Tag Humility

A Kingdom of Gentleness and Respect

Todd R Leave a comment

With another history post coming up, I set out this week to write about this blog’s approach to history and politics, knowing that with these topics, the hardest part can be how to say what you want to say.  Imitating David in Psalm 3, I write to testify that “salvation belongs to the LORD,”[1] to some an inherently political statement, in a way that obeys God in approach and tone.  What does that mean?  1 Peter 4:15-16 says:  “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”  This means it is not as simple as just yelling the right story from the rooftops, or in my case, from an unfiltered blog.  “Gentleness and respect” matter.

Last time, I wrote that “Jesus isn’t on the ballot this fall, but flawed candidates of many types will be.  Some more like David, and some more like Absalom.”  David, even as God’s appointed king of Israel, knew that not every problem was in his power to solve.  However, David was at peace with his limits in an imperfect world, knowing that his salvation came from God alone.  But Absalom hated David’s inability, or unwillingness, to solve all his problems.  Absalom harbored angry resentment against David for years before violently overthrowing him.  During this rebellion, David was calm and able to sleep because the kingdom of God was real to him, even when it didn’t look like it.  Then he wrote Psalm 3 to let us know about it.

This conflict between David and Absalom echoes in broad narratives or stories told throughout history: 1) we can and should perfect ourselves, or 2) we are dependent on God to save us.[2]

In the 1 Peter quote above, he says that we defend our eternal hope with “gentleness and respect.,” meaning that those who trust God’s salvation should use not only their words, but also their attitudes and very lives.  The story must be real to us to be convincing to others, and those who hope in God’s kingdom should show obedience to that kingdom.  Easier said than done.

Fortunately, when we truly believe, experience, and stand for God’s salvation, our brokenness and failure is part of the testimony.  When we know God’s salvation is the only solution, we can approach people with different worldviews with our common need for salvation, in “gentleness and respect,” instead of fighting over solutions we know are imperfect.  David was able to sleep at night even when chased out of Jerusalem by his own son, because he had “a good conscience,” showing gentleness and respect toward Absalom.  The kingdom of God was real in his heart, and he believed God would prevail no matter what.  Circumstances could not shake his faith, and God ultimately delivered and restored him.

If, on the other hand, our brokenness and God’s solution for it is not part of our story, we may be left defending an imperfect political solution to those who demand perfection.  In David’s case, he may have insisted that God was unjust in allowing Absalom to succeed.  After all, he could argue, he was a humble king after God’s own heart, while Absalom was bitter and unreasonable.  If David had done this, it may have ironically helped Absalom’s case for tyranny.  In addition, David would not have been able to find peace and sleep at night until Absalom was overthrown.  However, if the starting point is that weakness is common to all of mankind, then the imperfection of the system is both part of the “reason for the hope” and a reason for even the unbeliever to resist tyranny.  In this case, imperfection is not hypocrisy, but a condition common to mankind.

Declaring “salvation belongs to the LORD” with actions, along with words, gives evidence that worldly utopia is not the answer.  But when words or actions fall short, we can still point to the One who is perfect since we aren’t trying to prove worldly utopia is possible.  The two lessons from Absalom’s rebellion are reconciled in a life lived with “gentleness and respect.”  Because God does not rely on political systems to work His salvation, tyranny is just another “temporary and provincial authority” subject to the greater authority of God.  We can have a clear conscience based on the sacrifice of Christ and not on worldly success.

A life lived in hope for the eternal kingdom of God is one lived in love for those left behind by every imperfect system of this world, but also one that testifies that all systems, including our own individual wills, are not perfectible by human effort.  Peter wrote that those who hope in God will be slandered, but also that those who live humble lives based on hope in God and not themselves will ultimately be proved right.  Until then, by their example as they follow Christ, they can show the futility of tyranny.  By God’s grace, His people will inherit a real utopia by learning to love those who hope in a false one with gentleness and respect.

Our failure is part of our testimony as we drive toward morning, but “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” – Matthew 6:33

[1] Psalm 3:8
[2] There’s also a third common story: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” (1 Corinthians 15:32) Today, we focus on the other two.

King David Didn’t Let Politics Keep Him Up at Night

Todd R Leave a comment

The U.S. midterm elections are later this year, and some are already considering turning off their social media feeds until its over.  Jesus is not on any ballot for the elections, but this does not mean His people are without hope and comfort.  It also doesn’t mean Christians should ignore it all.  Last fall, I wrote a two–part series partly about not over-reacting to the threats of worldly kingdoms because “He who sits in the heavens laughs.” (Psalm 2:4) When recently reading Psalm 3, which is “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son,” I saw that this Psalm may not have come after Psalm 2 by accident and may also comfort us in the face of political bad news.

Absalom’s Rebellion
The story of King David in the Bible is a very condensed version of his life but does not shy away from David’s serious failures and flaws.  The story of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba is not swept under the rug, and eventually, Absalom’s rebellion against his father David was justified in his mind by those flaws.  Absalom harbored resentment for years after David’s lack of punishment for Absalom’s brother Amnon, who raped his sister Tamar.  One can imagine Absalom thinking about his father: “You’re the king of Israel, so why didn’t you protect Tamar, or at least punish Amnon?  If my sister and I don’t get justice, you don’t deserve to be king!”

David, on the other hand, was quite aware of the limits of being king.  In Psalm 131:1, David wrote:

“O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
            my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
            too great and too marvelous for me.”

Even while writing as divinely selected king of Israel, David knew many things were “too great and too marvelous” even for him.  Instead, David focused his heart on the God-given task before him, which did not include achieving perfection in this world.  That task belonged elsewhere.  Later, Psalm 131 was included in the Psalms of Ascent[1], which served as a liturgy for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for three annual festivals.  In those Psalms are reminders of God’s provision for things the world can’t provide, including salvation for our souls and a way to perfect righteousness.  The pilgrims did not go to Jerusalem to worship the earthly king, but to encounter God, and including Psalm 131 in that liturgy would always be a reminder that our worldly aims should always be rooted in humility.

When Absalom raised several hundred supporters and entered Jerusalem to violently overthrow his father David, “a messenger came to David, saying, ‘The hearts of the men of Israel have gone after Absalom.’ Then David said to all his servants who were with him at Jerusalem, ‘Arise, and let us flee, or else there will be no escape for us from Absalom. Go quickly, lest he overtake us quickly and bring down ruin on us and strike the city with the edge of the sword.’”  (2 Samuel 15:13-14)

David’s Response
After surrendering the throne and fleeing, David wrote Psalm 3, “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son,” which says in full:

“O LORD, how many are my foes!
            Many are rising against me;
many are saying of my soul,
            “There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah

But you, O LORD, are a shield about me,
            my glory, and the lifter of my head.
I cried aloud to the LORD,
            and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah

I lay down and slept;
            I woke again, for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of many thousands of people
            who have set themselves against me all around.

Arise, O LORD!
            Save me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
            you break the teeth of the wicked.

Salvation belongs to the LORD;
            your blessing be on your people! Selah”

Knowing the background of this Psalm and its placement after Psalm 2 make it far more interesting.  David had suffered a massive political defeat, being humiliated and tossed out of Jerusalem by his own son.  Instead of despairing, he turned to God for his salvation because he knew even the king of Israel could not save the people.  He was only a temporary and provincial authority.  Even though God had promised David the throne, God was able to save David, and Israel, without David on the throne.  With the murderous and vengeful Absalom on the throne, was God defeated?  No, instead we have this Psalm as a reminder of God’s presence and provision of salvation in spite of whatever situation we find ourselves in.

David, having cultivated over years an awareness of his own limitations as king of Israel, and the limitless power of God, “lay down and slept,” then “woke again, for the LORD sustained me.”  Surrounded by foes and removed from his throne, David slept soundly!  In contrast, Absalom is shown as one who broods upon every imperfection, plotting ways to force justice as he sees it on others, even if he must dishonor God.  You could say he is driven by the “utopian impulse,” belief in a government that can solve all of our problems and shouldn’t rest until it does.

Democracy and Tyranny
Jesus isn’t on the ballot this fall, but flawed candidates of many types will be.  Some more like David, and some more like Absalom.  A lesson from Psalm 3 is that we should be able to sleep at night in good conscience because no matter the world looks like, God says “I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:6) even when king David was on the run for his life.  The success of God’s plan does not rely on our political success. But a second lesson from the story of Absalom is that a ruler driven by achieving worldly perfection can be the worst kind, even if they seem to have good intentions.

Absalom’s story reminds me of this quote from C.S. Lewis:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under of robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some points be satiated; but those who torment us for their own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to heaven yet at the same time likely to make a Hell of earth.”[2]

How do we reconcile the two lessons?

Coming This Week
This week, I’m hoping to squeeze in a short series of posts on narratives, history, and (gasp!) politics.  I’m very much figuring this out myself every day and learning how to engage without following my own utopian impulse to cut off Malchus’ ear[3] but I also know that waiting for a perfect answer guarantees failure.  This blog is part of that process for me.  This week’s posts will lead up to the next “History Bits” post I have planned for April 9th and give some background on that series.

Hope you’ll join me and let me know what you think.

[1] I’m currently writing about those Psalms in a series, which began here.
[2] From “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.” C.S. Lewis. God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics.  (1970).  P. 292.
[3] See John 18:10

When You’re Stuck in Second Gear – Blessed are the Meek #4

Todd R Leave a comment

Everybody struggles with maintaining hope in tough times, and also with knowing and doing God’s will when what we feel is right seems irrelevant.  Today I’m going to cover a story of how the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah struggled to understand an idea God gave him to share hope with future generations, including us.  The story also loosely follows the outline of the first three Beatitudes and therefore fits in the “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” series.

If misunderstood, the first two Beatitudes alone can leave us in a place where we’re a mess and the world is a terrible place and there’s nothing we can do about any of it.  It can be a place of depression and despair.  Like in the theme song from the TV show Friends[1], we feel like “It hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year.”  Where does it end?  But God promises that there is work for each of us to do: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) The third Beatitude, “Blessed are the meek” promises a way forward – for every person in their own way to do whatever He has prepared for them.

The Gearbox of the Beatitudes
As I wrote in the first post on “Blessed are those who mourn” I believe the Beatitudes are an intentional sequence, and here I’ll describe better what I mean.  The Beatitudes are not a chronological path we move through as we mature.  We don’t learn to be fully poor in spirit before we can get any better at mourning or being meek.  The picture is more like gears in a machine that all need to work together for the machine to function in each specific situation.  Weakness in one place affects the entire machine and Jesus was explaining specific parts of becoming more like Him.  God, as our maker, knows how we function, the reasons behind when we fail to function, and the solution.  With the Beatitudes, Jesus encourages us to use the machine for what it was made for – loving God and neighbor in all times and circumstances.  First, being poor in spirit means that we have emptied ourselves of all illusions that our plans are better than God’s.  Second, mourning the state of ourselves and our world means we are emotionally engaged.  That we care.  In the third Beatitude, being meek is where we begin to engage our will, submitting it to God as our benevolent Lord.  If we don’t, “it’s like you’re always stuck in second gear” from the Friends theme song.

The story today (from Jeremiah 32) finds Jeremiah stuck.  The Jews had him imprisoned for speaking the words of their own God, and while he was there, God told him that he should buy a field.  Not only was Jeremiah in prison, but the field he was asked to buy was in enemy territory.  The Babylonians had already conquered much of Judah and were besieging Jerusalem.  Surrounded by despair, we can easily imagine Jeremiah asking: what good will it do?  He might think cutting off Nebuchadnezzar’s ear would be a better idea[2].

Jeremiah Inspects the Gears
As readers of the book of Jeremiah, we are doubly blessed to know that he did buy the field, but also that he recorded his prayer to God as he tried to overcome his reservations.  The prayer is in chapter 32, verses 17-25, and loosely reviews the first two Beatitudes, while he is having trouble engaging the third gear of meekness.  His mind and emotions are engaged, but his will hesitates.

First, Jeremiah reviews the power, character, and history of God to remind him to rely on His Spirit, not on the poverty of his own spirit in verses 17 to 23:

“‘Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.  You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them, O great and mighty God, whose name is the LORD of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the children of man, rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds. You have shown signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and to this day in Israel and among all mankind, and have made a name for yourself, as at this day.  You brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and outstretched arm, and with great terror.  And you gave them this land, which you swore to their fathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey.  And they entered and took possession of it.”

Second, Jeremiah mourns the consequences of Judah’s disobedience starting in the middle of verse 23 through verse 24:

“But they did not obey your voice or walk in your law. They did nothing of all you commanded them to do. Therefore you have made all this disaster come upon them.  Behold, the siege mounds have come up to the city to take it, and because of sword and famine and pestilence the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting against it. What you spoke has come to pass, and behold, you see it.”

Yet the prayer closes with Jeremiah doubting the significance of his own obedience in verse 25:

“Yet you, O Lord GOD, have said to me, “Buy the field for money and get witnesses”—though the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.”

In a book where the main theme is (temporary and partial) judgment on God’s people who had turned away from Him, there are also moments of (eternal) hope.  Jeremiah bought the field – to show God’s people that their exile would be temporary, and their eternal hope was secure. As the Beatitude says, the meek “shall inherit the earth“!   But there are also two notes of hope for us living centuries later: 1) that doubt is not something only “weak” Christians feel.  Jeremiah felt it too.  And 2) that encouragement matters, even if we see it as a meaningless drop in a turbulent ocean.  If God calls us to do it, it is meaningful.  For a lot of people “It hasn’t been their day, their week, their month, or even their year.”  As I write, the Covid-19 pandemic isn’t quite over and many are struggling to return to “normal,” which isn’t what it used to be.  To quote an old friend of mine in a recent Facebook post: “Encouragement. Everyone needs it, and we hardly ever share it. Don’t wait. Spread the love!”

If you still find yourself stuck, hesitant to shine God’s light in the darkness, go before God and follow the pattern of Jeremiah’s prayer – remember the power of His Spirit when yours is weak and the significance of obedience even in small things.  You might find not only yourself getting out of second gear, but also helping someone else move beyond a rut they’ve found themselves in.

“Let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” – Hebrews 10:25

This post continues a series on the Beatitudes. To start at the beginning, click here.

[1] “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts (audio here)
[2] See the post “He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs (Part 2)” for more on the growth in the Apostle Peter from cutting off Malchus’ ear to teaching “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.” (1 Peter 2:1)

The Benevolent Incarnation – Blessed are the Meek #2

Todd R Leave a comment

“And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day.” – Deuteronomy 6:24
“I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.” – Isaiah 42:8

In part 1 on Jesus’ statement that “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5), I wrote about one of my favorite movies, The Matrix, and how Agent Smith thought mankind stinks and he only wants them to obey his rules so he can be left alone.  Also in that movie, Neo fights to free mankind from rules so they can be “free” even if that freedom does nothing to address that they stink.  Agent Smith was the “malevolent incarnation,” and Neo the “ambivalent incarnation.”

By now you probably anticipated that Jesus is the “benevolent incarnation,” but to show what that means we return to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (last discussed in detail here).  A messenger came to Jesus telling Him that Lazarus was ill, but instead of returning to Bethany immediately to help, Jesus intentionally delayed in coming until Lazarus had been dead for four days.  Jesus knew all along that He would immediately raise Lazarus, but nobody else knew that and He found everyone in mourning.  Martha heard Jesus’ hints but thought Lazarus would have a future “resurrection on the last day.”[1]

Then, one of my favorite verses in the Bible: “Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” – John 11:39

In this one exchange we see the contrast of Jesus to both Agent Smith and to Neo:

  • The odor does not keep Jesus from loving His people.  He does not even comment on it but responds “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”[2]  He did not become human to tell us we stink and how he can’t stand being with us, as Agent Smith did.  He was willing to live among us in order to bring us to a better place, to be with Him.
  • His rule is for the good of Lazarus, Martha, all the witnesses to this event, and everyone hearing the story today.  When Jesus tells Martha to move the stone, He isn’t bullying her or oppressing her, but He is giving her a command.  For Lazarus to come out of the tomb the stone needs to be moved, and Jesus is asking her to participate in a good work.  Likewise, Jesus asks us to do many things, some listed explicitly in the Bible and others spoken to our conscience.  All these rules are there to generate good works, as all His rules are expressions of “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”, and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[3]  Therefore He is being neither malevolent nor ambivalent.  As a benevolent God, Jesus cares about what we do because He knows what is good and bad for us.  Unless we agree with what He knows is good and bad, we are actively rejecting the cure for our odor, the Christ who is “the resurrection and the life.”[4]
  • His rule brings Him glory, and Him alone.  Jesus delayed in coming to raise Lazarus specifically “so that the Son of God may be glorified through it”[5]  The entire situation was set up to deliver the lesson that as our Creator and Lord, He deserves all the credit.

In the opening verses, we see that His rules are “for our good always” (Deuteronomy 6:24), and also that He says, “my glory I give to no other” (Isaiah 42:8).  In my church, prayers often end with “for our good and your glory, Amen.”  I find that it’s often harder to give up the glory than it is to realize which path is the right one.  But as I wrote in the last post of the series, “the value of meekness depends on who or what you are meek towards.”  So giving Him the glory is just awareness that we are meek because He is worthy of our meekness.

Winning the Lottery
I’ll close with one illustration: Would you rather have someone deliver tomorrow’s newspaper to you with the winning lottery numbers, or would you rather work eternally on a system to try and predict them but never win?  Rejecting God’s truth and trying to make our own is like choosing the second option.  I too often would rather get credit for losing than win but not get credit for it, and I suspect I’m not the only one.  Picking the second option has replaced God in the hearts of many, from the inscription across the Pantheon in Rome, a temple to the many gods they claimed to serve (“M AGRIPPA L F COS TERTIVM FECIT”, which loosely means “Marcus Agrippa built this”[6]) to Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way” or Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life.”

If we accept that Jesus is our God, that He is benevolent and that His rule is for our good and His glory, then we win the best prize every time – eternal life in a perfect world.  Every sacrifice we make is worth it, and we end up being the person we were created to be, full of joy and peace and love.  If we choose a malevolent or ambivalent lord to follow, not only do we lose the prize, but we have to take the credit for losing it.  These ‘lords’ often don’t even claim to have the prize, just abstractions like “freedom” or “order.”  In Jesus, the winning lottery ticket has been offered to us all along, but we didn’t want to admit where we got it from, or that its prize was more important than what we thought we wanted.

This post continues a series on the Beatitudes. To start at the beginning, click here, and for the next post click here

[1] John 11:24
[2] John 11:40
[3] From Matthew 22:37 and 39
[4] John 11:25
[5] John 11:4b
[6] When I visited Rome in 2003, I learned that the Catholic Church, when building St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, removed the gold from above the entrance to the Parthenon and used it in the Basilica.  Only exposed, rotten wood planks remain where the gold was removed.  While St. Peter’s drive the Protestant Reformation since it was largely funded with the ‘indulgences’ that launched Martin Luther’s protest, the transfer of this gold was an obvious rebuke to the pantheism of the old Roman Empire.

Malevolent and Ambivalent Incarnations- Blessed are the Meek #1

Todd R Leave a comment

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” – Jeremiah 17:9
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” – John 8:32

Finally, we continue the series on the Beatitudes, the opening statements from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, with Matthew 5:5 – “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”  This one is particularly tough to write about because meekness has such a negative meaning to many people.  Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines meek[1] primarily as what you are not: courageous and strong.  It even references the first Beatitude accidentally, saying that being meek is being “deficient in spirit.”  But as we saw in Matthew 5:3, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  The dictionary gives an example of “a meek child dominated by his brothers.”  A good way to start this series on “Blessed are the meek” comes from one of my favorite movies, but unfortunately one which has little to do with Christian truth.

The Malevolent Incarnation
In The Matrix, humanity has been imprisoned inside a computer simulation by artificially intelligent machines.  A group of rebels are fighting within and without the simulation to free humanity, and the machines created super-powered Agents to track down and destroy rebels within the Matrix, which is what the simulated world is called.  These Agents hate the Matrix, which to humanity is their “real” world.  Hugo Weaving plays Agent Smith, the main Agent in the story, who says:

“I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can’t stand it any longer. It’s the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I’ve somehow been infected by it. It’s — it’s repulsive! Isn’t it? I must get out of here. I must get free…”

Agent Smith is a “Malevolent Incarnation,” an artificial intelligence who took on human form to represent the rulers of the Matrix, and his job was to make sure humanity stayed enslaved, which required brutally suppressing any rebellion.  What Smith couldn’t stand however was “the smell”!  His biggest motivation was to get the rebels in line so he could leave the world behind.  Agent Smith’s objective was to keep mankind imprisoned in a set of rules.

The Ambivalent Incarnation
Set against Agent Smith in the story is Neo, played by Keanu Reeves (“whoa!”), who wants to liberate mankind from rules altogether.  At the end of the movie, he says to the rulers of the Matrix: “I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.”  The contrast of these characters is a thinly veiled expression of atheistic Marxism, which argues that rules (particularly religious ones) exist only as an expression of power, particularly the power of “oppressors” which must be overthrown.

It’s no wonder why meekness has a negative association for many people, if authority figures are portrayed as malevolent oppressors, and our heroes are ambivalent, requiring nothing of us, so we can avoid being meek, pursuing whatever we want (even if it leaves an odor).  It is also undeniable that many rulers throughout history, including religious ones, have been malevolent.  Therefore, freedom good; rules bad.  Simple.

But it’s not that simple.  When Neo destroys Agent Smith in the end, the audience cheers, but if Neo is the hero of a “world without rules”, where does his authority over Agent Smith come from?  Agent Smith should be Exhibit A that letting everyone live as they please leads directly to oppression by the powerful, because this ethic does nothing to cure self-interest.  It only encourages it.  Under Neo’s “world without rules,” who rules Agent Smith?  He rules himself, and as we know, he hates all of mankind.  Also, what if Neo turns into a malevolent oppressor?  His own ethical system does nothing to stop him, and he’s more powerful than everyone else.  In the famous Latin phrase: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Who watches the watchmen?

Wonderful Counselor Redux
Merriam-Webster thinks being meek is undeniably a negative, but in reality, the value of meekness depends on who or what you are meek towards.  Do we often think about or realize who or what is guiding us?  We all submit to something, even if it’s our own desires, but is the thing we’re submitting to malevolent, ambivalent, or benevolent?  In my recent Christmas series, I wrote about Jesus as Wonderful Counselor (here).  I encourage you to read that if you have not already, or even read it again, because we are blessed by God through meekness because He is Wonderful. This series will expand on that post.

This post continues a series on the Beatitudes. To start at the beginning, click here, and for the next post click here

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meek