The Poverty of Entitlement
How is your Lent going? Truth be told, I am being challenged, and I like it. I have taken up a new devotional and reflection diary that really has me exploring things I haven’t before. This is very exciting for me as most things I experience by way of faith formation are not new. This past week, I have grappled with the beatitudes. While I have often been asked to ponder what they mean or which is the most challenging, this time I am being asked which one do I identify with the most. Slightly different. Again, truth be told, I am in the midst of discernment which might be why the opportunity to ponder which beatitude I identify with is so poignant. Within the constructs of this reflecting, the word “poverty” has been lurking in the background. Lent invites us into poverty, our own poverty. Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions. However, when you don’t lack material possession does it mean that you aren’t experiencing poverty? I would argue that there are other types of poverty. Let’s take the poverty of entitlement. That appears counterintuitive. Entitlement is a feeling that we have a right to all we own, to what we’ve been given. That we’re deserving of our privilege. Entitlement is what happens to us when we begin to take what we have, for granted.
Taking what you have for granted is where the poverty exists. The entitled want more, and more, and more and at what cost? I would argue that it is at the cost of charity. Not the ability to give what we have away especially when we are done with it, but at the cost of being able to love, at the cost of being able to respect another individual, at the cost of being kind, at the cost of apathy. We don’t have a right to anything. We don’t deserve any of it. It is all a gift. What we do with that gift is how we demonstrate our gratitude. The poverty of entitlement may be the inability to empathize or humble. This sin of entitlement may be intolerance and self-righteousness.
This is what I am contemplating. This is how I am being challenged. I am thinking to myself: Am I using the gifts I have been given well enough in honor of the God who gave them to me? Is what I am doing with my gifts worthy of Him or am I responding in an entitled manner? I don’t have an answer, yet.