Christian Living

The Ugliness of Ingratitude

Photo Credit: PeakD

When you’re genuinely grateful for what someone has done for you, your behavior toward him or her will evince you’re authentically grateful. Specifically, in this piece, I’m referring to those who wouldn’t be where they are today without the significant contributions a particular person or people made to their lives and journeys (both academic and professional). While you more than likely don’t have the address or telephone number of the individual who held the door open for you as you entered the store, you definitely have the address and/or telephone number of that person who, for example, wrote that recommendation letter, used his or her social capital to protect you, used his or her network and connections to get you accepted into a college or university (often multiple times), got you that position you’re currently in or one that allowed you to be in the current position you’re in, etc.  

Ingratitude

You shouldn’t pretend you’re so busy that you don’t communicate in any way with those who have literally paved the way for you. When you wake up and go to those spaces and occupy those attendant positions you flex on social media platforms, have at least a modicum of decency and check on those who made it possible for you to engage in such a flex. Such people are guilty of engendering one-way street relationships: relationships where these users, these leeches, only take from others and never show genuine appreciation for what they have been given.

Ingratitude doesn’t look good on you. Yes, ungratefulness is not a good look. Your flex is a vacuous flaunting of ingratitude.

How can you accomplish something truly significant, especially something less than 10% of people in the world have achieved, and not publicly acknowledge the person or people responsible for making that accomplishment thinkable, especially when that person’s literal and/or metaphorical fingerprints are on the accomplishment? Although you already know, look at the accomplishment right now. Are your fingerprints the only ones on there like you’re pretending?

Exactly, that’s what I thought!

Many of these ungrateful people publicly acknowledge everyone except the real people who made their success or accomplishments possible, or they will diminish the role and significance these crucial people played. For example, ungrateful folks will say or write a short sentence about them and extend the dominant praise and credit to those who had a minor role and/or impact at best on their success or achievement materializing.

At this time, Alexa, play Fantasia Barrino’s “Without Me” because too many people have forgotten they wouldn’t be enjoying an ounce of the life and success they have without *cough* me and others who made that life and success possible.    

How to Fight the Ungrateful?

First, call out those who reflect and embrace ingratitude. This article is an example of one way to do it. Also, when you expose them in writing, don’t self-censor; be willing to tell it all. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

James Baldwin, the greatest prose writer in world history and one of the greatest intellectuals in world history, insisted, in “As Much Truth As One Can Bear,” a brilliant essay, that we “…tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more.” Following Baldwin’s exemplary lead, give these people “as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more.” That’s what I’ve done my entire life: gave voice to truth without wavering.

In that same powerful Baldwin essay, he posits, “Writers are extremely important in a country, whether or not the country knows it. The multiple truths about a people are revealed by that people’s artists—that is what the artists are for.” As a writer, an artist, I’ve always used my gift and vocation to communicate “multiple truths about a people.”

Understanding that not everyone is comfortable articulating their thoughts to ungrateful people through written expressions, I encourage you to call and/or visit them and share your feelings.    

Given time and space limitations, I will end here for now, but, trust me, these aren’t my final words about the true ugliness of ingratitude.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

Johns Hopkins University

The Way to God by Dwight L. Moody: A Book Review

The Way to God Dwight L. Moody

(Photo Credit: Amazon)

Dwight L. Moody’s The Way to God offers a strong understanding of God’s agapic love and how that agapic love can transform the lives of all people willing to receive Him into their hearts. Recognizing that Christ is soon to return, Moody challenges people to answer His call to salvation, allowing them to enter into the joy of the Lord. The book primarily centers on several sermons he delivered across England and the United States, although he added more material in this work. His chief desire is for the reader to “be strengthened, established, and settled in the faith of Christ” (vii).

One of the most important elements of the book is Moody’s emphasis on sharing the message of God’s love with everyone, especially with the unsaved. For Moody, those sharing the message of God’s love need to have a deep knowledge and understanding of this love. The author is convinced that the more we help people know and experience God’s love, the many more souls that will be rescued from a burning Hell. Salvation, though, isn’t simply a “fire insurance plan”; it’s about possessing an intimate relationship with God and experiencing a victorious life in Christ.

Moody contends that Christ’s greatest and most vivid example of His love for all is the work He did at Calvary for us: dying on the Cross to give all who believe in and receive Him in their hearts eternal victory over sin. Without Jesus dying on the Cross, humanity faced eternal damnation in Hell. Christ demonstrated His divine love for us by suffering the most brutal beating and death ever at Calvary. Therefore, as the writer asserts, if one longs to see what divine love looks like in public, simply see the Cross and observe our Savior’s blood shed for us “while we were yet sinners.”

The author divulges that when a person receives Christ’s salvation, the Holy Spirit comes into his or her life and aids him or her in living a life that pleases Him, a life empowered to escape the temptations Satan will attempt to present him or her daily. Satan’s agenda is “to steal, kill, and destroy,” but the power of the Holy Spirit working in us enables us to conquer everything Satan tries to throw at us.

This is an important book, especially for unbelievers. I encourage every true believer to purchase at least two copies of this book: one for himself or herself to read and one for an unbeliever to read. Although passing out tracts is okay, we need to modernize our evangelistic efforts; giving a book like this one to a lost soul is a more modern evangelistic effort.

Again, read this book and share a copy with an unbeliever.

I received a copy of this book from Aneko Press to compose this honest review.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison  

The Real Win by Colt McCoy and Matt Carter: Book Review

The Real Win by Colt McCoy

(Photo Credit: Amazon)

The Real Win: A Man’s Quest for Authentic Success, penned by former superstar Texas Longhorns quarterback and former NFL quarterback Colt McCoy and megachurch pastor Matt Carter, offers men a view of biblical manhood that can help them to experience a productive and sustainable relationship with Christ. McCoy and Carter, recognizing their own personal failings as men, call for men to learn from their errors and commit to lives reflecting God’s will for their lives, lives as men of God.

For both authors, it’s unacceptable for men to continue to use their mistakes as crutches, but it’s time to employ those mistakes as lessons learned that guide their future of sustained progress. They’re displeased with notions of manhood that lead to men evincing seesaw, inconsistent moral conduct. McCoy and Carter proffer a critical intervention for men allowing troublesome ideas of manhood to derail their lives and the lives of their families: their answer is biblical manhood.

The Real Win: A Man’s Quest for Success desires to send a clarion call to men, especially those struggling to be honorable men, to surrender their morally bankrupt definitions of success and replace them with God’s definition of success. In our postmodern epoch, we’re arguably witnessing the most selfish and reckless behavior in history. This book causes men to pause and see what they can do to ameliorate their homes, their communities, their states, their nation, their world. For the writers, men must first place complete trust in God to lead their lives. Without God leading the way, men and women will fail and are failures.

The book contends that authentic confidence emerges from a life seriously committed to serving God. This point, one that should not be overlooked, has the power to transform so many men’s lives—if only they would embrace and implement it.

McCoy and Carter want men to be true leaders in their homes, role models for their children, and living lives that please God. With numerous men around the nation neglecting their roles as fathers and as leaders in their homes and communities, this book is a vital one, and church leaders can improve the men in their churches by engaging them with this book, leading to increased opportunities for community members to see real men of God extending invitations to receive Christ.

In short, readers will find this a worthwhile read. One can tell that this work emerges from the authenticity of their lived experiences. After reading this, men should feel empowered to strengthen their commitments to living the lives God has called them to live.

I highly recommend that not only men read this book but also women. If we want to live in a better country, in a better world, then it starts with recognizing where we need to change and how we can initiate that change.

Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers provided a copy of this book to facilitate this review.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Overcoming Adversity by Carl Garrigus: Book Review

Overcoming Adversity The Book of James

(Photo Credit: CrossLink Publishing)

In Overcoming Adversity: Life Lessons from the Book of James, Dr. Carl Garrigus demonstrates how the Book of James can be employed to aid people in rising above life’s challenges. For Garrigus, who holds doctoral degrees in History and Theology, defeating adversity requires a stronger relationship with Christ and an increasingly maturing faith in Him. A false relationship with Jesus will leave one powerless to combating the trials life presents, and a person may struggle with these trials for many years, years without joy and peace. Garrigus teaches the reader how to establish and maintain an authentic and effective relationship with Christ, one that leads to pure gratitude for such a relationship.

Garrigus emphasizes the significance of responding to God’s call to perform good works, which strengthens their ability to experience victory over the adversities they face. Instead of viewing trying circumstances through a negative lens, the scholar exhorts readers to use these circumstances as opportunities to perfect one’s faith.

As a believer, one has to recognize he or she is not seeking victory; he or she is operating from victory. This is a biblical reality for believers I wish the author would have explicitly stated. To experience such victory, one does not need to “reengage” with God as Garrigus posits; he or she simply needs to believe what God said: Christ leads us to triumph in all phenomena we encounter. “Reengage” seems to communicate that believers need to do something, perform some work, some work of the flesh, to earn their victory. This couldn’t be further from the truth: Jesus has already made our victory available to us through the finished work of the Cross.

To his credit, though, the scholar does explain that believers have God available to aid them in developing a constantly maturing and effective faith. Dr. Garrigus provides a powerful word of wisdom: “When a trial comes, don’t turn away from God but toward Him” (p. 13).This statement would be even stronger by instructing readers to remain focused on God and never “turn away from” Him. If he would’ve made this point, then there wouldn’t be a need to advocate for his readers to “reengage.”

Overall, this is a worthwhile read that can help many believers, especially those struggling with their faith, to rely on God for their strength to conquer adversities. I very much appreciate how Dr. Garrigus articulates such confidence in the efficacy of a true and engaging relationship with God. Each chapter of this short book (fifty-five pages total) ends with “Five Questions for Exploration,” affording readers opportunities to plumb nuances of ideas communicated.

Book Crash provided a copy of this book to assist with this review.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

The TouchPoint: Connecting with God through the Bible: A Short Review

The TouchPoint Bob Santos

(Photo Credit: Amazon)

In The TouchPoint: Connecting with God through the Bible, Bob Santos offers an understanding of how a close engagement with the bible allows the Believer to experience authentic encounters with God. The author explains that a serious commitment to the Word of God will cure hardened hearts. Also, Santos gives the reader a fundamental overview of the bible. This work strives to make the bible clearer for all readers. In fact, the author devotes an entire chapter, “Understanding the Bible,” to aiding Believers in gaining deeper revelations about God’s Word.

Too many pastors and preachers lack a real knowledge of the Word of God. Instead of making strong investments in receiving proper knowledge about it, they harmfully substitute biblical truths with their own, subjective advice. Living in this evil and dangerous world, one cannot afford to miss constant encounters with God available through reading, studying, and mediating on the Word of God.

Without question, I highly recommend this book. The TouchPoint: Connecting with God through the Bible promises to buttress one’s relationship with God. Contrary to many apostolic and pentecostal churches’ teachings, a God-encounter emerges from reading, studying, and mediating on the Word of God and not from simply shouting, dancing, and speaking in tongues.

In exchange for a fair assessment, Book Crash supplied me with a copy of this book to pen this review.

Dr. Antonio Maurice Daniels
University of Wisconsin-Madison