Among Jesus’ most famous teachings are the Beatitudes, a series of sayings beginning “Blessed are the…” and ending by naming a group of people who, by worldly standards, certainly don’t seem to be blessed. Groups singled out as being blessed include the meek, those who mourn, and those who are persecuted for righteousness (along with the peacemakers, the hungry, the pure of heart, etc.).

One way of reading the Beatidues, described but not endorsed here by Dave Smith of Online Opinion, is as a prescription of how we ought to be. If we are to be blessed, on this view, then we must seek to imitate the blessed in the Beatitudes. The meek are blessed, so we must seek to be meek; those who mourn are blessed, so we must seek to mourn; those who are persecuted are blessed, so we must seek out persecution. To adopt the televangelist slang, the Beatitudes contain ‘Be-Attitudes’, attitudes that we ought to adopt.

This reading goes beyond the text, and it does so via a logical fallacy.

Jesus describes people who are blessed. Everyone in each of these groups, he suggests, is blessed. Being a member of one of these groups is a sufficient condition for blessedness.

That being a member of one of these groups is a sufficient condition for blessedness does not imply that being so is a necessary condition for blessedness; it does not imply that only members of these groups are blessed. And it certainly doesn’t imply that only members of all of the groups are blessed. Blessedness may well come to other people too.

We must not confuse necessary and sufficient conditions. Though the meek, the mourners, and the persecuted may be blessed, for all that the text says our route to blessedness may have nothing to do with any of these attitudes. The Beatitudes are not ‘Be-Attitudes’ at all.