Gratitude & Grace
One of the vestigial traces of Christianity in a secular society like ours is some general expectation of interpersonal graciousness. Even if most people think of politeness or good manners as appropriate, however, whether they are always connected to actual gratitude we can be less sure. As a child, I may have had a bigger dose of total depravity than most children, as my mother claimed to believe, but I wonder if my memory of learning social niceties such as saying “please” and “thank you”—pretty much in the pursuit of self-interest—wouldn’t be the experience of lots of little kids during their formative years. Connection to anything resembling the virtue of gratitude comes much later, and probably then only in family circumstances where gratitude is regularly expressed in other ways.
I admit that even then it can take a while for gratitude to become habitual in the way the Bible regards as fundamental to spiritual health. In our home during my pre-teen years, we had a pretty regular weekly menu. Sunday was our feast day, so we typically had roast beef for dinner, usually a pot roast slow-cooked with vegetables, timed to be ready when we got home from church. Saturday night was baked beans, soaked over Friday night and, when cooked most of the day with molasses and served with a loaf of fresh bread brought home by Dad from Slater’s bakery, almost as tasty as the roast. These were my favorites, and I remember being honestly thankful for both. Codfish on Friday I was less enthusiastic about, but it was food. Thursday night seemed to me another matter altogether: liver and onions, rain or shine, summer or winter. Ugh. One Thursday evening, after grace over the meal was said by my father, I had the temerity to ask if it was necessary to be honest when saying grace. My father said, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Some of us might not be all that thankful for liver and onions,” I replied. Bad moment: I was thoroughly upbraided for my ingratitude. “Think of all the poor children in Africa, for goodness’ sake. They are starving to death and here you are complaining about such highly nutritious food!” My mother was not amused. Then I made it worse. “I bet those kids wouldn’t like liver either.”
I went without dessert.
Blessings & Psalms
I have since come to think that such impulses, uncorrected in other quarters, were a harbinger of troubling cultural change, heralding a sadly general absence of thankfulness to which many are now adult witnesses. To say “please, sir” or “thank you, ma’am” is still happily the behavior encouraged by most parents in the American South—though evidently not all. Even within the Christian community, I admit, such politeness can sometimes seem akin to the blessings offered over meals, in which varying degrees of sincerity may be involved in the ritual words. I look back now on the Scottish grace commonly used in the Kirk and wonder if it may have been experienced by a lot of folks in much the same way:
Some hae meat and cannae eat;
Some wad eat that want it.
We hae meat and we can eat,
So let the Lord be thankit.
“Now pass the ’neeps and be spry about it.”
Some formulas can seem less like an expression of gratitude than a mere statement of fact, as a Lithuanian blessing over meals taught me by a colleague illustrates: “Dievas duoda duonos; Dievas duoda dantis” (God gives bread; God gives teeth.) The ritual Anglican grace can likewise seem merely perfunctory:
For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.
And keep us always mindful of the needs of others. Amen.
“Here, have some gravy with your Brussels sprouts. It helps.”
There is in such rote prayers an obligatory and perhaps hygienic function, like dutifully brushing your teeth before going to bed. Whether they express real gratitude all that often is probably an undecidable question. Somewhat better in this regard is the old blessing we sang at church suppers and Baptist summer camp, invariably in four-part harmony in the same tune we used for the Doxology. The parallel invoked by the common tune, I take it now, was deliberate:
Be present at our table, Lord,
Be here and everywhere adored;
Bless these thy gifts and grant that we
May with our lives give thanks to Thee.
David Lyle Jeffrey is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Literature and the Humanities at Baylor University and Resident Distinguished Professor of Baylor Institute for Studies in Religion.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on culture from the online archives
20.7—September 2007
Paul Didn’t Build Bridges to Popular Culture by Russell D. Moore
32.2—March/April 2019
Reality Shows, Even in a Popular TV Series by C. E. Smith
more from the online archives
18.10—December 2005
on an Apostle’s Encounter with the Son’s Children by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
