We know that Adam's sin was pride, but many of the old English poets stressed the love that his pride repaid with disobedience. In other words, they saw that the fundamental manifestation of pride is ingratitude. So George Herbert portrays Christ reproaching us on His way to Calvary (I'm quoting from memory here):
Then all they do condemn me with that breath
Which I do give them daily, unto death.
Thus Adam my first breathing rendereth:
Was ever grief like mine?
I've been thinking about that verse these last few days. It's easy enough for the Christian to remember to thank God for at least a few of the good things He has given us. We might even remember once in a while to thank God for the breath in our lungs, for our mere existence, since it is with each of us as it was with Adam, that God has taken some dust from the earth and breathed into it, that we might be a living soul.
But Adam in his pride wanted to seize for himself what he saw as a good thing that God had not given him. In his disobedience he showed himself ungrateful for what he was given (since he wanted even more), and ungrateful for what had been withheld from him (since he judged that he might provide for himself a fairer enjoyment of goods). He forgot to thank God for the prohibition. Another way to look at it is that he forgot to praise God for the inequality between himself and his Maker.
Equality is a great mantra these days, but I don't see how our narrow-eyed insistence upon equality is easily reconcilable with gratitude. I am not talking about equality of human dignity, or equality before the law. I mean that the really grateful soul -- the one that is full of thanksgiving -- is pleased not only by the great gifts God has given him, but by the great gifts God has withheld from him, and (most difficult for man's hardheartedness) by the surpassing gifts that God has given to others. (That includes the gift of authority over us, as God gives us the gift of someone nearby to obey, lest we spend all our hours vainly imagining the direct commands of a deity we cannot see.) Imagine what an unutterably dreary life it would be if everyone else had at most your own measure of intelligence, love, courage, wisdom, and beauty. Imagine what a tuneless choir in heaven it would be if everyone sang only as well as oneself. Imagine no one to admire, no one to obey, but everyone equally admirable, meaning everyone equally stuck on himself, and everyone possessed of equal authority, meaning everyone doing exactly as he pleases.
If I'm right about that, then the American obsession with equality is an ill suit to wear in the Kingdom of God. Consider what it must be like to be "least in the Kingdom of God" -- to rejoice in the superiority of every other soul in blessedness. The elevator operator of Heaven, you might say; the soul with the lowliest job, whose gift it is to look up to everyone else. That soul might claim likeness to Christ in His littleness, not in His greatness. It cannot be beneath our dignity to be least, not when Christ deigned to descend to us and be born in a manger. May God then teach us to give thanks even for what we are not, lest the doors of that elevator shut upon us.
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