The Beatitudes

The Sermon on the Mount: Tissot.

Recently I wrote about human evil, and pointed out that like it or not, the New Testament makes a radical distinction between “sheep,” the good people, and “goats.” We determined that the bad guys are the upstanding citizens who have embraced ego over the good, aka the scribes and Pharisees. But who are the good guys? Does the Bible say anything about that?

Of course. There are two main clues to answer this question: whom Jesus chose as apostles, and whom he describes as blessed in the Sermon on the Mount, his great call to the masses.

Let's look at that latter first, as it is the most obvious and direct statement. Here it is, from the Gospel of Matthew. There is a partial variant version in Luke, but Matthew is definitive.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Sheep to the left, goats to the right. Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight! From God's perspective, the opposite. Fra Angelico.

“Blessed are those who mourn.” Isn't that, by itself, suggestive? Is he possibly talking about the “depressed”? What can this mean if it is not a symptom of something else behind it, an entire complex? For by itself, how can mere mourning be seen as a moral act, bringing blessing? Consolation, perhaps, but not blessing.

So, for comparison, let's look at the official symptomatology for what is called “major depression,” in DSM-IV, the manual used by psychiatrists in the US and Canada. (It has since been superseded by DSM-5. There is no significant change in the diagnostic criteria, and DSM-5 is wordier and less precise in its language. Hence, DSM-IV is more useful here.) See if you do not see, as I do, some significant similarities:

1. Depressed mood or irritable most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report (e.g., feels sad or empty) or observation made by others (e.g., appears tearful).

i.e., blessed are those who mourn. A straight match.

2. Decreased interest or pleasure in most activities, most of each day

This sounds to me, in turn, like the necessary meaning of “poor in spirit”--someone no longer interested in worldly pleasures and possessions.

“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity,” saith the preacher.

3. Significant weight change (5%) or change in appetite.

Of interest to an inveterate materialist, a physician, as modern psychiatrists are, but surely too trivial and tangential to mention in a spiritual context. In any case, in the first century, wealth would be a far stronger determinant of body weight than mood.

4. Change in sleep: Insomnia or hypersomnia
5. Change in activity: Psychomotor agitation or retardation
6. Fatigue or loss of energy

I suspect all of these are addressed in “blessed are the peacemakers,” understood as "those who seek peace.” Feeling tired and seeking calm is a natural response to stress, hence to PTSD. By contrast, according to the Bible, the wicked seek ceaseless activity: “The wicked will not rest” (Isaiah 57:20; aka “no rest for the wicked.” It does not mean the wicked are punished with busy-ness, but that they seek it). Later in the same sermon, Jesus counsels his listeners to try not to be anxious: “consider the lilies of the field...” Good advice for those experiencing PTSD.

7. Guilt/worthlessness: Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt

“Blessed are the meek”: i.e., as psychological jargon puts it, those with “low self-esteem,” those who habitually think of others before themselves. THis is what happens when you grow up in a family in which someone else demands they be the centre of attention. As it has been said of adult children of alcoholics: when they die, somebody else's life flashes before their eyes.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” also applies here: to be wracked with guilt, including undeserved guilt, is necessarily to care deeply about right and wrong. Caring deeply about right and wrong, in turn, paints a target on your back for suitability as a scapegoat in an abusive relationship.

8. Concentration: diminished ability to think or concentrate, or mere indecisiveness

This does not appear plainly in the beatitudes; but it may in the later image of the good as “sheep.” That image does not radiate decisiveness. A lack of interest in power and in the exercise of the will may also come across as indecisiveness. This is the "dying to self"of which the mystics speak.

9. Suicidality: Thoughts of death or suicide, or has suicide plan

Not present here. But Jesus also says, elsewhere, of his true and rightful followers: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” He is presumably not speaking about literal death; but anyone who is not focused in their thoughts on death and the afterlife is obviously not one of his sheep. Moreover, some who are called to die to self may make the natural mistake of taking that call too literally, and contemplate actual suicide.

The final beatitude seems to speak of the ultimate cause of depression, an ending summary of the syndrome: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.” Depression and blessedness comes from being persecuted unjustly, that is, abused.

These are the people Jesus calls the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.” These are his sheep.

Note that the modern diagnosis of depression is fairly arbitrary. It is a set of symptoms without knowledge of correspondence to any underlying disease. If a disease, is it one disease, or many? It is as if any pain in the head, regardless of the cause, were simply diagnosed and treated as “a headache.”

That being so, the fact that the supposed symptoms of “depression” correspond as well as they do with the Beatitudes is, I think, striking. If all “depressives” are not good Christians, it does seem that all who are here called to be Christians are subject to a diagnosis of “depression.”

The implications for depression's successful treatment seem obvious. The proper treatment, if you are a believing Christian, is to follow the call of Jesus, which in its earliest days was simply called by devotees “the Way.”

The mentally ill at La Salpetriere: Gautier.

Psychiatrists and psychologists instead resolutely try to force sufferers away from some of the things here called blessed, to push them back into the world of the senses, to turn them back from the call they may be hearing. No wonder depression (and mental illness generally), with this treatment, commonly becomes a lifelong condition.

Surely nobody wants this suffering. Probably nobody chooses it. But it would be worth a lot to the mentally ill even just to understand that they are undergoing a real spiritual call, instead of a meaningless “disease.”