Thanksgiving 2006

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. This holiday begs the question: "Who do we thank on Thanksgiving?" As a Christian, what I'm most thankful for is knowing the answer to this question, knowing who to say "thank you" to on Thanksgiving.I am not a wise man who figured out who to thank for the blessings of life. I am a little man who believes that a good and sovereign God created all things and has graciously made himself known to us. I believe that we humans have rebelled against this good and loving God, mistakenly and wickedly thinking that we ought to call our own shots and be our own gods. Yet despite our rebellion, the one God of the Universe chose to extend great grace to us by sending his Son, Jesus, to earth live the rebellion-free life we couldn't live and die the rebellious death we should have died.Jesus the Messiah took responsibility for what was not his fault. He took responsibility for what was our fault--rebelling against God and bringing sin and chaos into God's creation. So, this Thanksgiving I am thankful that I know who to thank: the God who both creates and takes responsibility for what's not his fault by saving broken people like you and me.That's how I'm answering the Thanksgiving question. And, most of you Buzzard Blog readers answer this question the same way I do. But, most Americans either don't know who to thank on Thanksgiving or they have a different answer to the "who to thank" question. As Christians who are seeking to love our neighbors, we ought to be well aware of how our non-Christian neighbors think about Thanksgiving. As we seek to understand how our non-Christian neighbors answer the Thanksgiving question, we can better seek to humbly point them towards the the great Who of Thanksgiving. We ought always to do this humbly, for it's only by grace that we Christians know who to thank.In today's Washington Post "On Faith" column, Tufts University Philosophy professor Daniel C. Dennett shares his answer to the Thanksgiving question. Dennett believes that there is no who to thank this Thanksgiving. He believes there's a what that we can thank, the what of "goodness."Dennett writes:

There is no person who created the universe, or the planet, or the biosphere, so there is really nobody to thank for that...I can thank goodness–the wonderful fabric of excellence created by individuals working together in human civilization to make this planet a better place...We nonbelievers have no difficulty with Thanksgiving; we just Eliminate the Middleman and give thanks directly to the real, ongoing, human project of making the world safer and better for everyone.

I have no hope in "goodness," "the wonderful fabric of excellence," or "the human project" for making the world "better." I think Genesis 3 and today's newspaper make clear where the human project leads us. My only hope is in the God who I thank this Thursday. I don't want to thank God by myself. I want to thank him along with you and, maybe someday, along with Daniel C. Dennett.