Is it really better to give than to receive? Seriously, I really enjoy being showered with gifts. I often venture to think that it is good for me to receive with a grateful or even ungrateful heart. What is the difference as long as I am still receiving and enjoying the newly acquired possession? Why am I told then, that giving is better than receiving? Is it because other people are being selfish and want me to shower them with gifts? Or do they know something I do not?
I have begun to see a certain theme running throughout all of philosophy and in Christ's parables. Plato talks about the goodness of virtue and how it ought to be followed for the sake of one's soul. Christ talks about the realm of the spirit and the goodness of His Father and the law He set forth. Which also ought to be followed for the sake of one's soul. Surely if as humans we want what is good for ourselves, then we will want to follow virtue and the law. Because ultimately not only would it be good for us but it would also bring about joy and gratitude. Both of which we find satisfying . However, we don't find any of those things to be what they are said to be. We think virtue is hard and if God is good then He would not condemn people to hell for breaking just one of His laws.
Perhaps, if these great men (one of them just so happens to be God!) exhort us to do these good things-things that we find difficult-then we must have a messed up view of what is good for us. Maybe giving is better than receiving because it satisfies a desire that we thought was manifested in a different form. What we thought would be good enough is not enough at all. Such as receiving to much or even the wrong thing could be damaging to our soul. (I realize that the argument "giving is always better than receiving" is pretty weak. Because it could work vice versa. Also it is not always bad to receive...such as receiving the gift of salvation.) Augustine conveys in his "Confessions", the same problem of not understanding what his desires are. When he was searching for God, he realized that what he thought was God, was not God at all. Making it nearly impossible to find the one true God instead of an empty fantasy.
"For what I thought of was not you at all; an empty fantasy and my own error were my god. If I tried to lodge my soul in that, hoping that it might rest there, it would slip through that insubstantial thing and fall back again on me, who had remained to myself an unhappy place where I could not live, but from which I could not escape." ~St. Augustine
It was after a severe destruction of Augustine's own pride and ego, that while his soul lay desolate before him, he found the raw desires of himself. Desires placed in us by God. And by seeking out those desires (as painful as it was) he came to the God he had longed for all of his life. It was then that he realized, "Our souls are restless until they find rest in You".
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I've been thinking about that myself. I've heard philosophers say that virtue must be loved for its own sake, because if there is any self interest then it is no longer “virtue”. But when it comes to the true needs of the soul, how you were describing them and how virtue is actually healthy for it, I'm not quite sure where this concept fits. According to what you’re saying, is Christ then telling us to be more selfish when He tells us to serve our neighbors? Meaning that, receiving is always best, but “giving is always better than receiving” because in actuality giving IS receiving.
I would be content to say that what Christ tells us to do for others is also what turns out in the end to be the best thing for us, but I would still think that it would have to be done FOR our neighbors and not for our soul health.
Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Post a Comment