Gratitude

It’s not surprising for anyone who’s had marriage trouble that the way we perceive our spouse starts to play a larger and larger role in how we feel about them. If I spend my time ruminating on their failures or flaws it will slowly build resentment and amplify what’s wrong until I drive a wedge into the relationship. However, if I practice gratitude… which looks like naming what they do well, noticing their strengths, and giving thanks for them, then I will grow closer and build a reservoir of grace.

But I don’t think this is limited to marriage or even relationships!

Think about the lens that you perceive the world through. There’s fascinating research showing that expectations can measurably shape outcomes. In some fields (including psychiatry and pain research), placebo responses in clinical trials appear to have increased over time, and researchers debate the reasons. It appears that people’s expectations, trial design, messaging, and context all seem to matter to the overall effect.

A bit more surprising to me is that “open-label” placebos, which is where people are told they’re receiving a placebo, have still shown benefits in randomized trials for certain conditions… which is wild to me on the face of it.

I think this should make us pause and ask… what are my expectations doing to my day-to-day life?

If you are like most people in the world at this point and regularly consume large chunks of negative media online, it can train your attention onto what’s wrong, and gradually lower your ability to see what’s actually good and true. Part of this is just how humans are wired. Psychologically, “bad” tends to hit harder than “good.”  And newer research around “doomscrolling” finds consistent associations with distress and lower well-being.

This would make sense in a world where things were getting worse right? But by many long-run measures, the world has actually improved dramatically! Global life expectancy is far higher than it used to be, child mortality is far lower, and extreme poverty has dropped massively compared to past centuries.  Even food supply per person has generally trended upward over the last several decades.

And if you look historically, many major justice goals that earlier generations fought for really did become law in the United States. Things like legal chattel slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, women gained constitutional voting rights by the 19th Amendment, and landmark civil rights legislation outlawed discrimination in many public and economic settings.

I’m truly thankful to those who fought and sacrificed for the world we live in now! So why the discrepency? Well I think we do need to acknowledge that progress doesn’t mean “no problems”. And on this side of heaven it will never mean “no evil”.

So I don’t think we should have naive optimism that everything is going to become a utopia. I’m simply saying we should have faithful attention to the world as it improves, because what we dwell on shapes what we become.

Philippians 4:8 says: “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

So here are some questions I’m asking myself in relation to this:

• Am I choosing to think about what’s going right in my life… or what’s going wrong?
• In my relationships, am I thankful for people’s strengths… or mainly focused on what they need to fix?
• In the wider world, am I consuming information that forms me into peace… or into outrage?

Sometimes, in conversations about prayer and belief, I’ve had friends imply it feels “unspiritual” to talk about these effects in terms of the brain, habits, or behavior. I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it. If God designed us as embodied souls, then it shouldn’t surprise us when spiritual practices have real, observable effects like attention, expectation, gratitude, peace, and endurance. And honestly, I find it encouraging that even secular studies keep bumping into a version of this truth that what you consistently take in, and what you consistently expect, changes you.

I’ve watched people I deeply care about slip away from the faith. And often, it starts the same way with fear and anxiety about the world. That fear hardens into anger, fixation, and a shrinking ability to see God’s goodness around them. Over time, even Scripture gets reread through grievance. And without realizing it, they begin looking for another savior.

I don’t have a clean formula to prevent that. But I can’t help but think about how much poison the news and social media can be when we aren’t also drinking the antidote of daily prayer and practicing the old Christian habit of “counting your blessings.”