“I and the Father are one.” John 10:30
Today’s post is admittedly long so let me put it in context so you will appreciate it. It connects the generous life with the nature of our generous, Triune God, and basically explains why we exist. Hilary (310-367), the bishop of Poitiers, France, was widely known as the “Athanasius of the West” for joining Athanasius in refuting the “Arian controversy.” When Arius of Alexandria (and others) worked to dismantle the relationship between God the Father and Jesus, Athanasius and Hilary, among others, refuted them.
In the opening sections of his treatise On the Trinity 1.1-2, Hilary basically sets the stage for the general notion that the Persons of the Trinity are one. They work and exhibit generosity between one another and towards humanity to show us how to live and function. Why does that matter when it comes to generosity? We learn that the aim of life is not “leisure combined with wealth.” People are not “born only to gratify their greed” but to “progress toward immortality.”
“1. When I was seeking an employment adequate to the powers of human life and righteous in itself, whether prompted by nature or suggested by the researches of the wise, whereby I might attain to some result worthy of that divine gift of understanding which has been given us, many things occurred to me which in general esteem were thought to render life both useful and desirable. And especially that which now, as always in the past, is regarded as most to be desired, leisure combined with wealth, came before my mind. The one without the other seemed rather a source of evil than an opportunity for good, for leisure in poverty is felt to be almost an exile from life itself, while wealth possessed amid anxiety is in itself an affliction, rendered the worse by the deeper humiliation which he must suffer who loses, after possessing, the things that most are wished and sought. And yet, though these two embrace the highest and best of the luxuries of life, they seem not far removed from the normal pleasures of the beasts which, as they roam through shady places rich in herbage, enjoy at once their safety from toil and the abundance of their food. For if this be regarded as the best and most perfect conduct of the life of man, it results that one object is common, though the range of feelings differ, to us and the whole unreasoning animal world, since all of them, in that bounteous provision and absolute leisure which nature bestows, have full scope for enjoyment without anxiety for possession.
2. I believe that the mass of mankind have spurned from themselves and censured in others this acquiescence in a thoughtless, animal life, for no other reason than that nature herself has taught them that it is unworthy of humanity to hold themselves born only to gratify their greed and their sloth, and ushered into life for no high aim of glorious deed or fair accomplishment, and that this very life was granted without the power of progress towards immortality; a life, indeed, which then we should confidently assert did not deserve to be regarded as a gift of God, since, racked by pain and laden with trouble, it wastes itself upon itself from the blank mind of infancy to the wanderings of age. I believe that men, prompted by nature herself, have raised themselves through teaching and practice to the virtues which we name patience and temperance and forbearance, under the conviction that right living means right action and right thought, and that Immortal God has not given life only to end in death; for none can believe that the Giver of good has bestowed the pleasant sense of life in order that it may be overcast by the gloomy fear of dying.”
Friends, we live on this round ball called earth not to live animal lives but for a greater purpose: to live for the eternal, to progress towards immortality. We do this when we realize that all of life is a gift that we do not deserve, and that God the Father is the Giver of all gifts (James 1:17). The Father is one with Christ (John 10:30), and has imparted to us His Spirit to produce the fruit of generosity in our lives (Galatians 5:22-23). When we bring these pieces together, we enter the proverbial gate of life in His economy (like the gate in this photo on our drizzly walk yesterday evening). That’s why God, in Christ, came to earth, to be the gift and teach us how to live so that we, like Him, might be gifts to the world, empowered by His Spirit. Our time is not to be spent worrying about dying. We are here to help people discover how to live. That’s what generosity is all about.