The Ungrateful Wicked
I’ll admit that it’s not often a Bible verse moves me. But when it happens, it feels like a tool wrenching open the gate to my heart.
A while back I ordered the poetry collection ‘‘The Quarantine Quatrains’, written by Rev. Malcolm Guite and illustrated by the painter Roger Wagner. Autographed by both poet and artist, with a limited print run of 600 copies, it is a treasure for any Christian bookshelf.
I placed the order within two hours of the book being advertised, wondering if was already sold out. Though I didn’t expect it incite the crazed rush of, say, an eighth Harry Potter book. Guite and Wagner are respected in their field, and the poems were bound to be something of a collectable. With this in mind, I awaited an email saying, ‘Sorry! The item you ordered is unavailable...’
Three days later, something thumped through the letterbox. There it was, ‘The Quarantine Quatrains’, inside a thick brown envelope. Inside were the poems, the paintings, the autographs ... and, also, the order number.
Out of 600 copies, mine was 598.
In other words, there had been three copies left when I clicked the ‘Order' button. You’d think I’d have been buoyant for days but, only hours later, I was lying in bed in a foul mood. I can’t remember why, exactly—probably something to do with lockdown restrictions. Whatever the reason, my thoughts were not Christian; if downloaded onto a CD, they would have needed a Parental Advisory sticker.
At some point – again, I don’t remember why exactly – I opened my Bible at Luke’s gospel and read a single sentence. No commentary, no enlightening exposition. Each word was a pre-sharpened double-edged sword:
‘God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.’
Such a short verse, but sometimes they punch the hardest. ‘Guess what, Steve?’ I imagined God saying as I lay on my bed, ‘The Quarantine Quatrains’ on the floor beside me. ‘I am not only kind to the thankful and lovely, but to the thankless and evil. And I’m not only talking about the Hitlers and Mussolinis of this world, or the Covid house-partiers you hate so much. I’m talking about you.’
Ouch. But it was true. From the naughty ten-year-old playing video games, to the serial killer eating a pastrami sandwich—to my self-loathing in my room— we all receive God’s kindness: everyday blessings designed to lead us to repentance.
One of the problems I used to wrestle with—and I still do, but not so much now—is why doesn’t God talk to us? Forget conscience and gut feelings. Why doesn’t he boom out ‘I’M GOD!’ or, as with Elijah, whisper wind-like into every ear?
Philosophers have argued about this for millennia, so don’t expect this blogger to have the answer, but it seems to me that, at least when I ask this question, I tend to assume God in my image rather than the other way around. I tend to imagine God as a guy who advertises himself by shouting his name and waving his arms.
But if God omnipotent, omnipresent, alpha and omega, why constrain his communication to a telepathic voice or a blurting of air molecules into our ear? Maybe his communication is already loud and clear, and we are ignoring it. After all, didn’t Paul complain that ‘the Jews demand signs’...? And maybe so do we.
Let me put it like this. When someone reads my stories, they are usually able to see something of my own character. My characters mightn’t be anything like me, but usually close friends can spot something of my personality codified in the prose. Words are my clay, the material I use to communicate.
God, however, is the universal Author, and his clay is the whole shebang. And so, the same way a writer’s work speaks their existence and their mind, creation itself (at least, creation uncorrupted by sin) should likewise tell something of God.
Does that sound hippy? Well, you only need to turn to Psalm 19 and read these amazing verses:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19:1-4a
This is where Malcolm Guite had been so inspiring. Drawing from the writings of C.S. Lewis, Coleridge and others, he taught me that there are two faculties through which we understand things: our reason and our imagination. Reason is our organ of truth. It says, ‘A rainbow is a reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in an arc-shaped spectrum of colour.’ But our imaginations look through physical realities to see that they speak of something beyond themselves; in other words, what they mean. It says, ‘A rainbow is a symbol of God’s covenantal promise not to wipe out mankind without another flood.’ Neither definition is mutually exclusive. Rather, they come together to give us the full picture.
My problem—and maybe your problem too; if so, welcome to the show—is that I have become so used to life that its colour can seem washed out. I bustle along without paying attention to God’s abundant gifts. Unlike my ancient ancestors, I no longer have to eat potatoes for breakfast, potatoes for supper and potatoes for dessert; food, more than ever, is abundant and in exuberant variety. Yet I gobble it down (not even tasting it) and forget about it seconds later or, even worse, pass it off as being nothing to write home about. I can feel so busy that a scheduled meeting with a friend becomes a tick-box chore, like laundry. I can rush through parks and gardens, totally oblivious or unappreciative to nature’s beauty. I am so used to everything—foods, friends, YouTube entertainment—that I consume, consume, consume without bothering to ask, ‘What does it mean, Steve?’
If I slowed down and savoured life a little, instead of treating it like an obstacle course, I might see that there is a God who loves me enough, wicked and ungrateful as I am, to care not only about the provision of my life but its quality. When I consider all that I’m blessed with—food, friends, limited-print poetry collections by admired writers—and still complain that I can’t hear God’s voice, I am like a spoiled, child who, sitting before a banquet courtesy of their dad slaving in a copper mine thousands of miles away, asks, ‘Why does daddy never say he loves me?’
Authors have a simple rule: show, don’t tell.
No one can blame us for wanting to hear God’s mighty voice or see his brilliancy. And we will, one day. But let’s not forget that other language: creation itself, uttering God’s intellect, beauty and supernatural love. A simple tree is an organic network of photosynthetic material, of course, but it is also a sign of God’s care to ensure that his little ones don’t suffocate. A car, though built by humans, is only possible because God has supplied us with raw materials by which we, as sub-creators, can find dignity in exercising our ingenuity and creativity. And a friend holding your hand during an evening of darkness might be God himself—the Holy Spirit working through every believer to comfort the crestfallen and hopeless.
It’s not so much that God is invisible and mute: I am blind and deaf. If only I listened more closely to Psalm 19’s voice of creation—the common little things taken for granted—I might better be able to grasp width, height and depth of his love.
Gratitude, I believe, is the mainspring of love; it is what gets this crooked engine going, trundling along the long and sometimes glass-strewn road of life. Other fuels in the tank—guilt, duty, coercion—don’t work as well, don’t get me as far. Or if they do, not without internal damage. Thanksgiving is mentioned over a hundred times in the Bible, and for good reason: it rejuvenates the soul, reminds us of the tens of thousands of ways God shows his love, and so fills us with the desire to show love back.
One Thursday night, pre-Covid, we had a prayer service at Apsley. My friend who was leading it (for anonymity’s sake, let’s call him Matthew Craig) taught from Philippians 4:8 (‘if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things’) and had the assembly devote the service to thanking God for the lovely stuff he's made. He even put up pictures of blue-faced monkeys, simply so we could admire their cuteness. More than any other Thursday night, I went home spiritually buoyant, determined to serve and worship God not because I was told to, but because I wanted to. Taking time away from the noise of 21st century life, and devoting my prayers to thanks, was like a glass of water being poured onto the wilting plant of my faith.
Let’s not underestimate thanksgiving—or the monstrosity of ingratitude. We must use our imaginations to see God’s glory all around us, to interpret the voice of his creation. The closer we draw to him in prayerful thanks, the more we will see the thousands, if not millions, of ways he communicates his presence and love.
Robert Hayden’s poem ‘Those Winter Sundays’ gets across this idea, more powerfully and in fewer words. It can be found here
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