God loves a cheerful giver

Our obsessions keep us from holiness

“Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” 
(2 Corinthians 9:7)

I wouldn’t call myself a sadsack, but compulsion is certainly my problem. From my calculations, Jesus tells us sadness isn’t the singular opposite of cheerfulness. A compulsion stage, a fixation, also keeps us from being cheerful. If we manage to wipe away the sadness in the “already determined” progress of our difficult lives, another problem (compulsion) can hinder our sainthood. 

The mark of holiness is to give as a sacrifice, in the many ways of submitting to God’s will, with hearty and willing contentedness.

Image by bethany121

Yeah, I know. Dear Jesus, can we get a break from this self-improvement process that Christian Catholics seem to always run into? It never stops! There’s always one more hurdle. Sheesh. I try not to be sad, even as this life insists upon daily crap that makes us sad. I must also be gleeful about my giving. Not a syrupy forced happiness, to be clear, but jolly, or at least genial, as I submit to caring for others. And now I must also worry about my compulsions?

And there lies the grumpiness that Jesus warns us about. Surly and cranky make up our compulsive outcomes. We’re stuck in behavioral modification steps when we try to force holiness as if it were a tactical prize. The sad world doesn’t stop being sad, so to be content with “already determined” bits that smack us upside the head, we resort to self-help solutions. Giving of self, the genius of holiness, isn’t enough for some of us. We want to fix things and avoid difficulties. 

That takes a lot of time.

Our obsessions can keep us from cheerfulness. A good example of the problem is our daily training and education as collaborators with one of the many ruinous ideologies that rue everyone’s existence. We apply a liberal, conservative, or non-plussed lens to everything. We surround ourselves with people and thoughts that fit a specific narrative. Regardless of our slant on some popular idealogy, it can turn us into curmudgeons and get in our way of being with God. We become obsessive, critical, and eventually angry. 

Jesus is right. We can’t be obsessive and giddy at the same time. It’s not compulsive behavior that allows us to offer sacrifice with our time, money, and talents. It’s something else.

Frustration over getting closer to sainthood, as my whining shows, reveals a childish grasp on holiness. We won’t be able to fix every problem and avoid every trauma/disaster. That’s not the purpose of life. For compulsive types, moaning is often the first marker in every changing phase of life because we haven’t transformed into a holiness that makes us gleeful. 

Compulsions won’t allow transformation from an earth-bound to a heaven-bound soul. Just when I feel stability in my friendship with God with some successful fix or avoidance, I get thrown into another lion cage. A litany of lion cages awaits our future. And, one of these days, we’re going to get eaten.

That may sound morose, but the secret to glee is to know that the jaws of death are only successful because God has allowed them. He orchestrates good from every sadness-causing event until he decides the game is over. 

We can’t rely upon God's infinite trajectory of earthly rescue because each speed bump could be our last. We do die, you know. God’s will and all that goes with it will make us paranoid, jittery, and compulsive. That is, unless we shift from a gearbox approach to traveling, grinding into faster steps to holiness (thinking we’re driving the vehicle), and recognize that God uses us at whatever speed and with whatever skill set we’ve been given.

Getting to cheery is a whole different part of the game of life. How the heck do we do that? Well, competitive measuring of God’s grace isn’t a good path.

The other day, reading about St. Edith Stein, I had a terrible notion that woke me into a different attitude about the two-step-forward, three-step-back journey to sainthood. It goes like this.

Edith Stein was likely damaged goods. Due to her reported mental difficulties — thus limited social skills — a biographer suspected she was autistic, maybe even at Asperger’s level on the spectrum.

That’s not the terrible notion. Plenty of people live with this issue. The awful thing was my thinking of her potential incapabilities at habitual sin and horrible thoughts, a blessing for many autistic children, as a better, smoother access to a sainted life. Her difficulty aided her in her sainthood.

How’s that for horrible? But is it really horrible, or just that she knew how to give of herself? We all have challenging, scary limitations. They’re all opportunities, not walls or deep wells. Edith Stein knew that.

Granted, I may not have grasped Edith’s sinless prognosis correctly, or even at all, about autism and Aspergers. The terribleness is that I placed sainthood on a competitive track. Yikes, and yuck.

Edith Stein didn’t become a saint because of her potential autism. She became a saint because she saw her potential as a child of God, however she got formed and raised and thrown into the lion’s cage.

“Moreover, God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work.”
(2 Corinthians 9:7)

God’s grace is not the escape from the lion’s cage. God’s grace is his giving us what we need to collaborate with him, even to the point of being chewed up. While I’m playing checkers in my obsessive fixations and avoidances, and maybe moving up to chess, God is orchestrating a symphony of sacrifices. God is asking me to join in his music, not his machinations.

We can give cheerfully because we have all we need already. We, in fact, have an abundance to meet every challenge with good work, healthy sacrifice, and holiness appropriate for us.