In my work with folks who have exited religion, I’ve found it helpful to view old ideas through new lenses. Concepts that made sense within a closed system may no longer be adequate to describe a wider range of human experiences.

Gratitude is one such concept.

I think it’s worth taking another look at gratitude and how we give thanks, especially if you’re navigating a deconversion, deconstructing your faith, or wanting to live more deeply into your humanity beyond religion. While this post is intended for folks who find themselves in one of the aforementioned categories, religious folks who are curious about how nonbelievers approach gratitude may also be interested in what follows.

To be clear, I have no interest in dissuading anyone from a form of gratitude that works for them, however, I am interested in expanding our perspective and making a case for a deeply meaningful gratitude that is experienced and expressed without a deity.

G.K. Chesterton once said,

“The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.”

While this sentiment may be internally consistent within the Christian narrative, it falls short when viewed from the other side of belief. What Chesterton describes as “the worst moment” for a nonbeliever, may actually be one of the most meaningful moments — what he views as limiting may be expansive beyond measure.

The following is how I might respond to G.K. Chesterton...

Nothing fills me with gratitude and humility, quite like contemplating the vastness of spacetime and the countless causal chains careening through deep history. The totality of humanity is but the tip of a slender twig growing from a 3.8 billion-year-old Tree of Life rooted in the cosmically young soil of this particular planet.

A countless number of interconnected events brought us to this moment — this moment where we struggle to bring awareness to the infinitesimal bubble of HERE, floating inside this speck of NOW, swirling through an immense cosmic dust storm on the edge of an infinite abyss.

It’s impossible to imagine, let alone thank each of the countless individuals who contributed to a single meal. Pause for a moment and attempt to trace a single forkful back along the key events that made it possible for these particular flavors to find a place on our taste buds. Our awareness, gratitude, and humility expand exponentially when we simply contemplate the causal chain trailing behind a single ingredient.

Multiply this gratitude experiment by even a handful of random items, or by the genomes smiling at you from across the table, leaving their indelible yet malleable mark on our species. The complexity soon eclipses our ability to comprehend, and we are left feeling small and in awe — deep gratitude even.

It’s unwieldy to expand our gratitude out too far, and we quickly bump up against our limitations. It can be unsettling to experience gratitude when it’s not clear to whom or to what to give thanks.

It’s tempting to limit our gratitude by offering it to a deity — an idea that lives inside a belief-sized box we humans constructed as language evolved and symbols gave rise to metaphor. We can reduce the infinite complexity, and attribute causality to the gods we created and imbued with supernatural powers — deities we can summon, wield, and even strive to become.

Many offer thanks to the divine — this spiritualized tempest we’ve created in a cognitive teapot. We bow and worship our cleverness as the gods born of language rise up and warm us, unaware that the ephemeral steam of belief obscures a vast roiling ocean of experience. Blinded by the fog of our own beliefs condensing on the cold edge of an expansive reality we struggle to acknowledge.

The worst moment for an atheist is not when they are really thankful and have no one to thank. It’s when they feel immense gratitude expanding in every direction and choose to limit their gratitude by placing it in a tidy box and offer it to a single individual or deity.

While I view G.K. Chesterton’s proposed solution as a form of avoidance, I also acknowledge that it IS uncomfortable to carry a balance of gratitude forward into the world. It would be easier to consolidate our debt of gratitude and make payments to a single deity.

However, if we’re willing to be with the discomfort of owing our existence to countless others, the “worst moment” according to Chesterton is actually a beautiful opportunity for our gratitude to expand beyond ourselves. Instead of offering gratitude to a single person, deity, or source, our gratitude can begin to extend out across the infinite web of our interconnectedness.

It is a deeply humbling, and at times uncomfortable, experience to consider our place in the cosmos — it is far easier to feign humility while worshiping projections of ourselves in the form of the gods we’ve created.

Here’s to gratitude that is not easily categorized or consolidated. Here’s to carrying a balance of gratitude forward into the world.

-Brian

Brian Peck, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in religious trauma and supporting folks with a history of adverse religious experiences. In addition to helping survivors resolve religious trauma, Brian is passionate about reducing the stigma attached to non-believers, especially those who have exited high-demand religious communities.