In my native German, "poor in spirit" is rendered as "Arm im Geist", which is supposed to mean"spiritually bereft" but also can be understood to mean "lacking mental capacity". Not sure if this is true in English, but certainly makes me feel that the US suffers from a severe case of the beatitudes.
I only learned the term Trump Derangement the other day from my own mother after she sent my brother and me an email wondering why we thought she was a bad mother and how she tried to raise us as good Christians because we expressed concerns about Trump in a family group text. (1)
I replied with a lengthy email about how she was a good mother and that Trump didn't live up to the values we were taught. She replied back with compassion, but also what sounded like blatant propaganda. (2)
Lately, I've seen people -- mostly on X -- criticizing The Beatitudes as being weak, effeminate, full of the sin of empathy, and not relevant to today's world. Sadly, many of the comments to such posts are equally looney and utterly devoid of any evidence that the poster has ever read the Bible.
Hilarious. Not really hilarious. Parts of the church have tried to twist Jesus so much to conform to their capitalist, racist (conscious or unconscious), discriminatory, misogynistic views, that hearing the red letter words of Jesus is jarring. Woe to the pastors who followed rather than lead.
I've recently heard people claim that sharing all with the poor was something that just helped the early church spread and develop and isn't for today. Among Charismatics who aren't cessationist about spiritual gifts. With zero cognitive dissonance too.
The human tendency to skew doctrine and beliefs to fit a personal or political agenda is strong. I am no saint in this regard. I just can't tolerate all the purposeful hate and greed right now. Literally just read all that Jesus himself said and go from there.
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A line from the 1960s song Eve of Destruction. Always sticks in my head.
"Trump D**k Sucking? Eww, no! I'm not MAGA!"
“Where do we keep the crosses?”