ƒ Christianity for Thinking People: The Morality of Meekness

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The Morality of Meekness

I often recall my father’s treasured sayings with which he sought to convey wisdom to the next generation. Some of Dad’s sayings are discarded and some treasured. For example, after I gave Angela flowers soon after we were married, my father told me, “No use chasing a bus once you’ve caught it.” He was joking … I think … and fortunately that is not a saying I live by. However, a saying that does stick with me is “Never trust humble people.” Or, relatedly, “Humility is the worst form of conceit”, a maxim that French writer François de La Rochefoucauld had recorded some 300 years previously. So, humility and its cousin meekness were vices that my father avoided with religious fervor, and he encouraged us to do likewise. Meek people did not have the courage to stand up for right, and apparently humble people are the most likely to seek their own good while you drop your guard.

The problem with this piece of Hunt family wisdom was that we also took the Bible fairly seriously as a guide to daily life, and it upholds humility and meekness as virtues, not vices. Examples include Matt 20:27,28; Luke 22:26; 1 Peter 5:6; 2 Cor 12:9,10; Phil 2:5-9.

Years ago Yusuf Khan challenged Angela and I to consider whether winning at squash was most important. “If you always want to win, its simple”, he said. “Just make sure that you always play people who aren’t as good as you.” It’s the same with having a lowly opinion of oneself – just make sure that you are worse than the people you compare yourself to. Just act awfully, make poor choices, and you will be sufficiently full of self-loathing that you will have no trouble with humility. Of course, this is just as silly as always playing poor squash players, and is simply inconsistent with “life, and life abundant”.

I believe that my life, and the lives of my family, has been tremendously blessed by seeking to live in accordance with the principles of the kingdom of heaven. Our lives are better as a consequence. Of course, people who have chosen to live by God’s principles have also experienced heartbreak, torture and a martyr’s death, but the general reality we observe is that living God’s way blesses our lives. You may see this as a shocking admission, but I often finding myself involuntarily praying from my soul, “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are.” Luke 18:11. I find myself praying the words that are iconic of arrogance – the Pharisee’s prayer – and meaning it. I am so grateful that God has delivered me at least partially from the fate of life lived without love or meaning. I pray that this realization will make me ever more reliant on God, rather than tempt me to self-sufficiency.

Of course, as you have probably already worked out, humility is not the same as self-loathing. It is the source of power and transformation in the Christian life. I read a wonderful book this Fall that was given to me by Gary Brown, principal of Columbia Adventist Academy. It is Andrew Murray’s 1895 book, ‘Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness’. Murray says it better than I can:

“Here we have the nature of true humility. … We must learn of Jesus, how He is meek and lowly of heart. He teaches us where true humility begins and finds its strength – in the knowledge that it is God who works all in all, that our place is to yield to Him in perfect resignation and dependence, in full consent to be and to do nothing of ourselves. This is the life Christ came to reveal and to impart – a life to God that came through death to sin and self. If we feel that this life is too high for us and beyond our reach, it must but the more urge us to seek it in Him; it is the indwelling Christ who will live in us this life, meek and lowly. If we long for this, let us, meantime, above everything, seek the holy secret of the knowledge of the nature of God, as He every moment works all in all; the secret, of which all nature and every creature, and above all, every child of God, is to be the witness, -- that it is nothing but a vessel, a channel, through which the living God can manifest the riches of His wisdom, power, and goodness. The root of all virtue and grace, of all faith and acceptable worship, is that we know that we have nothing but what we receive, and bow in deepest humility to wait upon God for it.”

Chapter 3, http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/murray/5f00.0565/5f00.0565.01.htm
© Alister L Hunt PhD

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