Sunday's Cool: The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.

You may have heard that "meek" means "strength under control." You heard wrong.

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Something I have very unsuccessfully tried to do with this Substack is make it not about me. Today, that means not making it entirely about some Twitter drama that I got caught up in over the weekend. Twitter drama is the most boring and tacky kind of drama there is, and I like to think my subscribers are cultured folks. If you are curious, you can check it out here and pick a side. Not exactly my first rodeo, but the pile-on does kind of suck and I appreciate everyone who reached out to make sure I was okay. 

But for the purpose of this specific post, all you really need to know is that I made a reference to Jesus’ line that the meek are blessed because they will inherit the earth. This led to a deluge of several dozen blue checked accounts correcting me, telling me that I need to read the Bible for once or at least stop pretending to be a Christian, and explaining what meek actually means in the Greek. 

If you’ve spent any time in evangelical church, you’ve probably heard about it. The idea is that while our english word “meek” means being a weak, tame pushover, the Greek definition that Jesus used is way cooler. The word he used is praus, and it’s super badass. It means “strength under control” or something like that. As one website actually called “Praus” puts it: 

“The word praus comes from ancient military training. The Greek army would find the wildest horses in the mountains and bring them in. After months of training, they sorted the horses into categories: some were discarded, others were put into ordinary duty. The fewest of all graduated and were put into service. When a horse passed the conditioning required for service, its state was described as praus.”

See what I mean? In this framework, what Jesus was actually telling us was to be very tough and cool, like war horses. In fact, it’s a military word! This is great news for the sort of Christian Man we talk about a lot on this Substack — the guy who wants Christianity to be an excuse to be a tough, cool guy. 

Unfortunately, Christianity doesn’t easily lend itself to this enterprise, and the Beatitudes are a particular problem for agro Christian men. You can figure some of this out just from the context of the verse itself. In Matthew 5, Jesus is telling his audience that — contrary to what they may have heard — it is not the rich, the happy, the well-fed, or the violent who are blessed. Instead, in the Kingdom of Heaven, the poor, the depressed, the hungry and, yes, the meek are the blessed ones. 

If meek really is the cool, Roman military word these guys want it to be, then it doesn’t fit the structure of Jesus’ teaching here. Nobody living under Roman rule would need to be told that the occupying force would inherit the earth. From their perspective, Rome had already done so. But in the Beatitudes, Jesus is flipping the paradigm. Meek — like the words “poor” and “mourn” — would be something his audience didn’t associate with being blessed. And here this crazy Jesus guy is telling them that, actually, meekness is the ticket to greatness. 

But it’s not just common sense that can correct our idea of what Jesus meant by meekness. I really appreciated this article by Australian theologian Marg Mowczko, who knows more about Greek than me. She did a lot of research on the ancient historical uses of praus and found no evidence of it being any sort of military word. It seems that the idea that meek means being “tame but in, like, a cool way” is another old pastor’s tale. 

You should really read her whole article but here’s a quick summary. Athenian military leader, historian, and philosopher Xenophon lived several centuries before Jesus, and while he did use praus to describe soldiers taming horses, he uses the same word to describe sheepdogs and even fish. He used the word “praun” almost entirely in relation to animals. For him praus means something like “gentle” or “soothed.” Around the same time, Aristotle also used the same word to describe men, though in a derogatory way. 

The word’s meaning may have changed between the time of Xenophon and Jesus, since Josephus and Maccabees used the word in a positive sense. Josephus, in particular, used praus to describe the dignity of oppressed people in the face of their oppressors.  As Mowczko concludes: 

…there is no implicit sense of strength in the word praus. And, unlike what the “meek warhorses” blog posts say, Xenophon does not indicate that praus has a military origin or military association any more than it has a farming origin or association (cf. Econ. 15.4). Moreover, there is no hint of either association in how the New Testament authors use prau– words.

Prau– words are not uncommon in ancient Greek. They typically refer to a gentle, mild, or regulated temper, and in the context of animals, including horses, praus typically means “tame.”[19] For Christians, the trait of meekness, like the traits of humility and submissiveness, are positive virtues. And while self-restraint may well be required on occasion, these three traits, plus a readiness to forgive, are essentially about putting aside or relinquishing power in relationships. Praus is not about exerting strength or maintaining power in relationships.

Let me tell you, staying meek in the face of a Twitter pile-on isn’t easy. I mostly dodged the temptation to get snippy and snarky on Twitter about the definition of “meek” but there were some close calls and the irony isn’t lost on me.

I think most of us go to social media for some sort of sense of approval or validation, and there are several ways you can go about getting it. But meekness just really does not get you anything on any social media platform. Reading the Gospels now, it also appears to be one of the things that drove people crazy about Jesus. The guy passed up a lot of opportunities to dunk on his critics, up to and including the moment of his death. 

So, yeah, if you’re looking for validation around here, meekness won’t get you far. None of the Beatitudes will. If you want to be like a war horse, that’s your prerogative, but that’s not anything the Bible is asking you to do. As a general rule of thumb, Jesus’ call tends to be away from the things that would gratify your ego and out into the wilderness, where you are at your weakest. Because as any kid in Sunday School can tell you: We are weak, but he is strong.

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• I woke up to news about another shooting in Texas. There is so much grief and horror in the story that I hardly know what to say. One small part of the whole nightmare is how much nothing ever changes, which means there’s rarely anything new to say about it other than to lament our latest sacrifices to our god of violence.

• I’ve been busy this week with other writing projects and wasn’t able to write about Jordan Neely, the young homeless man who was killed on the Subway. Fortunately, Albert Burneko said it all beautifully.

• There seems to be some confusion out there so just in case anyone asks, I haven’t been employed at Relevant for about six months now and haven’t written for them at all in that time!