An Attitude of Gratitude

The dangers of feeling entitled

In the middle of a business career that involved a significant amount of travelling, I always made sure to bring home presents for my wife, Deborah, and the children, probably in an attempt to make up for the time I was away from them. However, it came to the point where they ran straight for the gifts the minute I got home, rushing past the giver (me) to get to the gifts.

More recently, now as grandparents, Deborah and  I determined to give experiences or memories to our grandchildren, rather than straightforward gifts, when we realised that they had so many Christmas gifts that they would never remember who gave them what.

These realisations were part of a learning curve in what is mostly easily described as an attitude of gratitude.

A sense of entitlement

A further element of that learning came as my career developed and The Lord led me into management, and the leadership, of people. I rapidly grasped that few, if any, employees will thank you for an end of year bonus. I always made a point of thanking my line manager when I was awarded a bonus, so that was a shock to find I was in a very small minority. But there is a part of me that thinks that it is easy for the human condition to take the consistent for granted, which means I needed to mix it up a little. On that point, Dr Robert Lupton in Toxic Charity writes that if you give something once you will receive Appreciation, but if you give it twice you breed Anticipation. If you give three times, then you create Expectations. Then if you give four times you have forged Entitlement.

It is easy for the human condition to take the consistent for granted.

It was a hard lesson to learn; it hurt to work with people who felt they were owed, who gave virtually nothing beyond the bare essentials and yet expected everything. There was one particularly poignant Christmas where we laid on a dinner, free bar and a really special party. My PA worked so hard on it and yet had not received a word of thanks up to the morning of the event. Nobody had said thank you as she gave out the drinks tokens, as she distributed the Secret Santa, or double-checked menu choices. It hurt me so hard that I posted on LinkedIn about the insidious nastiness of entitlement. Within minutes colleagues were grumbling: how dare I write such a thing? We got more grumbles than Jackie did thanks.

A danger for us all

Entitlement is something that Paul addresses in Romans and Thessalonians (Rom 1:21; 2 Thess 3:10). And in the Romans text, he appears to highlight it as one of the signs of lawlessness in the end times. Indeed, it is one of the aspects of modern life that really does make me think that we are close to Jesus’ return. But I can’t just complain of others’ sense of entitlement. Whenever I wrestle with these matters, I get to thinking that it is also an inherent danger within our walk of faith, for we must never become blasé about God’s blessings.

It is one of the reasons why I have a Jewish ‘mezuzah’ on my front door surround. If you don’t know, a ‘mezuzah’ is a small box which contains key scriptures: Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21. It is scripturally linked to the command to bind these words to your door posts. There is no magic in these scriptures, it simply reminds us that everything we have is The Lord’s. I regularly forget all about the mezuzah for weeks on end and then suddenly I will notice it (usually when I am getting a bit up myself!) and it suddenly reminds me that I am simply a caretaker of what God has given into my charge, and I invariably praise Him for His grace.

Humility and gratitude

Blessing must be received with humility and a sense of gratitude. As Martin Luther said, the greater God’s blessings are given the less they are regarded. GK Chesterton put it more pithily when he said, “there are two types of people: those who take things for granted and those who take things with gratitude.” Moses tackled this in Deuteronomy 8, feeling it necessary to remind the Israelites not to forget YHWH. I have a friend who often talks about love languages, and it led me to reflect that God’s love language – the way that God most likes to receive love – is gratitude.

The Adversary, meanwhile, encourages us to feel entitled. Entitlement destroys gratitude and is very, very different to hope, expectation, even desire. It is an intense form of pride and, in a way, sits at the very heart of The Fall: ‘I should be able to eat from all the trees.’  Entitlement focuses on what you haven’t got rather than what you have.

Entitlement focuses on what you haven’t got rather than what you have.

Thinking like this brings me to the realisation that I deserve nothing from God, but in Christ I have been given everything, praise His Holy Name. “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is The Lord’s will for us in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5:16-18). Whatever the circumstances we can, and should, praise Him.

This reminds me of one of my mini bugbears. Psalm 118:24 is invariably read “This is the day that The Lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it.” However, the Hebrew normally translated ‘it’ is the word ‘bo’. In every other instance in the Bible, it is translated as ‘Him’, therefore it should read: “This is the day that The Lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in Him.”  It makes so much more sense, it doesn’t matter if the day is warm or cold, sunshine or raid. We rejoice in The Lord. We will enter His gates with thanksgiving in our hearts (Ps 100:4).

The ten lepers

This was a rather long introduction to our main bible text, but I hope it helps you to understand the importance of this story.

Luke 17:11-19 “On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’  When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’  feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’”

Leprosy is a disease that has survived into the 21st century; however, its impact today is a shadow of what it was. Leprosy is a disease that destroys the nerves, it starts at one point of the body and can spread throughout. There are stories of sufferers not noticing when rats are eating affected parts of their bodies. It was a contagious disease that drove sufferers away from their normal communities; they had to carry a bell to warn people they were coming. Yet these ten men, including a hated Samaritan, had gathered together in their own little community of outcasts.

These men realised that they could not approach Jesus, even though they knew they needed to get to Him. So, they stood at a distance and shouted to Him. It may be incidental, but the voice is apparently the last part of the body affected by leprosy, so it is possible that these men were crying out with rasping last vestiges of their voices. And note this, these men asked for nothing other than mercy. “Jesus, Rabbi, have mercy on us” they shouted.

And yet only one, a Samaritan, had enough gratitude to turn around and go back to thank Jesus and praise God.

Jesus heard them. He gave them instructions: “Go show yourselves to a priest.” Their healing did not manifest until they started on their way, “As they went they were healed.” And yet only one, a Samaritan, had enough gratitude to turn around and go back to thank Jesus and praise God. Jesus asks one of His rhetorical questions: “Weren’t ten healed? Where are the other nine?”

The form for presenting an offering for healing at the temple was as follows: -

1.    You reported your healing
2.    You presented a witness to confirm you had truly suffered from and been healed of the disease.
3.    You gave the name of the healer.

Nine times in succession, one after the other, a man presented himself to the priests to report that he had been healed of leprosy, one of the Messianic miracles, and that the healer had been Yeshua ha Nazareth - Jesus of Nazareth. There is a question of whether the Samaritan leper would have been able to do this, not being a Jew – but he received his healing anyway, by setting off to do so, in obedience.

 A community

Ten men, gathered together in community, including one Samaritan, part of the people with a mutual hatred of the Jews. But here is the thing about community, communities tend to gather around something, in this case sickness, and once you have that grouping it is hard to break out. This is why we need to be careful of the people we come into community with.

In this group, connected around sickness and pain, one man struck out, said ‘hey, I hear there is a man called Jesus who they say is healing people, delivering people. Maybe, just maybe He could heal us. Let’s get ourselves out there and find where He is.” What a statement for us today. So, they set out and eventually they find Him. Yet they were unable or unwilling to come close to Him in their uncleanness. We need to thank God that when we are sick and feel at a distance, Jesus sees us.

Jesus, master, have mercy

So they shout, “Jesus, master, have mercy on us.”  Just six little words in our language, yet inordinately powerful – master literally means ultimate, supreme authority. These men shouted it out, they were desperate, maybe some of them were in that late stage where their voice was little more than a croak – no entitlement here.  Our house group is working through the beatitudes right now, and we looked at ‘mercy’. Our conclusion was that mercy is what comes from the combination of grace and truth. Mercy is the giving of grace in the reality of the truth of the situation. When did we last cry out with such desperation?

Obedience to His word

Here’s the thing, Jesus did something different to how He dealt with the leper in Luke 5. He didn’t touch them, He simply replied with six words of His own ‘Go show yourselves to the priests.’ Then as they went, they were healed. Their healing was predicated upon their obedience to His Word. This is reminiscent of Israel at Sinai, ‘we will do, and we will hear.’  Our obedience to God’s Word is the key to a successful walk, we walk at His word, even when obedience makes no sense, when the walk is painful.

Remember the blesser

Nine of the men were so excited at the blessing that they forgot about the blesser. Maybe they were so excited at the prospect of seeing wives and children. Whatever it was, only one, a Samaritan, returned to say thank you. Maybe, the nine Jewish men felt entitled to their healing.  But the Samaritan put giving thanks to the blesser, the one who made him whole, at the top of his priorities.

How often do we forget to thank God for the blessings in our life? How often do we take His blessings for granted? We don’t know how long it took for the man to return but he did, he said ‘Thank you’ with a loud voice. It’s easy to be loud complaining, but let’s be equally loud in our thanksgiving and praise, both to other people and to our Lord. The thought strikes me that thanksgiving that is silent can easily be construed as lack of gratitude by the one who should be thanked. Jesus’ response to this man was striking: “your faith has saved you.”

It’s easy to be loud complaining, but let’s be equally loud in our thanksgiving and praise, both to other people and to our Lord. 

The others were physically well, they had experienced the outward miracle of blessing, but the text indicates that they had missed the inner experience of salvation. That salvation came to just one man, a Samaritan who came back to give praise. We live in a time of great abundance, relatively speaking, but the reality is that our physical wellbeing, our clothes, our cars, our houses will do us little good without the greatest gift of salvation.

I propose that we need to cultivate the discipline of thanksgiving, a daily practice of gratitude. Within Judaism there is a command to give 100 ‘thankyous’ to YHWH each day. I try to follow that path in my daily prayers with structured thanks for God’s grace, His word, His creation, my wife, our children, the meeting of our needs. Of course, my way is not the only way, even the best way, but, in one way or another, practise the discipline of thanksgiving to develop the attitude of gratitude.