What Is a Blessing?

Book excerpt: This book aims to bring clarification, understanding, knowledge, and wisdom about what a blessing really is. In America, we have the concept that a blessing is a material entity, such as a house, a car, extravagant clothes, and expensive jewelry (the bling-bling). A blessing in Western civilization is self-centered; whereas, it is supposed to bless others, as well. We see being blessed as being happy all the time (a state of bliss). This desire for a state of happiness and a propensity for a strong feeling of repugnance toward apathy, unhappiness, suffering, distress, anguish, afflictions, difficulties, no problems, no hardships, and no worries come from the philosophy of John Locke (16321704). John Locke lived in England, and his philosophy influenced the Founding Fathers so much that when they wrote the Constitution of the United States, they relied heavily upon Lockes philosophy about natural rights, which they stated in the preamble of the Constitution as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. John Locke is also known as the father of liberalism. Liberalism is defined as the belief in the value of social and political change in order to achieve progress. To be blessed, you definitely have to make progress. Locke lived in England during the time of ruling kings and queens, so Locke posited in his Second Treatise of Government that people had a sovereign power and the monarchy was merely a delegate. John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes were three of the major philosophers during the Age of Enlightenment who embraced reasoning (rationalization) as a means to serve God. The Age of Enlightenment resulted in atheism, and it has also contributed to an erroneous conception of what a blessing is. The notion of happiness has penetrated and become a component of one of the characteristics of what we think a blessing is. The blessing has to be what we want to make us happy, prosperous, healthyself-centered blessings just for ourselves. The prosperity-theology doctrine emphasizes the importance of personal empowerment proposing that it is Gods will for his people to be happy. My goal is to help people align their thinking with what a blessing is according to biblical standards, not philosophical rationalizations (Psalm 19:78).