In presence and in absence

You all think that everybody who writes for WORLD has doughnuts together in the corporate cafeteria at break time. But a lot of us have never met. I got to have face time with my editor-in-chief last Thursday (the only other encounter had been a two-minute brush in his office on 34th Street, New York, last year). I found him gentle of demeanor and easy to talk to.

I just thought you might be interested to know that, lest his take-no-prisoners editorials mislead. Part of that apparent disjunction is endemic to the writing endeavor. A 2,000-word thought must be shoehorned into 725 words, and once you have "killed the little darlings," annihilated the adverbs, and stricken semantic softeners, you sound downright terse.

But the disjunction is only apparent. It was brought to mind of the Corinthians' first meeting with the Apostle Paul, about whom they had only his "editorials" heretofore. Word got back to the itinerant preacher later of the scuttlebutt surrounding his visit:

"For they say, 'His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account.' Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present" (2 Corinthians 10:10-11).

It makes sense to me: You preach forcefully about the humble life in your letters, and then you live it when you meet people. Where's the problem, Corinthians? Humility is strength under control, as when a 200-pound dad wrestles with his 3-year-old toddler. God himself is both the most humble and the most implacable of persons. When Saul softened up God's "take no prisoners" policy toward the Amalekites, it cost him the dynasty.

Lowliness (Matthew 11:29), humility (Philippians 2), and poverty of spirit (Matthew 5:3), all headliners in God's kingdom, have perennially been confused with weakness. People have sometimes mistakenly thought to exploit it---like Aaron and Miriam did to meek brother Moses (Numbers 12)---only to find that God himself is the shield of the humble.

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