Analytical Review: Jim Forest’s “The Ladder of the Beatitudes” and “Loving Our Enemies” – by Sarah Anderson

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus details how undergoing an internal transformation moves us from poverty of spirit to become peacemakers, willing to undergo harm to themselves for the sake of love towards the enemy. The Jesus Way, laid out in the Beatitudes, is a way of living and being, not simply a checklist of behaviors. This embodiment of the Spirit allows for both the flourishing of the individual and the ushering in of a new kingdom, a kingdom of God that presents an alternative structure for society than the one we participate in now.

Jesus’ Program for the Individual Disciple

Jesus begins the Beatitudes addressing the crowds—not just the religious leaders/elite—suggesting this was meant for everyone (Ladder 15), and encouraging poverty of spirit. The Beatitudes consist of a sort of progression (Ladder 2), meaning that in order to fully embrace this Jesus Way, there are steps that serve as foundations and must be built upon in order to become fully transformed “little Christs.”

To begin with, poverty of spirit is similar to Step 1 in twelve-step recovery. Before recovery in any sense, there’s an acknowledgment of a problem, something we have to recover from. It’s a revelation of our lowliness and an acknowledgment of God’s largeness where we discover the central tenant of Jesus’ economy: the way up is down, and this wound is the means of healing. It diagnoses the problem while simultaneously offering a solution. Jesus knows in order to be transformed, first comes the awareness of needing to be transformed. From there, we mourn our brokenness, while hungering for the virtues of God’s kingdom, working towards displaying mercy towards even those who have mal intent towards us. But even this is not the final objective.

Forest writes, “we would do well to pray not only for the conversation of our adversaries but for our own conversation. We ourselves may be harder to convert than our adversaries. The most needed conversion may be my own” (LOE 98). In this way, the ladder of the beatitudes and progression of the individual disciple is more circular than a straight line. We end where we begin. In praying for our enemy, we are exposed anew to the problem of ourselves, a need for change in our own heart that feels even more pressing than a change in the other. Back to poverty of spirit, to begin the journey of blessedness through the Jesus Way again. 

Ultimately the program for individual disciples is rooted in the tension of existence: potential for transformation coupled with deeply rooted resistance to it. But Jesus reminds us that when we recognize the lack in ourselves, while moving towards acknowledging the blessedness of others, a new kingdom is ushered in, transforming the human experience.

Essential Components of the Jesus Way

The Jesus Way invites us towards mercy, instead of vengeance (Ladder 34), insisting on “tender lovingkindness” (Ladder 79) and not just mercy in the judicial sense.  In addition, our capacity for mercy is directly related to an awareness of our capacity for evil (Ladder 82). In other words, our showing of mercy soon becomes a display of self-righteousness if it isn’t also coupled with an understanding of how often we too need mercy because of our wronging of others. Partnered to this fundamental self-awareness, the Jesus Way also embodies a respect of the Other, and a malleability of our spirits to respond to the other with God’s patience and kindness (Ladder 35). It requires presence with Christ (not just admiration) and a sensitivity to the griefs of the world—or “repentant mourning” (Ladder 42). Meekness as mentioned in the Beatitudes is essential to this Jesus Way, but not as being equivalent to weakness. Instead, meekness is “making choices and exercising power with a divine rather than a societal reference point” (Ladder 49), in addition to a hunger for righteousness, or rightness by God’s standard—versus a hunger for virtues of the world. A spirit of integrity—or integrated whole—is represented with a pure spirit; one that refuses the scapegoat mentality. This is a practice to participate in and not simply a decision to make.

Fundamentally, the Jesus way is characterized by kenosis—a self-emptying that proceeds a divine pouring out.

The Jesus Way in Societal Renewal

Jesus’ talk of the Kingdom of God was centered in a “here and now” understanding.

Forest points out the intentionality of the Beatitudes saying “…for theirs is the kingdom”. The kingdom belongs to the poor in spirit now; renewal is possible in this moment, not just in a future a heavenly kingdom.

Societal renewal begins with a poverty of spirit on the cultural level, acknowledging where our systems and structures are lacking, and grieving how they have hurt and destabilized the most vulnerable around us. Forest writes, hungering and thirsting for righteousness means responding to “the real world with all of its fear, pain, bloodstains, to be a rescuer, to protect the
defenseless, to participate here and now in God’s righteousness.” (Ladder 69). Societal renewal means to not gloss over the brokenness of the world with shallow platitudes, dismiss the injustices of the world as “just the way it is”, and simply imagine God’s kingdom as just a “slightly improved version of the world we already have.” (Ladder 112). Rather, a societal renewal is a deep engagement with the reality of brokenness and a transformative change to a new way of being. It is not trite nor necessarily tranquil, but an upending of structures used to uphold power structures that reward aggression, in exchange for more thoughtful engagement.

Jesus’ program for social renewal is dependent on the humanizing of the people in the categories our politics and culture have made caricatures or monolithic narratives out of. When He says, “Blessed are the merciful,” Jesus envisions the potential for real peace by extending kindness to those (groups and nations, not just individuals) who might wish us harm, imagining what might be if the lines of difference ceased to work as barriers and instead as invitations to lean in. It means extending aid to countries after natural disasters—even those we might see as adversaries (LOE 101, 103); it means refusing to reduce human deaths to the term of “collateral damage”; it means acknowledging the spiral effect of violence that often leads to more and more damage and increasing destruction for those on both sides; it means a “holy disobedience” to the laws or systems that declare only one (violent) way of being in the world (LOE 156). The Jesus Way of societal renewal asks that we no longer make decisions out of fear of other, but love for the Other, refusing to see difference as liability, but an opportunity to see the image of Christ where we least expect it.

But even then, no societal change is long-term, and the process is incomplete if there is no individual transformation too (LOA 126). As Forest quotes Sister Rosemary Lynch, “even if nuclear weapons were abolished, unless we diffuse the bombs in our own hearts, the human family is quite capable of finding other even worse means of destroying life.” (Ladder 121)

Enemy-Love and Taking Up Your Cross

Forest describes an enemy as “anyone I feel threatened by and seek to defend myself against” (LOE 18). In this light, to love my enemy is to pray for their flourishing, a change in my enemy’s heart. But to do that is to make oneself vulnerable—with no guarantee for change or of being loved back. It’s an exposure to potential death—literally or figuratively—doing so knowing the highest aim as followers of Jesus is not preservation of life, but demonstration of love at all costs. Enemy love in its very nature is a death as it is taking up the cross of death to self, ego, rights, and a need to be right. It is imitating Jesus in his willingness to die, so we might ensure love—not retribution or violence towards the other—gets the final word. 

Conclusion

Like so much of Jesus’ teaching, the ideas highlighted in the Beatitudes feel paradoxical and contradictory. And maybe if all we were trying to do was follow them as a checklist to be moved through, rather than a way of life, it would be impossible. But the Beatitudes represent a journey of inner transformation, growing self-awareness, and acknowledgment of our deeply held enmity towards the other, that can be transformed into prayer for and love towards the very people or groups who may seek to harm us. Jesus isn’t suggesting “niceness” or glib responses to real pain and challenging realities.

He is requiring an internal awakening to our need for change, a hungering and thirsting for a rightness in the world that God envisioned in its creation, before taking on the task of trying to change the world around us. And yet, as impossible as it sounds, Jesus suggests this kingdom way of life is possible for here and now, accessible in every interaction with those we see as an enemy or an affront to us.