Praise where Praise is due

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

The Gospel today from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Luke begins with the golden rule “Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you.” The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verse 12 reads: “In everything, treat others, as you would want them to treat you, for this fulfils the law and the prophets.” Furthermore, a note in the NET Bible points out that the word “them” in Greek refers to men and women, boys and girls. So, this is an important verse, spoken by Jesus Christ in two gospels that applies to everyone and is a teaching of both the Old and the New Testaments. As a note in The Orthodox Study Bible indicates, treating others in the way we want to be treated “is the action that begins to draw us toward God.”

In the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 22, verse 36 when a lawyer asks Jesus “‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ Jesus says to him, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second [commandment] is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments,” concluded Jesus Christ. OK, so how can we learn to love God and our fellow human beings so deeply? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers some helpful advice in his book, Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible. Remember, the Jewish Bible is what we as Christians call the Old Testament; and Jesus has been quite clear that this golden rule applies to both Jews and Christians.

Rabbi Sacks writes about learning to love others in our families and praising everyone in the family for their attempts to tackle any problems that arise. He begins and I quote: “I discovered the transformative power of focused praise [that is, praise concentrated on a specific event] from one of the more remarkable people I ever met, the late Lena Rustin. Lena was a speech therapist, specialising in helping stammering children…. Lena believed that the young stammerers she was treating… had to be understood in the context of their families…. If a child stammers, everyone in the family has to adjust to it. Therefore, if the child is to lose his or her stammer, all the relationships within the family will have to be renegotiated. Not only must the child change, so must everyone else,” concluded Lena Rustin.

Then the rabbi moved beyond speech therapy to how we can change as human beings and learn to love others more deeply; and I quote: “By and large, we tend to resist change. We settle into patterns of behaviour until they become comfortable, like a well-worn armchair or a comfortable pair of shoes. How do you create at atmosphere within a family that encourages change and makes it unthreatening? The answer Lena discovered was praise. She told the families with whom she was working that every day they must catch each member of the family doing something right and say so—specifically, positively, and thankfully…. She was creating, within each home, an atmosphere of mutual regard and continuous positive reinforcement. She wanted the parents to shape an environment of self-respect and self-confidence, not just for the stammering child but for every member of the family, so that the entire atmosphere of the home was one in which people felt safe to change and help others to do so,” reflected Rabbi Sacks.

The rabbi then concluded with a reflection on the meaning of praise; and I quote: “There is in praise a deep spiritual message. We think religion is about faith in God. What I had not fully understood before was that faith in God should lead us to have faith in people, for God’s image is in each of us and we have to learn how to discern it. I then understood that the repeated phrase in Genesis 1, ‘And God saw that it was good,’ was there to teach us to see the good in people and events, and by so doing, help to strengthen it,” concluded Rabbi Sacks.

Many centuries ago, St John Chrysostom reflected on how to learn to “love your neighbour as yourself,” and I quote: “Our wishes imply careful regulation of our behaviour…. Note that [Jesus] did not say, ‘Whatever things that you want God to do for you, do these things to your neighbour’ …. Instead, Jesus said, ‘Whatever things that you want your fellow servant to do, you yourself also perform for your neighbour.’… Then the praise is exceedingly great: ‘For this is the law and prophets,” reflected St John. Then he concluded, “From this it is exceedingly clear that virtue is defined in accordance with our nature. So, we all know within ourselves what our duties are. We cannot ever again find refuge in ignorance.”

My experience is that it is surprisingly easy to, as St John phrases it, “find refuge in ignorance”—that is, to say, “I didn’t know that what I said would hurt you. I didn’t know what you needed in your life today.” Overcoming ignorance is a life-long challenge. For example, in the context of how to praise others, Rabbi Sacks points out, and I quote: “Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset, argues that there is a decisive difference between two approaches [to praising others]: we might believe that our abilities are innate and determined once and for all (the ‘fixed’ mindset) or we may assume that talent is something we achieve over time through effort, practice, and persistence (the ‘growth’ mindset). People [who believe in the fixed mindset] … tend to be … afraid that failure will show that they are not as good as they were thought to be [by others]. [Those who believe in the growth mindset] embrace risk because they take failure as a learning experience from which they can grow. It follows that there is good praise and bad praise. Parents and teachers should not praise children in absolute terms [by saying] ‘You are gifted, brilliant, a star.’ They should praise effort [by saying] ‘You tried hard, you gave of your best.’ [Parents and teachers] should encourage a growth mindset, not a fixed one,” concluded Rabbi Sacks after reading Carol Dweck’s book Mindset.

So, both Jewish and Christian tradition affirms that it is right to praise both God and other human beings who are made in the image of God. I conclude with the words of the poem “Anthem” by W. H Auden: “Let us praise our Maker, with true passion extol Him. Let the whole creation give out another sweetness … a novel fragrance … An authoritative This, an unthreatened Now, when, in love and in laughter, each lives itself, for, united by His Word, cognition and power, System and Order, are a single glory, And the pattern is complex, their places safe.”

And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages.              Father Emmanuel Kahn