Grateful Review

Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks by Diana Butler Bass is a Christian non-fiction book on the topic of gratitude. Bass claims it to be intended for all people, not just Christians, but her use of Christian faith and scripture is so heavily present and used to define gratitude as well as a common element in the stories and examples presented that it really can't be classified as anything else.

I only gave this book 2 out of 5 stars. I was very disappointed with it and downright didn’t like it. I did like how in-depth she defined gratitude. Sharing many aspect of what it looks like as well as the benefits of it. Her four part model of gratitude (me/we and emotions/ethics) was very fascinating, but I didn’t feel that she elaborated enough on it.

The first half of the book was interesting and I could see so much potential for it being a really profound, helpful and practical book. However, it just went down-hill from there. My first issue is that she uses the “we” portion of the book to push her political platform. She seems to be using the book to emotionally deal with the results of the 2016 US election. I didn’t feel like she was still talking about gratitude, I didn’t see the connection and it didn’t even appear that she was practicing gratitude amidst what were trying times for her.

Secondly, she seems to have a habit of impressing her view and ideas onto what she reads, making them say what she wants them too. One example is her use of the book Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. She has impressed her view of gratitude over the story to make it say and teach what she wanted us to learn. I’m not saying that her ideas about the book are necessarily wrong (there may be some truth to them), but she puts it forward as obviously the case no doubt about it when I have never heard anything like it in an analysis of the book. Furthermore she does make at least one completely incorrect statement about the book.

What was even worse is that she treated scripture the same way. She took the story of Zacchaeus and put her own spin on it to say and teach what she wanted in complete disregard for all past exegesis on the passage. Again, there may be some historical truth to her interpretation, but not in disregard to what is being directly said. It is always dangerous to look at a piece of scripture with our own views in mind first (looking to prove our theory correct instead of looking to see what God is saying). We need to first look and see what it says, who it is speaking to and in what context it is speaking, etc. and then we can extrapolate from that basis. But that is very clearly not what she did.

Furthermore, she would randomly pull individual scripture verses out of context to use as support for a point she was making in other parts of the book. But she never addressed any scriptures that very clearly say the opposite of the idea she was putting forward. All this was just too much for me. With it I felt she lost all credibility and reliability, let alone any authority to speak into the topic. This was just a bad book. I don’t hate it, but nor would I ever recommend it.