Give Thanks IN All Circumstances: What It Really Means

There is a pernicious piece of theological confusion that has worked its way into the bloodstream of modern Christianity, and it goes something like this: we are supposed to be thankful for everything that happens to us. Cancer? Give thanks. Job loss? Praise the Lord. The death of a child? Somehow, incomprehensibly, we are told to muster gratitude for this too. This doctrine, presented with the best of intentions by well-meaning believers, has done more damage to the faith than a thousand atheist arguments ever could. For it transforms God into a sort of cosmic sadist who dishes out suffering like medicine and expects us to smile while we swallow it.

But Scripture, when read carefully rather than sentimentally, tells us something quite different. Saint Paul does not write, "Give thanks FOR all circumstances," but rather, "Give thanks IN all circumstances." The difference between these two prepositions a mere two letters is the difference between a faith that makes sense and one that requires us to lobotomize our moral intuitions at the door of the church.

To be thankful FOR cancer would be grotesque. To be thankful FOR betrayal would be perverse. To be thankful FOR the death of innocents would be monstrous. Yet to be thankful IN these circumstances ah, now we are on to something entirely different, something that neither requires us to call evil good nor forces us into the exhausting gymnastics of pretending that suffering is secretly a blessing in disguise.

The distinction matters because Christianity, at its core, is not a philosophy of stoic acceptance but a rebellion against the very existence of suffering and death. When Christ wept at the tomb of Lazarus, He was not weeping because He had forgotten that He was about to raise His friend from the dead. He wept because death itself is an abomination, an intruder into the good creation God had made. The shortest verse in Scripture "Jesus wept" is also one of the most theologically significant, for it tells us that God Himself does not accept suffering with a shrug and a platitude.

Yet here we are, two thousand years later, with Christians telling each other to be grateful for their tumors and their tragedies, as if God were running some sort of cosmic obstacle course designed to make us more spiritual. This is not the God of the Bible. This is not the Father who runs to embrace the prodigal son. This is a caricature, a theological Frankenstein monster stitched together from half-understood verses and well-intentioned but misguided piety.

The call to give thanks IN all circumstances is something altogether different, and altogether more difficult. It requires us to maintain two seemingly contradictory truths simultaneously: that the circumstance itself may be genuinely terrible, AND that God's presence within that circumstance is genuinely good. It asks us to develop a kind of spiritual binocular vision, seeing both the horror of what is happening and the hope of who is with us as it happens.

Consider Job, that ancient man of sorrows who has become the patron saint of suffering believers. Job's friends, those tiresome theologians who show up to explain why Job's suffering is actually his own fault, or secretly good for him, or somehow part of a divine plan he should gratefully accept these friends speak for nine-tenths of the book. And at the end, God shows up and tells them they are wrong. Spectacularly, comprehensively wrong. Job, meanwhile, who has raged and questioned and refused to call his suffering anything other than what it is terrible Job is vindicated.

The modern Church, with its cheap grace and cheaper theology, has sided with Job's friends. We have become experts at explaining away pain, at finding silver linings in storm clouds, at insisting that everything happens for a reason when sometimes the only honest reason is that we live in a fallen world where terrible things happen. We have traded the robust faith of the Psalms where half the songs are complaints and arguments with God for a therapeutic deism that insists we must always be positive, always be grateful, always be smiling through our tears.

But thanksgiving IN a situation rather than FOR it creates space for something that our sanitized spirituality desperately needs: honesty. It allows us to say, "This is awful, AND God is good." It permits us to acknowledge, "This should not be happening, AND yet I trust that God has not abandoned me in it." It gives us permission to weep with those who weep rather than immediately rushing to point out the lesson they should be learning from their weeping.

The distinction also preserves the integrity of thanksgiving itself. If we must be grateful for everything, then gratitude becomes meaningless a compulsory exercise rather than a genuine response of the heart. But if we are called to find gratitude IN everything, then thanksgiving becomes an act of defiant hope, a refusal to let circumstances have the final word about the character of God.

Think of it this way: a prisoner in a concentration camp who gives thanks FOR his imprisonment has lost his mind. But a prisoner who, despite his imprisonment, gives thanks for the sunrise he can still see through the bars, for the memory of his family, for the stubborn persistence of hope in his heart this prisoner has found something that his captors cannot take from him. He has discovered that thanksgiving is not about the circumstances but about the God who transcends circumstances.

This is the secret that Paul understood when he wrote his letter to the Thessalonians from prison. He was not thankful FOR his chains but IN them. He did not praise God because he was imprisoned but despite his imprisonment. And in that despite lies all the difference. For it means that our thanksgiving does not depend on our circumstances improving but on our recognition that God's character remains unchanged regardless of our circumstances.

The practical application of this distinction is enormous. It means we need not torture ourselves trying to manufacture gratitude for genuinely terrible situations. We need not feel guilty when we cannot find the blessing in our burden. We need not pretend that God is teaching us a lesson through our suffering when the truth is simply that we live in a world where people get sick, where accidents happen, where evil exists.

Instead, we are called to something harder and truer: to give thanks IN the midst of suffering for the things that remain good. For the presence of God who has promised never to leave us. For the love of friends who sit with us in our pain. For the stubborn persistence of beauty in a world that seems bent on ugliness. For the memory of joy and the hope of joy to come. For the fact that this, whatever this may be, is not the end of our story.

This kind of thanksgiving is not easy. It does not come naturally. It feels, at first, like a kind of spiritual schizophrenia acknowledging the bad while praising the good. But it is, in fact, the most honest response we can offer. It refuses to diminish the reality of suffering while simultaneously refusing to let suffering diminish the reality of God.

The Christian life, properly understood, is not about being grateful for everything but about being grateful in everything. It is about developing the capacity to hold pain and praise in the same heart, to weep and worship in the same breath. It is about learning to say, with Job, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" not because the slaying is good, but because the One who permits it is trustworthy even when we cannot understand His ways.

So let us abandon, once and for all, the terrible theology that asks us to be grateful for our suffering. Let us stop telling the grieving to praise God for their grief, the sick to thank God for their sickness, the bereaved to celebrate their loss. These are not acts of faith but of psychological self-harm, and they serve neither God nor neighbor.

Instead, let us learn the harder, truer discipline of thanksgiving IN all circumstances. Let us become people who can look suffering in the face and call it what it is evil, wrong, not as it should be while simultaneously looking past it to the God who remains good, present, and faithful. Let us give thanks not for the valley but for the Shepherd who walks with us through it. Not for the storm but for the One who commands the winds and waves. Not for the cross but for the God who promises resurrection on the other side of it.

This is thanksgiving that costs something. This is gratitude that requires courage. This is praise that can only be offered by those who have learned that God's goodness is not dependent on our circumstances, and our worship is not contingent on our comfort. This, and nothing less, is what it means to give thanks in all circumstances, and it is enough more than enough for both this life and the one to come.

-The Seeker's Quill