me feel safe in an unsafe world. Any threat to this delusion of safety tempts me to dig in my heels and control even more, or to flee to an environment that I find more manageable. These are responses I have been learning to name and surrender. This means I acknowledge that this is how I have learned to deal with my fear of not being in control, to the extent that these have become my default actions and habitual behaviors. I further acknowledge that they have not proven helpful in confronting and processing my pain and fear but have instead caused further harm to myself and to others. My pain and fear still exist, but they get buried under layers of distraction, false trails, and false comforts. I even name the voice of shame that regularly circles through my thoughts telling me what a bad and worthless person I am for feeling pain and for running to my habits. I consciously choose to reject and rebuke that voice as unhelpful and accusatory. Once these things are all uncovered and named to the best of my ability, I take it all and admit that it is too big for me to overcome on my own. This allows me to honestly ask for help from God and from my community. Sometimes this involves being affirmed and healed in my brokenness, and other times this requires being shown my need to repent of sinful and harmful behaviors. It is both a vulnerable confession of weakness and a faith-filled conviction that I do not have to be stuck in an endless spiral of hopelessness. This is how I am learning to surrender, and it is working, though the well-worn grooves have not completely disappeared.
It is not just stubbornness that makes this poverty of spirit difficult. Poor in spirit is the opposite of the modern ideal of forging your own meaning and identity. If our worldview forbids any transcendence or supernatural personality, then it is left to us as individuals to be the arbiters of our reality, our identity, our truth, our future, and our ultimate meaning.12 At every turn we are told to “be ourselves,” though we have no idea who we are or whether the identity we have chosen is a good thing to be. This makes it so much more difficult for us to come to the necessary place of surrender. Why should we? We believe, at least on the surface, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with us, because the word wrong implies an outside standard that we cannot allow. Deep down we may know that something has gone terribly awry, but we have plenty of distractions and enough affirmation to believe that even our sins are just personality traits.
The effects go further than self-delusion, however. We fear meaninglessness. But if we are the creators of our own meaning, then there is immense pressure to fill the “existential vacuum” within us to give our lives purpose.13 These inner fears and pressures are reflected in the way we structure our political and economic decisions and systems.14 So we have created a consumeristic culture of self-obsession without accountability, one that tells us we are all-important and that our choices matter, but that limits our real decision-making to options that do not threaten the socioeconomic status quo. Our society is locked in an adolescent cycle of emotional reaction and self-entitlement, bolstered by the underlying philosophy that “nobody gets to tell me what to do!” And all the while massive corporations—including both the legal and illegal drug trade—profit off our misplaced and manipulated sense of individualism. It is the opposite of poor in spirit, and it cuts us off from ourselves, from each other, and from God.
No wonder this passage has been translated as “Blessed are you in your poverty; you are not shut in the false world of convention, riches, and human security.”15 There is an incredible freedom when we acknowledge that we are not in sovereign control and that our willpower alone cannot wrest meaning and purpose out of the swirling chaos around us. What we require is a community within which we can seek meaning in our relationships with the Lord and with one another. Poverty of spirit means learning to submit to God and to each other in love.
A friend of mine entered a recovery community with long hair. Part of his transformation involved listening to and taking seriously the counsel of those who cared about him, so when one of his housemates suggested that he cut his hair as a sign of cutting off his old way of thinking, he chose to do it. Some people get very upset at this idea because our culture views self-expression as the highest good, almost sacred. But my friend was not giving in to the pressure to conform; he was learning poverty of spirit and loving submission to his brothers. I know people who have confessed to past criminal activity and served jail time as part of their desire to be open, vulnerable, and surrendered. This is extreme, but I think it gets at the kind of transformation the Beatitudes call for. Following God into a new life means letting go of the false securities we cling to and trusting that our needs will be met on the other end. As dangerous as this is, far more dangerous is the thought, “I’ve got this; I can handle it; I do it myself.”
It is worrisome that this death-to-self appears especially difficult for those in the church. A young man in a treatment center told me he wanted to be part of a church, but he wasn’t convinced that Christians knew what they were talking about when it came to surrender. He didn’t see any evidence of it in their lives. I had to agree. We haven’t learned how to be vulnerable with one another, and this is perhaps especially true of pastors. I went on a retreat where senior pastors were encouraged to be open with their struggles and sins. Few wanted to do it for fear their confessions might be used against them. One pastor said, “There is no way I am sharing my stuff here. It will be put on my personnel form!” Pastor friends of mine estimate that 80 percent of their fellow ministers are either struggling with addiction or ready to burn out from being “bone-weary, mind-weary, soul-weary.” Nor are we helped by the thought that our “insider” status will save us. Isaiah’s shattering encounter with the Lord, when he realized that he was not the clean insider he thought he was but rather “a man with unclean lips,” should warn us against such complacency (Isa. 6:1–5). Learning poverty of spirit is a harder road for those who have more of themselves to lose. How can we learn to practice this vulnerability and honesty in community?
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“Saint Augustine said that ‘God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.’ If our hands are full, they are full of things to which we are addicted. And not only our hands but also our hearts, minds, and attention are clogged with addiction. Our addictions fill up the spaces within us, spaces where grace might flow.”16
Learning Surrender
Surrendering ultimate control over our lives is necessary if we want to receive God’s blessing and to bless others. Those recovering from addictions can help us learn surrender because they have experience trusting God and letting everything go. They know that even the smallest compromise will invariably lead them back into old patterns. Having pastored addicted men and women for most of my adult years, I am convinced that there is blessing in coming to recognize the unmanageability of one’s life. I have said many times to an incredulous group of men in recovery, “Do you understand how blessed you are? You recognize your brokenness and disorientation. The rest of us are not even consciously aware of our trouble.” Most people in our world never come to the realization of their spiritual brokenness because their habits and hang-ups are more socially acceptable or deniable than drug or alcohol use. Jenny, a missionary in the DTES, credits her neighborhood friends with showing her that we all generally react the same way to stress. But because she does not use drugs or alcohol, her reactions are considered normal and acceptable. When her friends act out it is because they are craving their “drug of choice” and “have no self-control”; when she acts out she just “missed a snack” and “is hungry.” People in recovery tend to be more honest and genuine about their issues and triggers. Sometimes it is because they don’t have the option to hide.
I ran a small discipleship group for a year in Regent Park, Toronto, that was composed of bankers, missionaries, drug dealers, gangsters, and a woman named Stephanie, who prostituted herself to support her heroin habit. She would totter into our meetings wearing dangerously high heels, her face painted with fresh bruises from a “bad date” the night before, her arms scarred from long-term needle use. Her appearance made some of the other group members uncomfortable, but if she noticed this, she kept it to herself. She was exuberant, eager to ask and answer questions, and unrelentingly honest, once loudly admitting that she struggled with lustful thoughts toward some of the men in the circle. Stephanie became essential to our Bible study because she presented a full body-and-soul vulnerability. She could not hide who she was, so she presented it to us with absolute candor and dared us to love and accept her. As a result, the love she received was pure—she knew she had not manipulated us into thinking better of her. Her vulnerability is one of the strongest things I have ever seen. It sharply and consistently challenged the rest of us to consider the ways we were trying to hide our sins, temptations, and wounds. It revealed how desperate each of us were to control the way we were perceived. Stephanie helped me realize that I am sadly able to conceal my issues: the marks of my sins are on the inside, covered by the right clothes, the correct vocabulary, the relatively spotless reputation. I can be accepted and welcomed in any congregation in the world, but I am also terrified that people will not love me if they know me. This extends to my relationship with God as well. I know, doctrinally, that God can see my every thought, intent, fear, and sin, and that he still died for me on the cross. But in the harsh light of daily life I flinch from that intimate gaze, wanting to create an alternate version of myself who is worthier of God’s love. All my hiddenness amounts to an inability to receive unfiltered, unconditional love in the way that Stephanie can. Oh, that I could say with my body and soul: “Here I am, with all of my bruises! Nothing is held back! Will you love me?”
Our group’s relationship with Stephanie was typical of many relationships I have had with confessed addicts; each one has challenged me to become more aware, honest, and vulnerable about my own attachments and addictions. These relationships have led me closer to the spirit of surrender that Jesus blesses. As such, I am convinced that one of the key ways for us to create and sustain Beatitude Communities is through intentional friendship with those who can lead us further down the road of vulnerability. In L’Arche communities, which gather around people with developmental disabilities, there is a well-known saying: “People may come to our communities because they want to serve the poor; they will only stay once they have discovered that they themselves are the poor.”17 When we realize we are poor, it is easier to join Jesus in his scandalous poverty and vulnerability and easier to welcome those who already know their poverty and vulnerability.
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“We must overturn so many idols, the idol of self first of all, so that we can be humble, and only from our humility can we learn to be redeemers, can we learn to work together in the way the world really needs.”18
What to Do?
1. Do an honest appraisal of your openness and vulnerability. Openness is the willingness to share what has been secret in your life. Vulnerability is the willingness to be called on it. We need both attitudes to be poor in spirit. This is about the basic awareness and frank admission that we need help, that we do not have this under control, that we have been unfaithful to our created purpose, and that the pain and dislocation of the world have led us into attachments that are stealing what God wants for us. How difficult is this for you?
Gather some people together who know you and love you well and ask them to identify what they see you running to instead of dealing with your pain. Write down your own answers to that question as well. See if you can also name some of the fears and desires that have caused this running. How do your answers and the observations of your friends match up? I advise people to meditate often on Psalm 139 as they do this self-examination.
2. Create an environment in which vulnerable truth-telling is the norm. This takes a significant commitment to one another and to the truth. I challenge Christian student groups that visit the DTES to learn vulnerability from our neighbors. I start by asking if any of them have a secret sin or wound they would not share in a church setting. Every hand goes up. Then I ask if they think everyone else in the church also has a secret sin or wound they refuse to share. Again, every hand. Is there any hope of overcoming this sin and brokenness in this life? Unsure. Do they feel trapped in guilt and shame? Every hand. I ask if they think this is a good way to live, if this sounds like the freedom for which we have been set free? No, it does not. Finally, I make the following suggestion: What if every time someone speaks in church they first have to say their name and announce their greatest failing or temptation? One of the students responded, “There would be a lot of silence in the church.”
Twelve-step groups are far from perfect, but they have created a culture in which everyone is encouraged to be open and vulnerable in a public way. This inspired us to include times of public confession of failure and weakness in our Sunday gatherings. The first time we tried it was awkward, but the recovering drug users and alcoholics in our midst started the ball rolling. They helped create an environment in which it was normal to admit weakness, pain, and even failure. This allowed us to declare our need for help.
My friend talks about the need for an environment in which people’s pain, experience, and honesty are validated. “There were times during my eating disorder when I was absolutely desperate. I knew that nothing else could fill my need but the Trinity, but I also needed someone to talk to who might understand what I was going through. I remember a moment when I could not force myself to eat, and I felt totally defeated. I threw my bowl of soup at the wall and called a friend who was struggling with the same issue. Maybe if the church was a place where everyone was willing to share their own pain, desperation, and defeat it would help people in my situation learn to share with others in a healthier way.”
3. Begin cultivating a shared life of surrender. Giving up our reliance on “I do it myself!” puts us in a place of deep vulnerability and risk. How will our legitimate needs be met?
For any addict to truly let go requires a huge trust in God and in the people around them. An ongoing Beatitude Community, therefore, extends far beyond what we normally consider “religious” concerns, because God meets our needs primarily through one another. The first monastic communities were founded in prayer and scriptural meditation, but they also included hospitality, housing, teaching, counseling, work, fellowship, food, medical care, and even leisure. In short, they encompassed the whole of life, the fullness of our flesh-and-blood reality.
Cru-62 in Manenberg, South Africa, gives us a modern example of this holistic, shared life. The young men who come out of gangs and addictions and into the community house cannot be asked to relinquish everything they know and then be left to their own devices. They require round-the-clock family. So together the community eats, does chores, exercises, makes furniture, prays, worships, reads Scripture, works on recovery, visits family, and has fun. There are no distinctions: they are just family, and each person has different needs that the community seeks to meet. They call this the “Onion Model” because there are multiple layers of involvement, but ultimately every aspect of life is engaged. They are now dreaming of a Reintegration House that will help their brothers continue to live as an alternative society in their broken neighborhood.
Your church may not have the capacity to offer an official program, but that is not required. This kingdom life can be lived out in people’s homes. Rediscovering the art of hospitality and communal living is not easy, but it does allow a greater understanding and experience of poverty of spirit when we realize that everything we have belongs not to us but to the Lord (Acts 4:32). Discuss what it might look like to start offering a deeper level of hospitality and sharing in your home.
For Theirs Is the Kingdom of Heaven
The poor in spirit are promised the blessing of the kingdom of heaven, much like the criminal on the cross who was promised a place in paradise (Luke 23:39–43). While this promise certainly includes a glorious life in the new heaven and new earth, how do we experience the blessing of a surrendered life here and now? The answer to this is revealed progressively throughout the rest of the Beatitudes, but it is worth affirming that poverty of spirit is the necessary starting point for a new purpose and hope in our lives.
We began this chapter with the story of my friend Grace standing in our doorway with nothing left but herself to offer, far from the world’s picture of blessing, and yet somehow blessed. After Grace spent a month with us, she moved to our women’s recovery home. It is a beautiful, safe, and sacred space, only a short bus ride but still worlds away from what she knew in the DTES. As Grace sat down with the other women for her first meal there, those who knew her noticed she wasn’t tucking into the food with her normal vigor. Instead, she looked around at this new, peaceful environment filled with warmth, love, and hope, breathed in deeply, and whispered, “I’m home.”