On Gratitude and How to Do it Wrong

The basic posture of the life of faith

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

There are ways of being grateful that radically challenge a secular conception of the world, and there are ways which reinforce secularism.

I don’t mean “secular” in the culture-war sense or unbelief, but in Charles Taylor’s theory in A Secular Age, which involves living in what he calls the “immanent frame,” a materialist conception of the universe. Many Christians have a functionally materialist conception of the universe.

A secular gratitude has a subject but no ultimate object. You can be grateful for but not grateful to anyone, except for benefits which have a clear human source. In other words, I can be grateful for my friends and I can be grateful to my friends for helping me move, but I can’t be grateful to anyone for giving me friends. Or for my friends’ wellbeing.