Posted on 12/25/2007 6:27:43 AM PST by Kaslin
In my previous column on bad Christmas gifts, I explained why we give bad gifts and how to avoid doing so. The main point of that column was that bad gifts are a burden because they fail to show real love. But what should we do when someone loves us this badly? The most habitual response is to say that we should be polite, smile, and say, “Thank you.” The most habitual response is wrong. Why? Because lying is a sin.
“But being polite is not a sin.” That’s a discussion worthy of it’s own attention. Fortunately for this column, acting pleased in the reception of a bad Christmas gift is not a form of politeness. Being polite is what we are supposed to do to strangers and people we don’t know well enough to be fully honest with. Such people are not usually giving us Christmas gifts, and, if they do, that’s a different case. I am talking about bad gifts from friends and family, people with whom we have a relationship, or are supposed to.
“Still, why is lying and acting grateful not acceptable? Isn’t it the thought that counts?” As I explained in the previous column, no. But the danger of lying is already well-known to anyone who’s tried this approach: it only makes things worse. I once had a good friend give me a book as a gift. I added it to the 3,000+ other books I own and forgot all about it … until he asked me a few months later if I had enjoyed it. I told him I hadn’t read it yet, and I distorted reality slightly by saying I intended to do so. Another few months passed, and he inquired again. Now I had to make a choice, either continue to lie and act as if I intended to read this book as soon as I could make the time or else tell him the truth.
And that’s the point, bad gifts accepted gratefully only cause further problems. Your friends visit and inquire if something went wrong with the lava lamp you’ve been storing in the garage sale pile. You get asked why you never wear that hand knit green and orange sweater you acted so glad to get from your grandmother. Or perhaps your realtor notices that your skin tone doesn’t seem to be responding to the Siberian anchovy cleansing cream he sent you.
Maybe you lie. Maybe you have to invent subsequent outrageous lies to cover over the first. But the worst part of lying is the awful thing that happens when you do it well: you receive another bad gift next year from the person who thinks he’s doing you a blessing. Alternately, at some point the deception becomes so fraudulent that you rightly recognize it as being incompatible with the honesty that’s supposed to be the cornerstone of any non-pathological relationship. So you tell the truth later, which turns out to be messier than if you’d done it earlier, before the scope of the fraud was so extensive.
Let me come at this a different way. When you give a gift, do you want it to be a blessing to the other person? Of course you do. If it isn’t one, do you want to continue falsely thinking you’ve succeeded while the person secretly deceives you and harbors resentment over having to do so because of your bad gift? Surely not. Unless you’re so selfish as a “giver” that you’re really doing it only to please yourself and you don’t really care about whether they are pleased.
When I give someone a gift, I make sure it’s going to be something the recipient wants. But even so, I will make it as easy for him to tell me it isn’t as I possibly can. “Here’s the receipt. If you want to exchange it. I won’t be offended at all. Please, if it isn’t what you really want, get something you’ll enjoy. I want to bless you, not be a problem, and I’d be truly upset if you didn’t exchange it.” Precisely because I know that bad gifts are an awful moral burden, I want to eliminate that possibility in giving something. But, of course, we all know the paradox. People who give gifts so selflessly are also the same people who give good gifts. It’s the bad gift-giver who makes honesty so challenging.
But honesty is your only viable option. Bad gifts are immoral, and just as a child needs guidance when he does something foolish, bad gift-givers need honest feedback if they are ever going to learn to do better. Not because it’s a way of punishing them, but because we care about them and about our relationship to them. But I get ahead of myself. You’re probably still balking on the idea of objecting to a gift in the first place. Allow me to persuade you with some examples.
I’m a Christian man. Imagine someone were to buy me a subscription to Hustler and a VIP pass to a local strip club. Should I smile and say, “Thank you?” What if he gave me a couple of ounces of cocaine? Perhaps a copy of the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce? What if someone bought my 3½ year-old son a hunting knife? What if someone gave my Muslim friend a one-year subscription to the pork-of-the-month club or my Mormon friend a copy of “Polygamy for Beginners?” Now, obviously, these are ridiculous and even sometimes evil gifts. But that’s the point. Some gifts are so inappropriate that being polite is clearly wrong.
If my son comes to me one morning with a dripping paintbrush in his hand and says he decided to give me the gift of painting my car for me, he would be in deep trouble, not in deep affection. If someone decided to “clean up” my desk and papers “as a favor,” this act would be such an affront that to act grateful would be nearly as inappropriate as the act itself. And that’s the point. When a gift is really bad, it demands an honest response. So why don’t we react honestly when it’s only moderately bad? The real answer here is painful to admit.
It’s because we’re selfish.
Bad gift-givers are selfish (see my other article), and polite bad-gift receivers are also selfish. It’s simply easier to avoid the conflict honesty would cause. It’s easier to make jokes about the person to a sympathetic spouse than to tell him the truth to his face. So we take the easy way out and deceive ourselves into thinking that we’ve done something loving. It’s almost perfectly symmetrical with the immorality done by the person who gave the bad gift. Both parties are selfish, and both parties think they are behaving lovingly. Now isn’t that ironic?
But there’s more wrong here than first meets the eye. We lie to them with our gratitude, but we lie to ourselves about our motives. We say that being polite is the loving thing to do for the other person, but we are equally motivated by the desire to protect our own reputation. See, you worry people will think less of you if you complain about a gift, so you do whatever is necessary to keep this fear from happening. Instead of voicing your ingratitude, which you fear will make you look mean, you lie and seem like a perfectly decent person. Thus, what seems like selfless etiquette actually turns out to be a very deceptive maneuver to prevent yourself from being judged for who you really are. What did the Bard say about webs and deceptions?
Here’s further irony. We would never feel such a burden in dealing with our enemies. Although I admit it’s a bit weird to imagine, consider how you would respond if someone you despised gave you a bad gift. Likely you would feel no compunction about telling this person the truth, and rudely. Why? Because you care neither about this person’s feelings nor about his image of you. But isn’t there something askew in a moral system where we only feel at liberty to be honest with those we do not love? I suspect our notions of love and truth need revising.
There is an explanation: we’re bad at telling the truth effectively. The reason for rules of politeness (though I repeat this isn’t about being polite) is because it’s easier to not mess them up. Honesty is really difficult. Nonetheless, there’s enough light at the end of the tunnel to make it worth trying. A bad gift is a kind of rupture in a relationship. It shows lack of knowledge and, therefore, lack of love. But any rupture is also an opportunity.
Bad gifts create a sort of crisis, and the relationship can’t stay where it is. It must either become stronger or weaker, and ignoring the breach can only make it weaker. Confronting it runs the risk of total ruination, but it also runs the risk of deeper intimacy. So you have to ask yourself a very simple question: Would you rather keep such relationships forever trivial by protecting them from the stress that might break them, or would you rather risk losing them in the hope that you might gain real ones in exchange? Every meaningful relationship I have is so because it survived one or more crises of honesty. The only way to get respect and real love is to tell people the truth. So here’s how to do so successfully.
The three keys to effective confrontation:
1. Apologize in advance. “I’m sorry, John.”
2. Admit the obvious. “I have something really awful to say to you, and I’m genuinely afraid that it’s going to hurt your feelings or make you mad and ruin our friendship. I’m really scared right now because you mean a lot to me and I don’t want to lose that. ”
3. Get permission. “So would you rather have me tell you the truth or keep it hidden from you?”
Certainly, the frenzy of Christmas morning may not be the correct time for such a confrontation. This you must decide for yourself. The Bible wisely teaches that we should confront people and resolve our issues with them privately, in part because defensive anger is a more likely result in public encounters. But some form of honest confrontation is the only loving way to proceed, and the benefits should by now be clear.
You’ve taken a breached relationship and tried to heal it. You’ve dealt with the giver honorably, as a loved one who deserves your honesty. You are likely helping that person to become a better gift-giver to you and others in the future, which should make everyone a lot happier. And you’ve cleared your conscience against the need to indulge in subsequent deceptions. But there’s one more benefit to this approach. When people know you react honestly, they know your expressed joy at a gift is real. Precisely because my friends know I’m honest, they also need never second-guess my reactions. I yield no false positives. And as a symbolic reinforcement of this very concept, my honesty about the need to be honest is my possibly unwelcome Christmas gift to you. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.
I agree that “Devil’s Dictionary” is best in small increments. “Owl Creek Bridge” isn’t his best Civil War writing, either. He was an amazing observer and a real prose stylist. Gorgeous sentences.
Wow, that was a Twilight Zone
If you find yourself needing to stay awake, try his “Complete Civil War Stories.” You’ll be too creeped out to sleep, and therefore able to nurse a baby for 18 hours straight :-). (James could really eat!)
Otherwise you’re a stupid, spoiled brat who is hasn’t grown up enough to realize the world doesn’t revolve around you.
I don’t care what or even if I receive a gift from anyone as long as they have a kind word for me. And for that I’m just as thankful as if they give me something material, often more so.
You grumpy old man!
Take note:
1) Women like cookware. (Cheap is ok)
2) Men like flashlights. (Check the Internet for the latest and greatest) This years is pocket size and 10 million candle power. (Expensive is good)
So simple even Squantos can do it!
Oddly enough 2000 years ago a Gift was given to the world out of perfect love and they rejected it as a "bad gift". They wanted a King and they got a Savior instead. So they threw Him away as worthless.
Just something to think about.
Kindred spirits!
I received one for Father's Day and love it. It is 69.4F at my desk and 54.0F outside. I have no idea how my wife would know that I would like it so much, but she did.
When I give someone a gift, I make sure it’s going to be something the recipient wants. But even so, I will make it as easy for him to tell me it isn’t as I possibly can. “Here’s the receipt. If you want to exchange it. I won’t be offended at all. Please, if it isn’t what you really want, get something you’ll enjoy. I want to bless you, not be a problem, and I’d be truly upset if you didn’t exchange it.”
= = =
I try to do similarly.
Especially if it’s something like handmade pottery. I make a big deal of not wanting to clutter up their home with something that’s not attractive AND USEFUL, comfortable to them.
Mostly I give few gifts at special times. I tend to give things all year long as I make them or have means . . . for no special occasion.
When someone offers me a gift—I am quick to thank them for their thoughtfulness and caring as well as their bother/expense.
If it’s not something I really want—I tend to ask them if they’d like to give it to someone else as I’m full up of STUFF at my age. And if I move back across the Pacific again, I’m not going to be carting a lot of STUFF back with me. If they really insist that they have no one else they’d like to give it to nor to keep it themselves, I might suggest an old folks home or some such or that I might have someone who could make better use of it than I would—if they’d be open to that.
I act like such a response is perfectly normal.
If they get all huffy, pouty and offended, the psychologist comes out immediately with some exhortations about a gift being freely given with no strings attached or it’ snot really a gift. IF it is a gift, then they would most constructively feel blessed for me to do with as I see fit—the gift was FOR ME AND MY PLEASURE, RIGHT?
If it’s not truly a gift with no strings, then they would do well to not give it and I must not receive it in the first place.
I might occasionally in a given relationship with a fragile person modify the above but generally, I try and stick pretty close to it. Seems to work OK. And, many folks become freer about giving and receiving gifts as a consequence.
Thanks for this thread.
But there’s one more benefit to this approach. When people know you react honestly, they know your expressed joy at a gift is real. Precisely because my friends know I’m honest, they also need never second-guess my reactions. I yield no false positives. And as a symbolic reinforcement of this very concept, my honesty about the need to be honest is my possibly unwelcome Christmas gift to you. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.
= = =
INDEED.
My face is quite overly expressive anyway. Doesn’t do any good for me to try and be too obsfucating. Sometimes folks get my face’s meaning wrong but they can sure tell the wheels are turning and the emotions are stronger than average.
I agree with the author that subtrefuge and deception hurt far more people far worse in the long run. And, no one grows on either end.
Jesus died that we might have better relationships with God AND WITH EACH OTHER, than THAT.
The Chinese—especially in Taiwan—tend to have a closet full of such gifts that they constantly regift. Everyone knows that’s what’s happening and it’s usually not a huge deal—particularly at office parties, birthdays in the extended family etc. Most of such gifts are hardly even unwrapped—or only enough to see what it is and rewrapped.
Honesty can be plenty graceful.
John and Paula Sandford say in THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE INNER MAN
that
Love without truth is useless [possibly even destructive] sentimentality
and
Truth without love is brutality.
I have found it so.
Paul Tournier once wrote a book on GIFTS and gift giving. A lot of complex junk can get tied up in it.
SOMEONE needs the grace and love to slice through the junk and bring some wholesome healing light into it in many lifes and families.
There’s a LOT of wasted effort and bother and annoyed to angry feelings NEEDLESSLY when some serious communication and education could bring the relationships to a whole new level of health.
Depends on who makes the fruitcake.
Collin St in Texas I’ll take any time of year.
Indeed.
I’d be very, very, very inclined to set mom down . . . for a very firm talk. Though I suppose it might depend on how much I cared about being disinherited! LOL.
Mom, you can continue to be selfish, proud and stubborn in how you relate to us at times—especially around gift giving—and be remembered as such.
Or, you can become a lot closer to us emotionally and a lot more integrated into our daily lives and hearts.
The choices is yours. But you will not be able to be a lot closer to us emotionally and a lot more integrated into our lives and hearts
IF
you insist on stubbornly holding on to your arrogant and selfish ways of relating to us. I’d think that growing old that way would get lonlier and lonelier. But the choice is yours.
I’d like you to think about that and maybe pray about it for 12-14 days. Then respond. I won’t entertain a response before then.
IF
I don’t hear a response within 12-20 days, I will assume that you wish to maintain your distant lonely stance from us.
Amazingly enough, that has never happened to me.
ROFLMSS!!!!!!!
I got the cooking thermometers I wanted for Christmas --- and they were NOT cheap.
Hubby got 2 different flashlights, and they were dirt cheap!
GRACIOUSNESS
POLITENESS
and
CIVILITY
are not all equal, identical terms.
Politeness often faintly masks a lot of squirrely junk in relationships. And everyone knows it. And it just gets wound up tighter and tighter with annoyance to bitterness and resentment.
NO thanks. That’s not Biblical and not edifying—subtracts far more from relationships than even brutal honesty in the long run. But honesty does not have to be brutal. It can be gracious.
There’s nothing preventing
BEING KIND AND HONEST.
They are NOT mutually exclusive.
What the other person does with the honesty MAY have to be their problem.
When it’s intentional, it’s not a “difficult person”. It’s an abuser.
I made the horrendous mistakes of
1. marrying her baby
2. Giving birth to two girls he loves more than her
Jesus said turn the other cheek. He didn’t say set yourself up to be slapped.
= = =
INDEED.
If we will have to give an account for every idle word—as Scripture insists we will—and we certainly will—
then I think we shall also have to give an account for
NOT
drawing healthy boundaries around ourselves and our family and teaching our kids to do the same.
There is a time to suffer in silence. But I have found that Holy Spirit leads me to do that far less than I’d been raised to think.
There are potential learning moments on a lot of growing edges all around us. When we fail to rise to the occasion, we suffer needlessly and usually cause others to suffer needlessly, too.
Boors, insecurely arrogant selfish clueless folks often need emotional 2 X 4’s upside the head to wake them up to reality in a list of ways. They are usually artists at being victims, needy, whiney, petulant, demanding, controlling and generally all around miserable and gifted at spreading their misery far and wide.
ENOUGH ALREADY YET. If you want time with me, learn to be more real, more honest, more loving and more constructive . . . or get out of my sphere and stay out.
I don’t always emphatically enforce that last part but if someone is persistently prone to being negative I will certainly minimize my exposure to them.
INDEED!
With documentation on her felonies.
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