The Root of Thanklessness

It doesn't take deep thought to realize that we live in a thankless world. People we don't even know leave nasty replies to comments on blogposts and videos if we dare to express a true statement that isn't very popular. Follow the comments section on the assassination of Charlie Kirk, for example, and see the hatred spewing everywhere. Not only do we live in an angry world, we live in a world corrupted to the core with selfishness and idolatry. Just the other day at school, I heard another teacher repeat a student's comment, "We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in my culture." Hmm. Is that all Thanksgiving is? A one-day holiday? And do we really get to say that we don't ever have to be thankful?

Luke tells the story of Jesus healing ten lepers from an incurable sentence of living death that rendered the victim an outcast for the rest of his life. Luke writes, "And it came to pass, as He went to Jerusalem, that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as He entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: and they lifted up their voices, and said, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.' And when He saw them, He said unto them, 'Go show yourselves unto the priests.' And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, 'Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.' And He said unto him, 'Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole'" (Luke 17:11-19).

The astonishing point of this story isn't that Jesus healed ten lepers but that only one returned to thank Him and that that one was the least likely person--so thought the Jews--to give credit and honor to God--a Samaritan. Jesus didn't ask, "Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine?" because He didn't know but because He wanted to register a public rebuke to thanklessness. Are we listening?

What exactly is thanklessness, and what causes it?

If we remember that sin began in the Garden of Eden--a perfect paradise complete not only with physical comforts, aesthetic stimulation of untold beauty, and, most of all, communion with God--we realize that thanklessness points to Satan himself who wasn't content in heaven. When Satan can succeed in planting his seeds of entitlement, pride, narcissism, and atheism, he not only lures us to make ourselves our own "god," he infects us with the sense that nothing is good enough for our tastes. If heaven itself wasn't good enough for Satan, we can be sure that nothing will be good enough for his followers. The bottomless pit of desire--known as lust--will demand more and more of whatever addiction grips Satan's followers.

The root of thanklessness is not merely pride or lust or selfishness but atheism. And that's why our own culture is so angry. We don't believe in God--as a rule--or we would find the humility to thank Him for what we have--and for what we don't have. We would find the poverty of spirit to kneel in submission to our Creator and stop snapping at people we don't even know as if we are hair-trigger happy to commit murder. The spirit of antichrist is indeed unleashed upon our world because we have made ourselves our own god, and Satan has come to the service. "Worship self, and Satan will come along," said Erwin Lutzer, longtime pastor of Moody Church, in a sermon series about the occult.

My father told the story of an unsaved man who began thanking the Lord for all of his blessings until he was overcome with both faith and conviction and was finally saved. Offering praise and thanksgiving for our salvation is the one thing angels cannot do, but when the Lord's people obey Him in this sacrifice of praise, we invite the Lord's Presence in unusual ways. Psalm 22:3 tells us that the Lord inhabits the praises of His people. He literally dwells among us as we abide in Him, and the surest way to abide is to focus on Him all day long. Isaiah said, "You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You because he trusts in You" (Isaiah 26:3). What is trust but wordless praise?

If the nine lepers couldn't thank the Lord even when He delivered them from virtual death, how are we to praise and thank the Lord for trials? And yet the Psalmist taught us this example, saying, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes" (Psalm 119:71). Paul could write, "In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you" (I Thessalonians 5:18). Corrie ten Boom writes in The Hiding Place of a plague of lice and fleas that infested her barracks in the concentration camp at Ravensbrück. At first Corrie and her sister Betsie were horrified and repulsed, until one day Betsie insisted that they thank the Lord for the fleas and the lice. Corrie, being the blunt realist that she was, found this a bit much, but she finally offered the Lord her reluctant thanks. One day, she found out why the Lord had allowed this added trial to their hellish punishments at the hands of the Germans. The German guards would not enter their barracks because of the lice and fleas, which gave Corrie and Betsie free rein to conduct their group Bible studies. Corrie had miraculously smuggled in a small Bible in a pouch under her dress--which the guards inexplicably overlooked while searching all the other women carefully.

When Paul writes that "this is the will of God" for us to give thanks, he isn't just making the point that it is God's will for us to give thanks but that we can give thanks in every circumstance because that circumstance in itself is God's will for us. This made Paul's own thorn a messenger of grace instead of a messenger of Satan. In my own life, there have been many things which I thought hindered me physically from being my best for the Lord. In a list too long to count from complications of Lyme's disease, I often worried that I would not be able to serve the Lord as I wanted. One day it hit me that nothing that happened to me would hinder me from serving the Lord because the very trial He had permitted was His manner of enabling me to serve Him.

When I experienced sudden hearing loss in my right ear shortly before the death of my father, which occurred six months after the death of my mother, I was at first astonished at how difficult even the simple task of walking had become. How can you walk if you cannot balance yourself? Over the course of a year, I slowly regained my ability to walk without hanging onto walls and countertops. I remember the first time I walked to chapel across an empty parking lot several months after I had lost my hearing. Although I am completely deaf in my right ear and cannot even remember what it was like to experience "surround sound" or auditory depth or even sound location since I usually cannot tell where sounds are coming from, I decided to be amused that part of me had gone to heaven with my parents. But the Lord left me one good ear--with excellent hearing, in fact--until I receive two new ears one day. There's a lot I am glad not to hear these days, and I'm sure I have no idea how intense others' suffering has been for far greater reasons, but I do know that the Lord can make us grateful even in small ways for things we otherwise could not stand.

The Lord keeps so many things hidden until that heavenly day when His will shall be revealed, that, if we only knew what the Lord has spared us from, we would realize it would take eternity to thank Him. Have you peeked down that road not traveled--the pathway you thought surely would become your journey? But has the Lord led you down the road less traveled instead? Aren't you thankful for all those "unanswered prayers"? I keep on my refrigerator a poem my mother gave me, entitled, "The Things I Miss," by abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson. It goes like this:

An easy thing, O power Divine,

To thank Thee for these gifts of Thine!

For summer’s sunshine, winter’s snow,

For hearts that kindle, thoughts that glow;

But when shall I attain to this:

To thank Thee for the things I miss?

For all young fancy’s early gleams,

The dreamed-of joys that still are dreams,

Hopes unfulfilled, and pleasures known

Through others’ fortunes, not my own,

And blessings seen that are not given,

And ne’er will be – this side of heaven.

Had I, too, shared the joys I see,

Would there have been a heaven for me?

Could I have felt Thy presence near

Had I possessed what I held dear?

My deepest fortune, highest bliss,

Have grown, perchance, from things I miss.

Sometimes there comes an hour of calm;

Grief turns to blessing, pain to balm;

A Power that works above my will

Still leads me onward, upward still;

And then my heart attains to this:

To thank Thee for the things I miss.

--Thomas Wentworth Higginson--

The truth of this poem reminds me of another favorite poem which my mother also typed up for me one day when I was particularly blue. Written by Ruth C. Kollhoff, the poem is entitled "Forever" and goes like this:

I learn as the years roll onward

And leave the past behind,

That much I have counted sorrow

But proves our God is kind;

That many a flower I longed for

Had a hidden thorn of pain;

And many a rugged by-path

Led to fields of ripened grain.

The clouds but cover the sunshine,

They cannot banish the sun,

And the earth shines out the brighter

When the weary rain is done.

We must stand in the deepest sorrow

To see the clearest light,

And often from wrong's own darkness

Comes the very strength of right.

We must live through the weary winter

If we are to value the spring,

And the woods must be cool and silent

Before the robins sing.

The flowers must be buried in darkness

Before they can bud and bloom,

And the sweetest and warmest sunshine

Comes after the storm and gloom.

So the heart from the hardest trial

Gains the purest joy of all,

And from lips that have tasted sadness,

The sweetest songs will fall.

For as peace comes after suffering,

And love is the reward of pain,

So after earth comes heaven

And out of our loss the gain.

Can we not thank our Lord this day and every day for His kindness that we interpreted at the time as sorrow, for the losses that were actually gain, and for the rugged bypaths that led to fields of ripened grain? Not to thank our Lord is to assume ourselves worthy of more than we have and, worse still, to regard ourselves as our own god. Let us refuse the encroaching influence of atheism and live this day like children of our Heavenly Father.