A Mouth with Tongues

Nobody has ever been more aware of their own mortality - I think - than a boy born with the name Yehoshuah. A man with a body that some have considered to be more divine than biological, a man who's name means "G_d rescues", interestingly enough was stricken with one of the most human traits in the universe; the understanding that he would one day die and the desire to use actions and words as a way to transmogrify his body from something physical into a pure, insoluble abstraction that would make his short life not only extend through the full figure eight of infinity but also matter the whole way around. Not the meekest aspiration, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
So, given this dude's bleak foreknowledge, is it any wonder that he might try to squeeze the full etymological and cultural values out of every word he spoke, like he was trying to press an olive to fill an entire jar? No. Of course not. He wasn't the first, last or only Rabi to have ever done it. It's called Remez; the art of intentful, biblical inference.
Before the postmodern vogue of political correctness and the conscious effort to say the right thing because the sayer is somehow responsible for how the saying is interpreted, even and especially should that interpretation be a misinterpretation, there were people - mostly Rabis and unwed, teenage mothers - who took strong notice of every way that what they said could be interpreted for more reasons than sociological insecurities and an esoteric sense of political guilt. These Rabis, zealots and reverse carpet baggers talked this way because they wanted any interpretation of what they said to mean something.

Yehoshuah died and became better known as Jesus, but I like to call him by his rightful birth name rather than calling him by a word people gasp or shout when somebody cuts them off and hits their brakes on the expressway. I mean, G_d did kind-of pick the name. But, anyway, before he died and became "The Dashboard Figurine Formerly Known as Yehoshuah" he was still Yehoshuah (Yehoshua) and he said a lot of things to a lot of people, especially if you consider the fact that he was saying a lot of things inside of those things that he said to a lot of people. Yehoshuah employed remez like it was his job or something . . . well, it kind of was, but that's beside the point I'm trying to make, here.

Over time, a lot of what Yehoshuah said has been forgotten. Not because it wasn't written down, but because it's lost its cultural context (which is a damn shame, but now is not the time or place to get nostalgic . . . get it?). When he said "Turn the other cheek, as recorded in Matthew 5:39 and referenced in Luke 6:29, he meant what he said. Yes, of course, a slap isn't going to threaten your life, so take it like a man. No need to get defensive and slap him back - then you might need to actually defend yourself. But he also meant it as a means of empowerment to the downtrodden people he spoke to. A backhanded slap, in the Roman empire, was a means of belittling somebody. If a poor person was in the way of a rich, white Roman, they would get slapped. If a poor person spoke to a rich person without permission, they would get slapped. Like a bitch holding out on their pimp, they would get smacked in the face. The back of the hand was the belittling factor in the slap. You eat with your palm, you caress the skin of your lover with it, you hold your children with it. You don't touch something lower than you with the palm of your hand. So, if you offered the other cheek, it was a subversive way to say, "I dare you to do it again, but if you do it, you're going to have no choice but to acknowledge me as your equal." Trust me, before the end of the Victorian era, that was a big deal.
The phrase "Walk a mile in another man's shoes" is a misstatement of the original "Walk another mile in a man's shoes." which was said by Messianic Rabis, in the early church, because it was a Centurion's right to commandeer any citizen to carry their goods, armor, or whatever else their trained muscles were too weak to carry. The stipulation of this right was that they could use it but not take advantage of it. Apparently, the main provision of this stipulation was that you were only allowed to commandeer a citizen for one mile. If you were caught with a tired citizen who'd been carrying your items longer than that, you would lose your job. The suggestion of walking another mile was a way of saying, "Yeah, the system sucks, but you can kill it with kindness. Get a cop fired and that's one less jerk to make you his slave for 10 blocks."

Enter, now, my offering; free of the arguable semantics of cultural subtext and all that stuff you might not be in the mood to take without an archaeological grain of salt:

Psalm 37:11/Matthew 5:5 - The Meek Will Inherit

In Psalm, G_d meant what he said the way it's traditionally interpreted, in relation to that specific verse (not the beatitudes). David was telling people not to spend their time bemoaning evil people for their success, because the schemes of evil people will slow them down in the end. He was just telling people to be patient.
In Matthew, however, Yehoshuah was talking to people about the gifts people would receive if they were willing to accept the abstract nature of a gift that happened to be metaphysical. But, as always, I think he was talking about some other things, too. Especially, when he borrows from the Psalms' passage about meekness.
Our picture of the meek is a varied image. We see gentleness, kindness and, sometimes, spinelessness. I don't think this is unique to modern times. I think it's pretty universal, historically.
When Yehoshuah said "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." I believe he was saying a couple of different things. The first being obvious; don't be boastful. If you're boastful, people won't want to give you anything. Not only because they probably detest you and your bastard attitude but also because they might think you already have it.
I, however, also feel that he was being a little sarcastic to all the people in the crowd who may have been spending their lives using legalism as an excuse for inaction. Keep in mind that Yehoshuah was a Jewish Rabi and most of his sermons were to and for Jewish audiences. Even when he was going out of his way to speak to Goyim, the fact is inescapable that the man was a celebrity Rabi and surely had a following. One of Yehoshuah's biggest issues with the Hebrew church at the time was the legalism, pride and lack of Maccabeean backbone. I think that, for these people, Yehoshuah was being decidedly sarcastic. He wasn't unknown to have a sarcastic sense of humor. Take into account "Render unto Cesar what is Cesar's" passage for example. The guy is hilarious and if you don't get it, I'm sorry. It would take a whole other excruciatingly long blog entry to explain the joke - besides, a joke isn't funny anymore when you have to explain it, anyway.
The meek will have to wait until the world is dead to get anything. Just like a trust fund child waiting for the oncologist to come back with grim results on that blood test, they have to wait until the end to get a damn thing. The apocalypse might not leave them much, but they are promised the gift of a new world after it, in Revelations. So, yeah, bless you for waiting. You have a real gift for patience.
Am I being ridiculous? No.
Maybe.
Probably.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
You tell me.
I just know that I had a totally irrational fear of success until lately. Even though that fear felt justified, I was still wrong. I was stealing control of my gifts from the god who gave them to me. I was using humility and strange, little, well-meaning excuses to make my inaction and resulting lack of success seem important and perfectly fine. And . . . I'm not telling you to kill, rape or steal here, but nobody put food on the table with meekness. From vegetables to meat, we kill to survive and that's pretty grim. Unless you're waiting for your food to fall off of the branch, but you'll be lucky if the birds, squirrels and other food don't get it first.
Am I saying it's a rat race? No. Am I saying I'm seriously considering Social Darwinism? No. What I'm saying is that I haven't observed a single sin that wasn't a mere perversion of the instincts G_d gave us to survive. When we ate from the tree of knowledge, we didn't become introduced to anything new inside of us, we just figured out that we could use these instincts in destructive ways.
We're all wired for survival because, for some crazy reason I haven't quite figured out, G_d wants us to survive. because (S)He loves us. And sometimes that means trying harder than you want to. Sometimes that means prioritizing your success over your sympathy for somebody's failure. Sometimes that means eliminating a threat to preserve life, even if it seems backwards to do so. Pacifism never got anybody anything except an Oscar and even that took the death of the real-life main character to make it happen. A mother who wouldn't kill for her child is no mother at all and a person who won't make sacrifices for their dreams has forsaken their gifts.