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Christian salvation and the Beatitudes # 3: The Meek

Christian salvation and the Beatitudes # 3: The Meek

Last updated on: February 3, 2016 at 8:00 am by Morgan Guyton

Christian salvation and the Beatitudes # 3: The Meek 2016-02-03T00:34:06-05:00 Morgan Guyton

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“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Is there any verse in the Bible that more plainly contradicts the ethos of our age than this verse? Blessed are the opportunists, the platform-builders, the meme-crafters, the virally-tweeted shade-throwers… but the meek? How are the meek supposed to inherit the earth? There’s nothing to monetize about meekness! The meek don’t get invited to speak at all the important conferences. The meek don’t get profiled in the top forty people under forty to watch in the coming year. Imagine if we lived as if the meek were the most important people in our communities.

What does it mean to be meek? There’s certainly a range of possibilities for defining the word, but the most prevalent connotation is that the meek are those who do not call attention to themselves. The meek are invisible in our world because they don’t take selfies and upload status updates every fifteen minutes. The meek make their contribution to the world quietly. They do not make a fuss. They aren’t Patheos bloggers.

So how do they inherit the earth? One thought which occurs to me is that while people like me are frantically chasing the next viral hit and making ourselves into basket-cases trying to build our empires, the meek are free to enjoy the quotidian beauties of life that people like me cannot experience. They are inheriting the earth while I am furiously chasing after my destiny. The meek have the freedom to be insignificant and boring without that meaning that they have failed in any way. They can enjoy things like fishing and carpentry and board games. What a wonderful freedom to be unburdened of the dreadful need to make an impact!

Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward talks about two halves to life. The first half is defined by the achievements we think we need to define ourselves. The second half is defined by the pursuit of spiritual wholeness, having gained freedom from the tyranny of achievement. You can only get to the second half of life by failing at the first half. If there is no disruption in your pursuit of achievement, you will never graduate to the pursuit of spiritual wholeness. I’m in the process of going through the necessary failure but I’m stubbornly resisting it. I’ve written a book that I think is supposed to change American Christianity. But it’s become more and more evident what an uphill battle I face to make even a tiny ripple in the Christian publishing world. Part of me wants for the whole thing to be a decisive enough flop that I can tell God I’m never writing again and then become a desert hermit. Of course, another part of me thinks that I can deploy reverse psychology on God by writing sentences like that.

When Henri Nouwen was at the peak of his worldly influence as a highly accomplished author and professor at Harvard Divinity School, he left it all behind to become the chaplain of the L’Arche Daybreak community for mentally handicapped adults. Nouwen describes his admittance into this community of the meek as his salvation. I wonder what would happen to me if I spent more time among the meek. I do know that they have much to teach me.

Of course, another angle we can take with this verse is to ask what must we do to make sure that Jesus’ promise is fulfilled. One way to measure a society’s moral advancement is the degree to which its meek are able to inherit the earth. A cut-throat, hypercompetitive society where only the aggressive overachievers can avoid drowning is a moral regression from the hunter-gatherer tribe that refuses to slaughter its blind and lame members. A morally advanced society is one where all who are willing to work, regardless of ability, are given a meaningful way to contribute according to their gifts. In a morally advanced society, the meek do inherit the earth, because they are uplifted and empowered by everyone else. If our churches are not spaces in which the meek can inherit the earth, then they aren’t going to be of much use to Jesus.

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