[Note: the next several days posts will be heavily drawn from John Piper and specifically his book "Future Grace" as well as some of my other favorite drinking buddies: C.S. Lewis (especially his article The Weight of Glory ), Augustine, and Jonathan Edwards]
The Bible almost never says that obedience should be motivated by gratitude.
Think about that for a moment. The motivation that is almost universally trotted out as the modus operandi for Christian living, namely gratitude, is almost never used in Scripture. There are literally thousands of verses about obedience, almost none of them explicitly link our obedience with gratitude for what God's done in the past.
Tomorrow I'll talk about how the Bible does motivate us into obedience. But first it might be helpful to see what role gratitude does play in our Christian lives and how it can go wrong when we try to make it an instrument for obedience.
Gratitude is nearly always connected with worship. As we see and understand the goodness of God, his power and wonder and might and how he's moved heaven and hell in order to come to get us, we are of course are moved to 'give thanks with a grateful heart.' This is crucial. There is no true Christianity apart from true worship. Please don't hear me saying that gratitude is not a significant part of our relationship with God.
Gratitude has simply been mis-cast. Gratitude was never meant to function as a motivator towards obedience, and so it goes wrong in a couple different ways:
1. Motivated to obedience out of gratitude often turns into what Piper calls "the debtor's ethic." It's often framed like this: "God has done so much for you, so now it's your turn to go out and do something for him." Steven Curtis Chapman actually had a tragically '80's worship song that said exactly this--"it's my turn now to live my life for him."
The debtor's ethic correctly identifies that God has done an extraordinary thing for us in rescuing us from sin, death, the devil, our own flesh, and an unhappy eternity alternative. What it incorrectly does is frame our response in such a way where we are now charged to attempt to 'pay God back.' This goes wrong on any number of levels: first off, again, there's no place in the Scriptures where our relationship with God is described in this way; secondly, what a miserable experience to spend our whole lives trying to pay back an incredible debt that never gets paid off! What an awful task-master God is who sets us up to go to work in a task that we can't ever hope to accomplish, indeed, can't even come close to making a dent in!
2. Gratitude is an emotion. As such, gratitude ebbs and flows. Today has been quite an extraordinary day of seeing God open up doors and opportunities to be a part of his work on campus. So today, I'm pretty grateful to be a child of God. Some days, frankly, it feels like a lot of work and not a whole lot of pay-off. Clearly, I'm not endorsing that attitude and repentance is the good gift of my Father when I'm in that mindset. But whether I feel particularly grateful or not, obedience is what is required of me. So there must be something bigger than that given to me by God to hang my motives for obedience on.
Tomorrow (and probably the next day) I'll talk about the more firm foundation from which God in the Scriptures does motivate us towards obedience. In the mean time, go dust off your old Steven Curtis Chapman cassettes and tell Steven that he's got some problems with his theology...
7 comments:
I will go ahead and anticipate the objections that will be raised by my good friends Macon and Marshall from their favorite verse in Corinthians: "For Christ's love compels us..."
My response to that particular Scripture is that Christ's compelling us is in and of itself the motivator for the missional work that Paul talks about in the context of the passage. Christ's love compelling me is not necessarily linked to gratitude (although gratitude could be a factor) but if you were to read that without the nearly universal presupposition of gratitude it would not necessarily require that you understand that verse in a gratitude-type of way.
An example: my wife Kelly has a huge heart for inner-city kids and the issues they face. As I have grown to know and love Kelly, her love for those kids has begun to rub off on me. My knowledge of Kelly, love for Kelly has put me in the place where Kelly's love compels me to be concerned for things that I previously didn't think twice about. No gratitude there (although of course I'm grateful for our relationship) but rather I'm motivated by her love that's much bigger than mine as I see it through her eyes.
What I'm trying to do here is to push back the un-thought-through gratitude-understood motivation for why we do what God commands. Not that it's a terrible motivator, but because it's not a necessarily Biblical one when it comes to obedience...and hence why I think so many folks struggle with obedience.
:-)
You felt it coming. This is because you are strong in the Force, and as such, sensed a mighty disturbance. As if a thousand voices cried out, and were suddenly silenced. (Ok, would you belive two voices?)
As we (you, me, Marsh, everyone else who's going to jump into this) feel our way towards the most faithful way of understanding our Life in Christ, I think we'll find that we've been talking about the same thing the whole time. I say this to say: We're on the same side in this theological project.
That being said: *rolls up sleeves* I'm putting together my response over at K&K. I'll let you know when it's up.
So Fun!
(previous comment was deleted due to unforseen spelling errors. Dang!)
I must correct you on your Steven Curtis Chapman quote - it's my turn now to give my life away.
And, actually, my response to all of this will have very little to do with gratitude and Christ's love compelling us. Nice try to anticipate grasshopper, but the mantis is perched on another branch.
Also, I think we have discussed the gratitiude and emotion part of this on another of your posts, haven't we?
Yes, Marsh. I gratefully second that emotion.
(Especially if you feel like givin' me a lifetime of devotion.)
Marsh, looking back over your earlier post about gratitude, I'm just not sure that I totally buy the 'willed gratitude' thing. Isn't all that just willpower religion all over again? Instead of talking about willpower religion to fix ourselves, we're talking about willpower religion to feel something that will then help us to fix ourselves.
Again, I'm not dogging on gratitude, it's just not in the Bible as a reason for obedience! And I'm offering some reasons why that might be the case. You might disagree with my conjectured reasons, but that's something of a secondary point to the initial idea that gratitude isn't a Biblical motivator for obedience.
Ok! My thoughts are up over at Kith&Kin.
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