Christian Living

THE PLEASURE OF POSITIVE THINKING

by GLENN PEASE
04/30/18
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Based on Psa. 84

    Have you ever watched a movie or play that ended with some basic problems unresolved?  It is a great let down, for we expect that no matter how bad the situation is the bottom line will be a happy ending. We are conditioned to this.  It is a part of our heritage through our fairy tales, novels, and most movies. Walter Kerr writes of an experience he had.  "Not long ago I spoke to an articulate woman who is a fervent  theatergoer and disliked, intensely, the position in which a certain play had put her:  She felt obliged to dismiss it in spite of its obvious merits and her obvious emotional involvement with it.  Yes, she agreed, it had caught her interest.Yes, it had created a lump in her throat.  'But when I came out of the theater, the lump was still there!'  She expostulated, angry and dissatisfied.  She had been moved, but she remained moved, in a way she did not like; some further agent ought to have intervened to dissolved that lump, to distribute that emotion in some meaningful way." 

     Where do we get the idea that every story should have a happy ending?  We get it from the Bible, which has influenced our whole culture.  Even wise secular authors, movie makers, and play writers will conform to the Biblical pattern of coming to a positive conclusion.  The Bible is filled with sin, folly and tragedy, but the bottom line is always victory over sin, suffering, and Satan.  The Bible ends, and they lived happily ever after.  God's grace is always sufficient to guarantee that the final act is one of triumph.  The result is, the Bible is the world's greatest source of positive thinking.  Nothing can be so bad that God cannot bring it out right.  Nothing can be so dark that God cannot make it bright. 

     Positive thinking is an absolute necessity for anyone who calls  themselves a Biblical thinker.  What a pleasure it is to live in a fallen world, where there is no end of things to complain about, yet, still be able to fill life with praise, because of trust in God.  This is where the Psalmist is in Psa. 84.  He has his negatives to endure.  He is temporarily cut off from the temple, and envies the birds who can chirp the praises of God in that lovely environment.  He has to plod through the valley of Baca, and figure out how to make it a place of springs.  This can be hard work and a challenge, and he cries out to God to hear his prayer for strength to press on.  He finds himself in a lowly position as a door keeper in the house of God.  There are many notes in the minor key in this great song, but the over all theme is in the major key of positive thinking.      

     Positive thinking does not mean, if you always think positive nothing will ever go wrong.  That is wishful thinking, and it won't work.  Positive thinking is telling yourself that even when things do go wrong, that is never the last word.  They can be fixed,  modified, overcome, or scrapped, but whatever, life goes on and God's will can be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Positive thinking is the conviction that God always has the last word.  Nothing can go so wrong that He will be at a loss to bring good out of it. Jesus said we are not to fear those who can kill the body and that is all they can do.  The worse thing that can happen in life is somebody killing you.  That is a seriously negative in anyone's book.  But Jesus says that is all evil forces can do.  That is the limit of their evil.   Don't sweat it, for you are still in the hands of God, and the story does not end as a tragedy, but as a triumph, for in Christ you enter His kingdom where all pain, sin, and folly is gone forever. 

     Paul suffered terrible things in his life, and was finally killed as a martyr.  His positive thinking was not a superficial philosophy that said, everyday in every way the world is getting better and better.  His positive thinking was that he trusted in God and was confident that God would write the final chapters of his life, and they would be chapters of victory.  That is why he practiced what he preached:  Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice.  Paul was a man of praise because no matter how much he suffered, he had the perpetual pleasure that comes with positive thinking. 

     Positive thinking is just a descriptive way of saying faith or trust.  Psa. 84 ends  with, "O Lord Almighty blessed is the man who trusts in You."  That is, happy is the man of faith, or, happy is the positive thinker.  Heb. 11:1 says, "Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see."  Faith thinks positive about the future even when the present finds you in the valley of Baca trying to survive. Faith reaches out to that happy ending and brings the power and joy of it back into time.  God says he will work in all circumstances of life to bring forth good.  Positive thinking is trusting in God to do just that, so that even when you are feeling the pains and sorrows of this fallen world, you are also anticipating the pleasures of victory. 

      Getting to this blessed state of trusting God is a process, and sometimes we are the man who said to Jesus, "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief."  He had a mixture of faith and doubt, and that is where we often find ourselves.  We are thinking positive, but the negative is there trying to take over and dominate.  Rhonda Kelly in Divine Discipline tells of her lesson in faith.
 
      "Several months ago I was suddenly confronted with the meaning of faith.  I arrived by taxi early one morning at Victoria Station in London.  I loaded all my bags on a cart and headed toward the train for the airport.  When I couldn't find an elevator to go downstairs, I asked the janitor for help.  He told me to push my long cart onto the escalator and release the handle.  What a foolish idea!  I knew the luggage cart was much to big and much to heavy for me to manage on a escalator.  And I wasn't about to risk all my earthly possessions. But he insisted, "push the cart down the escalator and let go."   There was no one else around to reassure me, and my plane was to leave before long.  So, finally, I stepped out in faith.  I pushed the cart on the escalator; and as it moved down I released the handle. My heart raced.  I worried to death.  But do you know what happened? The escalator steps flattened out to hold my cart and my luggage was safely carried down.  The escalator was specially designed to hold luggage carts. However, the escalator could have never worked for my cart if I had not given it a chance.  I often wonder how many times my lack of faith has limited God's power to work."

     I had a similar experience with the computer.  I would type a poem and then save it, but I was always fearful that it would not save the work I had done.  So I would go instantly into the program to open up the file to see if it did, in fact, save the poem.  I had doubts, and only after seeing that it did save what I asked it to, did I get confidence that it would do what it says it will do.  My doubt turned to faith and I am a more positive thinker about what the computer will do.  My faith is growing by a process by giving the computer a chance to do what it says it can and will do. 

     So it is with God.  The positive thinker puts his trust in God, and grows in his assurance that God will work in all things for good with those who love Him.  Not everything is good.  Much is bad and messed up in this world, but by the grace of God good can come out of every mess, and every valley of Baca, for those who have learned to enjoy the pleasure of positive thinking.  In II Tim. 1:12 Paul puts the negative and positive side by side, and lets the positive dominate.  He writes, "That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him for that day."  Paul does not have faith in life, history, fate, circumstances, or human nature.  So much positive thinking is superficial and Pollyanna because it is faith in something, rather than faith in someone.  Paul says, "I know whom I have believed."

     John Oxanham stresses this in his poem: "NOT what but WHOM I do believe. That, in my darkest hour of need, Hath comfort that no mortal creed To mortal man may give. NOT what, but WHOM. For Christ is more than all the creeds, And his full life of gentle deeds Shall all the creeds outlive. NOT what I do believe, but WHOM. WHO walks beside me in the gloom? WHO shares the burden wearisome? WHO all the dim way doth illume, And bids me look beyond the tomb the larger life to live? NOT what I do believer, but WHOM NOT WHAT BUT WHOM!

     Positive thinking that does not rise to the level of trusting in God the ultimate WHOM is going to fall short, and does not come with a guarantee of a happy ending. This Psalm has a happy ending because it ends with faith in God.  The Bible has a happy ending because God is the one who determines the last chapters.  We can, therefore, press on confident that the best is always yet to be.  Robert Crumly has captured the message of trust and positive thinking in the kind of poetry I can really enjoy.  He wrote-

Far out at sea, at close of day,
A lonely albatross flew by.
We watched him as he soared away-
A speck against the glowing sky!

Thought I : This lordly feathered one
Is trusting in the faithfulness
Of wind and tide, of star and sun;
And shall I trust the Maker less?

O soul of mine, spread wide thy wings:
Mount up; push out with courage strong!
And--like a bird which, soaring, sings-
Let heaven vibrate with thy song!

SPREAD WIDE THY WINGS,
O SOUL OF MINE,
For God will ever faithful be:
His love shall guide thee; winds divine
Shall waft thee o'er this troubled sea.

Though dangers threaten in the night,
Though tides of death below thee roll,
Though storms attend thy homeward flight,
SPREAD WIDE THY PINIONS, O MY SOUL!

Though shadows veil the verdant shore,
And distant seems the hallowed dawn,
Spread wide thy pinions--ever more
Spread wide thy pinions, and press on.

     The poet recognizes the reality of the negative, but his focus is on the positive, and this is the Biblical perspective on life.  Evil is real, but only good is eternal. The success of Walt Disney was due to his recognition of this truth.  Ann Ortland tells of being in Disneyland watching a film of Walt Disney explaining his philosophy.  Listen to what he said. "We were sitting in a little theater in Disneyland Watching an old film clip of Walt Disney philosophizing On what makes a good movie.  Back he leaned in his leather chair.  "Nobody could have predicted how well Snow White was going to do," he said.  "Not in our wildest dreams.  Heady with success, we put together another, Alice in Wonderland.  But do you know-it never went over very well.  So we sat back and tried to analyze why.  And we came to the conclusion that Snow White- and every successful production-had two ingredients:  Laughter and tears.  That was a milestone discovery.  After that, everything we turned out had to have both laughter and tears." 

     He had discovered the Biblical perspective that made him famous, and one of the greatest entertainers in history.  Be realistic about the sadness of this fallen world, and portray its evil, but always come to a happy ending where evil is defeated, and good celebrates the victory.  The whole movie industry has learned that human nature cannot tolerate a story that does not end with good defeating evil.  Man is made in the image of God, and by nature he is made to feel that any story in incomplete until good is victorious.  No matter how much people may enjoy the cleverness and violence of an evil person, they expect the good guy to win in the end.

     Positive thinking is built into human nature.  It is part of the image of God that man does not lose even in his fallen state.  But the problem is that it has no personal value until people find the foundation for this conviction in God.  Blessed is the man who trusts in you, says the Psalmist.  People can watch all the good movies in the world, and see all the good plays, and read all the good novels, with all the happy endings, and yet never be happy themselves because they have never made a personal commitment to trust in God.  They believe good will always win, but they are not on the winning side if they do not trust God and receive His plan of escape. God has given man a Savior and the assurance of being on the winning side when the battle is over.  Jesus Christ is God's gift to man, and those who receive this gift by trusting Him as Savior will have eternal life.  They will have the happy ending. 

     The negative side of positive thinking is that it can deceive masses of people into thinking they are secure, and everything is okay because they are basically good people.  They are not like the evil people they see on the screen, but more like the good guys who win.  This gives them a sense of false security, and they do not feel any need for a Savior.  Their positive thinking leads them to trust in human nature to come out okay in the end.  This is what humanism is all about.  It is positive thinking about human nature with God left out because He is not needed.  This is the way of disaster.  Positive thinking for the humanist means man will make everything come out okay in the end.  Positive thinking for the Christian means God will make all things come out okay in the end. 

     The Christian agrees with the humanist that the good will be victorious over the evil, and the story will have a happy ending.  The Christian disagrees as to why this will be.  The humanist says it is because man is basically good.  The Christian says, yes it is true the basic image of God is still there, and man even in his fallen state has the God-like love for the triumph of good over evil, but he cannot pull it off on his own.  He can never save himself.  Without a Savior he is sunk and will go down in defeat before the forces of evil. 

     Man's only hope is to trust in God.  Jesus said that he was the way, the truth, and the life, and that He was the only way to the happy ending.  C. S. Lewis concludes the last of his Chronicles of Narnia like this: For us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page:  Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read:  Which goes on forever:  In which every chapter is better than the one before.

     The humanist has no such hope.  This kind of happy ending is the hope only of those who accept the Biblical revelation of God's victory over all evil in Christ.  Only those with this hope can fully enjoy the pleasure of positive thinking.