Religion is one of those things where It Depends. I think Abrahamic religions have big subcultural (sometimes family level) splits between defaulting to a nurturing God and defaulting to a punishing God.
It’s worth noting that the quoted fragment occurs in a book on Stoicism, which doesn’t have a concept of personal god throwing you into hell, and it’s a part of the explanation of a Stoic technique. In fact, I think the OP cut away a little too much context from the quote:
The Stoics are not alone in harnessing the power of negative visualization. Consider, for example, those individuals who say grace before a meal. Some presumably say it because they are simply in the habit of doing so. Others might say it because they fear that God will punish them if they don’t. But understood properly, saying grace—and for that matter, offering any prayer of thanks—is a form of negative visualization. Before eating a meal, those saying grace pause for a moment to reflect on the fact that this food might not have been available to them, in which case they would have gone hungry. [...]
Grace is explicitly the expression of gratitude to a specific power: the power that holds your wellbeing and you life in its hand and you’re grateful that it allowed you a measure of happiness (see the Book of Job for the case when it did not). At best this attitude contributes to learned helplessness—“Man proposes, God disposes”, aka Inshallah!
Or it can suggest to you that you are a worthless sinner destined for the lake of fire :-/
This is basically a claim that reminding people of religion is good for them. I am… doubtful.
Religion is one of those things where It Depends. I think Abrahamic religions have big subcultural (sometimes family level) splits between defaulting to a nurturing God and defaulting to a punishing God.
It’s worth noting that the quoted fragment occurs in a book on Stoicism, which doesn’t have a concept of personal god throwing you into hell, and it’s a part of the explanation of a Stoic technique. In fact, I think the OP cut away a little too much context from the quote:
I don’t think this quote works well.
Grace is explicitly the expression of gratitude to a specific power: the power that holds your wellbeing and you life in its hand and you’re grateful that it allowed you a measure of happiness (see the Book of Job for the case when it did not). At best this attitude contributes to learned helplessness—“Man proposes, God disposes”, aka Inshallah!
Buddhism also has forms of saying grace before meals. Example.
more widespread, “itadakimasu!”