The Concept of Gratitude
If you enter the word “gratitude” into the search box on a google search, you will receive over two hundred million search results. Obviously then, the concept of gratitude has evoked a huge ocean of human thought and opinion over the ages. If you go to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, under the word “gratitude” you find the definition “the state of being grateful”. Not very helpful. Continuing on and going to the word “grateful” you find the definition of “appreciative of benefits received”. Ok then, a generic definition could be described as a feeling – a human feeling of being appreciative of benefits received. So here is where we run into trouble with the concept of gratitude.
That Troubling Bible Verse
In my Sunday school class when I was a child, we were studying in the Book of First Thessalonians one Sunday. when the teacher got to chapter 5, verse 18. This verse states “In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. An alarm went off in my head regarding this verse. My mind went to all the people in this world who are suffering in one way or another. I hate suffering. I mean I really hate it. I have never seen anything noble about it. The very thought of suffering, whether it is my own suffering, or a loved one’s suffering, or the suffering of a total stranger, actually makes me sick to the stomach. I asked the teacher “how could you be thankful for suffering”? The general response that I remember was that (a) man’s sin was the cause of all suffering, (b) we do not have the divine perspective of God, and (c) suffering deepens one’s faith. I was about to respond with a “Yeah, ok, but…” however the last time I did that with regard to another verse, the group started giving me dirty looks. Thus, I just nodded my head, said “Ok” and kept my mouth shut. Inside however, I was definitely not satisfied with the answer.
Science Weighs In On Gratitude
In 2015, there was a scientific study of the brain neural impulses done at the University of Southern California, Department of Psychology, with regard to the human feeling of gratitude. Participants in the study underwent magnetic resonance imaging of their brains while external stimuli were used to induce the feeling of gratitude. The results revealed that the ratings of gratitude on the part of the study participants correlated with well-defined neural brain impulses observed in the anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex of the brain. This study in affective neuroscience pinpointed the brain circuitry that accompanies the feeling of gratitude.
So There It Is – It Is All For You After All
You live in an outer shell that we call the human body. Within this shell resides your spirit. At some point after our birth, you ultimately shed this outer shell when it stops working. We call this event “death”. Your spirit, which is pure energy, proceeds onward. I cannot tell you exactly where or how your spirit will proceed after death because this is not learned until after death. While on this earth however, your energy, your spirit, resides within your body. It is the true you, and, being pure energy, it can project outward. You may have experienced something of this when for no rational reason whatsoever, you felt “good vibes” or “bad vibes” from another person.
Electricity is a form of energy. Neural impulses within the brain are electrical. When we activate those neural transmitters in our brain that science has identified as dealing with gratitude, these electrical impulses are picked up on by Universal Intelligence – All That Is. The universe has consciousness. As the early twentieth century author Wallace Wattles put it, ” There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates and fills the interspaces of the universe. A thought in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by that thought.”. Matching, or like impulses are then attracted to you by your transmission of gratitude neural impulses. In other words, if you truly feel gratitude, the universe has been created in such a manner that you will then be given something (“good stuff” I call it) that matches up with the level of your gratitude. Thus, the reason we are told by Scripture to “be thankful in everything” is for your own benefit or for the benefit of the one for which you wish to favorably intercede. If you are in trouble, it is a way out. Loving Omniscience did not create human beings so that there would be an endless supply of fawning sycophants. Loving Omnipotence has graced you with a never ending way of receiving good stuff in your life and thus displaying the glory of the I Am through your never ending state of gratitude. So there it is – gratitude is all for you after all.