Norman Grubb: What Meekness Truly Means
Meekness unadulterated carries with it crucifixion. The truly meek can claim no rights, keep no rigid hold on earthly possessions. Not for them is recourse to the law courts or police. Yet even now the meek inherit the earth. Many a missionary has found the almightiness of meekness sometimes a woman alone, defenseless, possessionless among savages whom a government cannot subdue, yet finds that in a few years those raw barbarians are her devoted servants.
Thus polygamy, allowed in Old Testament days, nowhere condemned in downright terms in the New Testament, became universally recognized as a sin and outlawed. Slavery has followed. The old imperialism, the subjugation of one race for the benefit of another, has in our generation begun to be recognized as immoral and un Christian, to be followed soon by the full realization that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men,” and that therefore all national barriers producing national prejudices, pride, enmities, selfishness are equally un-Christian.
Religious persecution, when compared to the attitude of the Church of the Middle Ages, is now coming under universal condemnation. Inequality of privilege, class distinctions, unequal distribution of wealth, are now actively disturbing the conscience of mankind. Equally the cry is going up for the outlawing of war as a method for the settlement of national differences.
In the van of this “Pacifist” movement, so far as war is concerned, come once again the “extremists,” but already there are the thousands of today in place of the mere handful in the Great War twenty years ago, who feel it un Christian to use weapons of destruction, defensive as well as offensive. Such “conscientiously object” to taking part in war. So few were they in 1914 and so fanatical in the eyes of their fellow Christians, that even in “Christian” England they were imprisoned and treated as criminals. Today in this 1939 war their viewpoint carries sufficient weight in Britain for tribunals to be set up to examine each case and exempt the sincere, although in most other countries the penalty for “pacifism” is still the broad arrow.
To our mind their stand for total meekness as a principle of the kingdom of God is in conformity with the full stature of Christ. All through Christian history enlightened groups have held fast to it. They have been and still are the forerunners and pioneers of the new age which will only dawn in fullness when our Founder and first Pioneer Himself appears to reign on earth. Meanwhile, it is “given” to some to see and follow thus literally in their Master’s footsteps, and to them it is also given to bear witness to their conviction before the world.