Op-Ed: Rightly Ordered Thanksgiving + The Antidote To A Self-Righteous Approach In Discernment and Polemics
During the Thanksgiving holiday, the Christian call for thanksgiving sharply contrasts with the secular practices that surround the holiday. While the world outside of Christ may express gratitude, their worldview lacks coherence. The secularist may have some fleeting sense of gratitude, but their worldview lacks a clear recipient for its thanks, and that thankfulness is often materialistic and circumstantial. Without a God to whom gratitude can be expressed, secularism leads to a kind of smug self-righteousness devoid of the hope and joy that can be found in Christ.
While the Christian expression of thanksgiving should be full of hope, joy, and peace, many discerning Christians have become exhausted by what seems to be a constant onslaught of pressure in recent years. This pressure comes from deceptions of the lost world and seeps into the church and family via theological downgrade and moral compromises, issues that oft required the practice of Biblical discernment and polemics.
Insomuch as the Christian hope is neither materialistic nor circumstantial, Christians in the midst of battle have a tendency to forget the joy of our salvation and the wonder of the work of Christ on the cross. Neglecting the hope of the Gospel in the desperation of present circumstances, we can forget our first love and lose perspective on who we are in Christ. For a season we may even embrace a kind of smug self-righteousness that resembles that of the secularist.
In Luke 18:9-14 Jesus gives a warning to those who clothe themselves in self-righteousness and consequently adopt a disordered sense of thanksgiving:
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
The Pharisee, who Jesus described as a polished professional religious person, had a severely warped sense of thankfulness. Instead of realizing his position of sinfulness in the presence of a holy God, the pharisee measures his own self-righteousness in terms of how society would view him in relation to the most despised persons in first-century Judea.
The essence of the pharisee’s thankfulness is fully captured in the statement, “God, I thank you that I am not like….” His thankfulness is completely horizontal, focused solely on the sins of others, rather than the fact that he is virtually naked before a Holy God, clothed in only the filthy garments of his own self-righteousness. In contrast, the tax collector in the parable recognizes the severity of his own situation, throwing himself fully on the mercy of God. The tax collector walks away justified, saved by grace through faith. The object of his faith is not in himself but rather in the God who saves.
For the Christian Polemicist, the foundational message that Jesus speaks in this parable is vital. If the polemicist fails to recognize his own sinfulness before a holy God, he will adopt the self-righteous attitude of the pharisee, forgetting that every breath that he breathes is evidence of the grace and mercy of God who saves sinners, among whom he is the greatest. When the weight of our utter sinfulness is recognized, God in his mercy and grace is glorified, and then we begin to see other sinners with new eyes. This is critical if the Christian polemicist is to wage war in the manner that God calls.
When we are crucified with Christ, laying aside our self-righteousness at the cross, God equips us to fight the good fight with proper perspective. He allows us to conduct proper theological triage, understanding the difference between heresy, false teaching, and disputable sundry fourth-order theological items. We learn to differentiate between wolves who seek to destroy the flock of God and confused sheep- little ones who have been taken captive by sophistry. We differentiate between a deceived, immature believer and a hardened heretic.
As we sit around the table this Thanksgiving with relatives who are held captive by various heresies and false ideologies, we may be tempted to say in our heart, “God I thank you that I am not like…”.
However, Christ beckons us to remember that we approach the cross in the same manner as all who would believe, whether we are a repentant pharisee, tax collector, or former Onlyfans content producer. Christ welcomes us naked, blind, and poor in the same manner that he welcomes all who believe, cleansing us with the atonement of his death and clothing us with his righteousness.
Our thanksgiving as believers in Christ is based solely on this fact. As we marvel in the work of the cross, let us remember that the enemies of the cross are potentially future brothers and sisters in Christ, and let us give thanksgiving to God for those whom he will reconcile to himself in the weeks, months, and years to come.
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Romans 5:10-11
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