“Man”,
notwithstanding philosophical, archeological, anthropological,
historical and scientific researches remains a mystery – a complex
conundrum and a prodigious myth waiting to be unraveled. His changing
mien, conduct, disposition, traits, characteristics and idiosyncrasies
monumentally attest to these assertions.
It was in this
context a bewildered 18th century philosopher and poet, John Arbunot,
had asked in his poem “Know Yourself”: What am I?How produced? And for
what end whence drew I being? To what period tend? Am I the abandoned
orphan of blind chance, dropped by wild atoms in disordered dance? Or
from an endless chain of causes wrought? And of unthinking substance
born with thought? The enigmatic labyrinth called ‘man’ gets more
complex every day.
But in the midst of the
quandary, Man has through emotion and reasoning established a symbiotic
and functional relationship with all other things. He has intra and
inter-human relationships, realising that as a catholic entity and
person it behoves man to husband himself and harness other things around
him. In making this relationship active and feasible, generosity,
beneficence, charity, altruistic commitment and kindness to his kind and
others becomes critically crucial.
What do we expect in return
for showing kindness and generosity in material or spiritual format?
Many will argue that they expect nothing for showing kindness, some will
say they expect a thank you and nothing more. Whatever we say is an
attestation to the complex nature of Man. But in all, a vast majority of
people will expect gratitude. Have our politicians been grateful to the
poverty-stricken masses of Nigeria right from 1960 till date?
Gratitude,
as a human trait, lies in the deepest recesses of a noble mind. It
entails a form of reciprocal action, an avid desire to show
appreciation, gratefulness and recognition of good. It is the drive line
between great minds and mundane ones. Ability to show gratitude
stimulates and extends the tentacles of altruism and munificence.
Egomaniacs
do well and show kindness because they want to be thanked in front of
the market place. In front of the church and on radio or television.
They are self-seekers. Theirs is, no matter what we say, is termed
philanthropy or generosity, but there is a material price in their
generosity. But giving or doing good without caring about self is true
goodness. Such has a spiritual price. Man is not armed with tools to
decipher and competent to judge a true giver, but we know that it is
more blessed to be a selfless giver. Let every generosity be hallmarked
by gratitude. Will the politicians that won and lost in the 2015
elections be grateful to the electorate who stood in an Indian file
under inclement weather to help them achieve their political ambitions?
It
is recorded in one of the synoptic Gospels that ten leapers were healed
by Jesus Christ, but only one came back to show gratitude and that one
left with Christ’s approval. William Shakespeare the English playwright
in his drama piece “Julius Caesar” showed how the great Caesar was
attacked by the conspirators, and as a Roman war General he wanted to
fight back but when he saw his own friend Brutus –a noble man- being one
of them he became despondent. And it was said of him: “Mark how the
blood of Caesar rushed out of doors to see if Brutus so unkindly stabbed
and as he plucked his cursed steel away ingratitude and treachery
stronger than the traitors hands burst his mighty heart ……. this was
most unkindest cut of them all.”
The Nigerian politicians have
never ever been grateful to the totality of the Nigerian electorate.
That is why 99.9% of Nigerians still wallow in poverty and neglect. We
still experience shortage of drinkable water, we have no shelter, no
good, motorable roads; no security, no medical care facilities, no good
schools; pensioners still die on the queue; we still experience
psychotic corruption in all strata of leadership. We ask our politicians
to show gratitude to the electorate by pursuing the greatest good for
the largest number of Nigerians.
Ingratitude is wicked and a
ghoulish trait in man. It is a gross inability to show appreciation,
gratefulness and thanks in the face of obvious and clear assistance. It
unearths the Biblical “Cain – Strings” in man. Ingratitude
short-circuits goodness. It smacks of Neanderthal man’s instinctual
primordialities and breeds secular humanism – a consummate belief in
self. That all I have, all I am and all I shall become are within my
purview and powers only.
Secular humanism has become the Modus
and Locus of the modern era; it tends to over-emphasize man and
de-emphasise “GOD”. We claim and boast that all our successes are by
dint of our hard work. We in all honesty know that this is a brutal lie.
God puts everything in place. He fine-tunes the logistics, perfects the
strategies and orchestrates the actions that led to whatever we have
achieved. Little-man is too full of himself that he arrogates himself
false dignities and claims God’s glory by showing gross ingratitude to
him. Will our politicians continue to stew in the irreverence of
ingratitude after 2015?
Ingratitude to God is the crux, the
locus classicus, the fons et origoand the initium et finis of the
purport of secular humanism. Ingratitude to God is based on our
inability to understand our roles on earth. We think that the
acquisition of material abundance is the sole purpose of life on earth
and man will stop at nothing in bringing it to pass in his life-time.
But in all honesty unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain
who builds it. God is it. He alone brings good things to pass. Forget
about the prosperity of the wicked, their properties will be inherited
by God’s own. Let us not turn around and kick the ladder by which we
climbed, God is the ladder, without which man would have been completely
vulnerable and empty.
Jane Eyre talking about vanity and
susceptibility of man said “Man but proud man, dressed in little brief
authority best assured of what he is most ignorant and plays such
fantastic tricks before high heavens as make the angel weep.” There is
no ratiocination or syllogistics reasoning that will ever come near to
disputing God’s total presence in all our endeavors, but man’s refusal
to commit it to him but rather believing in themselves has always led to
negative results. Man will fail you and you will fail yourself, unless
you commit it all into God’s hands. This is a prophetic prologue to
avoid a tragic interlude.
The wealth of life is decorated,
festooned and embroidered with travails, traumas and tribulations. It is
only God’s presence that can determine where you stand in the midst of
it all. Life is not for empty pursuits, it is to seek, find and serve
God and then all other things can be added unto us. The essayist
“Ingersoil” said “life is not, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we
die.” It is rather “Let us put our heads together and serve mankind
thence serving God.” Happiness is where you are, when you are, when you
are there and your own happiness is concretized by that you put in other
people’s lives. This is latently corroborated by Van Dyke – he said,
“There is a loftier ambition than merely standing high in the world. It
is to stoop down and lift mankind a little – higher.” Dyke is a legal
luminary, essayist and poet.
There can never be any acceptable
rationalization of our ingratitude. We can only show gratitude to God
through service to man. If we take offence at the ingratitude of “Man”
to us having shown them generosity. How then does God not feel chagrined
at man’s ingratitude to Him? Wilfred Greenfield said, “The service we
render to others is in reality the rent we pay for our room on this
earth. It is obvious that man himself is a traveler, the purpose of this
world is not “To have and to hold” but to give and to serve.” Alexander
Pope, poet and essayist in his poem “Essay on man” observed that, “man,
like the generous vine, supports lives; the strength he gains is from
the embrace he gives.” Will our politicians ever learn from this
morphology of ingratitude and shun pangyrical evocations and the
superfluity of ventriloquisms?
Man has nothing to offer God
except total submission to his will. He can abundantly reflect this
through service to man. Man should realize that he is weak and empty
without God except total submission to his will. He can abundantly
reflect this through service to man. In Thomas Gray’s ELEGY WRITTEN IN A
COUNTRY CHURCH YARD, he noted the ephemerality and transient nature of
man’s life in the face of his arrogance and moribund pursuit of carnal
things. He said, “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power and all that
beauty, all that wealth ever gave, awaits alike, the inevitable hour,
the paths of glory lead but to the grave.” Man is emptiness festooned
with lucent glamour – a Barmecial – dish.
It is tantamount to a
display of banal ingratitude to a friend who in a boundless
demonstration of compassionate comradeship decides to assist us in time
of need only for us to mock, traduce and blackmail him behind his back.
This fiendish spirit of ingratitude has stopped most people from doing
good and this has surreptitiously injected individualism into the world.
Ingratitude has murdered philanthropy.
A little soft thank you,
an acknowledgement, a recognition, a genuflection, a passionate apology
and good retort to somebody who has done something good to us is a
laudable and noble reflection of gratitude. Though little, but it shows
the greatness in little things. Scott Arnold the essayist said, “Little
things are but little things, but carefulness in them is noble and when
put in the right places go a long way.”
Do we do good because we
expect a reward and a pay back? Some do good to those they know can
also do to them, quite a minisculefew do “good for goodness sake.” Man
must realize that there is always a reward for doing good, but the
reward is more bounteous when it comes from God. Do good and leave the
rest to God. It is tantamount again to secular humanism if you do good
to those we hope to get reciprocal action from, it is more blessed to do
good to the needy and poor. Extrapolating Ella Wilcox, “Dollar’s
planted in the soil of benevolence grow into harvest of prosperity.”
In
the book “The great controversy” by E.G. White, we are told that when
emperor Charles V ascended the throne of Germany he was by papal bull or
the papal mandate asked to carry out wanton persecution of “Doctor
Luther” the reformist. But the quick intervention of the ‘Elector of
Saxony, to whom Charles V was greatly indebted on account to his throne,
he discountenanced the order. This is a splendid display of gratitude
because when he was fighting to ascend the throne the “Elector of
Saxony” stood by him. Gratitude is a noble virtue registered and
cultivated in great minds. Like the quality of mercy, the quality of
gratitude is not strained. It dropped as the gentle rains from heaven
and it is twice blessed, him that givethand him that receiveth. It is a
pity, and indeed a pity beyond all telling, a wondrous pity that “man”
can be ungrateful. Ingratitude is a monster too hideous to behold.
The
icon Dr. NnamdiAzikiwe cherished the virtues of humanity and gratitude.
He gave tacit endorsement to these virtues anytime he delivered a
panegyrical speech. A case in point was in May 4th 1949, when he
admonished the inimitable unionist Pa Imoudu, he said, “Courage brother
courage, do not stumble or falter. Through the path be dark as night,
there is a star to guide the humble and grateful ….. trust in God and do
the right.” Ingratitude as a noxious and egregious conduct will
imperceptibly but inexorable lead us on the perilous path of doom.
Gratitude
to God is the height of it all. That is where our lives lie and that is
where our peace can come from. Augustine of Hippo supported by Saint
Francis of Assisi said, “Man is a being that cannot find happiness
outside God, for only through him and inhim can there be that “Peace”
that passeth all understanding.”
Under any situation let
gratitude to the Almighty God be the signet and guiding light of our
lives. Gratitude is euphony and euphony is the greatest form of prayers.
It is a tragedy of eternal proportion for man to lack this virtue. We
are told the story of exemplary gratitude in Germany. “A young man lay
on an operating table. A skilled surgeon stood next to him and a group
of his students were nearby. The surgeon said to the patient, “If you
wish to say anything before we administer the anesthetics, now is your
opportunity for I must warn you that they will be the last words you
will ever utter in this world. The young man understood for his tongue
was to be removed because of cancer.
What words should he choose
for such an occasion? After a long pause, he said “Thank God for Jesus
Christ.” Can we say the same to appreciate God’s many gifts? First thank
Him for His greatest gift in Christ Jesus.
Gratitude to God
stimulates all commendable traits in man, love, brotherhood, kindness,
charity and altruism. Why is man ungrateful? This again takes us into
the complex being called Man for Alexander Pope warns, “Know then
thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.”
Let man introspectively unearth his grotesque inner-man in him and come
out and over with an eternal cure for himself. This will build great
universal bridge across the world. The basic foundation of gratitude and
man shall have become fully explored and understood.
Pastor and
lecturer Thomas Dewitt Talmage (1832-1902) told the story of an
accident that occurred on a ferry on one great lakes. “A little girl
standing by the rail suddenly lost her balance and fell overboard. “Save
my child” cried the frantic mother, lying on the deck was a great
Newfoundland dog, which plunged into the water at the command of his
mother. Swimming to the girl he took hold of her clothing with his teeth
and brought her to the side of the boat, where both were lifted to
safety. Although still frightened, the little girl threw her arms around
that shabby dog and kissed him again and again. It seemed a natural and
appropriate thing to do.
Likewise a response of love and
gratitude should flow from every person who has been rescued by the
Saviour through his self-abnegation and self-sacrificing death on the
cross. He came from heaven’s glory to suffer and die that we might have
eternal life. A good attitude towards life begins with gratitude toward
God.
Gratitude is the common denominator with which the latent
values of goodness and blessings from God are expressed. It has an
all-embracing outreach. Be it in Islamism, Buddhism, Hinduism,
Zoroastanism, Confucianism, Eckism, Paganism etc. Gratitude remains a
magisterial and imperious plinth of reaching out to the Almighty (Light,
God, Allah etc.). But call Almighty one by any name he remains the same
Almighty One.
In recognition of the importance of practicing
good as a means of enthusing Allah and committing our lives to him not
to our empty self-secular humanism, the Holy Koran admonishes in Ayat 4
Surat 173 that “Allah will reward those that have faith and do good
works. He will enrich them from his own abundance. As for those who are
scornful and proud, he will sternly punish them and they shall find none
beside Allah to protect or help them.” There is no victory and peace
anywhere except in the – Almighty One. Allah promises further inAyat 19
Surat 9 “As for those that believe and do good works. Allah will guide
them through their faith. Rivers will run beneath them in the gardens of
delight. Their prayers there will be glory to you Lord and their
greetings peace. Praise be unto Allah, Lord of the creation will be the
last of their prayers.”
Finally, let us begin to see “Humanity”
as one big happy family created and continuously called by the Almighty
to come and know him in truth and in spirit so that we can show him
gratitude befittingly due Him. We should show great love to his creation
through generosity, for if thou doeth it to one of this little ones,
thou doeth unto me. Let us not lilliputanise his person through our
megalomaniacal self – seeking arrogance. He is a God and not man. He is
the real indescribable and unfathomable conundrum that has provided
love, gratitude and faith as the only “Key” to unravel the “empty dust”
called man. “Man know thy self”. Politicians must learn from the
morphology of ingratitude and shun ventriloquisms in 2015, otherwise
they will be singing their own nunc dimities.
- Chief BobSon Gbinije is a commentator on national issues based in Warri
No comments:
Post a Comment