RSS
Home
The power of gratitude
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Faith in Christ brings gratitude into our lives
One of the greatest powers we possess is gratitude. It is unlikely that any of us completely understand it because we may not think of it as a principle of power. One of the most oft-repeated exhortations in the Old and New Testaments is:
O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever. (1 Chronicles 16:34)
For many years, my wife and I used to playfully bicker about our outlooks on life. She is typically optimistic, happy, and pleasant no matter what happens in life. Her personal motto is "Twice blessed is the man that is happy and knows it." My own attitude could be summarized by the adage, "Expect the worst and hope for the best." She used to tell me my approach was dour and depressing. I used to reply that her approach was unrealistic.
Over the years, hard experience taught me that she was right. Happiness is a choice. We can consciously choose to be happy, even in the most dire circumstances. How?Gratitude is the key.
Typically, an unhappy person is unhappy because his expectations are not being met. In that case, he is not grateful because a sense of entitlement robs him of the ability to appreciate what he does have. In the Book of Mormon, King Benjamin taught that we can find ourselves in a blessed state of happiness by focusing on gratitude.
"I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you." (King Benjamin, Mosiah 2:20-22)
That phrase "unprofitable servants" indicates a sense of humility. It is an attitude where our sense of entitlement is in line with God's reality. My wife once heard a woman complain about a man who was unhappy with his 82-foot yacht. This woman remarked self-righteously that she and her husband were perfectly satisfied with their 40-foot sailboat. Meanwhile, my wife and I would be content to go paddling around in a pond with a rubber raft (if we had one). I'm sure that, if we did own one, there would be someone less fortunate who could say, "Those lucky people! I wish I had a rubber raft!" In a world where many people are happy to have the barest necessities of life, this "sailboat lady" has always served to remind me to adjust my expectations downward. By being grateful for what we have, no matter how humble our possessions, we can find joy and contentment.
One of my favorite tales is Voltaire's "Story of the Good Bramin." In it, he tells of a man who is concerned for his friend, a Bramin, a religious leader and member of a privileged class. The Bramin struggles with an existential crisis of sorts. Lamenting the meaninglessness of his life, which he enjoys from a position of social honor and temporal wealth, he declares:
“I don't know why I exist. Every day people ask me questions on all these points. I have to answer, but I have nothing worthwhile to say. I talk, talk, talk, and then I am bewildered and ashamed of myself after all that hot air.
“It is even worse when they ask me whether Brahma was produced by Vishnu or whether they are both eternal. Well, I don’t know a thing about it, and that's obvious in my pathetic answers. ‘Reverend Father,’ they say to me, ‘explain to us why evil floods the whole world.’
“I am in as much of a fog as those who ask the question. Sometimes I tell them that everything happens for the best, but those who have been destroyed and mutilated by war don't believe that for a second, and neither do I.
“So I retreat to my house overwhelmed with my curiosity and my ignorance. I read our ancient books, and they make the darkness even darker. I talk with my friends. Some tell me that we should just enjoy life and laugh at mankind. Others think they know a little something, and promptly get lost in ridiculous, pompous, empty ideas. Everything increases my feelings of doubt and misery. I am sometimes ready to fall into despair, when I think that after all my dedication and seeking I know neither where I come from, nor what I am, nor where I am going, nor what shall become of me when this life is over.”
Voltaire's character evinces his disdain for clergymen and religious pretenders. Voltaire's scrutiny of his world him taught him that the professors of religion he encountered could claim no true revelation and were thus in as much in the dark as he was. Oddly, this condition was confirmed by God himself in the words spoken to Joseph Smith in the First Vision in 1820. Speaking or the religionists and sectarians of the time, the Lord told Joseph, that "all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: 'they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” Voltaire died in 1778, four decades before the glorious restoration of the gospel and the renewal of divine revelation to mankind. I don't know that he would have accepted the gospel had he lived, because his cynicism was so profound. Nevertheless, his assessent of the religions of his day was accurate. All of them were false.
The narrator in Voltaire's story quits the Bramin and later encounters an old woman, who lives at the polar-opposite end of the wealth continuum from the Bramin.
"That same day I saw the old woman who lived near him. I asked her if she had ever been confused and upset not to know how her soul was created. She didn't even understand my question! She had never pondered for a single moment of her life over a single one of the points that tormented the Brahmin. She believed with all her heart in the changing forms of the Lord Vishnu, and, provided she could occasionally have some water from the Ganges to wash in, she considered herself the happiest of all women."
Voltaire's cynical depiction of the woman shows her to be ignorant, but happy. His character returns to the Bramin to ask him about this difference. His reflection is, if ignorance is the price of happiness, would we be willing to trade reason for ignorance?
“Aren't you ashamed to be unhappy when right at your door there is an old puppet who never bothers with thinking and who lives quite happily?”
“You are right,” he said; “I have told myself a hundred times that I would be happy if I were as stupid as my neighbor, and yet I would want no part of that kind of happiness.”
These words of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than all the rest. I questioned myself and saw that certainly I would not want to be happy on condition of being ignorant.
I put the question to some other philosophers, and they were of the same opinion. “There is, however,” I added, “an enormous contradiction in this way of thinking.”
For after all, what is at issue here? Being happy. What does it really matter if you are intelligent or stupid? And what's more, those who are stupidly content with their being are quite sure of being content; those who philosophize and scrutizine and ponder and reason are never so sure of reasoning well.
“Clearly,” I said, “we should choose not to have good sense, if that good sense contributes to our misery.”
Everyone agreed with me, and yet I found no one who wanted to accept the bargain of becoming ignorant in order to become content. From this I concluded that though we greatly value happiness, we place even greater value on reason.
But yet, upon reflection, it seems that to prefer reason to happiness is to be quite insane. How can this contradiction be explained? Like all the others...there is much to be said about it."
I find myself giving leeway to Voltaire because, in his day, the true Church of Jesus Christ had been absent from the earth for nearly sixteen centuries. All that remained were the hollow forms, false rituals, and man-made creeds that purposefully discouraged God's children from seeking personal revelation. For centuries, seekers had been burned at the stake, had their eyes gouged and tongues cut out for such heretical things as possessing a few pages of the Bible or for translating it into another language like English. Wars had been waged, Christian against Christian, Muslim against Infidel, etc. His cynicism against man-made religions was well-founded. Nevertheless, he could not anticipate that the conduits of heavenly revelation would reopen only 42 years after his lifetime.
When I compare the Bramin with the old woman, the chief difference I see between them is gratitude. The Bramin, despite his palatial accomodations and privileged social standing, feels some entitlement that he cannot obtain by those means. Viewed as a religious leader, he can do no more than parrot hollow platitudes that have been passed down to him by virtue of his education. Nevertheless, it's all hearsay to him. He has no direct experience with God and is frustrated because he doesn't really consider it a possibility. Meanwhile, the old woman's happiness is depicted by Voltaire to be artificial and born of ignorance. All that would be necessary for her to become as miserable as the Bramin would be to educate her.
Let me interject here that, in hundreds of conversations that I've had with anti-Mormon atheists, humanists, and exMormon apostates, their view of me and my religious faith is exactly that of Voltaire's Bramin: “I have told myself a hundred times that I would be happy if I were as stupid as my neighbor, and yet I would want no part of that kind of happiness.” They say that I'm ignorant, and that I couldn't possibly believe what I do if I just knew the facts. The rant and rail and succumb to anger. While they attempt to pummel me with facts to forcibly "educate" me away from my faith, I go on living quite happily while their faces turn red with frustration and rage. I've yet to find any of these people who are truly happy. They are, in a sense, missionaries who proselyte for the cause of misery. Yet I don't live in ignorance. I, like other latter-day saints, have a knowledge that is available to all of God's children. Unfortunately, our modern-day Bramins are too proud and "educated" to admit that possibility.
We are blessed today to live in a time when God has opened the heavens anew. They are not sealed. God speaks again. The religions that Voltaire knew have been exposed as pretenders and the true kingdom of God stands upon the earth today. Unlike the Bramin in the story, it is possible for each one of us to commune with God's Spirit. Mormonism is an experiential religion. Our testimony of God is not based on 2,000 year-old hearsay. The promise God has given us is that, if we will read the Book of Mormon and ask him if it is true, with a sincere heart and real intent, he will tell us directly that it is true. The Holy Ghost testifies of this truth. Hundreds of thousands of people experience this each year. With that knowledge and that experience, you can find how to obtain answers to your question. We can know where we came from, why we're here, and where we'll go when we die. Unlike the old woman in the story, we need not great learning to obtain this knowledge from God. My friend Ronnie Bray says, "No one needs to be a genius to discover anything about Mormonism that is true. It is like searching for a matching pair of clean socks: one need only look in the sock drawer, and voila!"
Ignorance does not bring "happiness." True knowledge, based in revealed principles, confirmed first-hand by the Holy Ghost, brings great joy. The very source of happiness is to know for yourself the truths of eternity. When we know these things, it gives us a sense of purpose and place. It adjusts our expectations to a healthy level. We understand that trials and tribulations come to all of us, yet our knowledge sustains us because we know the purpose of life and its trials. We find happiness despite the existence of difficulties. Gratitude springs from that knowledge. When we exercise gratitude, a power comes into our lives that helps us obtain happiness, no matter what our circumstances are. In times of trial or distress, we can still find inner peace.
Gratitude is the power to overcome opposition, trials, depression, and even addictions. I think that, to some degree, gratitude is one of the few things that is completely and totally under our control. We can choose to be grateful and happy no matter what happens to us. No one has power to take it away from us if we will hang on to it. I don't think anyone successfully makes it through any kind of 12-step recovery program without having a grateful heart. In closing, let me cite the words of Albert Schweitzer, which seem to suitably sum up my own thoughts.
"To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude."
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
.jpg)
