Let me tell you another story: a story about two people I didn’t like, and my sin.
I used to have this friend; you have probably had this friend at some point yourself. When I call her a friend, I don’t mean that she and I were chums, bosom buddies, devoted companions like two petals on the same flower. I mean the other kind of friend: she went to the same Catholic college my husband and I attended, she married an acquaintance of his, and I friended her on Facebook to be polite.
I’m told by those who actually know this woman that she’s a perfect angel in person, but she didn’t sound very nice online. My friend was keen on giving thanks for the blessings of God. All the time. She loved that “#blessed” hashtag. She used it with no irony whatsoever. I don’t think she even comprehended that the “#blessed” hashtag has become a joke to some people. She declared herself blessed several times a day, as a magical way of legitimizing showing off. She wasn’t bragging about her perfect life, in her view; she was thanking God for it, In front of me, multiple times per day. That’s how thankful she was. And “#blessed” was not the only hashtag this astonishing woman used to baptize her jaw-dropping braggadocio. She never met a hashtag she didn’t like. On a given day I’d open my browser to see her saying “So grateful to God for my home business! #blessed.” or “Oops, just paid off another student loan! #blessed #soblessed #thankful.” Or, “I am so thankful to get my new Cadillac! This will help the family a lot! #blessed #sothankful #grateful” or “Had such a magical time on my Florida beach vacation! #blessed #thankful #gratitude_journal.”
Meanwhile, I was also ‘friends” with her husband. I’m told by those who know him that her husband is very generous in person, but he sure didn’t act this way online. He spent the whole day going back and forth to his Facebook posting memes. And the memes were not at all thankful, they were angry. He was angry at immigrants for taking jobs away from him. He was angry at poor people for being on food stamps. He was furious with the government for taking away his money to try to help immigrants and poor people, to say nothing of poor immigrants.
It wasn’t just that he was a conservative politically– I’m neither conservative nor liberal myself, but I can get along with liberals and conservatives. Everyone sees things differently, and everyone has different ideas about the best way of doing things and how to best help the country’s poor. But this man was bitter. He downright hated poor people and immigrants for taking his money. He didn’t want a different way of doing things, he just wanted to keep his money for himself. He must have said “it’s my money” or a paraphrase of that at least as often as his wife said “blessed.” When I challenged him on any of his views, he droned “I am faithful to Catholic Social Teaching” without any explanation of how desperately trying to hold onto mammon was faithful to Catholic Social Teaching. Once he informed me that “I have worked like a slave for my money,” and then that after he’d squirreled away a big enough nest egg for his wife and children’s upkeep he would start giving to charity, beginning with helping me and my husband in our poverty. And I watched his wife boast day after day about blessed cars and thankful promotions and grateful home renovations, more material comforts by the day. But her husband was still angry about his money being taken away for the upkeep of other people’s wives and children.
Every day, I’d open my browser to a patchwork quilt, a shocking chiaroscuro of those two posting again and again. Wife and husband, boastful and greedy. Thankful and possessive. Chipper and morose. Bragging and grasping. “Thank God it’s mine” and “don’t touch, it’s mine.” I got angrier and angrier. I started making my own parody Facebook posts, describing my own day with hashtags. “So grateful the slumlord is finally evicting that tenant who harassed us for months and threatened to kill me. #blessed.” But gratitude trolls can’t take a hint. Gratitude trolls only speak Hashtag, not English and certainly not Irony. Finally, after making a few expletive-laced responses to her husband’s latest nonsense, I unfriended them both.
Yesterday I discovered that Facebook has designated another approved emotion. Besides “like,” “love,” “sad,” “angry,” “haha” and “wow,” we are also now allowed to feel “thankful” and indicate as much on people’s posts. The symbol for “thankful” is not a smiley face but a retro purple daisy. And I was thankful. I was thankful that I already unfriended that couple. Because I know there would be daisies all over her page, daisies posted by her in response to her own posts, daisies on every Instagram pic, streaking across a football field scattering purple daisies for all the blessings God gave her to keep for herself. And her husband would still be morose. Nastily, I fantasized for at least the thousandth time about how funny it would be if her husband lost everything and had to apply for food stamps with the people he despised, while she tried to be daisy-thankful for a ramshackle apartment and not getting the gas turned off again. Let them post purple daisies about that and see how they liked it.
Please bear in mind that I’m not describing the seeming of two different vices here, I’m describing three– or maybe one. No one is good except God the Father, and most days I myself am particularly rank. My friend sounded boastful, her husband sounded miserly, but I was bitterly envious. I think, perhaps, that we were three ugly faces of the same sin. Misunderstanding itself isn’t a sin, but misunderstanding when you could have and ought to have understood is very sinful. Misunderstanding worldly blessings and what to do about them is a terrible, terrible thing. I don’t know how culpable my “friends” were, since I can’t read their minds, but I know I was culpable. So let’s speak about vices instead of people.
We ought to be thankful for blessings received, and our thankfulness ought to be sincere. But it should also come with the knowledge that a blessing we receive is never just for us. It’s a talent God expects you to invest. In the Christian worldview, one person has money for home renovations so that he can be hospitable to the one who has no home, or so that he can pass the money along to the one who has no home and just be thankful for the un-renovated house he has. People with cars should give rides to those who are usually stuck taking the bus. Those who have two coats should give to the one with none. Somebody who is one loaf of bread away from starvation should break it in half for the person who is zero loaves away. And our faith doesn’t give people a loophole if they “worked like a slave” and earned the blessing themselves, either. It’s still a blessing. Having the good health to work, living in a society that pays workers, being in the right place and time to land a job are all blessings. No Christian should ever say they earned anything on their own merit alone. If you have it, it’s a blessing, and if it’s a blessing it’s never for you alone. Your neighbor deserves help by virtue of having a need, and you are obligated to help by virtue of having the ability.
A braggart is someone who knows they are blessed and knows that they ought to be thankful, but doesn’t understand why they’re blessed or how to be thankful. So they spew verbal thanksgiving on social media while showing off their decadence, never remembering that that gift was given to them for the benefit of their neighbors and that no good deed, not even gratitude, should be performed as a public spectacle. A miser is someone who collects blessings, through hard work or otherwise, and imagines that they’re his to keep. He builds up a store of wealth God meant for his neighbor and fights off any chance that wealth could be taken from him. The envious one– that’s me– sees her neighbor being blessed and is angry, because she wanted a blessing for herself. She doesn’t view God as unlimited and so she thinks a blessing for one person means she can’t have a treat as well. And she doesn’t recall that human beings are all one flesh in Christ, so she ought to be grateful to God for blessings to another because the whole body should rejoice and suffer with each member.
In my view, our society encourages all these vices with its glorification of stored up wealth and its kitschy, shallow encouragements to brag about blessings with hashtags and daisies. We are not a culture that values storing up treasure for Heaven, but then again I can’t think of a culture that ever really did. To be Christian is to go against just about any cultural grain. Our God would have us be thankful even in times of great trial, and give purple daisies to the ones who have none of their own. May all of us ungrateful children learn true thankfulness, and true charity.
(Image via pixabay)
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