Blessed are the Meek

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

This beatitude comes from Psalm 37. Here are verses 8-11:

Cease from anger, and forsake wrath:
Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

For evildoers shall be cut off:
But those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.

For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be:
Yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

But the meek shall inherit the earth;
And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

The Hebrew word in this psalm means to bow in humility. (It’s not the same word usually translated as “worship”, which means to bow down in submission before someone in higher position.) A meek person is someone who is not self-important, someone who does not have to win. You can say that such a person is not a fighter. He does not feel the need to stand up for his own rights.

By contrast, someone who is self-important makes everything about him. The classic instance of this is someone who makes a fuss at the airline counter because his flight is delayed, or he did not get the seat he wants, or something along those lines.

But self-importance is not just about dealing with inconvenience. A self-important person is always right — at least in his own mind. His ideas are better, or at least deserve a hearing, regardless of what others think.

There is a similar word with more of a Greek flavor used by Paul in Philippians 4:5: “Let your magnanimity be known to all.” The word magnanimity, as far as I could tell, is only used in the New English Bible (NEB). But I think it is the best word to capture the Greek word epieikes. Magnanimity means allowing others to have their way, even when by rights you should prevail. It reflects the notion in 1 Corinthians 13:5: “Love is … not self-seeking….”

Magnanimity implicitly operates from strength. That is, a magnanimous person can afford to let go of his rights because he is not losing anything crucial. The word has a sense of “noblesse oblige” — the notion that the one in a better position ought to be willing to sacrifice for the one in a worse position.

In this way we can see why the meek person is blessed. Remembering that the blessing is a present blessing, we see that this blessing consists in the fact that a meek person does not have to fight, does not have to win all the time. A meek person operates from a position of strength because he sees that God will make him triumph. So in any particular situation, nothing crucial is at stake.

The irony of meekness, the way that it is a counter-intuitive alternative to the way most people think, is that everyone is fighting to gain the earth — to gain control of what they think matters. People think that meekness is unrealistic — the meek person will be trampled. One hears statements like, “If you don’t take care of yourself, nobody else will.”

This iron-clad assumption constitutes the basis for most of the conflict in life. People seek their own benefit and power because they think that nobody else will give it to them.

The meek person can go against this assumption and act unrealistically because he knows that God will give him victory in the end. The meek person will inherit the earth. (I sometimes imagine that the reason the meek person inherits the earth is that everyone else has killed each other off in attempting to gain it by force.)

As a Christian leader I have found myself in conflicts or differences of opinion from time to time. In numerous instances I have found that yielding my own position has resulted in amazing fruitfulness.

One case that stands out in my mind is that at one point CCIC-SV was trying to plan a summer VBS. One person proposed an ambitious program that obviously would take a lot of work. Many of us felt that it was too much work and we would be unable to do it.

I also had my own objection — the program felt “canned” to me. (Actually that turned out to be an advantage, since we did not have to invent everything from scratch.) But at one point I felt God telling me that in love I should support the person proposing the program, even though I did not particularly agree with the idea. The minute I tossed my support to the program, I knew it was the right thing to do. We ended up successfully executing the VBS and about 100 kids came. I also had the pleasure of playing one of the main roles in the VBS — I was the “rabbi” who called everything to order by blowing the Shofar (horn) and who taught much of the main teaching.

One thing I often hear people say when discussing meekness is “I won’t be a doormat.” I have heard this so often that I have come to label it “doormat theology.” The idea is that if you do not protect yourself, people will walk all over you.

But this buys into the assumption that the way to avoid becoming a doormat is to fight, to be assertive, to establish boundaries and maintain them. The problem is that Christ himself did not take this approach.

If anyone became a doormat, was it not Jesus? Paul speaks of taking him as an example in the way he emptied himself and humbled himself to the point of death. And this is the way he became exalted, so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11).

In other words, meekness is not consigning oneself to be a doormat. Rather, it is trusting that even in your humiliation, God will exalt you. It is like the advice Jesus gave to the Pharisees in Luke 14: do not fight your way to the highest seat, because someone more important might come along and you’d be sent to the lowest seat. Rather, take the lowest seat, and let someone exalt you (Luke 14:7-11). Or as Peter puts it, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time…” (1 Peter 5:6).

Meekness is not doormathood; the meek inherit the earth!

There is a quip that many people mistake meekness for weakness. But meekness comes from a position of strength: the blessedness of someone who has a sure hope in God. This is why we can let go of the things of this life. We can be willing to lose for the sake of love. We can seek peace instead of conflict, even when we have to pay a price.

Meekness does not operate in a vacuum. It is not a quality that we assume in order to please God. It is a value that God has — that relationships and love are more important than winning and power. And God showed us how seriously he took this by sending his son to die for us. Rather than call the twelve legions of angels he had at his disposal, he meekly submitted to being betrayed, falsely condemned, and punished as a criminal in the most degrading way.

His willingness to do this was based on the fact that God had the power over death, so that even in yielding up his life he gave up nothing crucial. God vindicated him by raising him from the dead and that same power is at our disposal as we seek to walk in his way.

Thus the meek do indeed inherit the earth.