Thankfulness
I’ve been thinking some deep thoughts on thankfulness lately. Some of this came out rather spontaneously in response to a blog by Eric 2, so if you frequent his site forgive the repetition.
What is thankfulness? Is it an attitude? An obligatory (and sometimes heartfelt) card you send? A state of mind? A way of living life? An action?
More and more I am beginning to think it is the latter. In the Christian sacred scriptures it says the following: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”*
OK. So much for faith. What about thankfulness? Well, to begin with, I think that the two things are not so far separated as I might originally suppose. It strikes me that you cannot be grateful to a God you do not believe in. In feeling thankfulness, I am really demonstrating at least a modicum of faith.
But what good is it to feel grateful for God’s blessings, and yet leave my neighbor to suffer? Is that not an empty prayer? To behave that way is to say, like the Pharisee, “Thank-you that I am not like that man over there.”
I can hear the lazy, selfish side of me jump right back with a retort. “Whoa, wait a minute!” she says. “The Pharisee was referring to the fact that he thought he was better than the other guy. That story is about hipocracy, not charitable giving.” Oh, sweet self, be careful where you draw that line. For most of us, is the issue of superior morality always 100% separated from the issue of superior economic power? No. Not always.
Admit it! It’s the fundamental attribution error. At least once in each of our middleclass lives, we have attributed anothers’ poverty to the fact that they make poor decisions, conveniently forgetting that it is, in large part, systemic problems with education and crime prevention and economic education and racial discrimination and job-readiness and a myriad of other socio-economic and political difficulties that place them in a position and in a culture which fosters those decisions. Does morality and the break-up of the family play a role? Absolutely. But what leads to such a pandemic of broken families? It’s not inherent stupidity or moral lassitude in a certain class of people. Those theories were discarded a century and a half ago, and yet for some reason they persistently haunt the back of the middle-class brain. I should know! I’m a recovering classist myself.
But I digress. Phew! Sorry. That turned into a rant.
Because I have faith, I should act. But also because I am thankful, I should act!
What would have happened if, instead of laying in bed the night before Thanksgiving and worrying about the people who I know in Clifton who sleep on the streets because tonight it is dangerously cold out, I had found out from them in advance what drop-in center they go to at night and donated blankets to it– or even gotten a group of friends together and gone down and volunteered for the night shift occassionally? What would have happened if, instead of merely thanking God for the food I ate and asking him to help those who had to go hungry, I instead had asked my family to go and volunteer with me at a soup kitchen in the afternoon, and have our own big Thanksgiving dinner in the evening?
Of course, we can never know what would have happened. But it is easy to find out what may happen if I do these things at Christmas.
God forgive me for my selfishness and laziness, and give me the strength of heart to act on my convictions, for a change.
And speaking of Christmas, I think I’ll go read A Christmas Carol.
*James chapter two, verses fourteen through seventeen.
November 28th, 2005 at 11:01 pm
I love your thoughts. I have been reading a fantastic book called Urban Ministry by Conn and Ortiz. My mind has been swimming with ways to act out thankfulness. It seems so absurd that we all exchange gifts for Christmas, spending hundreds of dollars on each other - generally people who don’t need any presents. Many of these gifts aren’t even things we would really want! Before I stop buying my grandmas presents, I want to re-evaluate how I spend my money on the things I want for myself.