Having My Way

3

THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH

Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

—THOREAU

I believe the Third Beatitude has a profound message, perhaps more significant in our time than ever before. Indeed, it may well hold the key to the survival of the human race. If this is so, it behooves us to seek its meaning and to become worthy of its promise.

Seek its meaning? Cannot people as literate as most Americans read plain English? The words, yes; the precise meaning of the ideas those words symbolize, no. Perfect communication presupposes the perfect sayer and the perfect hearer. Which of us is able to say exactly what he means? And what individual accurately hears or reads another’s inexactitudes? Approximations at best, even when discoursing in a common language!

Who are “the meek”? Surely not the Casper Milquetoasts—“timid, shrinking, apologetic” persons. It doesn’t make sense to suggest that the earth be turned over to them. Yet, this is the image “the meek” first brings to the mind of an English-speaking American. And what is meant by “inherit the earth”? Obviously, it does not mean to “. . . receive (property) by the laws of inheritance.” That “the meek shall inherit the earth” must mean far more than it seems. What, pray tell, can it be!

Even a linguistic layman, if he admits the difficulty of communicating in his own language, cannot help but grasp the enormously greater problem in deducing the precise meaning from other languages. There are some simple, concrete words such as yes, ja, si, oui, da; but abstract or idea words, more often than not, have no exact equivalent in other languages.

Take the word meek. Originally, it was in Aramaic: inwethān. Translated to Greek, it became praos. According to the late Gerald Heard,

There seems little doubt that praos stands for a word the meaning of which is opposed to “arrogant,” “domineering,” “overbearing,” “aggressive,” “bellicose.”

The French translated the Greek praos to debonair. “That,” writes Heard, “is a startling, gay contrast [to meek]. Instead of the motto being ‘Please don’t kick me,’ we find ‘Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.’”

After a careful analysis of the word usage in the period before and during the time of the King James translation, the scholarly Gerald Heard concludes that the word “meek” implied “a wonderful, inherent, teachability.”1 In a word, the Third Beatitude should read, “Blessed are the teachable for they shall inherit the earth.” To my way of thinking, this is wisdom of the highest order.

So, who are the teachable? Today, in the most advanced countries, knowledge—technical, scientific, and the like—is immeasurably greater than, say, twelve decades ago. A few examples:

• Back then we could deliver the human voice at the speed of sound and perhaps a distance of 50 yards. Now? At the speed of light and not only around this earth but far into outer space!

• Human beings then could be delivered at the speed a horse could run. Presently? Around the world in a few hours—even to the moon in a few days!

• My grandfather could bathe in rivers or pools or in rainwater caught in a barrel or cistern or water pumped from a household well. Today? Millions of homes have hot and cold running water often piped from miles away.

• Food? It is no longer confined to what could be raised at home. I enjoy spinach in New York picked the day before in California. The grocery store of my boyhood had no more items than I could rattle off in my head. The store at which I shop today has 10,000 items.

One could go on and on with examples of this miraculous burst of knowledge. In no department of life is the miracle more pronounced than in the harnessing of electrical energy. So dependent have we become on power from this source that a return to twelve decades ago would mean utter collapse. Hardly anyone doubts that this remarkable economic asset is of our own hands. Yet, who on earth can define electricity or knows what it is?

What is all of this knowledge doing to modern man? How does it affect his outlook and his attitudes? The fact that we know how to harness the unknown leads far too many people in today’s world to embrace the little god syndrome, convinced that there is no Source above the finite human mind. Infinite though it be, few there are who recognize it. In a recent speech, I repeated the line, “Only God can make a tree.” A graduate student sharply responded, “Until now!”

Such arrogance is the very opposite of inwethān which the Greeks translated to praos. We witness the know-it-alls! Not only are they not teachable but, far worse, they are the authors of authoritarianism and wars. A growing knowledge of how to harness the Unknown, unless scrupulously weighed and put in place, leads to a hopeless separation from the Infinite Unknown—man and Source divorced. This, I suggest, must lead to civil disaster.

So, how are we to describe the teachable, the inwethān, the praos, the debonair, the ones who will “inherit the earth”?

The idea Gerald Heard deduced from debonair—“Please let me know what I can do for you”—is not to be overlooked. This comes close to the Golden Rule, and the economics of voluntary exchanges. When I extend kindness and thoughtfulness to you, that is what you will extend to me; likewise when I render services to you in exchange for goods of yours. While such reciprocal relations appear contrary to natural instincts, such mutuality is possible and can be unbelievably rewarding. To prove it, try it!

The teachable are those who have taken the first step in wisdom: acknowledging mystery, they have emptied themselves of know-it-all-ness; humility is their hallmark, wanting-to-know-it-ness their ambition. Bear in mind that no person is educable on any subject prior to a state of inquisitiveness, that is, until his spirit of inquiry is aroused. The teachable are those who are forever probing, who recognize that our earthly gifts are not exclusively of our own hands; they sense that Infinite Something over and beyond their own minds. As seedlings, their roots go down but their shoots shaft toward the heavens. It is the teachable, and they alone, who will “inherit the earth.”

What is the meaning of “earth” in this context? In my view, it has nothing to do with acres of diamonds, soil, rock. Rather, it relates to man’s earthly potentialities: the evolution or emergence of individual faculties, a growth or development of awareness, perception, consciousness.

Stated another way, those who have so gained a control of themselves as to allow the search for Truth to take charge of their lives, are the ones who have the capacity to live their earthly lives to the full—to whom the real treasures of earth belong.

To me the Third Beatitude means simply: The teachable shall be graced with a realization of their earthly potentialities. Your or my understanding of and adherence to this wisdom may not “save” the human race but it is the key to one’s own salvation—the only commission you and I have been given.

• 1See “The New Science and The New Faith” by Dr. Donald Hatch Andrews, The Freeman, April 1961.