![[assets/covers/sermon-on-the-mount.jpg]] The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’s extended teaching recorded in Matthew 5–7, containing the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer, and a series of moral and spiritual injunctions. It is one of the most commented-upon texts in Western history and one of the most systematically misread. ## Read as law, not as teaching The dominant misreading treats the Sermon as a set of moral commands, impossible to keep literally, which then require explaining away: relocated to another dispensation, treated as poetry, softened into generalised sentiments about being nice. Richard J. Foster, introducing Willard’s *The Divine Conspiracy*, identifies this as the standard move: ‘Most writers turn these penetrating words of Jesus into a new set of soul-crushing laws.’[^dc-px] Willard’s departure is to take the Sermon seriously as what it claims to be: Jesus teaching his followers how to actually live. Rules without transformation produce guilt and performance; they cannot produce the kind of person who could live that way. The Sermon is not a moral examination Jason is expected to fail. It is a curriculum. See [[Legalism]]. ## The curriculum that is never taught ==The practical consequence of the dominant misreading is visible in the total absence of formation in Jesus's actual teaching.== =='Who among us has personal knowledge of a seminar or course of study and practice being offered in a "Christian Education Program" on how to "love your enemies, bless those that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray for those who spit on you and make your life miserable"?' (Matt. 5:44).== ==The question is rhetorical but pointed: no such programme exists, not because the teaching is unclear but because it has never been treated as something to be institutionally transmitted.==[^dc-p57] ==The Ten Commandments occupy a similar position.== ==Neither conservative nor liberal churches really teach from them; they are 'really aren't very popular anywhere' in practice, despite being displayed on courthouse walls in political controversies.== ==Yet they remain 'God's best information on how to lead a basically decent human existence.'== ==Both the Commandments and the Sermon share the fate of content that is publicly celebrated and practically ignored.== ## Selected passages > ‘Most writers turn these penetrating words of Jesus into a new set of soul-crushing laws.’ > > *The Divine Conspiracy*, Foreword, p. x ## Appearances - *The Divine Conspiracy*, Dallas Willard (1997), Foreword (R.J. Foster), p. x - *The Divine Conspiracy*, [[Dallas Willard]] (1997), Ch. 2 'Gospels of Sin Management', p. 57 [^dc-px]: [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)]], p. x · *‘Most writers turn these penetrating words of Jesus into a new set of soul-crushing laws.’* · [[The Divine Conspiracy - 9.jpg|↗]] [^dc-p57]: [[The Divine Conspiracy (1997)]], p. 57 · *‘Who among us has personal knowledge of a seminar or course of study and practice being offered in a "Christian Education Program" on how to "love your enemies, bless those that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray for those who spit on you and make your life miserable"?’* · [[The Divine Conspiracy - 76.jpg|↗]]