Showing posts with label thanks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thanks. Show all posts

Sunday, March 11, 2018

Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Madame Blueberry" (1998)

And one more thing I want to add: If it is the case that you're always saying "oh if only I had xyz then I would be happy" and then you get xyz and you're still not happy, you're like "oh if only I had abc then I would be happy"- you should really examine your emotions and desires and try to figure out why you feel that way. If you expect that getting a new thing will make you feel good, but then it doesn't, then it seems like your desire wasn't really for the thing itself. Like there's some other underlying issue, and for some reason you've developed unrealistic expectations about how to solve that underlying issue.

Your emotions and desires are real and important. Ask yourself why you feel that way and what you actually want. That's how you will figure out how to feel better.

Way more useful than "the way you feel is SINFUL so just STOP IT."
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To see all my VeggieTales reviews: Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales (Master Post)

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Saturday, November 28, 2015

On "Being Thankful"

A hand turkey. Image source.

A strange thing happens whenever I teach about Thanksgiving in China.

I ask the students to discuss this question: "What are you thankful for?" After letting them talk among themselves (in English, this is in the context of an ESL class), I do a little bit of error correction. Because most of them didn't catch that being thankful for something has a different meaning than being thankful to someone.

"I am thankful for..." and then you list the good things in your life. Your job, family, home, etc. "I am thankful to..." means you want to say "thank you" to someone. Your parents, your friends, God, etc. (Somewhat confusingly, these can also go on the "thankful for" list.)

Anyway, in the end, the students come away with this message: the meaning of Thanksgiving Day is to go thank people for everything they've done for us. And indeed, this week on wechat (Chinese social media app) I saw a post in Chinese which said basically "Today is Thanksgiving in western countries. Thank you to our parents, for giving us life. Thank you to our teachers, for giving us knowledge. Thank you to our friends, for giving us friendship." and on and on and on, all the people we should thank. It was really beautiful and poetic, in my opinion.

The problem is, that's not the meaning of Thanksgiving at all. Or, at least, it's so completely different from the way I've always understood Thanksgiving.

I remember in school, we used to have to write an answer to the question "What are you thankful for?" (Sometimes this answer was in the form of a hand turkey, obviously.) And my family has a tradition where we go around the dinner table and each person says what they're thankful for. But you can't repeat what someone else said. (And then sometimes it became a game, and we just kept going and going and you're out if you can't think of anything when it's your turn. Until someone says "I'm thankful for quantum tunneling" and that prompts everyone else to quit the game because it's been completely overrun by nerdiness. Yeah that's how we roll.)

Yeah, we always talked about what we were thankful for. But did we ever think about the "thankful to" part? Did we ever think about who we were thanking?

Aha! Yes, we did! The correct answer is God.

Except, not really. The whole "it's about being thankful to God" thing is more about a culture war than about actually thanking someone. It's about Christians getting all upset about how Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday, and isn't it terrible how our culture has lost sight of that, and kids in public school are writing "I am thankful for" but the lesson never mentions the name of God and isn't that the most horrible thing, it robs Thanksgiving of all its meaning, etc etc etc.

Thanksgiving, as I learned it, was about me having a vague feeling of thankfulness. Vaguely in the general direction of God. It's about me being happy about the things in my life. It's about "being thankful." It's NOT about actually thanking anyone. Yeah, they say it's about thanking God, but does anyone actually talk about what that means? Do we believe these good things were given to us personally by God? Or just because God made a world full of good things and the potential for happiness? Did God cause those good things only in a general sense, or actually with you personally in mind? And what about the bad things in our lives, or in the world- did God cause those too?

No, the average Christian (in US evangelical culture, at least) doesn't think about those questions. "Thanking God" is just a vague label that gets applied to positive things in one's life. Does it actually mean anything?

So I'm always a little bit shocked when I teach Chinese students about Thanksgiving, and they decide they're going to actually go out and thank someone. But I never tell them "no that's not what Thanksgiving is about" because, geez, that SHOULD BE what Thanksgiving is about.

(And if you're wondering about whether I totally omit the part where "Thanksgiving is a Christian holiday" in my lessons: I tell them the story about the pilgrims, and how the pilgrims were Christians and they thanked God. I tell them that Thanksgiving is about being thankful, and so for people who are religious, they would thank God. But most Chinese people aren't that religious, so I don't present it like "this is the entire point of Thanksgiving and if you're not a Christian then this holiday has no meaning for you." That would be ridiculous. And mean. And also not an accurate representation of the place that Thanksgiving holds in American culture- which is what I'm supposed to be teaching.)

It just shows how selfish and individualistic American culture (or American Christian culture) is, that we've created a holiday all about thanks, and yet it never occurs to us to actually thank someone. It's all about you and thinking about your own life. It's about "being thankful"- just a warm feeling, but not related to relationships between people or anything like that.

My Chinese students got it right though. Go actually thank someone this Thanksgiving.

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Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Psalm 92: Why should we praise God?

"It is good to praise the Lord
    and make music to your name, O Most High,
proclaiming your love in the morning
    and your faithfulness at night,
to the music of the ten-stringed lyre
    and the melody of the harp."
Psalm 92:1-3

Praising God. People do this by singing, talking about God's goodness, giving thanks to him, etc.

Why should we do it?

Well, a partial answer to this question is that it helps us emotionally connect with God. Music is good for that. And talking about good things God has done helps us focus on good things and feel better.

And does it have other effects besides helping us feel good and thankful and closer to God? Like, does it affect how God feels? Does it make him happy? Hmm. I'm not sure, but I hope it does.

The other half of "why should we praise God?" is the question of what exactly we are praising him for. And this is where it gets tricky for me. Because if we thank and praise God for good things that happen, what about bad things?

Praising and thanking God only makes sense if we believe God caused those good things to happen. Okay then, what about the bad things? Did God cause those? See it just doesn't make sense to me that we should credit God with everything good and just not mention the bad things.

The only way I can make sense of it is to say God made the whole world, and there are good things and bad things, so let's focus on the good things and thank God for those. But they must be viewed as parts woven into the rest of the world and how everything is connected- rather than individual events directly caused by God.

For example, God made a world that contains kitties, and I love kitties! (I happen to live with the best kitty in the world, by the way.) So I can say, wow God is so great, giving us a world with kitties in it! But I won't say God destined me to meet and care for this one particular furry creature, as part of his divine plan for my life. Right? Because why is God spending his time and energy assigning me a specific cat? I can think of a thousand more important things he should be doing.

And God made us a world that has things like love and friendship, and good food and pineapple juice (you guys, I bought pineapple juice at Walmart today- come to China and have some!) and light and sound and beauty and quantum physics. So cool! Yes, I can totally get on board with thanking and praising God for all that. ^_^

Image source.

I'd still like to believe he's involved in my own individual life... but I'm not sure how that would work.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 92. To read other people's posts, click here: Wired for Praise.

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Saturday, September 1, 2012

"It would have happened anyway."

All right, we're gonna bring this small group meeting to a close now- time for prayer requests!

"My family's traveling to Chicago- pray that we have a safe flight."
"My sister is sick today- pray that God heals her."
"Pray that we all get through final exams!"

And sometimes I roll my eyes at this. Do you know how many hundreds of planes take off from every airport in the United States every day? And ALL OF THEM are fine? And okay, your sister has the common cold. God better intervene on this one or she might miss a whopping 2 days of school! Also, guess what- no matter what happens, a week from now all the finals will be over.

You have access to the power that created the universe and raised Jesus from the dead, and all you can think to ask is that your luggage doesn't get lost? Image source.

(So, in other words, perfectnumber likes to judge other people's prayer requests...)

But that's not what I want to write about today. I want to write about when we pray for something and then it happens.

Suppose I prayed for the safe flight to Chicago. And then I had a safe flight to Chicago.

If I don't stop and thank God, I'm kind of a jerk.

Ah come on, thousands of people have "a safe flight to Chicago" every day. (67 million passengers came through O'Hare International Airport in 2011. Oh dude, I just realized I'm one of them!)  Regardless of whether they prayed for it. God didn't do anything- it would have happened anyway.

All right, if you're so sure "it would have happened anyway," then why did you pray for it?

Sometimes I pray for stuff, and it's stuff that I totally expect to happen, so I don't even remember that I prayed about it- I definitely don't remember to thank God.

And I wish I remembered more.

But it's not big epic stuff. It's not "oh look at the awesome power of God answering prayer." It's just a plane and a clear sky and a pilot who has done this exact same route for the past 10 years. It's just me not getting sick on the first day of school. It's just a good grade on an easy physics test.

"Thank you, God, that I didn't have to draw an elephant on my exam." Image source.

When I pray, do I really think I'm talking to God? Because if I'm not gonna take him seriously when he does what I asked, why should he take me seriously when I pray?

Yes, we could debate whether "it would have happened anyway." But the fact is that I prayed for it and then it happened, and it's a slap in the face to decide that "nope, that wasn't God, that would have happened anyway."

 Because either I was not certain that "it would have happened anyway", so that's why I prayed, or I just pray things that I don't mean at all. I just say the stuff you're supposed to say. Yeah God, help us be safe, help us have fun, thank you for the food and the hands that made it.

(Actually I personally never use the "hands that made it" line because I take everything literally and it sounds like some disembodied hands made pasta for us...)

Dig in! Image source.

What to do? What if I completely forget I prayed for something? How to remind myself to check later and see if God did it and then thank him?

Realizing my tendency to be kind of a jerk in this area (by not remembering to thank God) has caused me to focus more on prayer lately. To dedicate time to pray every day with no distractions (with my computer off). To think about people I know- friends and family- by name, and pray for them. To be thankful for everything God has given me, and lay out all my concerns about my future in front of him.

And I pray that God keeps reminding me to do that.

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