The Grateful Beast: Can Evolution Tell Us Why We Worship?

In this beautiful and moving book, bestselling author Tim DeRoche makes the case that human beings are hardwired to worship.

Drawing from evolutionary psychology, he argues that we cannot help but experience life as a gift. And, whether we admit it or not, our biological instincts leave us yearning for a right relationship with the unseen giver.

What makes us human? It is the instinct to give and receive gifts from one another. DeRoche shows how thinkers throughout history have obsessed over issues of reciprocity and social obligation Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, the anthropologist Marcel Mauss, the Freudian psychologist Ernest Becker, and so many more. And these themes echo through the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, which can be read as an extended meditation on what it means to be indebted to God for life itself.

The Grateful Beast offers a new take on the plight of modern man, urging us to acknowledge the full mystery of life and to accept the weight of infinite gratitude.