Receiving Gifts as Payments

I dreamed I was on an Adventist tour of a cathedral. A priest was explaining its significance to the group. The group displayed an embarrassing nonchalance and low-level disrespect, so I stayed by to thank him for the presentation. He said that he had drawn information from a book he had written about the cathedral, and he presented me with a copy. I was delighted and told him “Thanks!”

In my very next breath, I mentioned that I had contributed to some Catholic charity. I do this outside of dreams, too. Why? Is it to further show affiliation with the gift-giver? Maybe. But I also want to show myself worthy of the gift. Perhaps I think that if I earned it, then it is in my power to keep earning more. If it is only a gift, then it is all out of my control. Or perhaps I don’t like feeling obligated to return the favor, so I quickly drop a hint that I have already done the favor before getting the gift. I can be a cheerful giver, but it’s hard to be a gracious getter.

It is so human to receive gifts as though they were payments. A friend gives you a gift, and deep down you think you earned it. “I’m a pretty good friend. I deserve this. I laugh at their jokes.” It’s human to avoid indebtedness.

When by God’s unmerited grace and mercy we live to see a new day and we have sufficient food and adequate health, why do we not in overwhelming gratitude turn to share the blessing with others? Perhaps in some way we feel we have earned this bit of life, and the less fortunate aren’t trying hard enough. In other words we mentally recreate the Indian caste system. It’s either karma, God’s will, or natural consequence, that we have what we have and that they lack what they lack.

In this, we also join the ancient Jews who had been chosen because they were an unsightly mess. God was showing what He could do “with the least of these.” His blessings elevated the children of Israel until they had laudable hygiene, progressive engineering and philosophy, and astounding wealth. He wanted them to be a channel of His blessing to other people, to be a nation of priests as the world regained its rightful place as His loved children. Instead, they felt that they were somehow worthy and that God’s blessings were meant for no one else.

Result: a stoppage in the flow of God’s blessing. He’d called a small scruffy group so that they could see the outrageous miracle of His blessing and gratefully pass it on. Instead, their feeling of entitlement made them horde the gifts by which they were to cooperate and they became a stench to others.

When we feel we’ve earned a blessing we are less likely to pass it on, and we become like the Dead Sea always taking and becoming less and less life-sustaining. We are poisoned by what we do not pass on.