For those of you to the south, it was Thanksgiving this weekend. I know, you think Thanksgiving is in November, but in order for these holidays to mean something, they have to be attached to something real, you know. The celebration of Thanksgiving is a celebration of the harvest, of the riches of the earth being brought in, and in Canada, you can't celebrate the harvest in November. There'll be nothing left to harvest by then, unless you're planning on harvesting snow from your driveway.
The idea of celebrating Thanksgiving in November in Canada is silly for that reason, that you would get together, eat turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce, in order that you may let the tryptophan hit you nice and solid and make you sleepy. But if this is the case, if that is all that the day is about, about family and friends and togetherness, then consider this – to quote our Hebrew friends, 'what makes this night different than any other?' If the true meaning of Thanksgiving is getting together with friends and family, and celebrating the season, then how is that different from secular Christmas, secular Easter, or any other of these celebrations? In fact, the only two celebrations that we have are 'eat a big meal' or 'have a day off.' In order for these days to mean anything, they really need to be attached to real things, a celebration of something, you know?
Thanks isn't a concept that exists in a vacuum. Just like love, it needs to be attached to something. It reminds me of the riddle from the book 'Professor Egghead's book of riddles:'
How is a reptile like a number?
Neither one is real.
That riddle seems silly on its surface, but it makes sense. The way Professor Egghead explains it, is that a garter snake is real, and so is a box turtle, and you can bring either of them home and make pets of them. But you can't bring home and make a pet of the class 'reptile.' Aside from actual reptiles, the class just doesn't exist. Now, having said that, a number isn't real. 6 as a concept isn't anything, unless it is attached to 6 cakes or 6 hats. The Number on its own isn't a real thing. It's the same with love, and with thanks. The concept of love isn't a real thing, you know. It's an abstract concept – it can't knock down stuff. Thanks is the same thing. You can't just be grateful in general. You have to be thankful in specific. You can't be thankful for family and friends in theory. You have to be thankful for the family and friends you have. And this is where the problems start.
There's a tired old meme out there right now, the meme that says that Thanksgiving dinner is something that you have to suffer through. You'll get questions from your family all about how you aren't married yet, when are you going to have kids, when are you going to get a real job, blah blah blah blah. All that is going to happen, and as you live and suffer through the Thanksgiving season, you will really begin to question the truth that is on essentially page one of the Bible, that "It is not good for man to be alone." This statement shows up right at the beginning of the scriptures, it is the first thing that God acknowledges as less than good, and we all know that it is true, we really do. And this is how you know it is true: One of the few ways you can still punish someone is to place them into solitary confinement. You can't use the rack, or the thumbscrews, but you can still place someone into solitary, and that immediate reaction is to understand that it really is desperately not good to be alone. But that brings us right up against the truth that even though we don't want to be alone, and it isn't good to be alone, but in order not to be alone, you have to be around other people. And that's hard. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the only thing worse than being alone is being with other people. Other people don't do what you want them to do, they will be difficult, they will be burdensome, they will have other opinions, political or otherwise, and they will have their own motivations. And if all you're looking for is a group of people who will agree with you, then you're going to rush towards being alone as rapidly as possible.
It makes sense, of course, that this would be the case, that we would be in tension between wanting to be alone and wanting to be together, but this is more important the more you think about it. I'll explain what I mean. People don't want to be alone, but they also don't want real people around them. That's why there is a constant retreat to the online world, to the world that you have curated for yourself, the world that you have constructed carefully, the world that you have made and formed, the world in which your newsfeed shows you the things you're interested in, in which you have curated your friend feed to only people whom you want to hear from, who agree with you, and who like what you say. In other words, there's a massive tension between the real flesh and blood people you have to have dinner with on Thanksgiving, and the online world in which everyone agrees with you, shares your politics, and shares your views about when to have kids, what jobs to have, all that sort of stuff. If you can curate that space to only say what you want it to say, why wouldn't you do that instead of talking to real people. Heck, if you could craft a god who only agreed with you all the time, why wouldn't you just take that over the God who inconveniently tells you to smarten up semi-frequently? Why wouldn't you just carve an idol for yourself as a god, in the same way as your online presence is largely an idol of a family, of a community, a group who agrees with you, carved out of 1 and 0 instead of out of wood or metal. Once you realize that, then you start to figure out a little better the heaven / hell dichotomy.
Think of the way that heaven is described in the scriptures, as a feast, as a banquet, as a thanksgiving celebration that lasts for eternity. It's not just with food and wine though, although that is involved, but it also implies togetherness. Hell is frightening because you get to surround yourself with the fake god you constructed for yourself, and the fake family that you did likewise with. Hell is terrifying because you are on your own, cut off from God, cut off from the family of faith, finally getting your wish of being surrounded by people who agree with you and finding out that it leads to you only being by yourself. And it is truly not good for man to be alone.
So in this Thanksgiving season, it's important to understand, to realize that if you're going to be thankful for things, they have to be real things. You can't be thankful for the concept of god, you have to be thankful for the God of the Bible, what he has done and how he works. You can't be thankful for the idea of family, you have to be thankful for your family, warts and blowhards and disagreeable folks and all. Be thankful that they put up with you, that they love you in spite of your failings, and want to be with you for eternity as well. Be thankful for the gift of friends, not of people online who will only ever agree with you, but with people who want to sharpen you, who want you to be your absolute best. And be thankful for Christ, the lamb of God, who takes away not the concept of sins, but your actual sins. It's real, and it applies directly to you. The more you understand that, the more thankful you will be.
Happy thanksgiving, everyone.
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