In the popular HBO show MadMen, which is set in the 1960s during the boom of the ad industry, the main character Don Draper remarks: “Advertising is based on one thing—happiness.” This is no less true today. Ads on television and in magazines evoke happiness to promote products from cars and jewelry to bathroom fixtures, lingerie, and shampoo. As one ad for a shopping mall boasts: “You CAN buy happiness: just don’t pay retail.”[1]
However, recent research indicates otherwise. Ads make us less happy. They make us want what we don’t or can’t have. “Advertising,” says Andrew Oswald, “prompts us to measure ourselves against others. If I see an ad for a fancy new car, it makes me think about my ordinary one, which might make me feel bad. If I see this $10,000 watch and then look at my watch, which I probably paid about $150 for, I might think, ‘Maybe there’s something wrong with me.’”[2]
King Solomon once said:
Anyone who loves money never has enough. Anyone who loves wealth is never satisfied with what they get . . . As more and more goods are made, more and more people use them up. So how can those goods benefit their owners? All they can do is look at them with desire. (NIRV)
In other words, the more we have, the more we spend; and the more we get, the more we desire. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that even as Christians we are hardly immune to the epidemic of desire in our culture.
Jesus’ teaching gives us a totally different outlook on happiness. Blessed, he says, are those whose lives are characterized by physical and spiritual poverty, mourning, humility and meekness, righteousness and justice, mercy, peacemaking, and persecution for his sake (Matt 5:2-12). There is general agreement among scholars that righteousness (along with the kingdom of God) is a dominant theme in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.[3] According to one writer, the whole Sermon could be entitled, “Discourse on the Righteousness of the Kingdom of Heaven.”[4]
For many years, the slogan of White Castle was “What You Crave.” Now its slogan is “The Crave Is A Powerful Thing.” Think about a time when you had a craving for something. Perhaps it was for a cold glass of water (or a soft drink) to quench your thirst on a hot summer day. Or maybe it was for your favorite food to satisfy the hunger pangs of an empty stomach. “Hungering and thirsting” denote an intense desire for something. To those who have such a desire for righteousness, Jesus promises, “they will be filled”—meaning they will be “stuffed,” “filled to overflowing” (Matt 5:6; 10).[5] So, what is Jesus teaching us about true happiness in these verses? What is the meaning of righteousness? Finally, how can we resist a culture which bombards us with messages to consume more and more things and instead become persons who have a craving for righteousness?
Jesus’ Message of the Kingdom and Righteousness
Jesus’ lifestyle, ministry of healing, and teaching concerning the kingdom of God were as counter-cultural in his day as they are in our own. Jesus ruffles the feathers of the religious leaders when he castigates them for neglecting the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matt 23:23). He overturns the tables of money changers in the temple and compares them to robbers (Matt 21:12-17). Indicating that one’s attitude toward possessions reveals the condition of his heart, he instructs his listeners not to lay up treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt, but rather to lay up treasures in heaven (Matt 6:19-24). And in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus he indicates that God takes seriously the nature of our response to the suffering of the less fortunate (Lk 16:;19-31).
Jesus’ description of the “righteous” and the “unrighteous” (or the sheep and goats) in Matthew 25:31-48 is particularly significant. To some, Jesus will say, “Come you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you . . . for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me . . .” But to others, Jesus will say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire . . . For I was hungry, and you gave me no food . . . a stranger and you did not welcome me.” Both groups will respond, “When did we treat you in this way?” Jesus’ reply that the way they treated “the least of these” is directly connected to the way they treat him comes as a complete surprise. Notice that the unrighteous is this parable didn’t personally harm the hungry and thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the diseased, or the imprisoned. They were simply indifferent.[6] As Christine Pohl remarks, this passage is startling in its implications.[7]
Righteousness and Justice
What comes to your mind when you think of the term “righteousness?” If you are like most Christians, you associate it with an avoidance of worldly temptations or behavior prohibited by God. Or, positively, it is “good conduct.” We also tend to equate righteousness with spirituality and godliness, particularly the “fruits of the Spirit.” What often comes to mind are the “spiritual disciplines” of prayer, Bible study, and personal witness or evangelism. In sum, we tend to locate righteousness in behaviors and attitudes which are disconnected from the work for justice. In our culture, we rarely think of the righteous individual as one who acts justly or pursues justice on behalf of others.
But this is not how Scripture views righteousness. Biblical images of the righteous person connect what we would call “piety” with a concern for justice in areas of money, sex, and power. The book of Job, for example, eloquently describes the person who “puts on righteousness” as one who is a father to orphans, gives aid to the poor who cry for help, makes the “widow’s heart to sing for joy,” and takes up the cause of the stranger (Job 29:13-16). A righteous person is sexually chaste and faithful, just and generous toward the powerless, and depends on God rather than wealth (Job 31)
Modern English translations of the New Testament typically translate the Greek word dikaiosune—which is used in both the fourth and eighth beatitudes (Matt 5: 6 & 10)—as “righteousness” rather than “justice.” This has contributed to tendency among Christians to erroneously think that in the Beatitudes Jesus is simply referring to personal piety and morality. This is highly unfortunate, for it obscures the connection of the Greek term dikaiosune in the New Testament with the Old Testament term tsedaqah which can mean either “righteousness” or “justice.” In fact, in the Old Testament the two concepts are often interrelated. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, or Septuagint, uses the word dikaiosune for the Hebrew word sedeq (righteousness, justice) over 90 percent of the time.
What does this mean for our understanding of the Beatitudes? A proper translation depends upon the context. Obviously, it would make a big difference in our response if Jesus were saying, “Blessed (happy) are those who hunger and thirst for justice . . .” and “Blessed (happy) are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice . . .” Of the Hebrew words for justice, tsedaqah refers to God’s positive action in creating and preserving community, particularly on behalf of the marginalized. It denotes a gift of abundance and generosity. It is never used in Scripture to speak of God’s punishment for sin. Jonathan Pennington summarizes the meaning of “righteousness” in this way:
In the Old Testament, saddiq/sad𝑎qa often has the idea of ‘restorative justice,” understood in the context of covenant with God. This covenantal justice is ultimately God’s work of setting the world to rights, his saving activity, though we are called to participate in this and are the beneficiaries of it. (Sermon on the Mount, 89)
True righteousness is always a matter of the heart, not mere external conformity to a set of rules or norms. This, in part, is what Jesus means when he says that the righteousness of the kingdom exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees (Matt 5:20). The righteousness of the Pharisees is only skin deep. Their acts of piety (dikaiosyne)—alms, prayer, and fasting—are purely for outward show (Matt 6:1-18). Spirituality or “righteousness” which is not from the heart is a sham. It denies God’s truth. The hypocrite gives mere lip service to God’s will while the righteous, or godly, practice what they preach.
Jesus and the Old Testament Prophets
The noted Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff reminds us that when Jesus pronounced God’s blessing on those who struggle for justice and are persecuted as a result (Matt 5:10), he was standing in the great tradition of the Old Testament prophets who spoke out against injustice. In fact, a prominent theme within this prophetic tradition is that since God loves justice, worship loses its authenticity if the worshipers do not practice and struggle for justice. Worship in the absence of justice displeases and nauseates God. Our songs of praise to God disgust him when sung in the presence of injustice. This is what the prophet Amos says:
Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like the waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:23-24)
Jesus says essentially the same thing when, in response to the Pharisee’s preoccupation with rules for holiness and ritual cleanness, he exclaims, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’” (Matt 9:13; cf. 12:7; 23:23; Hos 6:6). Jesus is not saying that cultic and liturgical acts (prayer, worship, fasting, etc) are to be neglected—only that their authenticity is conditioned by the quality of our ethical behavior. Our songs of praise to God for his mercy are meaningless if justice and mercy are not made a priority in our lives. This has relevance for how we respond to poverty, abortion, human trafficking, racism, immigration, Covid-19 and a myriad of other issues facing our nation and the world.
Conclusion
One of the most popular tourist destinations in Atlanta, GA is the Martin Luther King Historical Park. The Visitor Center houses an interactive exhibit chronicling the life of Dr. King. It includes many of his famous speeches, accounts of numerous arrests, and several large photos in which he is depicted behind a pulpit, rallying his congregation to put its faith into action. The exhibit also shows images of marchers pushed back by fire hoses, attacked by dogs, and singing the anthems and spirituals of the Civil Rights Movement which fought for justice in the face of oppressive Jim Crow laws. Dr. King often described the years of segregation and the struggle for civil rights as “darker than a thousand midnights.” Many evangelical churches and leaders were reticent to speak out in support of the Civil Rights Movement on the grounds that it illicitly mixed faith and secular politics. But what has been construed as a secular political movement was in fact deeply biblical and spiritual. Dr. King is a powerful example of a strong faith and trust in Jesus’ promise of blessing to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice.
[1] Hostetler, American Idols, 24. [2] Oswald, “Advertising Makes Us Unhappy.” [3] Gushee and Stassen, Kingdom Ethics, 2nd Ed., 31. [4] Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount, 88. [5] McKnight, Sermon on the Mount, 44. [6] Wytsma, Pursuing Justice, 195. [7] Pohl, Making Room, 67.
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