Thanksgiving is a popular holiday by many for a variety of reasons. Its emphases on family, food, and football are pretty compelling reasons to claim the top spot for people’s favorite holiday. But more than that, the holiday’s ultimate emphasis—the call to be thankful—can be quite a compelling diagnosis of who we really are.
Thankfulness is essentially a response. Question is, what is the scope and nature of our response of thanks? Is it narrowly limited to only our blessings, or does it define our entire domain of life, with or without blessings?
Ultimately, I think the scope and nature of our thanksgiving (or, our particular response to life) reveals our worldview. What we are thankful for, and how we are thankful for it, also serves to uncover what is most important to us, such as, our sense of security, significance, and satisfaction—or, in other terms, our functional salvation.
If that’s true, that means our thanksgiving is our theology. The scope and nature of our thanksgiving is itself the scope and nature of everything we believe about God, ourselves, and the world.
For example, if we are thankful for some things, and resentful of other things, it means our reality is understood primarily through the lens of personal effort and circumstantial limits. But if we are thankful for everything—the good and the bad, the blessing and cursing, the perceived blessing and perceived cursing—it means that our reality is understood primarily through the lens of God’s sovereign grace.
If I am not thankful to God even for my inconveniences, sufferings, or trials, then I am telling God these things are…
1) contradictory to the nature of his love towards me,
2) beyond the scope of his power to fix, and
3) threaten the things I view as more valuable than He is to me.
But if I am thankful to God for all things, the good and the bad, I am affirming to God…
1) the unconditional nature of his love towards me,
2) the providential scope of his power over me,
3) the value of our relationship over everything else, which circumstance cannot touch.
I think it’s highly significant and incredibly interesting that in Romans 1, the Apostle Paul pinpoints ungratefulness as THE reason people reject God’s lordship. Not pride. Not idolatry. Not greed. Not sexuality immorality. Ungratefulness. He says…
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images…” (v. 21-23)
The main reason we reject God’s lordship is our self-sufficient proclivity to establish our significance, security, and satisfaction outside of Him and upon ‘the glory of other images’ (relationships, vocations, looks, academic success, earning potential, etc.). And when we do that, we credit, boast in, and worship anything but God.
In other words, thankfulness (or lack thereof) is the defining hinge upon a relationship with God hangs. The difference between Christians and everyone else, therefore, is that they thank God for all things because of an affirmation in His absolute love, power, and wisdom in all things.
If God is maximally loving, powerful, and wise in all things, that means every aspect of every experience on earth—the good and the bad—is all grace.
As such, our response should be to give thanks in all circumstances. Why? Because God and his grace to us is the same to us in all circumstances. Which means there will never be a reason to not give thanks.
“I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” “Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:12-13; 1 Thessalonians 5:18)
“Thankfulness is a theology in microcosm—a key to understanding what we really believe about God, ourselves, and the world we experience.” –R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
