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“Blessed are the pure in heart”

“Blessed are the pure in heart”

Last updated on: March 5, 2023 at 6:33 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Blessed are the pure in heart” 2023-03-05T18:33:33-07:00 Dan Peterson

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A view of Lake Kinneret (the so-called “sea of Galilee”) from the traditional site of the Sermon on the Mount
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

“Blessed are the pure in heart,” says Matthew 5:8 in the King James Version of the Bible, “for they shall see God.”

Whenever I think of this particular beatitude, I always think of the title of a devotional essay or sermon by the great Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855): Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.

And, of course, I recall the famous words of James 1:5-8 — the first verse of which was of such pivotal importance at the very beginning of the Restoration:

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

I like a passage from the ancient apocryphal Gospel of Thomas:

Jesus said: It is impossible for a man to mount two horses and to stretch two bows, and it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters . . .”[iv]

C. S. Lewis used to ask this question: How will we ever be able to speak with the Lord face to face until we have decided which face to present to him? That’s the background, in fact, to the title of his 1956 novel Till We Have Faces, which is relatively little known among his works but which was one of his own personal favorites.

We find it extraordinarily difficult to be single-minded. Our motives are very often mixed. The speaker in a Young Single Adult ward may sincerely want to deliver a talk that will honor God and inspire the congregation, but he may also wish to impress the attractive girl who generally sits about five rows back on the right.

And, of course, sometimes our internal conflicts are a little less innocent. A famous passage from Augustine’s Confessions illustrates this well, as he addresses God:

But I wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of Thee, and said, “Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.” For I feared lest Thou shouldest hear me soon, and soon cure me of the disease of concupiscence, which I wished to have satisfied, rather than extinguished.[ii]

And a more innocent but still rather amusing anecdote comes to mind from my own personal experience many, many years ago: When I had just entered the old Mission Home in Salt Lake City, before transferring down to the Language Training Mission in Provo, we went one Sunday morning over to the Tabernacle on Temple Square for a performance by the Tabernacle Choir. As we stood in line waiting to enter, several very attractive young women walked by. One of the new missionaries turned around and stared at them with obvious and lingering interest. Another missionary good naturedly chided him: “Eyes right, elder!” The embarrassed missionary responded instantly with a witty (and sexist) comeback that I’ve often thought about in the years since. “I may be fasting,” he said, “but I can still look at the menu!” And he was precisely right. There is no law against reading menus during a fast. But how stupid it is to do so! How much more difficult it makes fasting! How self-defeating! If you’ve decided to fast, you probably shouldn’t be lingering around Big Bob’s Famous Grill to take in the savory aromas.

Purity of heart may well require some very difficult choices. Here is an ancient though non-scriptural Christian passage that poses a real challenge and that merits future analysis and “unpacking”:

Jesus said: Whoever does not hate his father and his mother in My way will not be able to be a [disciple] to me. And whoever does [not] love [his father] and his mother in My way will not be able to be a [disciple] to me . . .”[v]

Of course, Latter-day Saints would probably want to clarify that true purity of heart involves willing one right thing, or perhaps even the one most right and most important thing. It certainly is conceivable that one could be perfectly focused on evil, and this would be, after a fashion, a sort of purity of heart. But it’s not what the Lord wants from us. I think, in this connection, of Bertrand Russell’s description of Vladimir Lenin — which I’ll share in a future entry.[i]

As to the idea of seeing God’s face, we Latter-day Saints take this very literally. We are unashamed anthropomorphists. It is true that God is, in a very real sense, omnipresent via his Spirit:

Cleave a (piece of) wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find Me there.”[iii]

But God really has a real face, and modern scripture makes the same promise that Matthew 5:8 makes:

Verily, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am. (Doctrine and Covenants 93:1)

But what does it mean to be “pure in heart”? Here are a few preliminary clues:

Zion is defined as “the pure in heart” (Doctrine and Covenants 97:21).

And the Lord called his people ZION, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them. (Moses 7:18.)

And again I say unto you, let every man esteem his brother as himself.

For what man among you having twelve sons, and is no respecter of them, and they serve him obediently, and he saith unto the one: Be thou clothed in robes and sit thou here; and to the other: Be thou clothed in rags and sit thou there — and looketh upon his sons and saith I am just?

Behold, this I have given unto you as a parable, and it is even as I am. I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine. (Doctrine and Covenants 38:25-27)

[I]n your temporal things you shall be equal, and this not grudgingly, otherwise the abundance of the manifestations of the Spirit shall be withheld. (Doctrine and Covenants 70:14)

For future reference, look at the concepts of atonement/purgation/purification, and re-read Dallin H. Oaks, Purity of Heart.

[i] Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays?

[ii] Augustine, Confessions, 8:7.

[iii] A. Guillaumont, H.-Ch. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till, and Yassah ‘Abd Al Mas¬Ω, trans., The Gospel according to Thomas (Leiden: E. J. Brill and New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 43.

[iv] A. Guillaumont, H.-Ch. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till, and Yassah ‘Abd Al Mas¬Ω, trans., The Gospel according to Thomas (Leiden: E. J. Brill and New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 27.

[v] A. Guillaumont, H.-Ch. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till, and Yassah ‘Abd Al Mas¬Ω, trans., The Gospel according to Thomas (Leiden: E. J. Brill and New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 51.

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