Sabbath Devotional: The Meek Shall Inherit

A woman I respect was recently interviewed by a journalist I also respect about the insufficiency of peacemaking as an approach to the problems of today. We need toughness in order to make any real progress on issues that matter, the journalist argued, and peacemaking is necessarily diminutive, accommodating, and weak. Listening to the exchange as a peaceful root director, I bristled. Listening as a human, I was sympathetic.

The public, political, and rhetorical realms all feel profoundly Darwinian to me. It's brutal out there. Eat or be eaten. Never show a soft underbelly. Hone your sound bites. Ready your attacks.

It is very easy to doubt the efficacy of peace and gentleness in a world that offers little space or reward for either.

I was able to see Shakespeare's "As You Like It" this week. It's a strange play with more plot than I can replicate in this space, but I'll give you the highlights. It begins with a violent insurrection that leads to the ousting of a good and just Duke by his oppressive brother. Within the next few scenes, there is an attempt to burn someone alive in their home, a rigged and nearly fatal wrestling match, and an uncle who unceremoniously exiles his niece to an inhospitable forest without friends or food. End of Act I. Classic start to a good comedy.

What follows is so entirely unlikely that Shakespeare had to include a character whose only purpose is to offer pessimistic reflections of the plot in order to balance the stage. The banished niece finds both romance and her father and further helps facilitate peace between the brothers featured in the arson plot. The usurping Duke goes into the woods to finally dispatch his brother but instead stumbles upon a religious man and is converted. Almost every major and minor character ends married. Harmony and order are restored to the kingdom not by any of the scheming machinations featured at the start of the play, but by gentleness, optimism, relationship and community building, and good cheer.

And it's all completely unlikely, as the pessimist reminds us throughout. None of this should have worked. There is more tragedy represented in the stands of the theater than the stage could possibly bear to hold. So, we know enough of the world to know it is not like this. 

And yet, the Duke's observation rings true: Your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to gentleness.

And yet, I find myself teary and nodding at the singing and hoping and embracing end of the play, convinced that an ending such as this could be true, and right, and possible.

And yet, knowing how unlikely this resolution is, and knowing also all of it could still fall apart, the pessimist nevertheless concludes, "Proceed, proceed. We’ll begin these rites, As we do trust they’ll end, in true delights."

Jesus has promised that the earth is not for the conniving or oppressive, but that the meek shall inherit. That seems an extremely dubious ending to what has been a rather unjust and bloodstained Act I, II, III, and IV. And yet, I am striving to take Jesus at his word. 

That is not blindness, or weakness, or rose-colored optimism, or bad strategy. Rather it requires strength and courage to look at a world that is still so far from what I wish it was, and to love it anyway. 

It takes wisdom purchased by experience to hold that gentleness persuades better than force gentles.

And it demands an unrelenting effort to create the earth we wish to inherit every day. And what sort of an earth will it be?

For myself, I want to inherit a world that is gentle, where the meek reign and peace abounds. If it is not gentle, I don't want it. And I firmly believe the path to gentleness is uphill, perhaps, but it is paved in gentleness.

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Sarah Perkins is the peaceful root director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.