Blessed are

   The Beatitudes are the most familiar part of the New Testament. People can usually cite at least a couple of them & some bits of the Sermon on the Mount. 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth', for instance, was amusingly inverted in the song for "Camelot", "The Seven Deadly Virtues", with Mordred signing "It's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt!"

   'Blessed are the poor in spirit' goes against the idea of self-esteem. Being poor in spirit means having no such thing. All therapeutic guides insist that people need a sense of self-worth, but to be poor in spirit means to be indifferent to that notion altogether, not to regard one's own gifts or presence as valuable or desirable.

   'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God' is likewise alien to the present time. For one thing, when people hear the word "purity" all they think of is absence of sexual relations, and they think of it as a kind of lunacy. But the purity is an absence of heterogenous motives & materials in one's way of feeling & thinking of God & the world -- of an absence of ulterior motives & suspicions about the designs of others, a reluctance to believe bad things about others, even when evidence obliges one to accept that those things are true.