I bumped into a man this past week whom I’ve known since we were in the first grade. It’s funny, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re still back in first grade and that nothing has changed. We’re still six years old in Mrs. Mann’s class. Of course, that isn’t true. We’re both married, we have grandchildren, we’ve experienced meaningful change in our lives, but it’s so easy to think nothing is different, so easy for our minds to run in the same old ruts. It’s like driving down the road after a heavy snow before the plows have passed, our minds slip into the well-traveled tracks made by previous drivers.
I came home and mentioned to Joan that I’d seen him and said, “That guy hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve known him.
She said, “Are you kidding? When I first met him, he was pleasant, now all he does is complain about everything, even though he has nothing to be upset about. He has a wonderful family, he’s well-off, he’s in good health. But he’s never happy.”
I thought to myself, “Boy, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before?”
Then I remembered, she said the same thing about me just last week.
It was an Aha! moment, an epiphany. I thought, “She’s right, the older I’ve gotten, the more entitled I feel, the more put-upon and imposed upon I feel. The more petulant I’ve become.”
Even the slightest inconvenience makes me feel as if I have been uniquely laden with the world’s burdens. I blow up about trifling inconveniences I once would have laughed away.
We’ve been talking about the characteristics of flourishing and failing nations. What do thriving nations do that failing nations fail to do? So far, we’ve said that flourishing nations acknowledge and address their historic shortcomings. They are honest about who they are and what they’ve been. Then we said flourishing nations ensure all their citizens have access to the resources they need to thrive. The last time we were together we said that in flourishing nations there is a distinct and unbreachable wall between religion and government, so that the ideals of democracies are not corroded by the abuses of religion.
Today, I want to say that flourishing nations are led by people who are wise, charitable, gracious and thoughtful, and not people who, despite their privilege, are petulant, complain incessantly, who act as if they are entitled, who lurch from one grievance to another, whose lives are a litany of perceived injuries.
I had a civics teacher in the eighth grade named Wendell Scudder. Mr. Scudder believed things read aloud were more likely to be remembered, so he would go around the classroom having us read aloud from our textbook.
One day, I was reading aloud and came across the French phrase noblesse oblige, which I pronounced “nobles oblige.” No one laughed, because we all lived in Danville and none of us knew how to speak French, since the only person we knew from France was Louie LeBeau on Hogan’s Heroes. Mr. Scudder stopped me and explained that it was a French term, pronounced noblesse oblige, which meant “nobility obligates.” He explained that the wealthy and high-born have an obligation to act honorably and generously to others.
This principle is also found in the Gospel of Luke, in the 12th chapter, when Jesus said, “To whom much is given, from them much will be required.” That’s noblesse oblige. It is the responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those who are less privileged. When a culture forgets that, when the affluent and powerful neglect their responsibility to treat the less fortunate with charity and dignity, that culture will not flourish, but will fail. When those who are privileged become petulant and entitled, when they wish only to be served, and not serve others, that culture will no longer flourish, but will fail. Write this down and put it on your refrigerator: Superior advantages require from us superior kindness. To whom much is given, much is expected. Noblesse oblige.
Entitlement and privilege are the enemies of noblesse oblige; gratitude and generosity are its friends. So if you came here today wondering why we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, now you know. We practice gratitude in order not to become entitled, not to think privilege, favor, and advantages are our due. Superior advantages require from us superior kindness. Ingratitude comes too easily and naturally to us. We slip too easily into the well-traveled tracks of privilege and entitlement, and once we are in those ruts, it is difficult to steer out of them.
Which brings us to our current dilemma. America is now in the grip of people whose sole objectives are personal privilege and public power. Noblesse oblige is a foreign language to them, an alien concept. What is telling about the release of the Epstein files are the names of the privileged and powerful—politicians, presidents, a university president, royalty, writers, prime ministers, entertainers, bankers, government officials, CEO’s, and billionaires, the one-percent—many of whom knew full well the extent of Jeffrey Epstein’s depravity, yet still joined their lives to his, still curried his favor, still thought only of themselves and their vile appetites and no one else.
It is the responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those who are less privileged. When a culture forgets that, when the affluent and powerful neglect their responsibility to treat the less fortunate with charity and dignity, that culture will no longer flourish, but will fail, for the health of a nation is not measured by its economic power, nor by its military might, but by the decency of those who lead it.