Being grateful and feeling grateful: reconsidering the phenomenology of gratitude to God

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the claim that feelings of gratitude to God are the proper measure for the authenticity and depth of gratitude to God. I want to illuminate what makes that claim seem obvious and then argue that it is false. I hope to show that feeling grateful to God, although not insignificant, is, from the Christian perspective at least, by no means the best barometer of gratitude to God. To those ends, first, I sketch out the structure of gratitude. Next, I explain four ways that gratitude to God stretches or breaks with the paradigmatic structure of standard interpersonal gratitude. I then show how current empirical studies of gratitude to God haven’t been sufficiently attentive to the disanalogy between standard interpersonal gratitude and gratitude to God. Finally, I turn to the Bible to consider how we should rethink gratitude to God if we reject the commonsense view.