I don’t recall the precise details but I once read about a man who became a Christian while considering the concept of gratitude.

The story went something like this.  After a significant crisis in the man’s life there was a remarkable turning point which was totally unexpected.  As a result this man was overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude.  That, of course, is not unusual; however, as a convinced agnostic he then began to wonder why he should be feeling thankful.  It struck him that thankfulness really needs an object.  Gratitude makes little sense when there is no one to thank.  Nor is there any point in expressing gratitude for something that “just happens”.  Since thankfulness is such a universal human response to good events this man, in a round-about way, finally came to the conclusion that there must be a God.  Eventually he embraced the Christian faith and learned about the most amazing kind of gratitude of all – thankfulness for deliverance from damnation and the gift of eternal life through the saving work of Jesus Christ.

All this came to mind after speaking one Sunday on some verses about gratitude from Psalm 116.  It struck me once again how common the concept of thankfulness is – not only in human experience but also in the Bible.  A computer search shows me that the idea of thankfulness to God occurs in various expressions more than a hundred times.  It is a common theme especially in the Psalms.  For example Psalm 107 has a refrain that occurs over and over: “Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love!”  That Psalm makes very clear that thankfulness should be part of every human life – particularly when good things happen in the context of trials and hardships.  But giving thanks becomes totally meaningless if there is no one to thank.

Strictly speaking this means that an atheist should never feel thankful.  For him life is simply the result of his own choices interacting with the random events of life.  If all things simply happen by chance why express thanks for the good things?  And if, perchance he does have overwhelming feelings of gratitude to whom does he express that gratitude?  It becomes clear that the existence of gratitude in the human heart is a manifestation of us being made for relationship with our Creator.

Occasionally those who reject the personal God of the Bible try to be consistent in their worldview with (from a Christian perspective) absurd results.  Consider for example the following: I kept a newspaper clipping from our local newspaper of an article on the then television drama Lost.  It featured one of the characters, Jin Soo Kwon (Korean actor Daniel Dae Kim).  Kim at that time lived in Hawaii and his work on the set of the film series required him to spend a great deal of his time on the beach.  Kim told the reporter about his love for his work and about his gratitude for the opportunities this TV series had given him.  He said: “Every day I’m at work and I look out at the ocean and see the crystal blue waves crashing on the beach, I just look up and thank the universe for putting me here.”

The article reported nothing further about Kim’s religious views – or lack thereof – but two observations are worth making.

First Kim’s comments reinforce the prevalence of the emotion of gratitude in the human heart and the need to express that in some way or other.  Second, Kim obviously does not believe in the personal God of the Bible, however, he has ascribed personality and divinity to the universe in which he lives – it’s what we would call pantheism: everything is God and God is in everything.  Therefore since he has no personal God to whom he can express his gratitude he must resort to thanking a deified impersonal universe.  The absurdity of giving thanks to the universe is obvious when we remember that Kim is part of that same universe so that indirectly he is giving thanks to himself.

Kim’s gratitude is simply the idolatry that the Apostle Paul refers to in Romans 1 – man worshipping the created rather than the Creator.  That’s a far cry from the gratitude that is expressed in the Bible and that finds it highest expression in thankfulness to God for the saving work of Jesus.

John Westendorp