Parochial Thanksgiving Will Expand the Overton Window

The Garrett Ashley Mullet Show

It's Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., and that has me wondering how our attitude toward thanking God for what we have relates to several sundry items which have had my attention the last week or so.

First, Paul writes in the New Testament, in his letter to the church at Philippi, that we ought to make our reasonableness conspicuously public. He also tells us not to be anxious. Instead, we should think about whatever things are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and praiseworthy, and present all our requests to God with prayer and thanksgiving.

But I think if we would do that more, on Thanksgiving and all other days, the Overton window would much more closely align with what is true, beautiful, and good. And this is largely because the Biblical pattern is not to reason from top to bottom, humanly speaking. We reason from God's character and revealed will to our reality, yes, and there is a top to bottom quality to that. But when it comes to our efforts, and how we work, it is from the ground up, quite literally.

From the dust we were made. To the dust we will return.

This is to say that we find the Biblical pattern is parochialism. Faithfulness with little things, and only after such fidelity is established are we entrusted with bigger and brighter things. Thus also the Biblical pattern is very conservative.

By the way, speaking of Christian conservatism, Paul also wrote in the New Testament, to the church at Thessalonica, to aspire live quietly, minding our own business, and working with our hands. But he did not leave unspoken his reasons, which were to the end of having a good testimony with non-Christians, and also being materially independent.

This is the best definition of the saying "all politics is local" I've come across to-date, by the way.

Some will doubtless accuse me, on this point, of trying to immanentize the eschaton. Yet I would direct their attention to better candidates for that charge, like the Woke, and also transhumanists, and also Democrats more generally.

But I'm not trying to bring about heaven on earth. I just think we would be living better in light of eternity, and what God has revealed in His Word, if we were applying the truth of God's Word to the problem of lessening labor participation among able-bodied men in America.

Similarly, I suspect there is a root we could testify to in the findings of the Hebrew University study which found that American male sperm counts have dropped 51% since 1973, and that the drop is accelerating.

So also, God is not silent on problems like the one recently reported on in an American literature course at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, where juniors were given a very rudimentary assignment on Goldilocks and the three bears.

How this all relates to Thanksgiving is that we must believe the good gifts we have in life are actually from God in order to thank Him for them. Otherwise, we might as well call this 'Turkey Day,' like others do.

"Thanks For Nothing Day" would be more honest for too many, sure. But we must not think that way.

As the Almighty promises in Psalms 50:23, “The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!”

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