The moment I saw this comment cross my social media feed, I was saddened, though not particularly surprised.

It struck me as one of the more revealing admissions of modern political life, not because it concerned Donald Trump specifically, but because it exposed something far deeper than one politician.

Replace the name with Obama, Biden, Bush, Clinton, or whoever else a person dislikes, and the fundamental issue remains the same:

Politics has grown so large in our emotional and spiritual imagination that it has robbed us of gratitude.

Maybe this bothers me so much because of my faith. For us Christians especially, gratitude is not an occasional emotional mood. It is a discipline of the soul. Scripture repeatedly presents thanksgiving not as something contingent upon ideal circumstances, but as evidence of spiritual health.

The Apostle Paul commanded believers to "give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:18). He wrote those words while living under Rome - an empire marked by corruption, cruelty, paganism, and political dysfunction on a scale modern Americans can only begin to imagine.

Yet Paul reminded believers God expected gratitude. He always has.

Jeremiah told God's people in exile to "seek the welfare of the city" (Jeremiah 29:7). He declared that under the authority Babylon - an authoritarian state that demanded assimilation or a den of lions. Jeremiah's words were not given because Babylon was righteous, but because God's people were never meant to become spiritually paralyzed by political disappointment.

The only way his words or Paul's lose relevance to us is if we believe that God's character changed sometime in the last 2,000 years. Needless to say, it hasn't.

Yet we apparently have. Somewhere along the way, many modern Americans stopped merely caring about politics and began emotionally inhabiting it. Politics ceased being something we participate in and became something we live inside.

• Disagreement became moral betrayal.

• Elections became existential crises.

• Opponents became heretical enemies.

As a result, public life slowly lost its capacity for shared joys. We increasingly struggle to celebrate anything together:

• Holidays - the 4th of July becomes a referendum on whether America deserves any honor, Thanksgiving tables become emotional minefields where grievances are waiting to be aired.

• Symbols - flags and anthems, once simple reminders of common belonging, now function as ideological Rorschach tests, filtered through protest, suspicion, resentment, or partisan signaling.

• Sports - we're told the NBA is too woke, NASCAR is irredeemably racist, the NFL is prejudiced against black coaches, stars are suspect for not speaking out, even fanbases are sorted into moral categories.

• Achievements - scientific breakthroughs, cultural milestones, economic gains, or national successes are rarely shared victories anymore, but quickly filtered through who benefits, who loses, and which side gets credit.

• Music - Bruce Springsteen is off limits to conservatives, while Nicki Minaj is MAGA-approved, Taylor Swift only wants LGBT allies in her audience, and Kid Rock is kryptonite to the woke.

Everything becomes filtered through partisan resentment. 👇

Once politics becomes the organizing center of the soul, gratitude slowly suffocates. Biblically speaking, that is no small thing. Romans 1 presents thanklessness not as a minor flaw, but as one of the early signs of spiritual disorder:

Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. - Romans 1:21

In the wider context of Scripture, ingratitude appears near the front end of humanity's moral and civilizational decline. Thanklessness does something corrosive to the human heart. It trains us to fixate on grievance until we become incapable of seeing grace. Christians should be at the forefront of warning Americans against this growing cultural instinct.

Every nation - from Babylon to Rome to America - is fallen and flawed. Political disappointment is inevitable. Yet Christians, of all people, should possess enough spiritual perspective to recognize extraordinary blessing when it stares us in the face.

This is why I find comments like Suzanne's so heartbreaking. Not because someone dislikes a president, but because political resentment has grown so large that it now eclipses thanksgiving itself.

That is a dangerous thing - not only for the soul of a person, but for the soul of a civilization.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.