Meanness is ugly. Grabbing is unattractive. Black Friday events are dark indeed, as the retail sector’s excuse for a greed-fuelled shopping frenzy sparked scuffles and scrums across the country. Determined ninja-shoppers jumped queues, elbowed, shoved and even punched each other in their determined pursuit of alleged bargains. The spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge, the lead character in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, was alive and well. We don’t have to be penny-pinchers to qualify as being stingy: we only need to insist that most of our pennies and pounds are spent on us. Dickens paints Scrooge, the wizened old skinflint, as a ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner’. Hardly a handsome portrait.
But we don’t have to wrestle with fellow shoppers to qualify as cheap. We’ve all been around people who work overtime to be last in line when it comes to paying. At the coffee shop, they open the door and insist that we go in first. This is not out of courtesy, but is a tactical manoeuvre ensuring that you get to the counter before them, and will be more likely to flash your credit card. Or at the end of a pleasant meal, their sudden departure to the bathroom is timed precisely to coincide with the arrival of the bill at the table. Returning from the loo relieved, their relief is heightened by the knowledge that you’ve paid in their absence. Irritating, especially when some veneer their meanness by making a virtue of it, insisting that they’re thrifty, when in fact they’re just squeakily tight.
All of this manipulative meanness not only takes a lot of effort, but actually robs us of the joy of giving. A recent sociological survey featured in the book, The Paradox of Giving, revealed that generosity is very good for us, and not in a silly, telly-evangelist, ‘Give and God will make you rich’ way. The meticulous research revealed that the more generous we are, the more happiness, health and purpose in life we enjoy. Generosity not only blesses others, but brings a smile to our own hearts too.
And generosity, more importantly, changes the world. The early Christians profoundly impacted their culture with their generous lifestyles, even though most of them were poor. The early followers of Jesus gave their service, their money, their goods, their time, their safety, their creature comforts, and their reputations, with a generosity that was not just a series of isolated, unusual actions, but a way of life. They scattered good everywhere, freely and indiscriminately. When terrible plagues hit, and huge swathes of the population fled the cities, abandoning the sick, the Christians stayed behind, nursing the ill back to life, which meant that some of the carers died in the process.
It’s been said that we are most like God when we give. Those early believers didn’t just share words and ideas about God, but they showed a confused world what the giving God looks like.
So let’s choose to live generously, and not just with our stuff.
Give that stretch of tarmac to the bullish driver who rudely cuts in during the rush hour.
Offer the rare gift of listening.
Instead of fuming over the man who stands in the ‘five items only’ queue in the supermarket with eight items in his basket, let’s smile, and wish him a pleasant day.
Let’s not just believe in generosity, but think, plan, and act. Too many of us practice post dated generosity: one day we’ll get around to giving, but we mistakenly think that until we do, believing in the idea is enough. It isn’t.
And if we’re honest enough to admit a tendency to be tight, let’s know that we can change.
He’s obviously a fictional character, but Scrooge changed. Dickens describes the transformation:
‘Many laughed to see this alteration in him, but he let them laugh and little heeded them…his own heart laughed and that was quite enough for him’.
Come on. Let’s have a laugh. Let’s be generous.