Bismillahrahmanirrahim Alhamdulillahi rabbalalamin wa salatu salamu ala rasulillahi. We begin in the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful, and we send peace and blessings on his prophet Muhammad. Assalamu alaykum Rahmatullahi. Peace be upon you. My name is Asa Tarsin.

This is the Renovation podcast affiliated with Setuna College. Today I'm going to be speaking with Joshua Harris. Before we begin I'd like to introduce our guest. Joshua is an assistant professor of philosophy at the King's University in Edmonton, California. He's also a PhD candidate at the Institute For Christian Studies in Toronto.

Currently, he's doing some interdisciplinary research on the metaphysics of social institutions. That sounds interesting and I think we'll probably touch upon that today. We're going to be discussing your forthcoming Renovacio article which is on gratitude. I'd like to open up with a question asking you, what interested you in this topic?

Yeah. Sure. And first, let me say thanks for having me on. It's a real pleasure to be able to talk with you guys. I guess when it comes to my own interest in gratitude I mean, certainly as a philosopher, I'm interested in gratitude.

As a, you know, an amateur student of psychology, I'm interested in gratitude. But, you know, let's be honest, as a human being, I'm interested in gratitude because I want to become more grateful. I'm personally quite fascinated, especially with individuals who have experienced profound suffering in their lives and are able to nonetheless affirm their life in a spirit of gratitude, whether it's expressed to to God or to other people or more likely than not, both. And to me, there's a real moral beauty to that. And it's it's a moral beauty that that is personally inspiring for me, but also a moral beauty that deserves some analysis.

And I I think some some great philosophers of the past working in different traditions have certainly been attentive to this this sort of phenomenon. And yeah, so that maybe that's where I'd start.

I guess one question I would have is how would you define gratitude?

Different philosophers say different things about it through certainly throughout the tradition of Western philosophy. But, you know, as a rough and ready definition, I'd say probably something like, you know, a proper or owed response that a recipient of a gift or a benefit owes to that benefactor, right? So, you, you know, let's just make it a very concrete, you know, you receive you're a small child, you receive a gift from your grandmother. Maybe you don't particularly like the gift that you received, maybe it's like a sweater or something where you're hoping for a toy, children can relate to this. You know, we would expect, nevertheless, even if you aren't overjoyed with the gift that you've received, you would, at the very least, at least if you're the parent of that child, you would expect the child to say thank you.

You would expect the child to express gratitude upon receiving that gift. And why is that? Well, it's not just because of the object given. That's kind of the whole point of gratitude is that it's you also have to be attentive to the intentions of the benefactor. Right?

And that's actually classically what distinguishes something like gratitude from justice, which, you know, gratitude and justice are very similar. They deal with social relations between people and societies. But gratitude at least classically concedes, and this comes out in in Seneca's work, which is which is what my article is about. It's about Seneca. What Seneca says is that, well, you know, gratitude has a lot to do with being attentive, not just to the thing that is being received, which mediates the social relationship, but also to the intentions of the benefactor.

And when I say benefactor, I mean the one who's giving the gift, to the one who's it is offering the benefit.

And so you touch upon this in your article, which is forthcoming in in Renovacio, entitled The Human Arts of Graceful Giving and Grateful Receiving. There's this kind of tension, right, between the fact that our gratitude to the benefactor should be spontaneous on the one hand, yet it's expected, and then there's there's a type of comportment around giving gratitude. Can you talk a little bit about how to reconcile that?

Yeah. Sure. I mean, this is, classically what philosophers have have dealt with throughout, various traditions in trying to think about gratitude and trying to analyze it. Usually, what at least in western philosophy, what is usually done is to speak of gratitude as in some sense owed, but it's owed in a different way and it's equalized. The debt is equalized in a different way than basic standards of justice.

Right? So someone like Thomas Aquinas will talk about a debt of honesty or a debt of friendship, as opposed to like a debt that you have to pay back in some sort of monetary way, or a debt that you have to pay in a courtroom or something like this, right? So, when and I think I put it this way in the piece is like, Look, when my friend pays for my lunch one day, I should express thanks. I should recognize the gift, the benefit that's being offered. Again, it's the intention of the benefactor that matters here.

It's not just the thing. It's not just the food on the plate that is being offered here. It's an extension of one's goodwill. We talk about gratitude as an art. I think this is really where the artistic thing comes in, you might say.

Because you have to have a unique if you're going to do gratitude right, you have to have that unique sensitivity to the reciprocity that the gift exchange involves, right? So in fact, someone like Seneca and Thomas Aquinas will even say, is that most of the time, when it comes to gratitude, it's not really even appropriate to do something for the other person back right away. You kind of want to bask in the gift that you've received, and to express a full appreciation that way, and then to give something back kind of later on. And it's not an exact science, that's why I say art rather than science, but it's certainly something that we all kind of know by experience. And I think, basically, when we're talking about Seneca, which is the article that I was writing for Renovatio, really, you have a renewed appreciation for the way in which these sorts of gift exchanges actually underlie all the other social relations we have.

And so if you don't have these basic relationships of gift exchange, if you have to mediate all of your social relations with something like money or some, like, objective standard of what counts as right return, man, your social order is in trouble, right? So whenever it comes to, you know, resolving this sort of paradoxical notion of the way gratitude is in some sense owed and in some sense not owed, well, you know, it's more about the the reciprocity than it is about, like, specifying the exact conditions of right return.

There's a hadith, a tradition of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, which says something you know directly related to this where he says tahadu tahabbu right that exchange gifts and you'll engender love between one another. So I think that idea of social harmony being developed through gift giving, I I think definitely, corresponds with our teachings. But but there's there's something else that I think you touch upon which, you know, speaks to the Islamic tradition as well, which, you know, there's another hadith where the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, says, he who does not thank God will not thank people. And so there's this correspondence between being grateful to God and being a person of gratitude and then being able to express gratitude to others and and vice versa. Can you talk a little bit about this relationship between gratitude to God as the giver of the true giver of gifts, perhaps, and then our social desire to to get have gratitude for the benefits people bestow upon us?

Absolutely. Yeah. No. I think it's a fantastic point. Well, first of all, let's just say there's a lot of work that's being done right now in empirical studies in psychology that basically bear out that exact point, not the one that you just made.

People who have consistent expressions of gratitude toward the divine, toward God. And, you know, they're studying people of all different traditions, right? But absolutely, they report higher levels of resilience. They report higher levels of the strength of the relationships they have with other people, the family members, friendships, this sort of thing. They even report higher levels of physical health, which is maybe something that doesn't jumble off the page.

Maybe you wouldn't have guessed that. But yeah, and these studies can be found. I mean, I'm thinking of the psychologists, especially Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough. Maybe that's just the first thing to say, but I think in a philosophical sense or a theological sense, I think it makes some good sense as well, right? So one of the things Seneca does, and I report this in the article for Renovatio, is that, Well, look, if you're worried about and we can imagine this, right?

You can imagine, say like, Well, when you're giving someone a gift, you're kind of doing it so that you get something in return. You wanna profit off of this or something like that. And it's like a scheming way. If you have like a really low view of human nature, for example, you might think that this is really why people express gratitude.

Yeah, praise or the

Yeah, exactly. And obviously, you can imagine examples of people behaving viciously in precisely this way. But one of the reasons that Seneca thinks that doesn't tell the whole story with respect to gift and gratitude is precisely because of the relationship between God and the world. Right? So it's precisely because that God doesn't need the world and nevertheless, gifts, you know, you know, just showers us with blessings if we're attentive to them.

He says, Well, like, how in the world could that be the whole story about gratitude if this is what God has done? Because God can't profit off of this. It doesn't make any sense for God to personally profit off the gifts that he's given his creatures. So it's very interesting how it functions in Seneca's argument, and it also coincides very profoundly, I think, with, you know, frankly, what may be common sense, I don't know, when it comes to the empirical studies. Like, turns out, you know, if you if you're grateful in a religious sense, it's actually, it does have these resounding effects in other facets of your life.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think the centrality of of gratitude to God will permeate everything a believer does and and and sees and experiences in the world. One of the things that's really interesting is one of the great mystics of Islam in Junaid.

He says to really reach us the state of gratitude of being a grateful person, it's to really see yourself as undeserving of the bounty that God has given you. So I think that there there is something of entitlement that has, you know, become widespread in our day that leads to this sentiment of ingratitude and and sort of lower coping skills, I guess you could say. So, you know, one of the things that that struck me in your article is that you quote Seneca on on benefits. One of the things he talks about is there's, you know, there's these two things that God has given humanity. On the one hand, he's given us reason, and on the other hand, he's given us this fellowship or sort of the bonding of society.

What are the ways in which, you know, those two things as gifts from God allow us to become more grateful?

Yeah. That's quite an interesting question. Yeah. So the way the way when Seneca is talking about fellowship, he's talking about kind of that social glue that that holds everything together. And he thinks if you upon analysis, and the Latin word, upon analysis, and the Latin word is societas, if you're interested in that, the word fellowship or societas is really about identifying that social glue.

And then upon analysis, Seneca thinks, what that social glue just happens to be is this fundamental gift exchange, right? And it comes from the bottom up, right? And this is one thing I would actually we'll see what they say about this. But this is one quibble I might have with some of the psychological studies, that they're very interested in talking about gratitude as an emotion. And it's understandable, right?

You do have a sort of bottom up feeling, especially when you're the recipient of like a spontaneous gift from a friend or from a family member, something you weren't expecting, there certainly is an emotional component to that. No question. And, you know, the folks in the tradition in in various traditions have recognized that as well. But there's also a profoundly cognitive element in gratitude too. It's not just simply a feeling.

It's a correct recognition. You mentioned the posture of humility that a believer ought to take. No question. That's a correct recognition. It's not just a feeling.

You are, in fact, the recipient of innumerable blessings from God. I mean, certainly in my own tradition as a Christian, that's certainly absolutely how we see the world. And we think that we're not just like you know, feeling that way. We think we're correctly recognizing the fact that we are in fact in this position, and that if we are to proceed ethically, if we are to proceed in a way that's consonant with our nature, well, then you should proceed in a spirit of gratitude. Right?

So there is an emotional component to it, but it also has a cognitive dimension.

Yeah. Definitely. Imam al Ghazali, you know, the great theologian, mystic philosopher, he he actually when he talks about gratitude to God, he talks about that there there are sort of 3 facets to that. 1 is what you've called cognitive, but he calls it knowledge. You know, that there's a knowledge that you have that this gift comes from God and that you are undeserving of it.

And and then the second he says is a hal, which is a spiritual state, which which, you know, I I think you're you kind of, maybe called an emotion in one sense. But then he says the third is action. So true gratitude has knowledge of your undeserving nature and then that you are filled with a state of gratitude. But the third is that you you act upon that and, you know, that's either by thinking and showing gratitude with the tongue or more importantly, with the limbs, acting with those bounties in a way in a consonant in a way that's consonant with what the giver of those gifts has intended. So true gratitude is what would be seen as a, you know, obedience to God and living a righteous life and and and living those virtues.

Yeah. I think I definitely think that's a profound recognition, and it actually makes me think of something. So one of the reasons that Aristotle is a is a little suspicious of gratitude as a virtue is because he he doesn't like the fact that you do have to have that humble recognition. Right? You can see very proud philosopher, Aristotle, right?

So, that's why he's a little reticent. In fact, he doesn't call it a virtue. Whereas later writers in Western philosophy, and certainly in the monotheistic traditions, tend to do identify it as a virtue. But I think what you just mentioned is really important. So when we think about the language of virtue, we throw that word around a lot, at least in Renovatio circles at least.

The word virtue really means power. It means empowering your spirit, right? Virtus means power in Latin, right? And so I think when classical writers are talking about gratitude as a virtue, they're talking about something that is, again, not just a feeling, although it is. Not just a cognitive recognition, although it is.

It's something that emboldens you and ennobles you to act in kind. You know, there's a sort of surprising figure that I might mention here, Friedrich Nietzsche, who I, you know, don't agree on very much. But he's actually quite attentive to this. He he says that's his disposition towards the artist. He says that's the artist's disposition, is that you experience a beautiful object, not as just something to be appreciated, but as something you wanna go out there and create something beautiful.

Right? You don't wanna sit there and and admire it all day. You wanna go out even if it's not, you know, personally, as as another creator of art, it's about living a beautiful life. And, you know, I don't agree with Vinicci on a lot of things. He he rejects the intellectual component of all this.

He thinks it's just a matter of will. I think that's a problem. But I do think he's right to kind of identify that. It's like there is a sense which gratitude is empowering, right, precisely because you're humble enough to recognize to truly recognize your position. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, one of the things that you've already touched upon, but I think I'd like to flesh out a bit more, is this argument that gratitude and gift giving and and thanking one another is just some evolutionary mechanism that we've developed and there there's no real virtue there, but these are just, you know, there's a utilitarian aspect to it. And although I think that component is undeniable, there is a societal benefit. Isn't gratitude more than just that?

Yeah. No question. I mean, look, and and we should say first that, you know, even on the on the evolutionary biologist's own terms, there's something that can be said in this way. So one of the things that Seneca has his finger on is this idea that it's in gift exchange that we have this uniquely human ability to not just think as, like, I you know, I'm over here. You're over there.

What do I have to do in response to you? It's about thinking of us as a we, as a as a first person plural. Like, when you get to know each other through the through the medium of of that precious process of gift exchange, that's what and that's really what societas is. We mentioned societas earlier, fellowship. It's that ability to think of ourselves as a we, right, rather than as just, you know, I'm over here, you're over there.

Right? And I think, frankly, that this is just not and this has been borne out. I'm thinking of the evolutionary biologist, Michael Tomasello, who has identified this, if folks are interested in that, is that this is actually is a pretty uniquely human ability to to think of ourselves as we. We can engage in projects together in a strong sense, in a sense that's not just reducible to my interests. In any case, I think even if you grant the evolutionary biologist all of that, it still comes out as unique.

Gift and gratitude still comes out as unique, precisely because of this unique ability that human beings have to think of ourselves as we rather than just I. And look, you can always play this game. You can always play this utilitarian game and offer a different style of analysis. But at the end of the day, it comes down to accounting for all of the data. What I think that the utilitarian thing doesn't account for is the moral beauty of someone who responds gratefully to the world, especially in light of suffering.

Right? So it's not just that I see that someone's response in gratitude to God or gratitude to others in their suffering. It's not just that I see it as a coping mechanism, probably as that to some extent as well, but I see it as something to imitate. Right? Even if it didn't have the instrumental value, I have this desire to see that as well, I see that as noble, I should say.

And I see it as noble in a way, again, that's empowering for my own life. I want to act that way. And I I just don't like, the utilitarian style of analysis, I just don't see how it can account for that. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that goes back to what we started the conversation off with, which is this teaching that giving gift and and mutually exchanging them engenders love. And love in a social body is very different than simply just exchanging benefits. You talked about sort of commerce as a very clear set of terms.

Owing commercial debts is very different than this this feeling indebted to someone out of love. And the gift and the giving of the gift typically being out of love. And that's why we teach our children to be grateful. It's that someone thought of you to get you a gift whether or not you actually like that particular object. Right?

That they wanted to gift you something means that you've entered their hearts in a certain way and that and that they would like to express that to you. So I think love underlying this this entire conversation is is really important aspect to to bring out and not just benefit.

Yeah. No question. I mean, this is why in the piece I I quoted Christina Rossetti, where it's like, yeah. We start learning this on day 1. Yeah.

Right? Because we we are recipients of just unbelievable, innumerable gifts of our own mother before we even talk about other things, right? So it's not a question. Frankly, I won't name names here, but there are some academics today, some academic philosophers who question whether we should be teaching our children gratitude. And why is that?

Because they're really attuned to the, well, the child should feel his or herself, and it should be spontaneous, and this sort of thing. I was just like, guys, like Yeah. But look, part of bringing and I have children, trust me, I try to teach them to be grateful. Part of bringing up a child is to offer them, to consistently instill in them the correct recognition that they are, in fact, recipients of gifts. Like, to not encourage them to be attentive to that, I think, is a real problem.

Like, it's one of those things that you can only convince yourself if you're like an academic, you don't like feeling very self important that you shouldn't teach your kids gratitude. Like, I don't know if it's maybe mean to say, but but you know what I mean. Right? Like, come on. Sounds great in theory.

Tell you truth.

Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. Sounds good in theory. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Well I think I think one of the things that it also denies is that, you know, this this thing that all aspects of human nature in its natural state are just good and should be embraced, and there's there's nothing that we should inculcate in ourselves, right? In our tradition we we we have this concept of sort of embodying something through will over time until it becomes a natural disposition. So some people are just very naturally grateful. And you can see that even with children. You give one child a gift, they're just teeming over with gratitude without any adult nudging them to do so.

And then you have other children that that really do need that, you know, yeah. Please remember to thank so and so for that. Right? And so, you know, even in that, you can see that some people have that natural disposition. But in all of these virtues, there is a component of through practice and through willful embodiment of it that one will develop it over time.

So I think there's there's probably on a more fundamental level, there's a difference of opinion on on what human nature is and and how human character is developed more than just the the question of gratitude.

Yeah. No question about it. Yeah. To be complacent in a way that does not allow us to realize ourselves in the in the ways that the the virtue tradition tells us we should be realizing ourselves is, I think that's a tremendous tragedy. I I think we're falling short of a human potential there.

Yeah. If we are complacent about that.

So I'm gonna ask a probably a slightly controversial question. Can someone truly be grateful without being grateful to God?

I mean, look, my my first inclination is to say yes. I mean, look, in the same way that human beings are in a natural position of hopefully being grateful to their own mothers, in the way that they can be grateful to their own friendships, in the way that they can be grateful to other family members in their lives, There's no like, to me, you know, I would be hesitant to somehow say that that doesn't count, or that's just ultimately worthless, or something like that. But at the end of the day, I do think that there is something missing, frankly. And it's not just something missing that's like another thing to be grateful for, it's something missing that is in some sense the whole thing, Right? So the the ways the way in which the whole can be missing and yet have its parts.

Right? So, you know, again, I don't wanna be the the sort of person who just rejects, you know, someone's natural dispositions because I think they are wrong about certain things, certain fundamental things. But at the same time, yeah, no question. It is different. And and, again, I think both for philosophical and theological reasons, but then also for frankly empirical reasons.

I think, being grateful to God is fundamental in ways that are not well appreciated.

Yeah. Ghazali has an interesting way of conveying this where where he says all gratitude is should be truly to God, that you should even see others giving you things as just the means through which God is is giving you things, and to only focus on thinking. The person would be like somebody who has, you know, there's a great king and he gift he sends one of his ministers to gift you something. And you're just so grateful to the minister, but you don't realize that the minister is not the true giver of the gift. Rather, it's the king who has sent the minister.

So I think in this sense, I would agree with you that gratitude to God is the whole through which we would sort of understand and experience our gratitude to people. And that's why I love that tradition that, you know, the one who doesn't thank people doesn't truly thank God because they're still inseparable. You can see God as the only giver of gifts, but still show gratitude to the means through which those those gifts reach you. So, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it certainly resonates with Christian tradition as well. One of the things that Peter Leithart in his book, Gratitude and Intellectual History, and, you know, in intellectual history is he means Western history, but, you know, it's still quite very valuable as a text. One of the things he kind of highlights is that in our in our in Christian tradition, we we should be attentive to St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, because what he does in that text is say, 'I thank my God for you all.' In fact, the Philippians.

And it's a very strange thing. So if you were attentive to the standard kind of Roman, what you would actually find in Seneca, frankly, the Roman convention for offering gratitude, that would be very strange. That would be bizarre. It might even get you the title of an ingrate. You know, early Christians were actually called ingrates because they weren't properly, grateful according to the Romans, to the emperor, to the empire.

You know, they were talking about this, you know, gratitude to God and and, you know, others as being mediators of that. Yeah. So it is different in the monotheism. I I no question.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting you you segued that for me perfectly. You know, one of the things in our tradition is is the word for disbelief in Arabic, which is kufak, is the same word for for ingratitude. So sort of, you know, one can infer from that that the the essence of our entire relationship with God is one of gratitude for for the gifts that that he gives. And, you know, as we've already talked about with with other with sort of the created givers of gifts, that that engenders love and and gratitude.

You know, one of the things that Ghazali says that I that I find interesting is he says gratitude is a virtue unlike some of the other virtues that I've discussed up to this point. You know, he talks about, you know, patience and justice and all of these things. That that is is an end in and of itself. And and the proof that he uses for that is, you know, there's a verse in the Quran that talks about the denizens the denizens of paradise being in a state of just utter gratitude for where they are. They're no longer patient.

They no longer have to be detached from the world. You know, all of these spiritual virtues no longer have a place, but gratitude is something that we embody, for all eternity. So I think that's it's very central to our understanding of our relationship with God, and I'm sure that that resonates with with your tradition as well.

Yeah. No question. I mean, certainly, you think of the the great reformer John Calvin described the whole of religious life this way. You know, Thomas Aquinas thinks of of gratitude as a as an integral feature of the virtue of religio. Religio is where we get our word religion.

Right? So what's expected, our devotion to God. And again, I think part of this comes back to what we were saying earlier about the way in which gratitude is not just emotional, and it's not just about will, but it's about a correct recognition. Right? So in Christian tradition, we talk about beatific vision, seeing God face to face.

You see the world as it really is. You see you see God for who he is, right, so in in a fuller way. And, yeah. So you wanna talk about denizens of paradise. I I definitely think in in our tradition, we have a very similar sort of sentiment.

What do you think about the state of you kind of touched upon this earlier, but, you know, somebody who's in a state of they're either suffering or they are oppressed by someone else. Are there limits to gratitude? Or Yeah. Are there times in which gratitude can be inhibiting us from other virtues or other duties where there might be an excess? What will what what do we do in those situations?

Yeah. It's very interesting. So there are philosophers who have written about this recently and they they're they're quite worried about situations in which peoples do find themselves as in conditions of oppression. There's a great example of this actually in in, Toni Morrison's novel Bluest Eye, where this young black girl was gifted this kind of lily white, you know, blue eyed doll, which embodies all the beauty standards of a culture which is designed kind of to denigrate her in conditions of white supremacy, right? And what this philosopher had remarked on this is like, Well, in some sense, it's like her response of ingratitude almost seems like the correct one, right?

Because this gift, even though it was given in a well intentioned way, actually kind of reinforced the conditions of oppression within which she found herself. Now, again, not to sound like a broken record here, the way I would defend gratitude in these circumstances is again, by referencing the cognitive component, right? So if you are giving someone a gift under conditions of ignorance, conditions of ignorance to such an extent that it actually contributes the recipient's oppression, What I would say is that you're actually not you're failing to give a gift. Okay? So that there's a failure on the part of the one who's ostensibly trying to give the gift.

Right? So I would say in this case, the young girl's reticence to express gratitude is actually correct, but the fault is on the side of the gift giver. It's not really a process of gift exchange at that point. And to me, I think we should be attentive to this. And I think the cognitive element of gift exchange is absolutely this is why you can't just view it as a feeling.

Right? If you just view it as a feeling, then you're not able to kind of correctly identify these conditions. Right? Because feelings don't don't do that. Like, they they do a lot of things, but they don't analyze social conditions for us.

Whereas the gift of our intellects, right, that's what intellects are designed to do. They have this critical capacity, this sort of thing. And so, yeah, I think it's really quite an important point. There are things that look like gifts, right? You can imagine this on a social level too, right?

Yeah. With governments and otherwise, Who who do we have to get into that. But, when they're contributing to conditions of oppression, right, well, it's not really a gift. At least that's the way I would probably analyze it. We talk about curses too.

Right? You can give curses. You know? Yeah. Anyway

Yeah. Well, one of the things I think that you know, this is, this is obviously a a difficult question, and I think the details definitely matter. But but one of the things I think that's that's really interesting is that things all become relative at some point. And there can still be a gratitude, at least in our tradition, even for oppressive conditions because they can always get worse. There are two terms in the Arabic.

1 is shaker, which means like someone who thanks and then there's shakur which is, you know, it's the, intensely active participle. So it means one who's consistently thankful. And the difference between the two is something that that that our our tradition talks a lot about. But, you know, one one of these breakdowns I think is very useful where, you know, it's the the one that thanks is the one that thanks for what they what they receive, what they have. But the shakur, you know, this intensely active participle, is one who thinks even for that which they don't receive.

Right? What what they're not getting. And so in this is this kind of awareness of God's omniscience of what's best for us and always an awareness that that the cup is always half full. And and I'm well aware that, you know, these things could be used to sort of quell the masses from from from doing anything, contrary to to some power's desires. But I do think on a spiritual level, there is a great power in seeing that things could actually be worse.

And, I mean and we see this in in countries, and this hits close to home for me because I'm I'm of Libyan descent, where you could live under a tyrannical regime and really think that you've identified evil and then things can get a lot worse and they'll suddenly become the good old days. And so in that, I think, is just this reminder that there's always something to be grateful for. And and that even in injustice and suffering, we have to keep in mind that it that it could be worse. You lost one arm, it could have been both. Right?

You lost one child, God forbid, it could have been all of them. There's always this calculation that that we can make cognitively that allows us to be more patient and to suffer, I think, a bit more gracefully.

Yeah. I mean, no question. I mean, certainly certainly that's true. I mean, it make you know, it makes me think of, Hamzah Yusuf's article in Renovatio, blank on the title, suffering as Surrender, something like that. Yes.

Yes. Suffering a Surrender. It was quite a beautiful piece, I have to say. He mentions the African American wisdom saying, It's all good. And we say that all the time.

We don't really give that a second thought. It's actually kind of a profound thing if you're attentive to what these traditions have to say to us, right? There is a profound sense in which it is all good, because it's all coming from the creator, right? It's all coming from God. And in fact, in the Latin scholastic tradition, they even have a nice little catchphrase for this to say, you know, goodness and being are convertible.

Right? To the extent that something exists, that's also the extent to which it is good, right? So we think of evil as a privation of being rather than something out there in the world or something like that, right? And it doesn't mean that you're just saying like evil doesn't exist in any sense. That's not what you're saying, of course not.

But what you are saying is that even in conditions of suffering, even in conditions in which there is oppression and there is evil in the world, there is a sense, especially in retrospect, I think we all kind of recognize that God is making, you know, bringing good out of evil. Right? And and to to fail to recognize that would be a failure of gratitude. No question about it. Yeah.

You know, there's a there's a tradition we have, of of the the prophet David in which he says to God, how can I thank you when my thanking you is itself a bounty that that you've gifted me? And God responds, now you have truly thanked me. You know? And so I think that kind of awareness that nothing is really of our own and we're not entitled to anything and that merely existing becomes reason for gratitude no matter the conditions, I think sort of shifts one's perception of the world even as we work to to to improve the conditions of the world. So we would have sort of, you know, a metanarrative through which we are grateful for everything even as we work to change particular conditions from from good to better.

Right? And we would try to to stop certain harms that we see because we're definitely called in in both of our traditions to to stop evil, to speak up against it, to to work to change it. And so our gratitude doesn't obviate us of that, obligation, but nor does it really cause any conflict. We can be grateful about something even as as we work to change it knowing that it could it could go in the opposite direction and get worse. So, I mean, we we we can understand that with something like health, right, that if if we have an illness, we're we're very grateful that it's a mild illness.

We hope to get better and we're taking medicine for it and, you know, we go to the doctor. You know, while we're in the waiting room, we can look and say, oh my goodness, look at that guy. I'm so grateful I don't have what he has. He looks like he's really suffering. And so I think that can be reconciled, but I think in the dominant culture today, that's becoming a harder thing to reconcile.

Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. So I think it brings me back to to the the notion that gratitude is a virtue of the will as well. Right?

So a good way to to know if your gratitude is is only, you know, self denigrating it's it's kind of an analogy to humility, right? So, yeah, I mean, there probably are some versions that travel under the name of humility that really are just kind of self denigration. But of course, that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about humility. And I think the same is the case for gratitude as well. A good test for whether or not you've got the real thing is whether it ennobles you to go out into the world, right, and carry things on in a way that is incontinence with God's providence, that is a response to vocation.

Right? I mean, I believe actually Al Ghazali mentions this as well, is that in that case, when the king offers the man provisions to come visit him, right, so and and he gives him an animal and and these other material possessions. Yeah. Like, it's great to, like, appreciate that and and and thank him or whatever from a distance, but you should come. Like, he's giving you the provisions to come visit him.

You gotta get up and go. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

And that's the idea of exactly, the horses. The Virtus is, again, that ennobling thing, is that if it's only about feeling if it's only about just kind of complacently appreciating, you haven't quite gotten it yet. Gratitude is about that interested response to go out and create something beautiful beautiful yourself. Right? And go out and respond in kind.

And we all know this. We we all know this from from experience as a friendship. We all know this in in the experiences with with family life, but it's good to reflect on it.

Yeah. No. Absolutely. I mean, there's an adage in our tradition that says that, you know, true gratitude is to utilize those gifts that God has given you only in ways that are pleasing to him. So there's there's something about, you know, being grateful for the gift, but that the that the highest form of gratitude, right, because there there are obviously levels of gratitude just as you mentioned, there's a golden mean to to to where gratitude lies.

It's really to use it, as Ghazali says, to get on that horse and go to the king and to and to use them in his service. Right? To go and use these provisions he's given you in these in these in these writing beasts in his service. So one last question before we wrap up here. What are some practical ways you'd give our listeners to sort of engender gratitude or if they feel like they need some some guidance on how to become more grateful?

I feel like I I could use some advice myself. But the the first thing first thing I would probably suggest that has worked even in my own study. I've been studying this kind of seriously for maybe like a year or so because I've been on a research project on it. And one of the things that comes up over and over again is try to find ways to be attentive Because it's it's that recognition of things as gifts, which is kind of the first step. Again, it's not the whole story.

We just talked about why that's not the whole story. Disciplines of attentiveness, and I certainly think I mean, this is what religious traditions are so masterful at in traditions of prayer, in conditions of fasting, you know, these sorts of things, is that it gives renewed attentiveness to the gifts that you have in fact been given. So before you can understand, before you can correctly recognize the fact that they are gifts, you have to be attentive to them. Right? I mean, maybe it's too obvious to say just go pray or something like that, but I certainly think that that's a good start.

Yeah. Yeah. I I think something else you touched upon is even something like fasting. Privation, right? Even self induced privation, you know, that's one of the great gifts we get from that.

I mean one of the things we tell children all the time is, you know, there's other kids who don't have these bounties that that you're experiencing to basically change their baseline of what's of what's, what's to be expected. So I definitely think, you know, the religious traditions have multiple means cognitive and practical there. Well, we could do this for much longer, but I really want to thank you for your time, Joshua Harris. Thank you for joining us today on Renovacio's podcast. His upcoming article is The Human Arts of Graceful Giving and Grateful Receiving.

I wanna thank you for your time and, sharing your thoughts with us today.

Thank you so much, Assad. I really enjoyed it.