I’ve been ruminating about….gratitude
I met her at our annual high school prizegiving. We were sipping wine in the Principal’s office before the ceremony, so I introduced myself as a board member and then inquired in what capacity she was there. And so began her story. She had traveled down from Auckland especially for the occasion, to present a newly established scholarship she and her husband had donated to the school. Many years earlier she had been a student at the college. But only for a brief time. Curious, I asked why such a short involvement in a school many years ago and hundreds of miles from where she lived now, would cause her to donate such a hefty sum of money on an annual basis to a graduating student who showed potential.
Her reply was sobering. She had a troubled childhood and was a renegade student. If memory serves me correctly, she ended up at this school as a kind of last resort. According to the woman, that’s when her life trajectory took a dramatic turn for the better. At school she was befriended by a teacher, who saw through her hard exterior and found ways to inspire, challenge, encourage and believe in her. In a word, she was loved.
Looking back, it was a watershed experience. Here she was, years later, happily married and a successful businesswoman.
So what was it that caused her to contact the school several decades later?
It was a profound sense of gratitude. You could tell it in her voice. She carried an overwhelming thankfulness, even indebtedness to the teacher and school who had rescued her from a downward spiral.
This woman knew that it was pure grace and gift that had been extended to her. And this is what drove her generosity.
An absence of gratitude
In contrast, there’s something very ugly about ungratefulness.
When a child throws a tantrum after opening a birthday present and not receiving what they wanted, we put it, quite rightly, down to immaturity. But it’s also a symptom of the spoiled nature of our culture.
The inimitable Bart Simpson, when asked to say grace at the table says “Dear God, we pay for all this ourselves. So thanks for nothing.”
Bart’s response typifies much of our twisted culture’s take on life. It’s one where most of us have so very much to be thankful for, yet often respond as spoilt brats, completely unappreciative of all that’s been given to us. In fact, these responses are often driven by an insidious sense of entitlement – as if we are somehow “owed” something.
Such behaviour speaks of immaturity, an inflated view of our own importance, a thoroughgoing minimization of the place of gift, grace and good fortune in our lives.
Interestingly, psychologist Martin Seligman, who has spent much of his adult life researching what makes people happy, lists “gratitude” as one of the key attitudes or attributes that happy people possess. And this gratitude, Seligman suggests, can be cultivated by recognizing that much “goodness” that comes our way, does so independent of our own actions. Happy are those, it might be suggested, who when good things happen ask, “Why me?” (As contrasted with those who only ask that question when bad things happen.)
Gratitude is a little different to thankfulness. It hints at an appreciation and recognition that a person’s actions have really cost them something, as well as suggesting that what has been done has genuinely made a difference and that it has been noticed.
Gratitude also cuts across our culture’s obsession with reducing anything and everything to a commodity that can be bought or sold. When there’s a price tag on relationships, experiences and acts of kindness, getting something for nothing, something quite undeserved and unrepayable, doesn’t quite fit. We’re tempted to blurt out “How could I ever repay you?” in the hope that we’ll find some way of dealing with the sense of indebtedness we feel. Of course, the answer is that we can’t possibly repay a true gift. That’s why it’s called a gift. It’s an act of grace.
There’s no way, for example, that children can ever repay their parent/s for all they have given them (or to use an economic phrase “invested in them”). And on the other side of the equation, the somewhat recent temptation to do economic calculations of how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to raise a child, are absurd to any parent who truly loves their child.
The destructive power of coveting
It’s easy to spend our time envying others – what they have, rather than be content and grateful for what we have.
God takes this seriously. In fact, it is clearly a big enough aspect of the human condition to be noted in the Ten Commandments. As Eugene Peterson puts it: “No lusting after your neighbour’s house – or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbour’s.” (Exodus 20 – The Message)
The older translations call this “coveting”. Desiring, craving after what others have.
And it’s not just the things they “possess” and the people in their lives. It’s fair to assume that Yahweh is also warning against envying others’ circumstances and abilities. An all-encompassing kind of “I wish I was so-and-so.”
I used to think that the reason coveting made the Big Ten was because of its potential for social anarchy. And it’s true that if we allow ourselves to crave after what others have or are it will cause enormous social damage. Broken marriages, unsafe streets, distrustful relationships, barbed-wired homes.
But I think the results of such envy go much wider and deeper in their damage. They also wreak havoc on our capacity to be content with our own lot in life. And in doing so, this leads us to be unable to recognize God’s amazing grace toward us, and to express this in genuine gratitude and worship of our Creator and Provider.
For if we live with an ongoing sense of the unfairness of life, always looking over our shoulders at what others have, we really treat God’s gifts with disdain. We effectively give him the one finger salute.
All this reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20). This is a story that on first reading reeks of unfairness. A landowner hires workers at different parts of the day, but chooses to pay them all the same – regardless of how many hours they have worked. A ripe case for our Employment Court, one would think.
Yet in answer to the complaint of a worker who had laboured the full day, the landowner says:
Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?
That was the landowner’s prerogative, surely. And so it is with God’s treatment of each of us.
Gratitude leads to generosity
It is true that too great a sense of indebtedness to people can cripple us. But generally it will lead us to express generosity to others.
For when we are truly grateful and aware of how much grace has been extended to us, we are liberated to be thoroughly generous in our praise, our time, our money and our relationships.
Generous people are people who are exceedingly grateful for all they have been given.
Of course, it’s easy to convince ourselves that what we have is solely – or even mainly – a result of our own hard work, intelligence or creative genius.
The reality is quite the opposite. I’ve come to recognize that its way more good fortune than good management that caused me to be born into a loving family, into a prosperous country, into a church and faith that followed Jesus, and with gifts and abilities that have allowed me to grow and develop and serve so freely.
What would have happened if I was born in a slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh? Or to abusive parents? Or in a society and religion that knew nothing of the liberating love of Christ?
I don’t pretend to understand the mysteries and inconsistencies of life. Nor can I get my head around who or what determines one’s initial circumstances. Did God orchestrate this? And if so, did he also arrange for someone else to be born into a deeply challenging context? I honestly don’t comprehend the apparent inequity of it all.
But this I do know: so much of who I am, and of what I’ve been able to experience, and of what I believe, has absolutely nothing to do with anything I have brought about. It is sheer gift. (Maybe even sheer good fortune?)
This is a more healthy perspective. It’s not just being modest. It’s been truthful.
As the Apostle Paul asks: “What do you have that you did not receive?” 1 Corinthians 4:7 NRSV. Or, in the words of The Message, “Isn’t everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from God?”
Sheer gifts indeed.
And such gifts call for a response.
Jesus says, “Freely, freely you have received, freely give.” (Matt 10:8). This is in the midst of his instructions to the disciples to go out preaching the message of the kingdom. It’s a “therefore” message. Serving God and others should flow out of our gratitude for God’s gift to us.
You have been blessed – therefore, be a blessing.
Paul echoes this in his seminal passage on giving in the second letter to the Corinthians, where he writes:
And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability…
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
Cultural shortsightedness
It’s not just individuals who can be taken in by the lie (or at least, half-truth) of being “self-made”. Culturally we can also develop an arrogance that believes we are superior to other nations and ages because of our technological sophistication and advancement. It’s easy to think that previous generations were so “primitive” and even simple. We “moderns” and “post-moderns” are proud of how clever we are.
But as Bernard of Chartres noted in the 12th century: “…we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size”.
So much of our immense understanding of the universe, so much of what we benefit from in our lifestyle today, if we are truly honest, is built on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. We may take it for granted. Yet an honest assessment will lead to humility and gratitude to those who have gone before; those who have paved the way.
On a personal note
I must admit that learning generosity has not been easy for me. A naturally harsh and judgmental approach to others who don’t play according to my rules has often led me to be deeply “un-generous”.
But God’s grace has been, and is at work in me. Gratitude has increasingly been a mark of my spirit. And as I have seen how much grace has been extended to me – not just by God, but also by those who have so generously invested in me, befriended me, given freely of themselves for my benefit, I’ve slowly but surely been captured, overwhelmed by gratitude. And this has translated incrementally into a generosity of spirit extended to others. God has been tenderizing my heart and my attitudes.
Gratitude. It’s a fruit of the Spirit. May it grow more and more in our lives and exhibit itself in acts and attitudes of generosity.
And may we, like King David, call out in deep gratitude, reflecting our sense of unbelievable good fortune: “Who am I Lord God and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?”
“Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice and echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.” Karl Barth (20th century German theologian)
“You have given so much to me. Give me one thing more – a grateful heart.” George Herbert (17th century Welsh poet)
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