I recently read about an English professor who assigned a class to read Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” and to respond with essays. The students largely didn’t like the sermon. They found it harsh. They thought it wasn’t fair. They saw it as a bunch of impossible commands.
Is that the case? Is the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7) such an unfair collection of commands? Or is it less literal, more of a figurative way to encourage better living?
Let me propose a third approach. This sermon is an ideal to guide our lives. Of course we’re not perfect, but we hopefully desire continual improvement. The “Sermon on the Mount” gives us guidance on that adventure of transformation.
I encourage you not to get down on yourself because you don’t quite live up to the sermon’s lofty ideals, nor to discard them as unrealistic or unfair, but rather to embrace them as goals to direct you.
(Day 275: Matthew 5-7)
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