Thank Me

I frequently find myself saying, “Thank you Mommy for making this meal for us.  Thank you Mommy for doing our laundry for us.  Thank you Mommy for taking us to the park today.”, etc.  I am actually not speaking to my mother when I say these things, though she did deserve these thanks when she was alive.  I am saying these phrases to my children.  It has become a parenting strategy for me of late when my kids get into an ungrateful mood where they like to express how life is not meeting their expectations.  We’ve done this enough that my kids know when I start saying the thank you Mommys their job is to repeat the phrases after me.

While I do appreciate being appreciated, that’s not what this is about.  I don’t need their thank yous to feel good about myself.  It is about training my children to SEE what they DO have to be thankful for. 

Some of you out there are thinking that this is ridiculous.  “You are not going to change your kids’ heart by making them say something over and over.”  That point sounds right in theory, but it is just not correct in reality.  

In Psychology there is a concept called cognitive dissonance.  The principle is that you cannot continue in a pattern of behavior that you do not believe in.  People who believe something to be immoral, but continue to engage in that behavior will eventually come to believe that what they are doing is not immoral.  It goes the other way around as well.  If you don’t like someone but commit to treat them as someone you do like, your feelings about that person will eventually change.  Basically, emotion follows action.  

Of course it was not modern Psychology that figured this out.  Cognitive Dissonance it just a restatement of principles already in the Bible.  Regardless, the point is sometimes we just have to behave our way into feeling the way we want to feel. 

You’re wondering if my kids within a few minutes have transformed attitudes.  Sometimes yes.  Sometimes just the words coming out of their mouths really does remind them how ridiculous it is for them to be ungrateful.  Other times their hearts are slower to change, likely because these are the times my tone is hard and impatient as I’m going through the thank you mommys.  But as we continue in this process we are all more quickly catching ourselves in our grumpy, unthankful moments and replacing those words with words of gratefulness.

One thing that makes me crazy is that often the thank you mommy exercises are required the most on days that are particularly fun kid days, days that it should be the most natural and easy for the kids to be thankful.  It’s like getting something we want just feeds the monster inside us that believes we should get EVERYTHING we want.  This past Saturday was one of those days.  So my response was to gripe to my husband that no matter how much fun stuff we do with the kids they can never just be thankful, they always want more.  As I’m being ungrateful for my ungrateful kids I have a brief moment of recognition.  I recognized myself.

God many times in scripture tells us to praise him and thank him.  For many years I found this off-putting and boring.  Is he sitting around just waiting for those who love him to say all these great things to him about him?  Does his ego need that?  Of course not!  So why does he do this?  Because he loves us!  (I will transition to first person singular so I only step on my own toes here.)  I’m his precious child.  He loves me enough not to leave me as the immature, selfish person that I am.  I’m so foolish that I often don’t realize that I’m happier and can see life more clearly when I’m thankful and have my eyes focused on God.  Please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want my happiness to be the aim, I want loving God to be the aim.  Again (as discussed in previous posts), happiness is often a by-product of putting God in His proper place at the center of everything.  When I put myself at the center of the universe, inevitably I’m unhappy and ungrateful.  Life just doesn’t make sense with me at the center in the same way charting the stars didn’t make complete sense until it was recognized that Earth was not at the center of the universe but the sun was.

So as a parent, I comprehend why God repeatedly tells me to love him, praise him, thank him.  Just as saying thank you doesn’t come without being taught to children, I too have to be taught what doesn’t come natural to me by God my Father.

Does Your Marriage Make You Happy?

Is marriage supposed to make you happy?

Maybe the better question is ‘should I seek for marriage to make me happy?’.  “Of course!”, you say.  

Yeah, I don’t think so.  Again, just like my post yesterday about our aim being off, I think we are shooting for the wrong target when we aim for happiness.  The aim should be pleasing God.  I will use the word holiness (meaning set apart for God) for this idea.  

Do you see the difference?  One is about you and the other is about God.  They both seem like good objects, but only one is the best.  In case you are unclear, God is the best not you.

What do I mean by holiness?  Well, the fact is marriage is tough business.  It roughs you up.  Anyone with half an ounce of humility will tell you that marriage quickly reveals your selfishness.  If you are seeking happiness, you will easily find a way to justify your selfishness, because your spouse is just not making YOU happy!  And in time, you will find that YOU just aren’t happy in your marriage.  On the other hand, suppose the same thing happens to someone who is seeking holiness.  The same selfishness initially rares its ugly head and considers what the other person should be doing to fix this thing that is making you unhappy, but then the Holy Spirit gently reminds us “submit to one another out of reverence to Christ” (Eph. 5:21), “overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21), “a gentle answer turns away wrath” (Prov. 15:1), “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18), go the extra mile (Matt. 5:41), “the wife must respect her husband” (Eph. 5:33),  “husbands, love your wives” (Eph 5:25) etc.  Quickly, it becomes evident that to please God we must die to our selfish nature.  

So is happiness a bad thing to want?  No.  I just don’t know that it should be the end goal.  Think of it more as a side effect.  I can’t promise you that if you live to please God in your marriage you will be happy.  What I can say is countless people will tell you when they stopped trying to make themselves happy and sought a higher goal for their marriage they actually became happy in their marriage.  Please don’t misunderstand.  This is not a magic pill, overnight thing.  You are going to have to live it and live it for a while.  Dying to yourself is not easy.  But anything worth having is not easy.  Aim for the highest goal in your marriage; aim for holiness.

Don’t Be A Good Witness

I have heard many times growing up in the Christian world that I need to be a good witness.  Or that something like drinking is a bad witness.  But I say forget that.  Don’t be a good witness. . . or at least don’t let that be your aim.  Where in the Bible are we told be a good witness?  I can’t find it anywhere.  This aim falls short of the greater aim of loving God with all of who we are.  Sometimes, it goes the completely wrong direction altogether.

“How can it bad to be a good witness?” you say.  I understand this question.  Maybe you even acknowledge that the goal is not high enough, but certainly not bad.  But it is.  It is a subtle but profound transition that takes God from being the object to man.  

In loving God, He is the object.  It is Him and Him alone I seek to love, please and pour my affection out to.  It is my Father I consult to determine whether something is right or wrong.  

In living to be a good witness, it is man that I am trying to please.  It my perception of what man at large views as good that I consult to discern whether a choice is good or not.  

While my understanding of Him is growing, God Himself is constant, unchanging.  He is truth, eternal truth.  He is my steady measuring stick.  Man on the other hand is fickle.  Mankind’s views of what is good changes with the seasons or location or any other number of factors.  At the end of the day, what may constitute a good witness for my next door neighbor may not be the makings of a good witness to my co-worker.

I hear some of you thinking, “but what about Paul saying we should be all things to all people?”.  Fair question.  Yes we should be willing to step into different worlds and experience them and enjoy them and be part of them in order to love and reach the people who make up those worlds.  But still, when it comes down to determining how we should live, what is right or wrong, or good or better, we must not consult the people we are trying to reconcile to Christ, but Christ Himself.

Still there are those who think it not bad to strive to be a good witness because at least it is moving in the right direction.  How do we know it is the right direction if the mark is moving with the spirit of the times?  

Lets say it is for the moment moving in the right direction to strive to be a good witness.  Even with that premise the aim is too small.  We must aim for the highest.  We must aim for what we were created, to love God.

At the end of the day, living to be a good witness is just another way of worrying what other people will think.  The question is ‘what does God think?’.  If you are ever tempted to wonder if you are being a bad witness, throw that thought away and ask yourself, ‘is this pleasing God?’.