If it were not so clunky, Thanksgiving should actually be subtitled National Apologetics Day. The apostle Paul tells us that there are two things that the unbeliever wants to suppress, and those two things are the Godness of God, and our consequent responsibility to render thanks to Him. Thanksgiving is really the central epistemological duty of man. Without it, we stagger right into every form of zeitgeistian idolatry.
A corollary of this is that the Church must recover a robust sense of these two realities, experiencing them in her own life, both in our worship services and out in the parish. If the unbelievers are laboring mightily to repress their sense of the Godness of God, and their responsibility to offer up to Him a life of gratitude, then the central thing we must do is live in such a way that keeps bringing the issue back up. They, in their unbelief, are trying to hold an over-inflated beach ball under water. And when we live rejoicing in the presence of the triune God who is God, and we live in a way that overflows with thanksgiving for all things, we are gently poking their quivering arms.
During the course of this last year I have had the privilege of interacting with the new atheism in three areas. The first was a book responding to Sam Harris’ book, the second was a series of blog posts here responding to Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, and the third was an online debate with Christopher Hitchens over at Christianity Today Online (which, incidentally, will soon be published in book form). I always want to see such instances as opportunities to rejoice in who God is, and to write gratefully. A shrill “how-dare-you” response to the new atheists is just what they want, and not what they need. They want to be the bad boys in third grade who shock all the good girls who never heard of such a thing.
In that spirit, I want publicly to thank God for all His blessings to me and my family this last year. I cannot really comprehend how much goodness surrounds me on every hand, but Scriptures goad me constantly to try harder. Someday I might even begin to get a glimpse of the beginning of it.
I am grateful for the blood of Jesus, the truth of God, and the kindness of the Holy Spirit. I love the worship of the Church, and the forgiveness of sins. The Scriptures are a delight, and the communion of saints a glorious context for that delight. The Spirit and the Bride have both called to me through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and this environment of glorious music is my everlasting home.
My wife Nancy is the single greatest earthly blessing of my life. She is sweet, funny, intelligent, quick, hardworking, loving, lovely, and a stupendous cook.
God has blessed me beyond all reckoning in my kids and their spouses. Ben and Bekah are thriving at Oxford, Nate and Heather here in Moscow, and Luke and Rachel also here in Moscow. In a recent conversation about all the opportunities and blessings he has been getting, Nate told me that “he is not cheating.” But, he added, “somebody is.” We feel this way about all that God has given to each of our families — Oxford, book deals, business opportunities. All of this is simply God’s kindness and grace, multiplied far, far beyond our expectations and our deserving.
We have eleven grandchildren on hand, and two more set to arrive in just a few days. Whether we are reading them stories, listening to them terryhooting in the basement, or hearing their comments in the worship service, they all delight us constantly. Recently Christ Church and Trinity Reformed developed a common liturgy for our periodic joint services, and this includes kneeling for the confession of sin. At that point in the service, I stepped out of the pulpit and knelt by it, and Evangeline inquired loudly, “What he checking?” So we render thanks for the generations to come, starting with Knox, Jema, Bel, Hero, Judah, Rory, Lucia, Ameera, Seamus, Evangeline, Daphne, ?, and of course, ?
I am extremely grateful to be living in this nation, at this point in our history. I am grateful for our freedoms, for our heritage, for the challenges and opportunities before us. I am extremely grateful to be an American, and hope never to be proud of it.
When the apostles were beaten by the leaders of their people (Acts 5:41), they went out rejoicing. In such a context, it is always an honor to be dishonored, and a grace to be disgraced. God has seen fit to have it come to pass that many people have come to believe me to be a scoundrel and a snake, and this too is to be a reason for thanksgiving. You can’t be surprised, when you stick your head through the canvas at the state fair, if people start throwing softballs at it. God knows what He is doing, and our responsiblity is to respond to it the way He instructs — always and for everything giving thanks.
“You ask me how I know He lives,” as the old gospel song puts it, but I want to offer a variation on the answer given. Certainly, He lives “within my heart,” but I also know that He lives because of all the stuff He gives me. If He were not there, if He did not live, then how could He be constantly giving me so much? If I keep getting things in the mail, doesn’t there have to be someone mailing it? If He were not there, where could I direct my obligatory thanks? This is the argument from gratitude. I have a true obligation to render objective thanks for all the objective gifts I have received. This duty would not be a true duty if God did not exist and had not given these things to me. But it is a genuine duty. Therefore, He exists.
You ask me how I know He lives? Because of all these gifts. I have tried to enumerate some of them before, but it really is a pitiful exercise in helplessness. So here comes another sorry attempt. God exists because I have lots of books, and because of how a really good sneeze feels. Socks feel great on the calves when you pull them up, and somebody needs to be thanked for that. When I get up in the morning and pull my fingers back, stretching them. How my iPod works. A laptop computer. Hot showers in the morning. Cold beer. The smells that come out of Nancy’s kitchen. The way a sixteen penny nail goes into wood. Shoes when they lace right. Blues licks. A roaring fireplace in autumn. The kennings of Beowulf. The satisfaction of mowing the lawn right. Cold weather. Hot weather. Temperate weather. Rain. Sunshine. Snow. Drizzle. Oobleck.