TBM39: The Perverting of Gratitude
Of all the spiritual practices that have been endorsed over the centuries by spiritual and religious leaders, the one that’s been twisted almost beyond recognition is the practice of gratitude.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m NOT saying that gratitude is a bad thing. In fact, gratitude as it’s practised by the soul is as important as breathing.
I’m saying that gratitude is so important to the hearts of regular people that bully after bully, tyrant after tyrant, has taken advantage of this deep need and twisted it — perverted it — to satisfy the status cravings of the tyrants.
Hence, we have a long history of psychopaths telling us things like this:
“You should be grateful I’ve given you the chance to die as a slave. These Pyramids are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be worthy before you die.”
“You should be grateful you’re one of the Chosen People. These bloodlines are a tribute to the gods, and the gods will reward us for our obedience to their wishes. I’ve given you a chance to rule over the world.”
“You should be grateful you’ve been saved by Jesus Christ. These sacraments are a tribute to God, and God will reward us for our obedience to his wishes. I’ve given you a chance to be saved in the End Times.”
And on a more personal level . . .
“You should be grateful for my superiority, woman. Without men, without me, you’d be nothing.”
“You should be grateful to have a job with my company. Without me, you’d be nothing.”
“You should be grateful for the gift of God’s grace. Without it, you’d be nothing.”
Needless to say, this is not what the soul means by gratitude.
There are countless examples of the perverting of gratitude in all cultures and time periods. No culture and no religious tradition is exempt from the tendency among status-addicted psychopaths to seize upon a person’s heart and suck up the gratitude like a vampire drinking from a straw. This is why so many religions start out as an expression of faith and end up as a form of worship. Worship is the perverted form of gratitude.
Despite the plethora of examples to choose from, the one that stands out for me as a sort of “symbol” or “archetype” of how NOT to do gratitude is the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 21:1 – 22:19). It’s pretty tricky to come out and tell the truth about a biblical tale that billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold dear, but I gotta say — this one biblical lesson has been used over the centuries to justify more crimes against humanity than we’ll ever know.
The writers (more accurately, the redactors) of the book of Genesis want us to accept a number of claims about the proper way to be in relationship with God. Despite the fact that Genesis was probably collated and redacted in the last part of the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt,* the writers were very modern, very astute, in their understanding of human nature. They were not naive. They were not poorly educated. They were not simply misguided. They knew exactly what they were doing.
What they were doing was taking the ancient texts of early Judaism — such as the codes of ethical conduct that now appear in Exodus — and creating a mythical “back-story” to make Jewish teachings more appealing to a “modern,” post-Alexandrian, Greek speaking Ptolemaic empire. It’s no accident that, in the Book of Genesis, God gives Abraham and his descendants the rightful claim to all the lands “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). That’s a big hunk of choice real estate, real estate that by no coincidence Alexander the Great had already successfully conquered in the 4th century BCE (not that anyone in the Jewish canon ever breathes a word about Alexander’s conquest . . . )
I can live with megalomaniacal claims to land and territory. They’re nothing new in the history of tyrants and emperors. What I can’t live with is the claim that God would actually tell a man of faith to sacrifice both his sons for the sake of obedience to God. God would never do that, and God’s angels would never do that. To Mother Father God, the loving care of children is paramount
So first we have God telling Abraham it’s okay for him to disown and cast out his young son Ishmael, along with Ishmael’s mother, the slave Hagar. They get turfed into the desert, afraid and alone. But, hey, not to worry — they should be grateful for this abusive treatment, because God “will make a great nation of him [Ishmael].” Then we have God “testing” Abraham, telling him directly (that’s a claim for channelling, folks!) to “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”
So Abraham takes his son — the son he supposedly loves — to the mountain, and forces Isaac to carry the firewood up the slope, and then ties his son to the altar and raises his knife with every intention of killing him as a sacrifice to God.
Is this really the kind of symbol we should be using if we want to be in relationship with God? Photo credit JAT 2014.
Okaaaaaaaaaay. Let’s stop right there Let’s not go on to the next part of the story, the part where an angel of the Lord intervenes and tells Abraham not to harm the boy. Let’s just think for a minute about the first part, the part where Abraham actually believes God has told him it’s okay to scare the living shit out of a vulnerable, trusting child. The part where Isaac is lying on the altar and it finally dawns on him that his father is going to murder him. The part where Isaac experiences all the precipitating factors for lifetime post-traumatic stress order, not to mention a lifetime inability to ever trust his father’s love or integrity again. What, you think Isaac’s gonna forget something like that?
Ah, but we’re not supposed to be asking questions like that, are we? We’re not supposed to be asking questions about Ishmael’s or Isaac’s feelings or their brain health. Instead, we’re supposed to be saying to ourselves, “Who am I to withhold anything from God’s messengers if Abraham, our chosen forefather, did not withhold his only son from God?” (Never mind the fact that Abraham clearly had two sons, not one.)
The editors of Genesis and several chunks of the New Testament want us to be saying to ourselves that obedience to God’s messengers (the prophets, priests, and eventually the Apostles) trumps everything, even charity and compassion towards our own children. Proper sacrifice to God demands, well, sacrifice. After all, sacrifice and gratitude go hand in hand. Don’t they? You’re grateful to God for the blessings in your life, so obviously you want to give God a sacrifice — something tangible, something that takes money or goods or food away from you and your family, or maybe something that takes away your health and your children’s health — but the main thing is you must willingly put a sacrifice on the altar so you can prove your humility.
‘Cause, yeah, it’s . . . like . . . a totally crazy idea that you could just say thank you to God with all your heart and all your mind and all soul and all your strength, and that God would find your genuine gratitude a good enough response.
I’m certainly not the first person to point fingers at the horribleness of the Abraham-and-Isaac “wisdom teaching,” and I hope I won’t be the last. It’s just the stupidest idea imaginable to believe that God (who created billions and billions of galaxies) would actually want you to say thank you by abusing, enslaving, or humiliating your children. If you really want to show God how grateful you are, you can start by treating children well.
Jesus knew all this. Good luck finding any reverence for Abraham in the original teachings of Jesus (as witnessed in the Gospel of Mark and parts of the Letter of James).
The Sacred Spring at the Roman Baths, Bath, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.
Jesus once said (in writing!) you can’t expect a spring to pour both fresh and brackish water from the same opening (James 3:11). He said it this way because in a dry and arid terrain (such as Judea) fresh water is synonymous with genuine gratitude. It’s the source of life and healing, a blessing not to be taken for granted. Brackish water is synonymous with ill health and disease, and, by extension, diseases of human nature such as hypocrisy and deceit.
Just as you can’t expect a spring to give both fresh and mouldy water at the same time, you can’t expect to find the truth about relationship with God in the midst of a story about abuse, self-aggrandizement, and forcing somebody to submit to sacrifice.
Pick one — fresh or brackish. Then be honest about your choice. Pick either gratitude or worship — but not both, because they’re mutually exclusive.
This means you have to decide whether you can live without entertainment news (worship of status addicted stars) and professional sports scores (also worship of status addicted stars).
Just don’t pretend you’re so grateful for these people (e.g. famous pop stars) that you can’t imagine living without them. This isn’t gratitude. It’s plain ol’ status addiction wrapped up in a pretty package of fakey-fakey gratitude.
Tough words. But necessary to understand if you want to find and stay on the Spiral Path.
Good news, though — you don’t have to give up the songs or the films or the sports activities that inspire and encourage you. You just have to give up the worship!
* For more on the history of the writing of Genesis, please see the post entitled “The Book of Genesis.”
