Editorial February 19, 1927 Issue

Silencing Self-Justification

Ella W. Hoag

Emerson was wise enough to write of one who was truly humble, "If he is insulted, he can be insulted; all his affair is not to insult." Emerson, however, did not give the definite rule whereby one may gain that mental state of equanimity in which he may remain all undisturbed whatever may be the temptation to strike back against misjudgment and wrong, whatever may be the human inclination to employ self-justification as a weapon to deliver one's self from the condemnation of one's neighbor.

Jesus understood and demonstrated that mighty humility which could remain silent in the presence of the unjust judge. There is no record of his ever resorting to self-justification to establish his righteousness in the thought of either friend or foe. On the contrary, Peter speaks of him as one "who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously." Here, then, was the secret of Jesus' humility and his consequent power to refuse to descend to the mistaken method of self-justification: he "committed himself to him that judgeth righteously"! He certainly knew that God is the alone perfectly righteous judge.

How surely Jesus must have discerned that there could be no possible satisfaction in attempting to convince anyone of his righteousness from the basis of a human sense of self! How clearly he must have seen that nothing could be gained by appealing for justification to a consciousness blinded by misjudgment! A mental sense thus clouded would not be ready to accept any testimony which one might offer, whether it were true or false, since that which misjudges inevitably shuts itself out from right seeing; indeed, it blinds itself to a just estimate of both truth and error.

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