The question: If in the Incarnation of
Christ we have received the fulness of “grace and truth” (John 1:14), how should we respond and what should our gratitude look like?
In discussing the science of gratitude
through the work of U.C. Davis psychologist Robert Emmons a few nights ago, my friend Bill and I
were engaged in a spirited debate about the nature of gratitude, especially as
we look at the greatest gift of all this season, the birth of Jesus Christ. I
thought some of that discussion is worth posting here. My comments below will serve mainly
as foils for Bill’s reflections.
(And, in order to get this posted by Monday--which is my pattern--you're seeing this in a form that's still a bit rough-hewn. So I reserve the right to make a few edits this week to help clarify our meaning. Still I think the essence of our discussion/debate is here.)
Feel free to comment on how you see the answer
to this question.
Bill: It’s become popular to reduce
gratitude to an emotion, but I resist that idea. While I agree there are
emotions associated with it, it is much more than a feeling. My
emotional responses have a lot to do with my chemical or hormonal levels at the
moment. Identifying gratitude as an emotion overlooks that an actual debt
is incurred. The debt is real, despite the giver waving it off. Gifts
create bonds that we actually feel some reciprocation is necessary. It’s
misused as a common sales technique to manipulate someone to reciprocate by
buying a product. The emotions that go along with gratitude are those
associated with relationships involved. Gratitude does not exist outside of a
relationship.
I’ve been excited in seeing that the biblical
word for gratitude or thanksgiving (eucharist) literally means “to return good
grace.” Returning grace is not a payment for something received, but is
an expression of love. When we recognize ways our value has been elevated, we return grace by doing something to
elevate the value of the other. “Thank-you” is not properly an expression
of gratitude. It is a “place-holder” expression that says, “I am ‘thinking’ of
you…” (which is the literal meaning of “thanks”). It is like a yet
un-cashed “I.O.U. It says, “I will remember this debt of kindness in some
future encounter.”
Greg: Bill, this implies that somehow gratitude necessitates something that we received. I want to challenge the idea that
gratitude always meant I personally benefited. It
often does, but if that’s the only definition, then gratitude is always selfish.
And what the Spirit leads us toward is serving others and moving beyond our
interests alone: “Look not only to your own interests, but also the interests
of others,” as Paul write sin Philippians 2: 4. And there are even more mundane
examples. We can experience gratitude when something good happens for a friend.
“Hey, I’m thankful you won a car at the Almond Bowl football raffle” (which
really did happen to a friend of mine).
Bill: I find your example challenging. It does
give me something to think about. However, I would ask, “Why chose the word
grateful?" The word “gratitude” itself contains a form of the word grace
and it implies that you have received grace.
Greg: We must be careful of taking the roots of words
too seriously, sometimes words do in fact mean what their roots imply, other
times the meaning has meandered through the centuries. To note the ways that
words change, C. S. Lewis, for example, points out in Mere Christianity that gentleman
had nothing originally to do with kindness or propriety, but simply that
you were in a particular social class. To be more precise, originally, a
gentleman was a man of the lowest rank of the English gentry, standing
below an esquire and above a yeoman. But the word has morphed. And the
little roots of “gentle” and “man” don’t really help much either.
Bill: While this is true, words change meaning,
it is also true that the etymology of words frequently point to important
distinctions in reality… distinctions we can point to and identify. These
distinctions are lost, forgotten, or obscured when we reduce the meaning of a
word. If we begin to use the word “gratitude” as a synonym
for “glad,” then we have in effect lost the word.
As C.S. Lewis has also pointed out, there is a tendency for
a culture to reduce all words to synonyms for “good” and “bad.” This
is also one of my concerns in focusing on gratitude as an emotion. It has the
effect of reducing it to an “emoji.” It is reduced to a subjective
experience to be studied by psychology. Gratitude is an excellent word to
describe the response to receiving grace. It means we didn’t deserve or even
ask for it, but we have personally benefited.
A second consideration to be addressed in your example is
this: Who are you grateful to? The consensus of those in our group, and the
papers we had read together [from the work of Emmons and texts he edited], seemed to agree that gratitude was personal and
intentional response to gift that was both intentional and personal. Who are
you grateful to for this benefit? If emotions “move us” toward some action (as
the word and research implies), what did his gratitude move you to do.
Greg: Yes, gratitude implies indebtedness. And when we think of the Incarnation during this month, the grandeur of that gift leads us to sense indebtedness to God—and that is reflected in
the biblical texts. But there is this higher way our relationship with God that Jesus points to when he refers to his
disciples as “friends” (John 15:15). Simply put, friends aren’t just debtors.
Even more, Paul’s deepest conviction—expressed passionately in Galatians—is
that we are free for Christ (not, of course, free from doing what’s right). Faith
receives grace freely, apart from works. I'm concerned that to feel the burden of
reciprocity twists grace into a form of works that nullified the grace given. We
can never pay back what God has done in Christ, and to act as if we could is to live in a form of slavery God never intends.
Bill: While grace is freely given and cannot be earned, nor
can it in any way be repaid… the act of grace has indebted me to another in
that the value of my life has been increased at their expense. Even though they
do this freely, without expectation of a return, the moral register of the
recipient usually recognizes the debt of gratitude. While this debt can be
ignored, in most cases, if it is brought to our attention, we respond with
expressions of gratitude. We could imagine an exaggerated example of ingratitude…
someone accepting gifts as if they were a right “because grace doesn’t expect
anything in return anyway.” The exaggeration makes the point that we
have an innate sense of the injustice in such a response. I'm
not suggesting your advocating such a response… only that such a response could
be a logical extension of what you seem to be proposing. I believe
your initial instinct is correct, that grace is not a burden, but frees
us. And it is important to guard against turning grace into manipulations.
I believe what I’m saying addresses that.
I want to repeat, our indebtedness has nothing to do with
what the other person expects in return. It has to do with the recognition of
the moral law of justice, and what is rightfully ours to take at the expense of
another. In other words, justice demands a return of some sort (and this has
been the philosophical conundrum Aristotle talked about), but it cannot be a
return that nullifies the grace in the gift. You can’t buy the gift. The
justice required is when receiving grace, is a return of grace. A return of
grace means you owe a debt of “gratitude.” This is expressed by doing something
to elevate the value of the giver. This is not a payment or response to the
gift, but to the giver. For grace is really not in the gift, but a gift of
grace is really an extension of the persons themselves. Grace is always
personal, intentional and relational and therefore gratitude must be so also.
This is why Paul identifies ingratitude (in Romans 1:21) as the sin that
darkens the mind to God.
Practicing gratitude (which we read in Emmons's work) are really practices of awareness.
As we become aware of our connections to others through gracious acts, it
should evoke the experience of being loved… which is why it has health
benefits. But to be actively aware of, and to take advantage of, the love of
another without intent of reciprocating that love will be
self-limiting… for it is a form of injustice. It disregards the personal nature
of the gift… that the gift is a form of the persons themselves. Any disregarding
or demeaning of a person is an injustice… and ingratitude can be a form of
injustice.
Greg: As you begin to talk about the practical form of gratitude, I think our perspectives are really close. The word ingrate is still, in my vocabulary, a sign of moral weakness, even sin. It would be hard to find a more fundamental theological statement about our life in response to God than James 1:17: "Every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights."
Bill: Yes, to ignore the debt of gratitude is equal to the mistake of
trying to “re-pay” a gift given. Both actions nullify to person as a giver.
They both focus on the nature of the gift and their relationship to the
gift rather than the giver. Grace is the essence of relational bonds. You
must “return grace” for “grace.” This must also be something that is not
earned, but gives value TO the giver... rather than merely giving something of
value to the giver. This is “grace for grace.”
Sex is an example of the exercise of grace and the return of
grace (gratitude). If the sexual union becomes an exchange for money or reward
for work, it is profaned by the denial of its true nature. Its nature is to
bond a relationship in love and care. Despite claims of “free-love,” and
the proclamation of “no strings attached,” there are
always “strings” that will have a profound effect on everyone involved.
The strings are real, not because the grace isn’t freely given, but because
grace is always costly to the giver... and it directly affects our identity and
value... and it undergirds our connection with the rest of the world. But this
kind of binding is the nature of love. It frees us by securing us.
When grace is not returned, there is a breach in
the relationship. Gratitude can never be selfish, because it is the
recognition and care for these relational bonds. The danger of manipulation
comes when we don’t recognize that grace and gratitude does not begin
or end with us. We are not the source of the grace… for we all
have received and can extend grace only to the extent we recognize we
have received grace. We channel the grace we have been given. We are
stewards of the grace of God. We should be grateful for every steward and show
our appreciation… but our true debts are to the one who bestowed the grace
first. Gratitude is what creates community, for it is a binding exchange that
involves a long chain relationships that begin and end with God. The
Apostle Paul’s solution to avoid manipulation is interesting. In a thank you
letter to the Philippians he is careful to never actually say “thank you” to
them. He chooses instead to say, “I thank God for you….” Gratitude, if it is not
to be manipulative or diminished, is always in some way, a recognition of the
grace of God.
