Merciful Meekness – Becoming a Spiritually Integrated Person

by Kerry Walters Paulist Press 2004, ISBN 0809141191 rrp $24.95, pp 137

Reviewed by Maggie Helass

This book attempts to make sense of some of the anomalies between traditional Christian spirituality and the philosophical context of western society today. The strain of living suspended between these differing – often antagonistic – world views leaves little energy left over for many of us to get on with our Christian vocation.

Kerry Walters tackles this dissonance and confusion between one’s spiritual life and the public environment with the bracing remark that Christ came to shake things up, not hand out canned platitudes. “We Christians should follow his example... Otherwise we risk becoming whited condominiums.”

He uses Friedrich Nietzsche’s savage vivisection of the Christian values of meekness and mercy to demonstrate how the 20^th Century world view undermined traditional spiritual teachings of the Church.

We dwell in a climate whose core values and beliefs are Nietzschean,Walters says, arguing that this German philosopher was possibly the most articulate prophet of the age.

Nietzsche taught that meekness and mercy are morally repugnant as well as being incompatible; that they are not what they seem – meekness characterised by timidity and spineless indecisiveness; mercy by dominion and manipulation.

Private contempt for meekness went public in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, writes Walters.

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By nature, an unrestrained feral will to power enslaves, so that the unmeek person becomes a onscript in the service of megalomania and that most ferocious of all predators – self-will. This saga ends in the horror of spiritual destitution – hopeless entrapment in the labyrinth of the beast.

The only way out of servitude is to acknowledge powerlessness and give up the struggle. This is not cowardice but a clear-headed and honest confession
of our own limitations – poverty tames the beast.

Paul recognised such powerlessness and relinquishment of self-control in the Crucifixion. “We know that our old self was crucified with Christ....” Rom 6.6. He discovered that God’s power is made perfect in weakness – in dependence, in the loss of arrogance. We may suffer, and we will die. But we cannot perish.

Mercy is identified by Nietzsche with pity which,
he says, disrupts the natural course of evolution – the
weak should be allowed to perish.

Pity observes the suffering but does not recognise the person – an “object of pity”. William James, the American philosopher called this the “sentimentalist fallacy” – professing loving concern for the welfare of
abstract “humanity”, while all the time aloofly disregarding the well-being of individual humans.

There is a difference between the philological
roots of the words for mercy in Greek and in Hebrew – the former describing a passive emotional response and the latter a way of being.

Recognition of shared personhood prepares the way for compassion. Henri Nouwen calls this “voluntary displacement”, and it involves letting go of judgementalism – “it’s utterly unimportant whether the suffering arises from foolish or even sinful choices”

Christ’s clear instruction in the Beatitudes was to cultivate both meekness and mercy. Although the qualities of each virtue may require a different attitude, a balanced person had what the Medievals called integritas – “a stable but creatively adaptable harmonisation of beliefs and motivations, intuitions and concepts, intentions and actions”.

Some of us are more naturally inclined to meekness, others to mercy, but full personhood requires a creative synthesis.

Walters investigates Nietzsche’s notorious distinction between master and slave. The “blond beast” embraces freedom and passion, but the slave clings to the herd and a staid, unruffled existence. In Nietzsche’s view the Christian god epitomises weakness – meek persons have, in our common parlance, the lowly status of mice.

Ruthless self-examination is one of Walters’ tools for examining Nietzsche’s premises. He finds that although we may try to segregate our lives into airtight secular and churchy compartments, we never really succeed. Deep-seated fidelity to the will to power inevitably expresses itself in all arenas of existence.

This person has tamed the savage beast within

We dwell in an internal environment of moods, emotions, ideas and temperament which can be harshly inhospitable. In this environment, the self-deception of rationalisation can re-label and redefine our own failings – a tendency Nietzsche called “transvaluation”. Here, intolerance becomes zeal; pharisaic nit-picking masquerades as fidelity to the law.

Our task however, is to restore congruity between outer and inner worlds – and this begins with meekness.

Jesus himself (the Word) displayed remarkable self-knowledge.Through him we learn that meekness is a spiritual strength that bestows clarity on who we really are... warts an’ all.

The meek person has a poverty replete with riches unimagined by Nietzschean masters or power-hungry go-getters, because this person has tamed the savage beast within.

A wild beast can’t tame its own nature, as Paul discovered:“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand...”

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Walters engages the imagery of the lion and the lamb to work with Nietzsche’s premise of the incompatibility of meekness and mercy. Meekness is the lamb who is most comfortable in the green pastures of quiet gentleness and withdrawn contemplation.

Mercy is the roaring lion that robustly engages with the world. The difference between these two virtues is marked by freedom from in the case of meekness; freedom to in the case of mercy. This precipitates a discussion of the nature of freedom – characterised
by Nietzsche as radical individualism.

But long ago, another of our founding fathers, Aristotle, identified the human being as a political, or
social, animal – zoon politikon.

In First Century Athens, the world of Aristotle, Paul claimed that communion, not isolation is the order
of things. (Rom 12.4-5)

As persons we are extensions of the divine Person and of one another. In showing mercy to broken wayfarers, we not only minister to God, we also minister to ourselves.

By contrast, attempts to sever all ties with God and one another exile us to a forlorn tundra of lonely and directionless egoism.

Walters points out that Peter, Paul and Luther all claim a dynamic of both subservient slave and free lord for the Christian. We acknowledge our dependence with gratitude and humility – when we admit everything, we enter into the way of meekness and are thereby liberated from the beast’s ravages.

We discover that God can bring peace, compassion and love through our wounds. The lion and the lamb lie down together.

The stylish typography of this little book makes it eminently readable. A good companion for a retreat or holiday.