“It’s wasted on a generation of spoiled idiots.” Comedian Louis C K believes this is the response of many who live in an amazing world. “New York to L.A. takes 5 hours. It used to take 30 years. By the time you got to California you were with a whole new group of people.” Complaints about air travel? “You hear people say (in a whiny voice), ‘I had to wait 20 minutes to board the plane.’ Oh, really? You’re sitting in a chair in the sky! You are flying through the air!” Is your cell phone too slow? “It’s going to space! Can you give it a second?!” Watching You Tube videos of C K’s stand-up or late-night-talk-show appearances reminds us that we expect too much and are too little thankful.[1]
Michael Douglas plays such an ingrate in The Game. Douglas’ character Nicholas Van Orton has everything; but like Scrooge, he appreciates nothing. He lives in opulence yet has cut himself off from every relationship that matters. Sean Penn plays Douglas’ brother who gives him an interactive game experience for his birthday. Initially unimpressed, Douglas goes along unaware that he is being drawn into series of debacles that will overturn his life. The viewer is given the same “ride.” We are dragged through a world impossible to predict. Crisis upon catastrophe is piled high. Every fright is replaced by another horror. Just when we think the character can take no more, the tension is ratcheted up another notch. Our initial revulsion of Nicholas Van Orton is upended at the end as we see him broken, uttering the phrase “thank you” for the first time. And then, if we are sensitive to the story, we no longer see actors, but ourselves.
How often do we belly ache about the slightest of grievances? Did another driver cut us off on the highway? Was someone inconsiderate in the check-out line? Did a person not meet our slightest expectation? What small inconvenience has intruded upon our lives today? Has a light bulb gone out? Has the printer run out of ink? Did we get a paper cut? Were we let down because the product was out of stock? Was our latte not made to our liking? Are we a generation of whiners? Are we ever pleased about anything without qualifying complaint? Can we stop focusing on the smallest of maladjustments from our day to consider our ingratitude? Have we become Scrooge?
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for those which he has,” is wisdom ascribed to the Greek philosopher Epictetus. “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others,” says the Roman historian Cicero. Seneca, Cicero’s contemporary, adds, “He who receives benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.” And Dietrich Bonhoeffer—a man who could make this claim based on how he lived—wrote, “In an ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”[2]
To be thankful is to acknowledge someone outside of ourselves. What we need is confession, the essence of the word for “thankfulness” in Hebrew. We tend to think of going to confession to ask forgiveness for sin or giving a confession of guilt before a court of law. But The First Testament term emphasizes a declaration of God’s greatness. Exaltation, praise, or glorification remembering God and His works is a confession.[3] Our confession is to be made among the nations and in large assemblies of people, with song.[4] Confessional praise was to be wholehearted with a right mind continually.[5] Indeed Jesus came from Judah’s line, whose name means “to confess.”[6]
G. C. Berkouwer takes gratitude to its ultimate level: “The essence of Christian theology is grace, the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.” Doing right is proper confessional reaction. Doing right is based on remembering we live before Another. Doing right is a small response to a large endowment. 2 Corinthians 9:15 summarizes what should be our singular feedback, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” R. C. Sproul answers, “Once we have received this grace of eternal life in Jesus Christ, we should be willing to crawl over broken glass to honor and praise Him for that grace.”[7]
Ethics courses should be built on confessional praise thereby reminding us all we have come from Someone else. Louis C K is correct: we should take nothing for granted. Our first thought should be, “How providentially fortunate I am to be living now, enjoying the goodness of this life.” This is what George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) discovers in It’s a Wonderful Life. When we think our impact is insignificant we should think of Frank Capra’s classic tale. Let us take stock of our lives. Stop whining. Celebrate the large blessings over the small evils. Content ourselves with what we have, not what we want. May we find ourselves at the end of the tale in the lives of Nicholas Van Orton and Ebenezer Scrooge. And may we thank Christ that we even have the opportunity.
Crawling Over Broken Glass—Gratitude
Mark Eckel, ThM PhD, Professor of Old Testament
[1] Many thanks to my nephew Luke who hunted down the You Tube video for his uncle! Excerpts in this paragraph can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOtEQB-9tvk.
[2] The quotes noted here are attributed to these historical figures, accessed in various references. In this case, the statements are taken from Robert A. Emmons’ book Thanks: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier (Houghton-Mifflin, 2008), p. 15.
[3] Psalm 89:5; cf. Psalms 105, 106, 145.
[4] 2 Samuel 22:50; Psalm 35:18; 28:7 and 109:30.
[5] Psalm 86:12; 119:7; 30:12
[6] Ralph H. Alexander. 1980. yada. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. (Moody): 1:364-66.
[7] R. C. Sproul. 2009. Romans: The Righteous Shall Live By Faith. (Crossway): 203.