{"id":17025,"date":"2012-09-20T09:52:30","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T15:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/?p=17025"},"modified":"2016-09-30T17:04:55","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T21:04:55","slug":"big-questions-interesting-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2012\/09\/big-questions-interesting-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"Big questions, interesting answers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few years ago, I gave a Thanksgiving Day homily<\/a><\/strong> in which I quoted the Unitarian minister Peter Fleck. \u00a0He suggested that perhaps the pilgrims weren\u2019t thankful because they survived; maybe they survived because they were thankful. \u00a0As I noted:<\/p>\n

Gratitude doesn\u2019t always come easily. We all know that generosity \u2013 the giving of a gift \u2013 means thinking more about others than about yourself. It represents an act of love. But so does being thankful. To give thanks is to extend yourself. It is to remember where the gift came from.<\/p>\n

It is to go out of your way to acknowledge that \u2014 like the one cured leper in the gospel, who changed the direction he was headed, and walked back to Jesus, all the way back from the temple, to thank him.<\/p>\n

There is love in that. A love for the gift \u2013 and for the one who gave it.<\/p>\n

Reverend Fleck suggested that maybe\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0is what enabled the pilgrims to thrive and prosper: a humble appreciation for whatever God gave them, trusting that He would give them what they would need. It\u2019s an optimistic message, really \u2014 and gratitude, I think, carries a spirit of optimism. Maybe that spirit can teach us something, as we endure our own hard winds and deep snows \u2013 the storms of our own lives. Especially now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, along comes another view of the virtue of gratitude, from a website called Big Questions Online<\/a><\/strong>. (Full disclosure: the site\u2019s executive editor is my old colleague from Beliefnet, Ansley Roan.) \u00a0Each week, they look at a compelling moral issue, pose a question, and discuss. This week\u2019s big question: is gratitude the Queen of Virtues?<\/a> <\/strong>\u00a0 Writer Robert Emmons mulls:<\/p>\n

When the Roman philosopher Cicero stated that gratitude was the queen of the virtues, he most assuredly did not mean that gratitude was merely a stepping-stone toward personal happiness. Gratitude is a morally complex disposition, and reducing this virtue to a technique or strategy to improve one\u2019s mood is to do it an injustice.<\/p>\n

Even restricting gratitude to an inner feeling is insufficient. In the history of ideas, gratitude is considered an action (returning a favor) that is not only virtuous in and of itself, but valuable to society. To reciprocate is the right thing to do. \u201cThere is no duty more indispensable that that of returning a kindness\u201d wrote Cicero in a book whose title translates \u201cOn Duties.\u201d Cicero\u2019s contemporary, Seneca, maintained that \u201cHe who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.\u201d\u00a0 Neither believed that the emotion felt in a person returning a favor was particularly crucial. Conversely, across time, ingratitude has been treated as a serious vice, a greater vice than gratitude is a virtue. Ingratitude is the \u201cessence of vileness,\u201d wrote the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant while David Hume opined that ingratitude is \u201cthe most horrible and unnatural crime that a person is capable of committing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wander over to BQO and join the conversation. \u00a0It\u2019s smart, it\u2019s thoughtful, and it\u2019s refreshingly sane. Once you\u2019ve spent some time exploring the questions, you may well find yourself feeling something akin to gratitude.<\/p>\n

And thank God for that!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, I gave a Thanksgiving Day homily in which I quoted the Unitarian minister Peter Fleck. \u00a0He suggested that perhaps the pilgrims weren\u2019t thankful because they survived; maybe they survived because they were thankful. \u00a0As I noted: Gratitude doesn\u2019t always come easily. We all know that generosity \u2013 the giving of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-great-links"],"yoast_head":"\nBig questions, interesting answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A few years ago, I gave a Thanksgiving Day homily in which I quoted the Unitarian minister Peter Fleck. \u00a0He suggested that perhaps the pilgrims weren't\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2012\/09\/big-questions-interesting-answers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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