This essay continues a sequence. Read the previous one here.
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them:
otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
Therefore when thou doest thine alms,
do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets,
that they may have glory of men.
Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
That thine alms may be in secret:
and thy Father which seeth in secret Himself shall reward thee openly.
— KJV, Matt 6:1-4
Many things in The Word sound strange. But it’s not The Word that is strange – it is human nature that is warped.
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Hypocrite! That’s A Strong Word…
The first part of this essay established that seeking attention for “good” actions is frowned upon by The Word.
Even so, is it not quite harsh for Christ to label us hypocrites for our habit of metaphorically sounding trumpets for acts of generosity?
“Good” without reference to spirituality is a meaningless concept (ref. “Creating Is Perpetual“). There can be no truly good earthly action without a loving spiritual motive.
So, we are hypocritical when our external actions are at odds with our spiritual volition.
Love helps without any thought of self. Therefore good actions that purport to arise from pure love when a “compensation” (attention, respect, self-satisfaction, etc.) is also somehow a factor are hypocritical. Spiritual volition is everything.
Expectation Is Expectation. “Nothing” Means Nothing
Therefore, it is also hypocritical when we expect gratitude from those that we help, because this is equivalent to demanding compensation from the beneficiary. This is an insight that runs counter to many social norms.
Yes, gratitude is a good thing. Yes, genuine gratitude from a beneficiary is a blessing to the giver, because it is equivalent to a prayer. And yes, every mature human being will express gratitude when he receives help.
But the expectation of it is a subtle demand for compensation. The giver’s nature is yet to be fully transformed through The Word. It is an impure form of love and is hypocrisy by the high standards of The Word:
But love ye your enemies,
and do good,
and lend,
hoping for nothing again;
— Luke 6:35
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“Nothing” includes gratitude.
The Word expects us to mature beyond desiring or expecting gratitude. We should help because it is in our nature, just as the fish swims because it is in its nature.
Ye Must Be Born Anew
Being natural means minimal mental calculation, minimal involvement of the calculating intellect. We (briefly) mentioned the dangers of intellectual domination in “Fall Down And Worship Me!“.
This is what is fundamentally expressed in “let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth“: when love has been deeply ingrained in our nature, our giving will be almost unconscious, and the expectation of gratitude will disappear, naturally.
The absence of this spiritualised nature has made many otherwise good people fall into a mental trap whereby they cannot imagine true altruism, and believe that “altruism” only exists to the extent that it benefits the giver in some way.
For those of a philosophical bent such behaviour must be driven by selfishness or self-interest. For the biologically-minded, so-called “love” must arise from selfish genes or the pressures of group evolution. Those interested in psychology might argue that it arises from a need for psychological comfort.
They demonstrate ignorance of the love that The Word teaches and the possibility of making this love part of our essential nature. They are dominated by the earthly intellect, and so cannot envisage the spiritual ideal that The Word seeks to transform us into.
To be born anew is to have fully inculcated this kind of love, which The Word explained in several ways, many of which we covered in “The Beatitudes“.
We are to use our brief time on Earth to use The Word to attain to this true spiritual maturity (ref. “Act To Experience To Know“).
Today’s Resolution:
- We shall seek to inculcate pure love into our every action, such that we can receive the great grace to wash our robes white and be transformed into a new creature through the power of The Word.
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