Just how cheerful
do you want to be? Saint Paul writes, “God loves a cheerful giver” (II Corinthians 9:7). The Greek word for “cheerful” is hilaros, the root of “exhilarating” and “hilarious.” Do you find giving exhilarating? What sound characterizes you best: hilarity? or lament? Did you know that giving in any form — money, gifts in kind, volunteering, teaching others a skill — not only correlates with better overall health and lower rates of depression, but that there is a demonstrated causal relationship between giving and well-being? (See here and here.) We do not give because we are cheerful; we become cheerful by giving. There’s a reason why Saint Nicholas (a/k/a Santa Claus) is jolly. (For more about him, visit http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/who-is-st-nicholas/.) |
And did you know that when we are giving cheerfully, we are most like God, and also most truly, perfectly human? God loves a cheerful giver because God is a cheerful giver. God created humanity “in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26): that is, to be as cheerfully giving as God, who gladly gave all, even his beloved Son, to rescue us from a world of challenges to our well being, and to ransom us from captivity to our own doomed efforts to sustain our own existence against them. A depressingly dutiful, cheerless, stingy human race has never been in God’s playbook.
We do not experience all of our giving as cheerful, because not all our giving is truly free. We can give out of guilt, fear, obligation, social pressure, coercion, compulsion,[1] or in an attempt to manipulate people, institutions, or society. But giving that is not free, giving that is forced, cynical, contingent on circumstances, or motivated by the anxious or resentful attempt to control, provides no lasting delight, and breeds resentment.
It takes faith to be free. Like Adam and Eve, we are tempted to envision God as a killjoy, if not a tyrant. We give gladly enough in good times, but the natural, default reaction to difficulties — deprivation, loss, pain, maltreatment, oppression, loneliness, physical or mental illness, disaster, betrayal, you name it — is survival mode. Self-sufficiency. Anxiety about our own well-being and the benefit to our kin, group, or tribe. Instead of sharing, we hoard. Instead of hospitality, we defend turf. Instead of lavishing gifts, we impose rationing. Or we resort to counterfeit freedom: bravado, defiance, and recklessness. Or we withhold, withdraw, and refuse to give manipulatively, thinking that by so doing we can assert independence, or at least scratch the itch of resentment. It seems like freedom, but the dead giveaway is an undercurrent of umbrage, defensiveness, legalism, hardness, anger, and blame.
Real freedom — marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22‑23) — grows as we exercise faith (which, by definition, means we have no airtight proof or guarantees) in the one, true, provident, creator God who transcends anything our own brokenness, the brokenness of others, or the brokenness of nature can hurl at us. Faith that is not exercised in practice atrophies and paralyzes; but if applied, we discover how good God really is, and how little else we need. God becomes all in all, our dearest treasure, surpassing the satisfaction of any other need or want. And when your treasure is there, so is your heart: nothing can ever take that cheerfulness from you, and nothing is so important you cannot gladly give it away.
Faith sets us free to love God with our whole being, and every neighbor as ourself. Faith bears fruit, not in modest but precarious good feelings that depend on success or favorable circumstances, but in an unreasonable, irrational, super-natural (beyond what comes naturally) cheerfulness that thrives even in the shadow of evil, and so shouts to the world that it must come from God.
So ... how hilarious do you want to be? How exhilarating a life do you want to live?
Saint Paul writes:
Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that, having all sufficiency, in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. (II Corinthians 9:6‑12)
Faith sets us free from fear. Faith in God sets us free from the cruel illusion of control, and from the frustrating burden of trying to control what we cannot. Faith in the truth of Jesus Christ sets us free from crushing guilt when we fail, and from crushing disappointment when others fail. Faith frees us to do what we are created by God, called by Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to do. The magnitude of the gift or the degree of sacrifice is not the point. However much or little you may have or enjoy, God pours out upon you the grace of faith to give cheerfully, to sow generously, to produce thanksgiving, and to harvest righteousness.
You can become more free, more alive, more perfectly human, more hilarious than you ever could have imagined.
Father Tom Malionek
December 6 • Feast of Saint Nicholas of Myra
Patron of hilarious givers
[1] See Sam Kean, “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Giving”, The Atlantic May 2015.
We do not experience all of our giving as cheerful, because not all our giving is truly free. We can give out of guilt, fear, obligation, social pressure, coercion, compulsion,[1] or in an attempt to manipulate people, institutions, or society. But giving that is not free, giving that is forced, cynical, contingent on circumstances, or motivated by the anxious or resentful attempt to control, provides no lasting delight, and breeds resentment.
It takes faith to be free. Like Adam and Eve, we are tempted to envision God as a killjoy, if not a tyrant. We give gladly enough in good times, but the natural, default reaction to difficulties — deprivation, loss, pain, maltreatment, oppression, loneliness, physical or mental illness, disaster, betrayal, you name it — is survival mode. Self-sufficiency. Anxiety about our own well-being and the benefit to our kin, group, or tribe. Instead of sharing, we hoard. Instead of hospitality, we defend turf. Instead of lavishing gifts, we impose rationing. Or we resort to counterfeit freedom: bravado, defiance, and recklessness. Or we withhold, withdraw, and refuse to give manipulatively, thinking that by so doing we can assert independence, or at least scratch the itch of resentment. It seems like freedom, but the dead giveaway is an undercurrent of umbrage, defensiveness, legalism, hardness, anger, and blame.
Real freedom — marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22‑23) — grows as we exercise faith (which, by definition, means we have no airtight proof or guarantees) in the one, true, provident, creator God who transcends anything our own brokenness, the brokenness of others, or the brokenness of nature can hurl at us. Faith that is not exercised in practice atrophies and paralyzes; but if applied, we discover how good God really is, and how little else we need. God becomes all in all, our dearest treasure, surpassing the satisfaction of any other need or want. And when your treasure is there, so is your heart: nothing can ever take that cheerfulness from you, and nothing is so important you cannot gladly give it away.
Faith sets us free to love God with our whole being, and every neighbor as ourself. Faith bears fruit, not in modest but precarious good feelings that depend on success or favorable circumstances, but in an unreasonable, irrational, super-natural (beyond what comes naturally) cheerfulness that thrives even in the shadow of evil, and so shouts to the world that it must come from God.
So ... how hilarious do you want to be? How exhilarating a life do you want to live?
Saint Paul writes:
Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that, having all sufficiency, in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. (II Corinthians 9:6‑12)
Faith sets us free from fear. Faith in God sets us free from the cruel illusion of control, and from the frustrating burden of trying to control what we cannot. Faith in the truth of Jesus Christ sets us free from crushing guilt when we fail, and from crushing disappointment when others fail. Faith frees us to do what we are created by God, called by Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to do. The magnitude of the gift or the degree of sacrifice is not the point. However much or little you may have or enjoy, God pours out upon you the grace of faith to give cheerfully, to sow generously, to produce thanksgiving, and to harvest righteousness.
You can become more free, more alive, more perfectly human, more hilarious than you ever could have imagined.
Father Tom Malionek
December 6 • Feast of Saint Nicholas of Myra
Patron of hilarious givers
[1] See Sam Kean, “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Giving”, The Atlantic May 2015.
You can be cheerful right now!
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