Meekness

Meekness is an attribute of human nature and behavior. It has been defined several ways: righteous, humble, teachable, and patient under suffering, long suffering^[1] willing to follow gospel teachings; an attribute of a true disciple.^[2][3]

Meekness has been contrasted with humility as referring to behaviour towards others, where humbleness refers to an attitude towards oneself^[4] - meekness meaning restraining one's own power,^[5] so as to allow room for others.^[6]

Christianity

• The Israelite Apostle Paul gave an example of meek behavior when writing to Timothy: "The servant of the Lord must be gentle, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves." (2 Tim. 2:24–25)
• Sir Thomas Browne explained: "Meekness takes injuries like pills, not chewing, but swallowing them down." This indicates that meekness allows a person to overlook or forgive perceived insults or offenses.^[7]
• The meek feature in the Beatitudes, and were linked thereby to the classical virtue of magnanimity by Aquinas.^[8]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints/Mormonism

• A meek behavior is presented as being opposite to "the natural man" (i.e. one who acts strictly according to desires of the body): 'Put off the natural man and become meek.' (Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3:19), and in 3 Nephi 12:5 when Jesus Christ appears to the people of ancient america after his Ascension to Heaven and teaches them the beatitudes.

Criticism

• Beethoven rejected meekness and equality in favor of cultural elitism: “Power is the moral principle of those who excel others”.^[9]
• Nietzsche rejected Christian meekness as part of a parasitic revolt by the low against the lofty, the manly, and the high.^[10]

Other traditions

• Buddhism, like Christianity, strongly values meekness^[11] - the Buddha himself (in an earlier life) featuring as the 'Preacher of Meekness' who patiently had his limbs lopped off by a jealous king without complaining.^[12]
• Taoism valorized the qualities of submission and non-contention.^[13]
• Book of Numbers chapter 12 verse 3: Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.

Animal analogues

• The classical Greek word used to translate meekness was that for a horse that had been tamed and bridled.^[14]
• The buffalo was to the Buddhists a lesson in meekness.^[15]

Literary examples

• Meekness is used to characterise the nature of Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.^[16]
• The Heroine of Possession: A Romance judges the hero as "a gentle and unthreatening being. Meek, she thought drowsily, turning out the light. Meek."^[17]

See also

References