"Armed Robbers visited my neighbourhood yesterday night, they attacked my neighbour, took some of their possessions and killed their child, but they didn't come near me and my family. God kept us safe, I want to thank god for this divine protection."
How many times have we heard a Christian say something like this as a way to thank god? It's all too common.
Or consider this, what my mum told me some time ago: "you should give thanks to God because he's been protecting you. You've travelled many kilometres to school and back for the past 4 years and nothing bad has happened to you. Many people have taken similar journeys and didn't live to tell the story. But you're still alive, you ought to thank god."
While I understand the positive intentions behind this statement, I can't help but notice it's stupidity and insensitivity.
It is often said in Christian circles that "it is he who can think that can give thanks", but is this really the case? What sort of thinking is this?
In fact, this sort of "gratitude" betrays the lack of deep thought of the believer. What's worse is that when Christians say things like this is, it is intended as a sort of "proof" of god's goodness.
But imagine I was introducing you to my doctor and I said "he's a very good doctor, the other day he allowed his other patients to die but he saved my life."
What would you think of this doctor?
Would you see him as a good doctor? Is he someone you would want to hire as your personal doctor? Or someone you would want to treat you?
Probably not.
Because if I told you I had a "good doctor" what you would expect to hear is that "he saved as many lives as it was within his power to save." That would be more reasonable.
Following the same line of reasoning, why does it make sense for a believer to proclaim proudly that god saved them but not their neighbour? How does this show the goodness of god?
If I had a god I wanted to brag about, I would want to say something like "he protected me and my neighbour", not "he allowed my neighbour to be killed but he protected me."
This doesn't give your god a good name, does it?
What you're saying, in essence, is "God allowed bad things to happen to this other person but he didn't allow it to happen to me. God is good and faithful."
Apart from being very self-centered and narcissistic, it's also deeply insensitive to those who are on the receiving end of the injustice. Imagine you were the person who was attacked and you're listening to your neighbour talk about how god protected them but allowed you to come to harm.
So, if the person who was saved comes to the conclusion that it was god who spared them because god is good and faithful, then what about the person who wasn't spared? What conclusion should they come to? That god is bad or unfaithful? That god doesn't love or care about them?
This leads us to another problem with Christian gratitude. Which is that it implies that God has favourites, that god is partial. He spares some and overlooks others.
Christians thank their god for many things; food, water, protection, family, etc. But this thanksgiving almost always involves some sort of comparison, "I have food to eat, some people don't" or "I have a place to live, some people are homeless."
Instead of everyone to be objectively better off, which is what a good god would want, he instead decides to spare some - specifically, you and your family - and allows the others to come to harm.
What Christians don't realise is, rather than proving that their god is good, this form of gratitude actually proves the opposite. Going back to the doctor analogy used earlier, if a doctor allowed so many of his patients to die, so he could go save a specific, "favourite" one, especially when it was within his power to save everyone, this doctor wouldn't be praised as a "good doctor", it would be the opposite. He would be condemned as a terrible and murderous doctor.
The point I'm making is, the fact that there are people out there who live in less than ideal conditions; who are suffering, malnourished, chronically ill, etc, shouldn't be a sign that your god is good, it should be the opposite. A good and loving being would want to ensure that none of its creations come to harm, so if millions of people yearly are being harmed or are suffering, even if none of it directly affects you, that is in itself, a sign that your god isn't good.
To quote Daniel Dennett, "the idea that god is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians."
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