Grateful Beyond Thanksgiving

As a society, we seem to be embracing technology as a, if not the means, of making life more bearable. While I have my concerns about artificial intelligence and transhumanism, they are symptoms of a more basic problem, an underlying expectation that we can and should be living an unburdened life. In part, gratitude assumes that there are such things as gifts. It assumes there are acts of kindness we don't deserve and states of being we could not bring about on our own. In many ways, gratitude is linked to our conviction that we are dependent beings in need of undeserved favor from others. Hi everyone, it's Richard Beebe. And on this edition of Thinking Christian, Dr. James Spencer is unpacking what it means to be thankful. James, as we do every podcast, you thank Life Audio for making Thinking Christian possible. I am grateful that we get to talk to our listeners about things that remind us what's important. There are many things that we face every day that give us pause and come to the conclusion that improving our serve only is an organizational way, kind of to be self-serving, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. I mean, I think, you know, as a society, we tend to be moving towards something that is a little bit more oriented toward efficiency. And, you know, efficiency is not a bad word, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways that efficiencies actually help us out. You know, being able to record via Zoom, for instance, which we're doing right now, is a great, efficient way for us to get together, for us to get to know each other, for us to get to work together. And so it's not about being anti-efficiency, but what I think isn't always clear is what efficiency implies. And so, you know, I, my wife and I recently took a trip to Germany. We've talked about it on the show other times. And, you know, I had the sort of misfortune of renting an electric car. So I got to the airport and I had a rental reservation and they gave me the option of a nine passenger van, which on the small streets of Germany is not particularly helpful. Or I could get this electric car. And so I took the electric car thinking, you know, it's the lesser of two evils. But as if I needed another reason to question whether we're moving in the right direction from a technological perspective, every charging station seemed to take a different form of payment. I couldn't just, you know, pop my credit card into the, you know, a slot and have it charge me for electricity. I had to download apps. I had to go online. I had to deal with 5G issues and connectivity issues over in a foreign country. And, you know, so overall, all the different charging issues really did delay our trips an awful lot. And at one point we actually got, you know, quote unquote stuck in a Martes hotel in Lutherstadt or Wittenberg. And we we ended up staying an extra night over at that hotel in order to charge the car. Well, when I get to the hotel, the car wouldn't charge there either. And so I'm sitting there with a, you know, an electric car that's on 10% battery, which isn't enough to get me back to the highway to a charger that I know will work and trying to figure out what to do. Well, one of the staff members there at the at the Marta hotel Lutherstadt, which if you're ever in Wittenberg, folks, Marta hotel Lutherstadt. Fantastic. I can't say enough about it. They were wonderful, super helpful. But one of the staff who actually spoke excellent English stayed after her shift. So she was actually off work. She stayed after her shift to help me communicate with the repairman whose English was as good as my German. Right. And so when technology failed, there were these really kind people who stepped in to help me carry a burden that I was incapable of carrying on my own. And I think it's just really important for us to recognize that, you know, while I would have loved a completely efficient system, right, I would have loved to be able to sort of like we do with gas powered vehicles, right? You drive up to a gas station and what do you expect? You expect to be able to put a credit card into the gas station, the gas pump, you know, pay for your gas, pump your gas and move on. You don't have to interact with anyone. Right. That's what we're expecting. But with the electric cars, what I what I experienced was all these disruptions and efficiency. I didn't understand what I was doing and I didn't understand how to use the car. It was just a totally new experience to me. And and so what I ended up with was this sort of undeserved kindness from people who were working at a hotel who didn't know me from Adam. Right. But ended up helping my wife and I enjoy our vacation in relatively unexpected ways. And so as I reflect back on that, it's sort of like the efficiencies that we experience on a day to day basis. If I'd have gotten a gas car, I would have never really been particularly grateful for that efficiency. I only understand the effort that goes into creating that efficiency when I experience the inefficiency. And so I step back from that German vacation and I say to myself, wow. Number one, you know, I don't want the audience to feel like I'm you know, I got to go on vacation in Germany. I realized what a privilege that is. And so, you know, these kind of complaints are somewhat trivial, but I think it's a good illustration of. Look. There's a lot of times when we think we deserve the efficiencies that we have. When in reality, there's a lot of effort that goes into giving us that seamless process, that seamless experience that we're used to that undercuts our willingness or even our capability to be thankful. Well, and you think about what what you're going through here. You're in a you're in a foreign land dealing with something that it's a whole different experience. It makes it like multiplies that experience and that and that foreignness a little more. And then and then having the I mean, were the were the people who were helping you? Did they understand it any more than you did? No, not really. I mean, they, you know, I mean, essentially, we just sort of by God's providence in everyday parlance, we might say luck. We walked down to the charging station and eventually just got it to work. But nobody nobody came to fix anything. Nobody came to do anything different than I'd done. I mean, you it's essentially like, you know, you plug a cord into an outlet enough times and it eventually starts working. You're not sure what went wrong the first 50 times you tried it. You're just happy the last time it worked. And so these are folks who were wading into an unknown situation. Right. They really had no knowledge of what was happening any more than I did. But they were willing to stay. You know, they were just willing to stay and help me out. They didn't say any bad language like Farenegan or anything like that. They may have in German. I wouldn't know. Like I said, my German is not real strong. I mean, I had I had theological Germans. So unless they're going to start quoting Martin Luther, I'm out of my depth. Well, unfortunately, we have to well, maybe it's fortunate. You know, I'm thankful for these breaks. It's an efficient break that we're going to take right now on Thinking Christian. When we come back more on the situation James found himself in with his e-car in Germany and how thankful he is for the people who helped him navigate recharging. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty? More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And then you're finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 94878 or call 888-958-6579.

James, despite the learning curve, you had sympathetic people who tried to help. This has been my experience with the digital realm of media. There's a learning curve and there are people willing to take time to try to give you and I moral support, yet trading efficiency and getting a show posted on air or online, it can be efficient and in theory, what could go wrong? Well, I think what can go wrong is that we begin to expect that it should be easier. See, I think that part of our problem is that we expect life to be without burdens. And that's an anticipation we probably need to get rid of as Christians. I would say particularly as Christians. We need to step away from that idea that life will be without burdens. Yes, Christ says that my yoke is easy and my burden is light. He does not say that my burden is absent. And I think the general idea here is this. There are a lot of things that, and I've talked about being a personal trainer on the show before, so I used to work out with people and they'd come in and have me help them sort of get in shape. There was never a time when I said, you know what would be more efficient? It's just more efficient if I don't show you how to do this exercise and then have you go through the effort of doing the exercise yourself. Why don't you just stand there and watch me work out? That won't work because in order to reap the benefits of a personal training session, of actually lifting weights, you have to do more than watch. You actually have to lift the weights. And I think that's a basic lesson that we're in danger really of forgetting is that oftentimes, as frustrating as it may be, we have to lift the weights. There has to be a burden put on us. And oftentimes what I think that burden does to us is it reminds us that we are often dependent on other people. You know, even when there's peak efficiency, right? When there's 100% efficiency and everything goes as seamlessly as possible, and I don't notice that it's difficult for me to charge my e-car, or if it's difficult for me to purchase something on Amazon, or it's difficult for me to, you know, XYZ, right? Whatever activity it is we're doing. Whenever we have this sort of seamless experience, what we tend to forget is the hundreds of man hours that go into creating that experience for us, right? It isn't that there is no burden, right? And so sometimes I think when we think of efficiency, we think lack of burden. In other words, when we think of efficiency, we think it's easy for us. Yes, it is easy for us, but that doesn't mean there's no burden. The burden has been shifted. It's been shifted from us to someone else. And I think that's really, when I think back on the experience of that e-car, that's what I realized most is that when I go to a gas station, just a regular old combustion engine to fill up with gas, that process has been made easy for me, but it does not mean that there is no effort behind that experience. In other words, the efficiency has shifted the burden so that it is no longer mine. My experience of that efficiency is someone else's burden now. And I think that really was highlighted for me as I drove that e-car around Germany. You know, aside from helplessness, maybe a touch of humiliation, when you're stuck, it's hard to be thankful, isn't it? It really is. And I mean, I think that comes from this idea, though, of entitlement. Right. There's something about it. Like when I pull up my map and I see that it's four hours from Nuremberg to Berlin, right? What am I expecting? I'm expecting to get there in four hours. And I'm expecting that every system that I have at my disposal is going to get me there. It's going to work properly to get me there in four hours. Right. That's an expectation problem. It's also an entitlement problem. Because as soon as I expect it, I start to feel entitled to that expectation. Right. And everyone else should sort of bow to my will because the map app says that I should make it there in four hours. So darn it. I should make it there in four hours. And if I don't make it there in four hours, it's obviously someone else's fault. Right. The fact that maybe if I make it there at all, it's a gift, doesn't enter into my mind. And I think that is the real crux of the issue we're facing here with efficiency. We've got to be able to think through differently how we expect or feel entitled to or feel we deserve something. And if we can't do that, we're never really going to feel gratitude. Yeah, I didn't look at it that way with entitlement and thinking of entitlement. And we think of entitlement in so many different ways and we're very judgmental with people who are expecting, you know, they're entitled to something. And then we realize that, you know, that's when you measure it, maybe we have that same problem. And maybe it's just a cultural thing. Maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's sort of an inside thing. And, you know, it's obviously not a thinking Christian thing to do is to feel entitled. No, I think it's, I do think it's a cultural thing, but I think that it's also something that has invaded our imaginations. And so if we look at some of the dystopian novels that have been written, right, let's take, you know, 1984 is one of my favorites. Right. Me too. Right. And so what you have there is a totalitarian government controlling people, threatening coercive punishments, you know, monitoring their every move, all that kind of stuff. Right. But efficiency doesn't really fit into that world. They're not concerned with efficiency so much. What they're concerned with is just simple control of the citizens. But if I look at something like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, that is about efficiency. It's about eliminating everything that would possibly be human. Right. In favor of an ease that we can all experience, a simplicity that we can all experience. If folks haven't read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or Brave New World Revisited, you know, maybe they've seen WALL-E, the Disney movie, the Pixar movie. Because the beginning of WALL-E, what you see is humanity in a peak state of efficiency. And it is not a pretty picture. No. I mean, these are rather large individuals who don't seem to have any muscle tone at all, sliding off chairs and being fed everything that they need. It's highly efficient, but that is sort of the picture of the end of efficiency that we need to keep in mind here. Efficiency doesn't do us, it can't be the end goal. We can't seek to get rid of everything that burdens us because at the end of the day, we need burdens. We just need them. We need to work hard. We need to push forward. We need to make sure that we are being agitated. Right. Because it's that agitation that produces growth in us. You know, I mean, we can look at scripture and it talks about, you know, James talks about this. Rejoice. Find joy in the trials. Not because of the trials themselves, but because of what they produce. Right. And in a 100% efficient society, that 100% efficiency doesn't produce anything because we're no longer pushed. We're no longer burdened. We're no longer pressed to become something better. You know, you bring up a good point because, you know, you hear and you read some of the great entrepreneurs. They live for challenges. They live for problem solving. That's what business is. Yeah. And that's what efficient businesses are. Those who say, boy.

You know, what kind of great problems am I going to have to solve today? You know, if we had that attitude, that eliminates entitlement, doesn't it? It really does. And I mean, I think that's the real trick here, is recognizing, it's not so much that, you know, we think, oh, okay, we have to live in utter poverty, or we, we shouldn't expect anything of other people or anything like that. What it is, it's about recognizing life as gift. Yeah. It's that we don't deserve it. What we have, we don't deserve. You know, for Christians, this should be a fairly intuitive leap, right? Because what we deserve, what we've earned, if the wages of sin is death, right, what we've earned is death. We're not dead yet, right? And we're just not there. In fact, I don't even feel dead. I mean, I have amazing things going on around me, right? I have, I have fantastic things going on around me. I have, I have kids. I have a loving wife. I have a beautiful home. I have, you know, a good job. I have ways to contribute to society. Those aren't deserved. They're gifts. And if we think about them as gifts, it's easy to be thankful. If we start thinking about them as things I've earned, it's impossible to feel thankful. Wow. That's, that's interesting because I've heard that a couple of times this week and I had an interview with a singer-songwriter by the name of Danny O'Keefe, who is considered a one-hit wonder. And he, you know, he's written hundreds of songs. So, but he, he thinks of those and he thinks of songs as these gifts that have been given to him as far as the writing. And I, when I'm at my best, I think of that as, I think of these radio shows as, as gifts. These shows that we're talking about these challenges and kind of in a loving way, gently correcting ourselves in these things. And that's, I think that's the other thing too. Don't be too tough on yourself when you have those challenges or, or the people around you who are trying to help. And so you can be, you, you can really practice gratitude by that very, very gesture of the way you handle those things. Yeah. And I think one of the things, I mean, I appreciate what you're saying, that we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves. And I actually agree. I think that there are a lot of situations that we walk through where we're going to have a much harder time feeling grateful. Right. You know, I mean, I can think back on my life and, and realize times where gratitude was nowhere in the picture. Right? I mean, my, my son was born. He was in the NICU for seven weeks. I'm not grateful for that. I certainly didn't feel grateful at the time. And it's very difficult for me to understand how I should be grateful for it now. I'm grateful that he got out of the NICU. I'm not grateful that he was in it for several weeks. Right. I mean, I have to really think through that and say, what did that do to me as a husband and father? Right. To really get to a point where I understand what that means to feel gratitude for that event. My wife had a heart attack after she had our twins. Wow. I don't know that I feel grateful for that in the moment. At the moment, I was just sort of confused and lamenting and concerned and, you know, anything but grateful. I wasn't saying, oh Lord, thank you for this heart attack. Right. Long term, am I, did it cultivate a greater appreciation for my wife and deeper thankfulness that she's still around? Absolutely it did. Right. But I never would have identified that at the time. Right. Even my career, you know, am I grateful for my time as an academic dean? I am now. Yeah. I don't know that I would have said I was then. And so sometimes I think what this, what's important to underscore is that gratitude sort of comes with time. That we have to use the situation that God takes us through, those burdens that we're asked to carry, and we may not be thankful for them in the moment, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be thankful for them in the long term. And that to me is, is a really crucial point because it's easy to be less than grateful in the moment when you're experiencing pain, when you're experiencing loss. But what I, what I find sort of unacceptable and would call all of us as Christians to, to is learn to be grateful for what God has brought you through and how he has changed you through it. Right. We have to be grateful for that. Well, I like what you said that gratitude requires us to recognize the various ways other people have made our lives better. And what you're saying here is life itself. Your wife is here. You, you probably cherish her life even more than you ever did before. Your son, same thing. You cherish his life because it's, it is here and you have this relationship with your son. And yeah. And it doesn't negate the burden. No, it doesn't. Right. It comes through the burden or the experience. I mean, you'd never want to experience that again. That's right. You don't want to say, well, let's go back there again. Exactly. Yeah. But the gratitude is really, it's, it's the people. Yeah. And, and it's who you're grateful for. And that's, that really is, you know, we can script this as much as we want to, but when you really, when you really get it, I think this is the conversation. This is the useful conversation where we, as we say, you, you talked about bearable, which I thought was really, really good. As far as I was thinking about the surveys that you get, I mean, for, for things, because we were talking about efficiency and one of the things that go on so much about, you know, you, you go, you go anywhere, you buy anything, there's always a survey, a survey about service. And it's almost like a fit. It's a different type of fishing expedition. I'm not talking about fishing for your, for your personal information, but it is, it is asking for, you know, show us your gratitude here. I mean, it's, it's one of those things. And then I think that flatlines gratitude and how, how do we react to those things? It's just, it's not a burden to, to fill those out, but it is, I think there's probably less gratefulness when we get those surveys. Well, yeah, it, what I, here's what I'd say. A lot of the, the surveys that I've done in the past, I mean, higher ed, we used to do student satisfaction surveys. Right. And what is student satisfaction, asking someone about how satisfied they are? What does that really do? It doesn't generally ask them, how grateful are you that you've had this opportunity? Right. It says, did our performance meet your expectations? Right. Your standards. Right. And, and where it didn't, and, and I'm not saying that's not an appropriate question. I think it is an appropriate question, but at the end of the day, it doesn't exactly cultivate gratitude. No. What it can cultivate is I expected this, I received lower than that. Right. And so now am I grateful? Not particularly. I'm actually a little frustrated that I didn't get what I wanted. Right. And, and that I think is sort of commensurate of where our culture is. The customer survey is a symbol of how we think about the way businesses should serve us, governments should serve us, you know, even maybe even people in our lives should serve us. But at the end of the day, you know, and, and I've been married, I mean, my wife and I got married in 1999. Right. I don't know that either of us would look back and say that we have met each other's expectations in every way. Right. But what I would hope is we would say that we are grateful to have each other in our lives. Right. And, and that's just two different questions. Right. I don't feel like I deserve my wife. Mm-hmm. And I don't think she feels like she deserves me. Right. We've both been surprised by one another in equally unexpected.

Right. To push us, and so, you know, I support her in ways I don't think she would have anticipated. She supports me in ways I don't think I would have anticipated. Right. But it never entails us not carrying a burden. Right. And that, I think, is the key thing here, is that if what we're expecting, if our sort of barrier or guardrail for, I'll feel grateful when, right, is set so high that we require people to meet this level of expectation before we'll ever even think about being grateful, like they have to score way exceed expectations for us to be thankful. Right. We have set ourselves up for failure on the gratitude front, and I think that if we, it's not a question of, you know, set low expectations so you'll always be thankful for things, right? That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is, expectation comes when there is undeserved kindness. Right. And what we need to realize is that we are often the recipients of undeserved kindness, that often what God sends us is gifts. And if we can't recognize it as gift, we tend to fall back into something that looks a little bit more like, I work for this, I deserve it, sort of dynamic. And we bracket God out of that equation. And I think the more we bracket God out of the equation, the less thankful we'll be able to be. Yeah, and I don't wanna come face to face with God, and I don't expect him to say, hey, did I under-promise and over-deliver? That's right. I mean, you know, you hear that all the time, and it's like, you know, I don't know if that's the way I wanna go through life. I don't wanna. Right. Like, you don't wanna be standing before God and be like, so I know you gave me everything I ever had, and, you know, you're sort of amazing and all that kind of stuff, but I gotta tell you, compared to my expectations, could have been better. Was our service bearable? Right. Like, we're not gonna give God a satisfaction survey. What we're going to give God is praise. Right. And praise implies a level of thanksgiving that we don't usually experience in our daily lives. Life wasn't that bad, was it? So where do we go from here? I mean, I think we've hit this pretty well. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think we are very likely to struggle with efficiency going forward. Right. I think that as technological systems advance, as, you know, we buy into this narrative of a progress that is fairly prevalent in society anyway. I think one of the things we're going to find is we are going to really struggle with the notion of efficiency. We are going to struggle with gratitude. Right. And it is simply because every system that we develop is designed to unburden us. It's just what we're doing. Right. You know, I've talked a lot about artificial intelligence, and artificial intelligence is really specifically designed to unburden us. It's designed to marginalize us. It's designed to keep us from thinking that hard. You know, if it were to come into its maturity right now, it doesn't feel like this, but when it's in its maturity, if it were to advance to the level that people think it will advance, we will essentially not need to think anymore. And so I think we're going to struggle with this idea of efficiency. And, you know, while efficiency and its technological helpers may be sort of, may make it more difficult for us to be grateful, I don't think that gives us an excuse for being ungrateful. We as Christians particularly need to recognize that everything we have is gift. You know, I always go back to Deuteronomy 8, and God tells the Israelites, hey, you're going to go into this land. You're going to dig cisterns, or you're going to enjoy cisterns that you did not dig. You're going to live in houses that you did not build. Don't sit back and say that it was my strength and my power that gave me this. Recognize that it was God who gave you the strength and the power to have all the things that you have. And so to the extent that we begin to lean too much on efficiency, I think we start to forget God. And that's what I want to encourage Christians who are listening out there on this podcast is just to say, look, efficiency is not a bad thing. What efficiency does to us is a bad thing. And we can counteract that aspect. We can actually say that even though things are efficient, we recognize God behind the efficiencies. We recognize God doing everything for us. It is not the efficiency that is accomplishing what we're excited about. It's not the efficiency making it easy for me to fill up with gas. It's not the efficiency making it easy for me to charge an electric car. It's not the efficiency, you know, making it easy for me to overcome an illness or something like that, right? None of those, it's not efficiency that's doing that. It is a God-given capacity of humankind to do those things for us. And thus, all of our thanksgiving should be to God because everything he has given us is gift. And we just need to keep in mind and frame that well so that, you know, when we look out at the world, we see efficiency as something that God is giving us to enjoy, not something that should distract us from him. Right. Final word on efficiency and gratitude as, has this been a gradual thing or is it just all of a sudden, is it, or is it just getting more intense? I think we're seeing some really unique challenges right now. I think if I were to say, I think that efficiency is becoming, it's getting to the point, I'll say it like this. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Efficiency is getting to the point where I think that it is going to be able to mask God from us. Wow. I think that there are so many things in this world that we can get at just the touch of a fingertip, literally. And as that increases, what we're going to have is the ability just to think things into existence. And I'm using air quotes for those of you who are on audio. It's giving us the ability simply just to think things into existence, that the external world will respond to our thoughts. And I think that creates a massive, massive facade that gives us this sort of illusion that we're in control, that we have the ability to craft a world that we want. And I find that to be extremely problematic. Right. And so I would say, Richard, yes, I think it's going to be more and more problematic. Absolutely. And I think that where efficiency seems to be going is going to create new problems and increasingly impressive problems for us to navigate. You know, you think about the difference between an old industrial warehouse, you know, Henry Ford, again, to sort of reference Aldous Huxley, Huxley talks about the post-Ford era. Right. Ford.

Pioneered sort of the assembly line and mechanized a lot of what was going on with the creation and the building of cars, the manufacturing of cars. We're a long way from Henry Ford. Yeah, we are. I mean, a way long way. And I think that as that sort of efficiency continues and as we see innovations like, you know, SpaceX, you know, the privatization of space travel, as we see something like Ozempic, right? That can allow us to lose weight without any real effort put in. Right? We've lived with anabolic steroids and blood doping for a really long time. Well, what are those but shortcuts? They're efficiencies that allow us to have greater performance and to maybe not lose any appreciation for hard work, right? But they certainly diminish our appreciation for hard work, right? And so I think we're there. I think the more technology we develop that makes things easier for us, again, that sort of idea of having less burden. Yes. And I think that's where we're going now outside of the physical realm. Again, you know, anabolic steroids, blood doping, Ozempic, those kind of things have been around, you know, for some time, right? Drugs and chemicals that could allow us to modify our bodies with more ease. What we haven't had are things that will do that with our brain. Yeah. And now we're starting to get those things that will do that with our brain. Because of AI you're talking about. I'm talking about AI. I'm talking about transhumanism. I'm talking about Neuralink, the new, you know, brain implant from, you know, that's being developed by Elon Musk to allow, you know, maybe even paraplegics to have a more organic connection to a prosthetic arm, you know, prosthetic leg. Right. You know, there are certain things that aren't bad, but I don't think we think through the full implications of them. And so what I just want to emphasize is that gratitude is a crucial aspect of what it means to be Christian. And so as we participate in activities and processes and just sort of the overall ethos of our culture that moves more toward efficiency than toward gratitude. Right. We are going to lose that capacity. We're going to diminish our capacity to be thankful. We just will. And will we even know it? That's the thing. It's a shroud that hangs over us. Yeah. I mean, you know, when's the last time you were thankful for the person who coded the website that you visit, you know, 16 times a day? Yeah. Never. Right. When's the last time you were frustrated when the Internet wouldn't work right? Yeah. Right. You know, I mean, we're more prone to frustration than we are to thanksgiving. Right. And that is a direct response to a recalibration of our expectations toward efficiency. Right. I expect the Internet to work the way I want it to work when I want it to work, period. When it doesn't, I'm frustrated. Right. When it does, I'm not thankful. That's what I deserve. That's what I expect. Right. That's what I want. And so that's where I think the real disconnect is going to come in. Again, you know, to emphasize this idea that efficiency doesn't eliminate burden, it shifts it. Right. And so if we aren't willing to recognize the shift in burden and be thankful for it every time we access it, we are going to have a diminished capacity to be thankful. So it shifts responsibility rather than you have an excuse. Oh, 100%. I mean, you know, you think about the gratitude you might have if you were building your own car. Yeah. Right. Your own transportation. It's a different experience. Right. And doing something on your own with your own hands is a different experience than, I don't know, you know, having someone else build it. It just is. Yeah. And so I think that a lot of these things, when we come to expect that they're going to work exactly this way, what we then end up with is we end up with more of our expectation. And when something doesn't exceed our expectation, there's no reason for us to be grateful for it. And so we've got to be very careful as a Christian community what we come to expect. And I would sort of point people to Hebrews 12, right? We've talked about Hebrews 12 in various conversations in the past. I've had an op-ed out on it. I think it was called Christians Should Be Stirred, Not Shaken. Right. Sort of a takeoff that James Bond drink. Yeah. But, you know, Hebrews 12, what it says is the world will be shaken. When God comes, the world will be shaken. And Christians are supposed to be grateful that we have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Yeah. And I just don't want us to lose that through the facade of efficiency. Because at the end of the day, God can disrupt whatever He feels like disrupting. Yes. Well, James, wherever people listen to us or how they listen, we are grateful that they're listening on Life Audio. We have a lot of expanded borders of this content and beyond. And we're grateful for that, too. Next year at One Place or on One Place, a daily useful to God program. And that will also be on My Hope Now on Crawford Media as well. How, I mean, it's just amazing that these things are expanding, that our reach is expanding, too. I know I'm grateful for that. And I know you are, too. I very much am. And I'm excited about starting next year. We're going to be having the 30 Days in the Gospels at the beginning of the year, starting in January. We're going to walk through, you can read the Gospels reading no more than four chapters a day. You can read through all four Gospels in 28 days. And so we're going to be challenging people to do that the month of January and having a series of just conversations about the Gospels, what they mean, walking through various passages in the Gospels and trying to help people frame out what it is they're reading across those 28 days. Good. And, you know, we can either look at them as burdens or we could look at them as challenges. Let's choose the challenge and to take the challenge. That's a great thing. So it's been a wonderful first year you and I have had. We started out on Thanksgiving week. Yeah. That last year. And, you know, I actually re-edited a couple of shows from the very first couple of weeks. You know, I cut some things out and I didn't add anything, which is what we're supposed to do, right? So, but yeah, no, it was really good because, you know, we were kind of feeling our way through how you and I would communicate with each other. And I will tell you, we get comments all the time about this conversation that we have every week. And it's going to be more and more. No, it's been a, it really has been a fantastic year. And I will say, you know, gratitude is the word that I would apply to it. I think that I spent a lot of years working behind the scenes as an administrator, but, you know, my training as a, you know, PhD in theology, right? Thinking I was going to be a faculty member. This is a mode of teaching that I never thought I'd get to do, but I'm very excited to do and very happy to have you in it with me. And so I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to do this on Life Audio. I'm grateful that we're going to be on One Place next year. I'm excited to see what the next year brings and just hopefully a lot of building up of God's people to proclaim the gospel in word and deed. That's what it's all about. And so I thank you again for including me on the ride and that through just doing a couple of public affairs shows, I said, man, I want more of this. And so thanks. This has been fun. I really have enjoyed doing this program today. Take care, everybody. Thanks for being with us here on Thinking Christian. Please come back and listen to some more episodes.

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