Things Worth Boasting About

 Posted at Reformation Scotland:

When the things that give us our deepest fulfilment and satisfaction are just things, we are missing the chief end of our existence. Our souls will always be empty and dissatisfied until we find our rest in God, the only one who has the attributes that our souls need for completeness and happiness. However, as Hugh Binning points out in the following updated extract, we cannot really find our blessedness even in God Himself unless we know that He is our God. Only once we have a saving relationship with God in Christ can we have a solid basis for rejoicing and glorying in Him.

Our capacity for joy is also our capacity for misery

There are some gifts that God gave uniquely to mankind in the first creation, enduing human nature with them, beyond other living creatures. When these are rightly ordered and used towards the right objects, they advance the human soul to a wonderful height of happiness, a height that no other sublunary creature is capable of.

But by reason of man’s fall into sin, these gifts are quite disordered and turned out of the right channel. So, just as the right use of them would make us happy, so the wrong employment of them loads us down with more real misery than any other creature.

I mean, God has given mankind two notable capacities beyond other things. One is, to know and reflect on ourselves, and to consider what goodness or advantage redounds to ourselves from any thing, and, in that reflection and comparison, to enjoy what we have. The other is, to look forward beyond the present time, and, as it were, to anticipate and get ahead of the slow motions of time, by a kind of foresight and ability to see ahead.

In a word, a human being is a creature framed to more understanding than others, and so capable of more joy in present things, and more foresight of the future. The human is made mortal, yet with an immortal spirit of an immortal capacity, which has its eye on tomorrow — that is, on eternity.

Now, in this consists either the individual’s happiness or misery — how he reflects on himself, what he chooses for his joy and glorying in, and what provision he has for the future. If these things are rightly ordered, all is well. But if not, then woe to him! There is more hope of an animal than of him.

Human nature inclines to boasting — to glorying in something. This springs from some excellency or advantage that humanity can grasp, and so it originates in the human power of understanding, which is far above that of the animals. Animals find the things themselves, but they do not, they cannot, reflect on their own enjoyment of them, and therefore they are not capable of such pleasure as humans. For, the more distinct knowledge we have of things in relation to ourselves, the more delight follows from it. Many creatures have unique qualities and virtues, but they are none the happier for it, for they do not know them, and have no use of them, but are wholly destinated to the use of mankind. Only mankind is said to “enjoy” them, because only mankind is capable of joy from them.

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