This post is a little late, but these questions have been
rolling around in my brain for a while.
What exactly does it mean to “give thanks?” Just
to “give thanks.” Period. I keep hearing people say (or sing) that they
are thankful for this, that, or the other, but often they don’t say to whom they are
thankful. So . . . can you be
“generically” thankful? Does “I am
thankful for. . .” - whatever – mean
anything? I mean, can an atheist be
thankful? Obviously an atheist or anyone
else can be thankful to another
person, but can they be thankful for
another person? What does it mean to be
thankful for food, home, friends, family, etc. if no one actually gave them to
you? Are you thankful to yourself? I watched a video from Skepticon where all
these atheists were expressing thankfulness for things, people, concepts,
etc. Only two of them noted that they
were not thankful for anything,
because being thankful for implies
that you are thankful to
someone. One of them said, quite
sensibly, that saying that he was “thankful” would be anthropomorphizing the
universe. So he just commented on what
he “liked.”
And then there are the Christians who express thanks. We say things like, “I am thankful that I
have all of this good food to eat.” But
if we are expressing thanks to God, we had better be careful. If we acknowledge that God is the source of
what we are thankful for, then we are by default acknowledging that all we have
is a gift. And if that is true then the
“blessings” that we have are supposed to be used to bless others. If we are not blessing others, can we truly
say that we are thankful?
If true thanksgiving acknowledges the source of the
blessings for which we are giving thanks, then we should be prepared to put
some muscle behind our thankfulness.
Otherwise our thankfulness can be as empty and meaningless as that of
the atheists.
I think that I am going to need to be more careful in the
future with my words of gratitude; instead of saying, “I am thankful for . . .”
generically, I need to say: “I thank my
friends for. . .,” or “I thank my family for. . .,” or “I thank my church for .
. .,” or “I thank God for . . .” And my
gratitude really should be expressed in giving to others, not simply in
indulging myself.
I have come into contact with a lot of people who do not
have enough food, electricity, water, etc.
I pray that more and more God
will turn my giving thanks into sharing blessings.
Sigh. Just when I think I have made a little progress towards being a Jesus-follower, I realize how far I have to go. I am thankful to my family, my friends, my church, and our God for patience with me!
