Thanksgiving of the Damned

Kind of sounds like a Spinal Tap song, right? But it's the title of a great post by Bob Bixby on the true nature of Thanksgiving. Check it out:

I love Thanksgiving. And I can’t wait for the festive time with family and friends. The food. Tons of food. Lots and lots of good stuff. Yes, the cornucopia of blessing is overflowing. But I don’t want to thank God like the damned. I don’t want to celebrate the good things of life like the unjustified Pharisee.

This Thanksgiving millions of Americans will indulge in self-righteousness. And they’ll do it by thanking God. It’s because the notion that prosperity, particularly in health and wealth, are the key tokens of Divine blessing. This is an American ideology even though many do not formally subscribe to the Prosperity Theology that dominates huge swaths of contemporary evangelicalism.

In Luke 18:9-14 Jesus tells about a Pharisee, prosperous in the stuff that mattered to him, went to the temple to pray. There was also in that same place a publican, spiritually broken and alone, praying at the same time. The Pharisee could not help but contemplate on all the advantages that he had over that poor, broken, despised publican and so he thanked God.

Yes, he thanked God!

Read the rest.