the brighter side of life

WHEN: August 28th 2009
AUTHOR: bk
CATEGORY: Blog
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In the 1950s, Norman Vincent Peale wrote a runaway bestseller called 'The Power of Positive Thinking.” The entire book is basically just a thousand different ways of rephrasing the title; that is, positive thinking is powerful.

When I first read the book, I immediately dismissed it as fluff. In my opinion, 'positive thinking' was just 'wishful thinking'. The way we think doesn't make a difference, I thought to myself. It doesn't matter if I wake up with a smile on my face, or wake up with what I like to call 'morning-face.' It doesn't matter if I recognize positive things about another person or whether I find all sorts of things that they lack. It doesn't matter if I celebrate my successes or whine about my failures. Positive thinking doesn't make a difference.

What does make a difference, I thought, was not positive thinking, but genuine thinking. I didn't care so much about being happy or sad. More than anything, I wanted to be real. And if my attempts to be real made me a pessimist, so be it. At least I wasn't wearing a mask.

This attitude created all sorts of problems for me, however. I was to my emotions a piece of clay: pliable and lifeless. I wanted to be genuine, so I thought that meant I had to be subject to the erratic shaping forces of my emotions and my circumstances. I wouldn't put up a fight if something would make me unhappy or discouraged, because—darn it all—I'm being real!

After awhile, though, I realized that I was being shaped into a deformed jar of clay. My attempts to be real were turning me into a vessel that was actually very far from real, because I was being shaped by everything except myself. I didn't know myself anymore; I only knew what other influences told me I was. Although I realized that we as humans are made from the dust of the earth (Ps 103:14) and are compared to clay (Jer 18:6), I had forgotten we are not only dust and clay. That's only part of the story. We are also saints (Col 1:2), kings (Gen 1:28), priests (1 Pet 2:9), and sons and daughters (Eph 1). We are, in a word, powerful. And as a result, we don't need to submit to negative influences over us. We are not slaves anymore.

As for me, I realized that I am most real when I oppose those forces that would have me be discouraged or despairing. Fighting despair and pessimism with hope reinforces our sense of self and our identity in Christ, because we prove that we are not under someone else's power.

So does positive thinking matter? Absolutely. It is not a savior, and will not forgive sins, but it is one of the ways that the Spirit of God works in us. By willfully choosing to be joyful, to be optimistic, to see the humor in things, we defy the power that negative shaping influences can have over us. And we can work with the Spirit in us to bring joy and hope and laughter to the world.

Positive thinking is a powerful tool. It enables us to live differently from the worry and the despair of the world. As we learn to think positively, it also starts to change us from the inside out, as this proverb makes clear, “A happy heart makes a cheerful face” (Prov 15:13). Who doesn't want to a cheerful face?