Thoughts on the Beatitudes, Part 8b: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

I think we all agree that God knows us through and through. Sometimes we find out what he sees in us through the ministry of others. Sometimes a friend simply understands us intimately enough to see and say what is true. At other times, someone – even a stranger – might bring direct insight from the Holy Spirit. Occasionally the delivery of a spiritual or prophetic declaration can be quite striking, as when a pastor who did not know me from Adam once stated that he could sense in me a pure heart.

My immediate reaction to this revelation was to invoke Deuteronomy 18 and prepare this fellow for the stoning Moses enjoins for false prophecy. On second thought, I decided to merely downgrade his prophetic rating. After all, I was pretty sure of two things: One, that I knew men and women who were pure-hearted; and two, that I was not one of them. Over time, I came to see that my response was more than a tad too simplistic.

Why would the idea of purity of heart be so problematic? Last week, I proposed one primary issue that we have to deal with: Being pure in heart seems to be, at best, a condition that we experience for the briefest of moments. My solution to purity’s ephemeral nature is to attach myself to Jesus, the Pure One, and my purity (such as it is) to his. Doing so stands me in good stead in the hope that I will attain the Beatitudinal promise of seeing God. So that all seems copacetic. In spite of my pride, I kind of like it.

But then I get to pondering a group of people I know who really appear to demonstrate the purity thing in a seemingly effortless and natural way. I won’t name names, but I have male friends who could remain chaste living in a brothel. And maybe some female ones, as well. Does this mean that they automatically have front row seats to the divine show? Well, of course not, since I do believe the biblical principle that all have sinned and fallen short of the God’s glory. Purity – like any positive expression of personality or character – is a gift that neither qualifies us for the kingdom of heaven nor provides a boasting ground for those who receive it. Rather, it glorifies the Lord and humbles the undeserving recipient.

As with all the Beatitudes, purity and its consequent happiness are yet another testimony to the Father’s freely offered grace. Whether we come by it “naturally” or through a patient application of the Holy Spirit’s power, a pure heart never arises in or from ourselves, but depends on God himself, in whom there is no darkness, sin, or marring stain. The perpetually unblemished milk bottle. For you and for me, it can only be purity in, purity out. When my prophetic brother sensed a pure heart in me, my response should have been a simple acceptance of whatever work the Spirit had accomplished in me. In questioning the revelation, I had fallen into the proud trap of denying the Father’s perhaps hidden (at least from me) blessing. If I couldn’t see it or declare it for myself, how could it be present?

Along with its nature as gift, purity arises from influences inside and out. In Philippians 4:8, Paul implicates what we see and ponder as crucial to the purity of our lives. He  encourages the church to orient their sight and thinking toward the things that are true, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. In writing to the Christians in Rome, Paul’s corollary admonition was to allow the Lord to transform them through the renewal of their minds (Rom. 12:2).  Purity in, purity out, yet again.

It is unfortunate that we are immersed in an increasingly shallow, rude, crass, greed-driven, sexually promiscuous culture – the antithesis of Paul’s Philippians exhortation. Even my natively pure in heart friends must find it wearing to experience our modern lowest common denominator environment. For those of us who are less inherently gifted, the onslaught of  vulgarity and vitriol produces a daily tearing away at our less robust constitutions. Even the sports blogs from which I derive absolutely critical information about everything Michigan are chock full of inane and loutish content. Not a renewal, but a debasement of the mind.

And yet what is good, pure, true, admirable, and excellent endures around and even within me. Without being prudish, sentimental, or saccharine (a red herring – I’m not in danger of becoming any of these), I can put aside the boorish and the obscene and turn to what expresses the Father’s goodness and beauty. For me that can mean anything from meditating on Scripture to hearing a Bach cantata to having a conversation with Joanne or with a good friend to walking through the beech woods near our house to praying with a brother who shares the same debt to grace that I have. Just because we live in a society inundated with the gross detritus of moral rebellion doesn’t mean that we have to drown in the flood.

We can further understand purity by considering its parallel Beatitude: Blessed are those who mourn. Recall that mourning is a response to sin – to our chosen inability to meet the destiny that God intended for human beings. Mourning and purity go together in numerous different ways. One of the clearest is that mourning our failings produces something like a washing of the heart and spirit. Mourning leaves us rightly weak and vulnerable to grace. We have seen our condition as it truly is; at the same time, we have heard the promises of comfort. In this state, we can draw near to see the Father with a new, sharper vision. We have no hope in ourselves, only in him and in his mercy. This connection between mourning and purity reveals the fruit of repentance – turning away from the futility of reliance on anything other than God, and turning toward the Lord as our highest good.

I see repentance as the great mediator between our inability to live out the full measure of God’s intention for our lives and the promise that we will be rewarded in spite of our incurable frailty. Repentance leads to simple, humble prayers that allow grace to bridge the gaps, however wide and for whatever heavenly purpose is before us. Like the man with the epileptic son, we beseech Jesus: I don’t believe enough, help my unbelief. I don’t pray enough, pray through and in me. I don’t love enough, reveal your love to and through me. I don’t serve enough, anoint your gifts and use them to serve.

I’m grasping on to the hem of Jesus’ garment and hanging on for dear life so that I can be filled with everything that’s his. Which is the only way to explain why someone once saw in me a pure heart.