On the fast track, meekness isn't one of the qualifications you hear a lot about these days. Interviews for corporate executive and government positions don't usually begin with questions designed to elicit an applicant's degree of meekness.

On the other hand, "gutsiness" and self-assertion, of a certain kind, are likely to be prized. Freewheeling subordination of subordinates, by both men and women, appears to be in style. According to a recent New York Times piece, "whistle-blowers" who don't go along have sometimes been subjected to subtle, and not so subtle, harassment, including being remanded to a psychiatrist. ^{The New York Times, August 6, 1989.}

The familiar Christmas tale of the domineering Scrooge and the long-suffering Bob Cratchit isn't just a well-told story. Dickens comes close to the heart of many people's life experience. It may be part of the reason why so many have such capacity to enjoy the classic each time the season comes around.

But for the very reason that meekness seems to be out of style we probably need to work all the harder to dig out the true meaning of the word and to comprehend its importance in our lives.

Christ Jesus teaches, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." ^{Matt. 5:5.} Yet Jesus, the man who threw the money-changers out of the temple, certainly wasn't advocating lack of spirit or backbone, which is the way meekness tends to be perceived. Patience and spiritual assurance, lack of resentment in the face of provocation and attack, are far closer to the meanings we're looking for.

We know that Jesus' friend and follower, Peter, drew his sword in the garden of Gethsemane and cut off one of the ears of the servant of the high priest when the priest and his minions came to take the Master away. But Jesus chastised Peter, and he healed the servant's ear. So who was actually strong—Peter in his anger and aggressiveness or Jesus in his meekness?

The Twentieth Century Bible Commentary gives a wonderfully direct response: "Meekness is a mark not of weakness but of strength. The humble servant of God, knowing his place in God's world to be a sure one, has no need for the aggressive self-assertion which is the sign of the upstart and the nouveau riche." ^{G. Henton Davies, Alan Richardson, Charles L. Wallis, The Twentieth Century Bible Commentary (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1955), p. 385 .}

We begin to realize that meekness isn't a human attitude we artificially put on and force ourselves to adopt in order to get a spiritual reward. It is a quality that comes naturally in serving God. Genuine meekness is what happens. It is a sign of a life being lived in relationship to God. As we are assured of God's strength and justice, we have more strength. We can't help having less fear and less angry self-assertion.

In an article titled "Significant Questions," which explores some of the practical ramifications of meekness, or the lack of it, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, asks, "Who shall inherit the earth?" She answers, "The meek, who sit at the feet of Truth, bathing the human understanding with tears of repentance and washing it clean from the taints of self-righteousness, hypocrisy, envy,—they shall inherit the earth, for 'wisdom is justified of her children.'" ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 228.}

Isn't the underlying lesson of Jesus' words that the human understanding simply doesn't understand the all-important spiritual fact. We are, in reality, God's expression; we are not self-directed achievers and material beings. We need to stop, sit down, and meekly get on with learning about this relationship to God. There is a vast amount to learn about the sheer practical reality of God's governing of man and creation.

This 180-degree change of orientation obviously takes some humility. It is a startling reverse of direction from the human mortal mind's usual approach. But as we make the change, we begin to get a remarkably different view of life. Spiritual meekness can't help apprehending God's presence and so recognizing the folly of trying to take all into one's own hands. This is no passive, fatalistic attitude but is rather an active, growing realization that we are in fact God's direct reflection, His spiritual image and likeness.

With meekness we listen more to God and make less of an effort to tell Him about what is wrong. It is fruitless, of course, to struggle to acquaint God with what's wrong when He knows so well that all is right.

Meekness demands great moral courage and strength of character—more courage and strength, not less. It involves discipline of the self that so much wants to defend itself, preserve itself, advance itself. This better understanding of God's spiritual creation—a creation that is present and tangible to our increasing love and humility and spirituality—stabilizes and calms. We discover that God maintains spiritual man's individuality and that we experience good, not because we create it but because God is the giver of infinite good.

Most of us pray quite sincerely each time we pray the Lord's Prayer "Thy will be done ...," but we may not realize to what an extraordinary degree human will keeps getting in the way of responsiveness to God. Meekness, the opposite of a driving human will, enables us to obey God—to escape from our own parochial habits and patterns of thought and to live more with the dimensions of divine reality or what Christian Science terms the Science of being.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy asks a question related to meekness: "A higher and more practical Christianity, demonstrating justice and meeting the needs of mortals in sickness and in health, stands at the door of this age, knocking for admission. Will you open or close the door upon this angel visitant, who cometh in the quiet of meekness, as he came of old to the patriarch at noonday?" ^{Science and Health, p. 224.}

The lines of the Christmas hymn "O little town of Bethlehem," which include the title of this editorial, remind us, "Where meekness will receive him, still / The dear Christ enters in." ^{Christian Science Hymnal, No. 222.} With the coming of Christ the dark, mortal sense of having to subdue others and gather everything unto oneself dissolves in the understanding that we have already been given everything by God and what we have been given belongs to all. It can feel quite suddenly like light shining, as though we are inheriting the earth.

Allison W. Phinney, Jr.