![\"flower-1345899_640\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/664\/2016\/05\/flower-1345899_640-300x225.jpg\")
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Let me tell you another story: a story about two people I didn\u2019t like, and my sin.<\/p>\n
I used to have this friend; you have probably had this friend at some point yourself.\u00a0 When I call her a friend, I don\u2019t mean that she and I were chums, bosom buddies, devoted\u00a0companions like two petals on the same flower. I mean the other kind of friend: she\u00a0went 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.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m told by those who actually know this woman\u00a0that she\u2019s a perfect angel in person, but she\u00a0didn\u2019t sound very nice online. My friend was keen on giving thanks for the blessings of God. All the time. \u00a0She loved that \u00a0\u201c#blessed\u201d hashtag. She used it with no irony whatsoever. I don\u2019t think she even comprehended\u00a0that the \u201c#blessed\u201d hashtag has become a joke to some people.\u00a0She declared herself blessed\u00a0several times a day, as a\u00a0magical\u00a0way of legitimizing showing off. She wasn\u2019t bragging about her perfect life, in her view; she was thanking God for it, In front of me, multiple times per day.\u00a0That\u2019s how thankful she was.\u00a0And \u201c#blessed\u201d was not the only hashtag this astonishing woman used to baptize her jaw-dropping braggadocio. She never met a hashtag she didn\u2019t like. On a given day I\u2019d open my browser to see her saying \u201cSo grateful to God for my home business! #blessed.\u201d or \u201cOops, just paid off another student loan! #blessed #soblessed #thankful.\u201d Or, \u201cI am so thankful to get my new Cadillac! This will help the family a lot! #blessed #sothankful #grateful\u201d or \u201cHad such a magical\u00a0time on my Florida\u00a0beach vacation! #blessed #thankful #gratitude_journal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I was also \u2018friends\u201d with her husband. I\u2019m told by those who know him that her\u00a0husband is very generous in person, but he sure didn\u2019t act this way online. He\u00a0spent 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.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just that he was a conservative politically\u2013 I\u2019m neither conservative nor liberal myself, but I can get along with liberals and<\/em> conservatives. Everyone sees things differently, and everyone has different ideas about the best way of doing things and how to best help the country\u2019s poor. But this man was bitter.\u00a0He downright hated poor people and immigrants for taking his money. He didn\u2019t want a different way of doing things, he just wanted to keep his money for himself. He must have said \u201cit\u2019s my money\u201d or a paraphrase of that at least as often as his wife said \u201cblessed.\u201d When I challenged him on any of his views, he droned\u00a0\u201cI am faithful to Catholic Social Teaching\u201d without any explanation of how desperately trying to hold onto mammon was faithful to Catholic Social Teaching. Once he informed me that \u201cI have worked like a slave for my money,\u201d and then that after he\u2019d squirreled\u00a0away a big enough nest egg for his wife and children\u2019s 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,\u00a0more material comforts by the day. But her husband was still angry about his money being taken away for the upkeep of other people\u2019s wives and children.<\/p>\n Every day, I\u2019d open my browser to a patchwork quilt, a shocking chiaroscuro of those two posting again and again.\u00a0Wife and husband, boastful and greedy. Thankful and possessive. Chipper\u00a0and morose. Bragging and grasping. \u201cThank God it\u2019s mine\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t touch, it\u2019s mine.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I got angrier and angrier. I started making my own parody Facebook posts, describing my own day with hashtags. \u201cSo grateful the slumlord is finally evicting that tenant\u00a0who harassed us for months and threatened to kill me. #blessed.\u201d But gratitude trolls can\u2019t take a hint. Gratitude trolls only speak Hashtag, not English and certainly not Irony. Finally, after making a few expletive-laced\u00a0responses to her husband\u2019s latest nonsense, I unfriended them both.<\/p>\n Yesterday I discovered that Facebook has designated another approved emotion. Besides \u201clike,\u201d \u201clove,\u201d \u201csad,\u201d \u201cangry,\u201d \u201chaha\u201d and \u201cwow,\u201d we are also now allowed to feel \u201cthankful\u201d and indicate as much on people\u2019s posts. The symbol for \u201cthankful\u201d is not a smiley face but a retro purple daisy. And I was\u00a0thankful. I\u00a0was\u00a0thankful 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\u00a0purple 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\u00a0about 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.\u00a0Let them post purple daisies about that and see how they liked it.<\/p>\n Please bear in mind that I\u2019m not describing the seeming of two different vices here, I\u2019m describing three\u2013 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\u2019t 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\u2019t know how culpable my \u201cfriends\u201d were, since I can\u2019t read their minds, but I know I was culpable. So let\u2019s speak about vices instead of people.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2019t give people a loophole if they \u201cworked like a slave\u201d and earned the blessing themselves, either. It\u2019s 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\u2019s a blessing, and if it\u2019s a blessing it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n A braggart\u00a0is someone who knows they are blessed and knows that they ought to be thankful, but doesn\u2019t understand\u00a0why they\u2019re blessed or\u00a0how to be thankful. So they spew verbal\u00a0thanksgiving on social media while showing off their decadence,\u00a0never remembering\u00a0that 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\u2019re his to keep. He builds up a store of wealth God meant for\u00a0his neighbor\u00a0and fights off any chance that wealth could be taken from him. The envious one\u2013 that\u2019s me\u2013 sees her neighbor being blessed and is angry, because she wanted a blessing for herself. She doesn\u2019t view God as\u00a0unlimited and so she thinks a blessing for one person means she can\u2019t have a treat as well. And she doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n (Image via pixabay)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let me tell you another story: a story about two people I didn\u2019t like, and my sin. I used to have this friend; you have probably had this friend at some point yourself.\u00a0 When I call her a friend, I don\u2019t mean that she and I were chums, bosom buddies, devoted\u00a0companions like two petals on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,181,14,54],"tags":[211,215,218,213,214,212,217,216],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parable","category-politics","category-prayer","category-story","tag-blessed","tag-charity","tag-god-and-mammon","tag-gratitude","tag-gratitude-journal","tag-hashtag","tag-mammon","tag-money"],"yoast_head":"\n