POSITIVE THINKING AND THE FALL OF THE WEST

INTRODUCTION

Positive thinking: the unspoken assumption has permeated every aspect of Western culture. And while it makes us feel better about ourselves and the world around us, it has fundamentally undermined our ability to think critically causing an epistemological crisis of unprecedented proportions. Inadvertently, it has so damaged our ability to differentiate fact from fiction that the very nature of our shared reality is now up for grabs. It’s even begun to affect the sciences. How did this happen?

When I was 5 or 6 years old, I talked my parents into ordering a Superman costume for me I had seen the ad in the back of a Superman comic book I had been reading. After weeks of breathlessly waiting, the package finally arrived! Of course, I couldn’t wait to open it up and try it on. I figured that since I had the cape and the “S” emblazoned on my chest, that I now had Superman’s powers. It seemed a logical deduction to my 6 year old mind. So I went out onto our 15 foot high back porch and leapt into space expecting to fly! But the harsh reality of gravity had other plans. I managed to break my leg but when my panicked mother came rushing out, I walked around on it to show her it was OK despite the protruding bone.

That was my first lesson on the difference between what could be called “positive thinking” (aka, “wishful thinking” or erroneously “faith”) and objective reality. I had truly believed I could fly. I had faith in the ability of the costume to enable me to fly. And I put that positive thought into action risking my own life by defying the laws of nature. But the results were entirely predictable.

My father worked for 19 years in the U.S. Postal Service before trying his hand at other professions in an attempt to make a better life for his family. I suspect he was quite content to spend the rest of his days behind the counter at the Post Office, but I think my mother thought we deserved better. In any case, my father eventually became an insurance salesman where he did quite well for several years. But the training involved an intense indoctrination in “salesmanship” which was really just a specifically targeted form of positive thinking. I don’t think he was ever entirely committed to the philosophy, but he saw it as necessary to succeed in his new profession. And I saw the internal struggle he had with it and the toll it took on him. It drove home for me the demeaning and destructive effect of trying to constantly maintain your “happy thoughts” despite the harsh realities of life.

Over the years that followed, I became increasingly aware of how ubiquitous “positive thinking” had become. We’re hit with it on every front. In school, magazines, TV, the workplace, shopping malls, and then the internet and social media. A constant barrage of ads telling us how happier we’d be, how we deserve the best, how we should have it all. Employers telling us we need to keep a positive attitude if we expect to succeed at our job. Even those bastions of truth, the churches, telling us that God really just wants the best for us and for us to be happy.

We’ve become so accustomed to someone making a sales pitch every time we turned around that we’ve become addicted to it and feel deprived when it’s missing. We’re insulted when someone feels indifferent concerning whether or not we buy their product or believe what they’re saying. Without an enthusiastic presentation trying to convince us and making us feel special and earnestly seeking our approval, we feel like we’ve been slighted. Whether we’re buying a car, voting for a politician, meeting someone for the first time, buying a burger, applying for a new job, or visiting a church we expect and demand that the people we interact with be positive and roundly kiss our behinds or we’re quite put out.

The unspoken assumption underlying all of our interactions as well as our own inner dialogue is that we HAVE to “stay positive.” Negative thoughts and feelings are wrong, plain and simple. No good can come from them. They’re destructive lies and we have to force them out of our thinking and avoid them in our attitudes and conversations at all costs. The more determined we are to be positive, the more we begin to filter our reality and our understanding of truth and our priorities become increasingly skewed. If a fact is unpleasant, we ignore it. If someone insists on making us face it, we become hostile. The eventual result is that our world grows smaller and smaller as we filter out unpleasant facts and people until we’re left with a nice, positive little world of our own creation that bears very little resemblance to the real world.

But how did this happen?

“you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” - John 8:32

INNOCUOUS BEGINNINGS

It may surprise most citizens of the United States to learn that the phenomenon known as “positive thinking” is not worldwide. It is almost exclusively a Western aberration and goes hand-in-hand with our defiant individualism and American exceptionalism. In most other cultures, there is a greater sense of loyalty and identity from their association with the group. Eastern thought leans towards learning to see and accept the world as it is and be at peace with that. Europeans, too, strive for a more rational, balanced perspective that acknowledges both the negative and positive. Russian thought sees life as hard but as a struggle they intend to survive. Both African and Middle-Eastern mindsets see life as difficult but integration with the community, along with their spirituality, makes life easier to bear. Hispanic culture is perhaps the closest to the Western philosophy but they, too, have a greater focus on family and community as a primary source of happiness and identification.

But there are two distinct but complementary movements which gave rise to the western obsession with positive thinking.

NEW THOUGHT MOVEMENT

The New Thought movement sprang from the teachings of Phineas Quimby during the 19th century. Quimby was born in New Jersey and became fascinated with the idea of mesmerism (aka, hypnotism) being used to heal people of various diseases. His assumption was that illness was a result of negative thoughts and that “the truth” was the cure. He propagated this philosophy through a series of healing tours.

The movement gained momentum during the later part of the 19th century as various spiritual thinkers, philosophers, and pastors from various denominations adopted it and fleshed out its beliefs with their own. The Unity Church and the Church of Divine Science (among others) were born out of this philosophy.

The core beliefs of the New Thought Movement will probably sound familiar to you as they have become accepted axioms in Western thought.

• Mind Over Matter: Thoughts have physical power and can change the external world.

• The Law of Attraction: Thinking positive thoughts will cause good things to happen and thinking negative thoughts cause bad things to happen.

• God Is Everything: God is a creative energy, an infinite intelligence that exists in all people and all things.

• Healing Through Thought: Unhappiness and illness are the result of negative thinking. Correcting your thinking can prevent and even heal illness.

• Continuous Truth: Truth is a continuous, unfolding revelation that evolves over time rather than a fixed set of rules.

This philosophy continued to gain acceptance and spread throughout Western thought and culture into the 20th century. Now even a casual observer can easily see how TV shows and movies such as “Star Wars,” motivational speakers, self-help books, and religious teachings have incorporated these beliefs.

But it wasn’t until 1952 when a minister from Ohio rebranded it and published the result that it exploded in popularity.

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING

Norman Vincent Peale was a PK (i.e., Pastor’s Kid) and a Methodist minister. However, he changed denominations to the Reformed Church In America when he became the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City in 1932 where he remained until his retirement in 1984. He had a successful radio show called “The Art of Living” and later published his first book bearing the same name. In the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, he established the “American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry” with psychoanalyst Smiley Blanton and also co-wrote 2 books with him. Blanton would handle psychiatric issues and Peale would provide religious counseling. Peale and his wife also published the popular Guideposts magazine (a collection of inspirational stories). He was a well-known associate and consultant for five U.S. presidents (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush) and Billy Graham once said of him, “I don’t know of anyone who had done more for the kingdom of God than Norman and Ruth Peale or have meant any more in my life for the encouragement they have given me.” He was the author of 46 books but by far his most popular work was “The Power Of Positive Thinking” published in 1952 which stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 186 weeks and has sold over 21 million copies in 42 languages.

Peale’s primary thesis is that the reason people are unhappy, fail in their endeavors, and suffer sickness is due to negative thinking. Correcting these problems requires the implementation of what he refers to as “scientific principles” based on the truths of the Bible. These could be summarized as reprogramming the mind to reflect the positive reality that God is for us and, therefore, we can accomplish anything through faith in Him and faith in ourselves. This reprogramming can be accomplished through a series of specific techniques which he spells out in his book. Each technique takes the form of repeating positive affirmations or visualizations consistently over time while rejecting any negative thoughts thus changing the way we think. Changing our thoughts to positive ones unleashes the power within us to accomplish whatever we set our minds to, to change the world around us, and to live successful and happy lives.

The way he presents these techniques is by stating the perceived problem, giving an anecdotal story of someone suffering the problem, delineating how repetition of specific affirmations/visualizations will correct it, relaying an anecdotal story of how someone was cured of the problem using the technique, and then deducing that the technique will universally work for anyone.

It’s an intoxicating mishmash of pop psychology, self-hypnosis, and wishful thinking couched in the context of faith and pseudo-Christianity designed to make people feel better about themselves which, in turn, makes it easier for others to enjoy their company. So it’s easy to see how this could reduce stress in some people’s lives and how it might smooth casual business and sales relationships. Corporate America certainly seems to think so. Most of our Fortune 500 companies along with many of today’s secular self-help influencers rely on this exact same “mind over matter” framework. And our self-centered sales/consumer culture has enthusiastically adapted it to every area of our lives. It has become essentially sacred doctrine particularly in the realm of sales, motivational speaking, and self-help. But it is a gross exaggeration to say that positive thinking is a God-given mandate and that our thoughts have the power to physically change the external world. And it has had devastating, if unintended, consequences.

IPSO FACTO

It should be obvious that limiting your thinking to only positive thoughts puts a whole world of objective truth out of bounds, cripples one’s ability to think critically and evaluate risk, and anticipate the consequences of one’s actions. But, apparently, it isn’t.

If positive thinking’s application was limited to superficial business relations, then I could see a pragmatic, if amoral, benefit to it. Even then it amounts to manipulating people’s perception of you to get what you want out of them. But in every other area of life it becomes, at best, counterproductive in the long run and, at worst, absolutely insidious. Allow me to give an extreme example.

I was in the Nuclear Power Program in the U.S. Navy as an Electrician’s Mate. I found the technology fascinating and challenging but the military was not for me. However, part of the training required you to know how to reconfigure the system to keep it safe and stable no matter what happens. This involved continuous drills throwing every foreseeable casualty at us. You had to KNOW what to do. You couldn’t just “wing it” and say “that should probably work” and hope for the best. Keeping a positive attitude could actually get you and a lot of other people killed. You had to think it through and consider everything that could possibly go wrong BEFORE doing anything. Otherwise, you and all your shipmates could die and (in the case of land-based reactors) an area the size of the state of Montana could become permanently uninhabitable.

As I said, an extreme example. But it goes to show that while keeping a positive attitude might help you make a sale or get a date, it’s actually detrimental when it comes to important things like defusing a bomb, skydiving, brain surgery, assaulting a fortified position, making national policy, or operating a nuclear reactor.

Then there’s the personal effects. As someone once said, a poor self-image is sometimes just plain ol’ common sense. Or as another observed, “be yourself” is the worst advice you can give some people. The tension created by desperately striving to keep a positive attitude in the midst of what is undeniably crushing circumstances can make bad situations even more unbearable. It sets expectations sky high only for you to discover that it’s impossible for reality to match it. It creates a dichotomy in the heart and mind where you either feel worse because you’re failing to keep your “happy thoughts” or, if you succeed, you feel like you’re lying to yourself. Positive thinking makes a sacrament of denial. At best it’s a temporary band-aid for issues that need to be faced squarely and either dealt with or made peace with through accepting that not all problems have solutions. There isn’t always a happy ending. Welcome to the world.

One of the areas where Dr. Peale’s philosophy has had the most profound effect is within Western Christianity.

THE SELLING OF THE GOSPEL

For much of our country’s history, the church was known as an oppressive place that preached “hell fire and damnation.” You went in feeling bad about yourself and came out feeling worse. Many pastors pounded their congregations convicting them of sin and their failure to live up to God’s expectations and warned them to do better or else! Well, that was then…

But today’s church is all about being positive, making you feel good about yourself, and not only that, to tell you how great God feels about you, too! The pendulum has certainly swung the other way. Today’s church services feel more like a pep rally than a humbling encounter with God Almighty. The message can usually be boiled down to “here’s how much God loves you and here’s all that He wants to do for you” - the “selling points” of the gospel emphasizing your happiness, your fulfillment, plus eternal bliss, bliss on tap, with no mention of sin, its consequences, why you need a Savior, the necessity of repentance, the cost of discipleship, picking up your cross, the price of ignoring God’s warnings to His people, and the fact that we exist for God’s glory and God does not exist for our happiness.

“The greatest commandment is ‘thou shalt remain positive’ and the second is like unto it; ‘thou shalt offend no one.’ On these two commandments depend all your effectiveness.” - Peale 22:37-40, Dale Carnegie Translation

Too many of the sermons coming from pulpits sound more like a motivational speech for selling Amway.

Would it surprise you to know that the words “positive” and “negative” are not in any English translation of the Bible? There’s really no equivalent word in either the Greek or the Hebrew. Yet, we filter all of our understanding of the scriptures through these lenses. Much of the Bible would fall into the “negative” category filled with warnings of judgment and calls to repentance. The prophets, the law, the history, most of the wisdom books (except Song of Solomon), Revelation (especially the letters to the churches), even parts of the Gospels, Acts, and the epistles. But when was the last time you heard a sermon on repentance? Or judgment? Or God’s discipling of His children? I’m not saying that those are the things that the church needs to focus on, but there needs to be a balance so that “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) is presented. The inevitable effect of our assumption that we need to focus only on the positive has been that we virtually ignore the majority of scripture and have completely stopped teaching many doctrines that are essential to our understanding of God and what it means to be a Christian. And even when we do touch on those areas, we put such a positive “spin” on it that the intended meaning is missed. Instead of simply letting the scriptures speak, if it seems harsh or unpleasant, we try to find some way of fitting it into our preconceived notion that everything has to “stay positive.”

Little wonder that so many of our churches are “a mile wide and an inch deep” and riddled with half-truths, conspiracy theories, and doctrines of men. There’s no appetite for the meat of the word that would strengthen it to discern and ward off false teachers and prophets. Just stick to the milk that makes us all feel so warm and fuzzy. So when we’re told that the “Seven Mountain Mandate” is God’s plan for redeeming the world by having Christians dominate the worlds of politics and culture, or that we must establish a relationship with people before sharing the gospel, or that God would never punish His children, we just go along with it because that’s what everybody’s saying. We don’t know the scriptures well enough to know when something is unbiblical. And we’ve surrendered the ability to exercise any spiritual discernment due to a misunderstanding of one of the few verses we all do know; “judge not lest ye be judged” (Matt. 7:1). We’ve come to believe that determining right from wrong, good from evil, is in itself, wrong. Unless, of course, it’s concerning the outside world. Then it’s OK.

We cast such a wide net welcoming anyone to be a part of our church that the Body of Christ has become indistinguishable from the world of unbelievers. We may have a few religious phrases or rituals that the rest of the world doesn’t have, but our character and virtues (or lack thereof) are the same or worse than those who reject any belief in Jesus. In our zeal to have our church be “successful” (measured by noses and nickels), little if any Christian understanding or acceptance is required and we’re willing to overlook even the most blatant of unrepentant sin as long as it doesn’t cause a scandal. The doctrines of sanctification and church discipline that historically have been so vital in differentiating the church from the world have become foreign concepts. Even discussion of them is considered in bad taste and a throwback to Old Testament legalism. Too many of our gatherings could be called “The Church of the Lowest Common Denominator.” But as long as you’re willing to be nice and not rock the boat, you’re in like Flint. Why should we be surprised when almost every day we hear of a new scandal involving pastors doing things that even unbelievers are shocked by?

One of the most misunderstood scriptures today is Matthew 18:20, “for where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.” Jesus is God and God is omnipresent. It’s one of the central characteristics of being God. No matter where you go or how many people you’re with, Jesus is there. The context for this passage is concerning church discipline and the preceding two verses say, “truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.” He’s saying that when the church exercises biblical discipline, they do so with the full authority of Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. THAT’S how important church discipline is! Yet the process is rarely if ever used and, when it is, it’s usually because some scandal has become public knowledge.

For a brief period of time, I was a Calvary Chapel pastor. I wasn’t very good at it but I endeavored to teach the whole counsel of God without favor, partiality, or spin. I used to say that if you’re attending our church and living in blatant, unrepentant sin, one of three things would happen; you’d repent, you’d leave, or you’d be asked to leave. I guess it’s no surprise that we closed our doors due to low attendance after about a year and a half…

Having said all this, allow me to offer a little balm for the wounds that I’ve inflicted here. I love the Church and I know how difficult it is to keep the faith in these trying times when there’s so much confusion and conflict. Those of you who are born of the Spirit are my brothers and sisters and I’m confident that “He who began a good work in you will complete it” and we will be spending eternity together. For the most part, we are loving, kind, and generous people who want to do what’s right and want to please God and bring honor to His name. And there are many things that the church in the United States is doing well. We love and help each other and do our best to help the needy outside the church. Historically, we have been among the most generous contributors to various charities around the world and have helped millions of disaster victims and refugees. As flawed people always doing battle with our sinful natures, our reach will always exceed our grasp. And if we were just a civic or humanitarian organization whose primary goal was to be kind and help others where we can, that would be good enough. But we are called to be more.

God as my witness, I want to bring encouragement and not correction. But Jesus didn’t die on the cross to create another humanitarian social club with good intentions and religious overtones. We’ve lost our way. Maybe not completely but we’ve lost that divine spark and mixed in so much that’s not of God that we’ve become diluted, compromised, and lukewarm. Like the church of Laodicea, we see ourselves as rich, wealthy, in need of nothing but we refuse to see that we’re wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked, and God will not allow it to continue indefinitely. He sees our comfort with the way things are as being lukewarm. We’re so content where we are that we really don’t want God to move in unexpected and supernatural ways. It would be unsettling and inconvenient. Calls to repent are met with confusion and annoyance because we see nothing to repent of. We have become so fixated on staying positive for so long, rejecting the urges of the Holy Spirit trying to tell us something’s wrong as “negative”, that we no longer hear it at all. Maybe it’s not the “big” sins like murder, theft, and adultery but more subtle ones born out of convenience or pragmatism or peer pressure until we find ourselves countenancing attitudes and behaviors that are completely incompatible with Christian ethics. Things we would have rejected out of hand as clearly wrong a mere ten years ago.

This short-sighted ham-handed attempt to turn the preaching of the gospel into a sales pitch has had several unintended consequences. The next generation has seen right through it and has been turning away from the evangelical church in unprecedented numbers. They’re looking for something more authentic and less superficial than “Peter Pan advice.” Some have turned to more liturgical worship seeking meaning through ancient, mystical rituals. Others have turned to the hyper-emotionalism of youth-oriented mega churches whose services are more like rock concerts where they’re whipped into ecstatic frenzies. But many have simply dispensed with the idea of God entirely opting for a vague, individually defined spiritualism/pantheism/atheism.

Another byproduct of the synthesis of positive thinking and Christianity is the prosperity gospel. A whole gaggle of preachers like Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, T.D. Jakes and others are more than glad to tell you how God wants you to be healthy and wealthy and if you’ll just buy their latest book you’ll know how! Their mega-churches are packed because if you tell people what they want to hear, they’ll beat a path to your door. But these motivational speakers have little in common with the great men of God who came before them and suffered to ensure the integrity of the faith that was passed on to them. It’s an empty feel-good psychobabble sort of religion propagated by snake oil salesmen.

Our inability to distinguish between faith and wishful thinking has left us vulnerable to what Jesus and Paul called “ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15, Acts 20:29). Peter referred to them as “unprincipled men” (2 Peter 3:17) seeking to take advantage of Christians to build their own ego, wealth, and power. Jude said that he had intended to write concerning our common salvation, but he felt it was necessary to exhort the church to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3) because certain ungodly persons had crept into their congregations trying to turn the grace of God into license to do whatever they wish. And if it was true in the first century, it is doubly true today.

Since we have rejected the notion of exercising discernment and calling out false teachers and prophets because “judge not” seems to be the only commandment we seem determined to obey (at least when it comes to those on “our team”), we are even more defenseless than the first century churches against con men. Thinking and saying only positive things is an open invitation to those who would use the church for their own selfish ends. And that’s exactly what has happened.

A political party enthralled to a power-hungry unprincipled demagogue has co-opted the evangelical culture as its vehicle to power using a heady mixture of positive spin and bald-faced lies along with fear and hatred of “the other.” Decades of conditioning congregations to reject objective, uncomfortable truths as “negative thinking” has systematically destroyed the precise cognitive filters needed to resist this manipulation of the political narrative using religious rhetoric that plays on their perceived victimization. And when you ask people today why they have rejected the evangelical church, the most common reason given is the hypocrisy of the politicization of Christianity. We teach and say one thing, one set of values and ethics, then we endorse a party and/or a candidate that exemplifies the opposite. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon but it’s been building for decades. And it has reached its zenith with the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement and the person of Donald Trump.

GOD’S SALESMAN

I once wrote a brief parody of C.S. Lewis’ book “The Screwtape Letters” changing its setting to the United States in the aftermath of the 2016 election. The original book is a satire where a senior demon (Screwtape) is instructing his nephew (Wormwood) in how best to seduce someone known only as “the Patient.” In my version, Screwtape is dubious about his nephew’s plan to use someone like Trump to compromise and undermine the evangelical church. But when he’s successful, his proud uncle showers him with praise at how it exceeded even their wildest dreams. A poor fictional attempt at making humor out of tragedy, but, boy howdy, could you imagine a LESS likely person to garner the devotion of the body of Christ than Trump? No wonder so many say his election must have been a miracle. How in the world did this happen? Well, positive thinking had a lot to do with it.

Norman Vincent Peale was instrumental in shaping Donald Trump’s view of himself and the world around him. The Trump family were members of Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church and were indoctrinated every Sunday with the positive thinking mentality. He was a longtime spiritual adviser and friend to Donald as well as to his parents. In fact, Peale officiated at Trump’s wedding to Ivanka in 1977. Trump often credited Peale and his books as a major influence on his life and business philosophy.

In the hands of your average person, Peale’s philosophy can bring short-term benefits at the expense of an increasing cognitive dissonance and deteriorating connection with reality. But in the hands of a spoiled billionaire sociopath with an obsession with winning and revenge, it becomes a tsunami of destruction. It easy to see where key points from Peale metastasized in Trump; winning at any cost; never accepting the possibility of failing; rejecting anything negative said about him; refusing to apologize or accept blame for anything; thinking and speaking positive things in the belief that it will make them true; an absolute belief in himself and that he deserves the best; belief that he can do anything because God is on his side; a worldview that is increasingly at odds with objective reality. He’s turned arrogance, vanity, and denial into art forms.

But these are the principles that he’s lived by his entire life by and they have served him so well in the past that he sees no reason to change. So we shouldn’t be surprised by his history of bankruptcies, borrowing money and failing to pay it back, cheating business partners and wives, claiming elections are rigged when he loses, making claims about conversations and agreements with foreign leaders that never happened, claiming he can solve intractable problems and wars in a day and then blaming others when he can’t, lying incessantly about things great and small to make himself look better, taking advantage of his position to enrich himself, refusing subpoenas and defying courts, firing everybody that gets in his way, wrecking their reputations and careers, suing everybody because they’re lying about him and keeping him from winning so they’re evil and must be destroyed…the list goes on and on. And to this day, he’s never been held to account for his actions in any significant way. Gee, maybe positive thinking does work!

But he never could have pulled it off without the help of the evangelical church which remains his most ardent supporters and apologists and the core of his base. And that could never have happened without influential Christian insiders like Paula White and Franklin Graham whispering in Trump’s ear over the years. Telling him how if he would just come out against hot button issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, that he could write his own ticket with evangelicals. Stir up their passions on these emotional issues, convince them that the whole world is against them and you’re their white knight sent in to save them, and he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone dead and never lose a one. In return, these Christian leaders would win a seat at the table with unprecedented access to the halls of power. He may be a bully, but he’s OUR bully…

And that’s how someone who is the embodiment of everything Christians despise became the darling of the evangelical church and the most powerful man in the world…twice. Of course, there is no rational explanation that can adequately explain how this happened. I suspect the real explanation is a strong spiritual delusion that God has allowed as a judgment against His church in the United States. Going back to the influence of positive thinking, perhaps many Christians just could not accept the possibility that they and their Christian leaders could be that badly wrong. God wouldn’t allow something like this to be done in His name, would he? Yet here we are.

At this point in our history with Trump, I hope I don’t have to provide you with a list of his vices and character flaws. They’re blatant and he makes no effort to hide or excuse them. Even if you’ve chosen to ignore them or rationalize them away, you can’t help but be aware of them because he’s been shouting them in our face for over a decade. Any attempt to say he isn’t a bully, a narcissist, and a pathological liar would require redefining the terms.

So setting aside how such qualities would disqualify someone from getting a job at McDonalds much less controlling our nuclear arsenal, let’s consider how the Bible says we should deal with someone who claims the name of Christ yet exhibits such behavior. Remember when we were talking about church discipline? In 1 Corinthians 5:11-13 Paul tells us “not to associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person, or a greedy person, or an idolater, or is verbally abusive, or habitually drunk, or a swindler - not even to eat with such a person…remove the evil person from among yourselves.” He spelled it out even further for Timothy.

For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. - 2 Timothy 3:2-5

It’s almost like he was painting a portrait of Trump! So if we’re to avoid such men as these, not even eat with them, and remove them from our presence, is there ANY circumstance where you think God would approve of us making him the leader of our nation and the most powerful man in the world? That’s a rhetorical question.

But we can’t even begin to think that way. We can’t consider the possibility. If the idea of doing this inside our own church is unthinkable, then holding our dear “Christian” leader to such a standard is out of the question. It would require us to ponder “negative” thoughts with unpleasant consequences. It would cause conflict and division. It would require relearning discernment and how to “judge with righteous judgment” (John 7:24). And as long as we’re wholly committed to staying positive (unless we’re talking about the outside world), then such a discussion is impossible.

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” - Matthew 10:34

THE WAY BACK HOME

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” - You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe

Our country will never be like it was. There is no going back. But I hope that we can find a way forward. For ourselves, our posterity, our nation, and most importantly for the Christian faith in America. A path to restoring the integrity of the faith and the honor of the republic.

The knee-jerk response many Christians have when considering what our nation needs most is “revival.” And I agree. But revival has to start within the church. And the church will never know revival until we stop telling ourselves those “little white lies” that allow us to stay “positive” and, thereby, make it through the day. Revival always starts with repentance and acknowledging that there’s something wrong. And I don’t mean with “the world.” I mean with us as the body of believers in this nation. There has to be some intense introspection and some hard conversations. There has to be some changes in our fundamental assumptions about God, ourselves, what church should be like, how we live the Christian walk, and what is most important in life. I know that sounds daunting but, as they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step.

The first step is to acknowledge that there’s a problem. Again, not with the world, but with us as the body of Christ in the United States. If you look around at the things that are being done in Jesus’ name, at the attitudes and behavior being modeled, at the deliberate cruelty and dehumanization of “the other,” at what evangelical believers are willing to ignore and accept in their name that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, at the compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance occurring and the dishonor it’s bring to the name of Jesus and His church…and not see that there’s a problem, then there’s no point in continuing the discussion (although I doubt you would’ve made it to this point).

But in the unlikely event that describes you and you have read this far, I would ask you to do one thing. Bring it before the Lord. Don’t go seeking online for fodder to justify what you already believe, but just bring these things before the Lord in quiet, personal prayer for a few days. And ask Him if there’s any truth to it. And be willing to do as He leads you. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

But if you already acknowledge that there is a problem, you’ve made a courageous yet humbling decision. It takes bravery and humility to admit that you’ve been wrong about something. Especially when it goes against the beliefs of the majority of your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Too many times we allow our pride to prevent us from changing our minds about something we know is wrong and the end result is we become unteachable. I’ve been wrong so many times that I’ve become of the opinion that I hate it when I’m right. I’d much rather be wrong about a problem and the severity of its consequences than discover that, yeah, it really was that bad.

SEVERING THE ROOT

But having taken that step, let’s try to address the root of it and not just a few symptoms. It bears repeating that the words “positive” and “negative” are nowhere to be found in the Bible. In the scriptures, the emotional impact of a statement has absolutely no bearing as to whether or not it’s of God. So a good point to begin with is by changing the way we evaluate whether something is of God.

God is truth (among other definitive characteristics). Jesus said, “I am the truth” (John 14:6). He called the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17). God cannot lie (Titus 1:2). So we need to change our first level of evaluating whether something is of God or not to be “is it true.” Whether you’d describe the personal emotional impact as negative or positive, whether or not it aligns with what you believe or want to believe, whether it’s from your peer group or it’s from someone you don’t like, whether it offends someone or not, your primary consideration should always be “is it true” NOT how it makes you feel. How many times have we rejected what God was trying to tell us because it seemed “negative?” Christians should never be afraid of the truth.

But as Pilate quipped, “what is truth?” How do we know what’s true? The hope was that with the internet giving us access to the sum of human knowledge in our palms, mankind would experience a renaissance of wisdom and understanding. Instead, we’ve discovered that as Mark Twain reportedly said, “a lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” With everyone having a worldwide forum for their views, we’ve had an explosion of misinformation and the reality of artificial intelligence has put it on steroids. To the casual observer, online there’s little difference between Joe Bob sitting in his parents basement in his underwear living on Cheetos and pot spreading his conspiracy theories and a global news organization of experienced journalists who are passionate about reporting the truth. And the wilder the claim, the more entertaining it is to read and share.

To make matters worse, we have the most well-documented pathological liar in all of human history as the most powerful man in the world calling legitimate journalists “fake news” and insisting that we believe him no matter what the facts are or what we see with our eyes.

So how do we glean what’s true from the firehose of lies we’re subject to every day from both the world and, too often, our Christian culture? Let’s start with the obvious. Use the common sense that God gave you. If it sounds too good to be true, if it sounds too outlandish to be true, then it probably is (unless we’re talking about Trump…funny, not funny). Treat such things with a healthy dose of skepticism and try to confirm it with reputable sources of information (not Joe Bob or organizations whose primary purpose is to echo state propaganda) before you get too worked up about it and spread it all over the world. Even then, sometimes it’s best to wait for more information to come out so that you have a broader understanding of what actually occurred or was said. Remember that the way a lot of people make money is through “clickbait” designed to engender your fear or rage.

THE WORD

Secondly, as Christians we should all endeavor to be good Bereans “examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so” (Acts 17:10,11). There is no substitute for a broad knowledge and understanding of the Bible when it comes to evaluating the ways in which God works and the ways in which He refuses to work. Without having a good grasp of God’s essential character and the history of His interaction with the human race, we have little basis for refuting even the most bizarre claims. Initially, it might be a good idea to review the passages of scripture which you may have neglected over the years. Avoid reading only the parts that you’re already familiar with and which usually reflect the “feel good” parts of the Bible. Endeavor to extend your knowledge to include the more difficult or unpleasant passages. The idea is to have a fuller understanding of who God is.

Having a comprehensive understanding of the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) is entirely different from “cherry-picking” scriptures about beliefs and doctrines that you’ve already made up your mind about. It doesn’t require memorizing the entire Bible but it does require a concerted effort over time to read and understand the entirety of the scriptures. There are a variety of approaches to achieving this, but try to adopt one that will cover different areas of the Bible. Don’t let it become a burden or beat yourself up about it, but just make it a goal to be disciplined and consistent. Don’t forget, there are a plethora of Bible commentaries and sound teachers that can help you understand the more difficult passages and concepts. One resource I highly recommend is Bible Study Tools (https://www.biblestudytools.com/).

One way to ensure that you’re not basing a belief on a single verse taken out of context is by looking up all the verses pertaining to that particular subject. I have a huge, heavy copy of Nave’s Topical Bible which I used to use for that. But today it’s relatively easy to go to an online bible and do a search or to even use Google or AI to do so (just double-check the AI results).

But even with an expert level of knowledge concerning the Bible, we can still fail to understand God’s will or discern what’s true and what’s not. I had a friend whose son loved God and wanted to devote his life to furthering his knowledge of Him. So he got his Masters of Divinity and his doctorate and became an expert in Greek and Hebrew respected by those in his field around the world. Yet somewhere along the way, he lost his faith. He knows the Bible backwards and forwards, but now it’s merely an intellectual exercise and a job.

THE SPIRIT

The Word of God only becomes effective when it is combined with faith. If you do not believe and put into practice what you read, then it becomes simply “head knowledge” and “knowledge puffs up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). In other words, it becomes only a way to build up your ego and impress your friends with how much you know. But when combined with faith, the Word of God is alive and sharper than any sword (Hebrews 4:12, John 6:63). And through faith in the completed work of Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within you. And the Holy Spirit will guide you as you study the Bible, helping you to understand it, and bringing it to mind when needed.

As with physical exercise, the more we exercise our faith and the more we listen to and obey the Holy Spirit, the better attuned we become to hearing His voice and differentiating it from other voices and influences. The Holy Spirit can speak to us in a variety of ways. Sometimes it’s through His Word, sometimes through a sermon or a song, sometimes through others, sometimes through His creation, and sometimes it’s simply an inner pull or a “check” in our spirit that this is not what God would have us do in a particular situation. In Acts 16:6, Paul describes how the Spirit “forbid” him from taking the gospel to Asia. There was nothing morally wrong with it. It just wasn’t what God’s plan was for Paul at that time.

Our discernment, our ability to determine what God’s will is in a given situation and to determine good from evil, grows as we mature in the Lord. And the way we mature is by growing in the knowledge of God and consistently obeying His urgings as we receive them. However, the reverse is also true. The longer we ignore and disobey the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the less we will hear His voice, and our ability to determine His will and discern good from evil will suffer. Again, resist the urge to dismiss the conviction of the Holy Spirit as “negative” and an attack of the Enemy. Seek to remain humble, teachable, and willing to change.

SOUND DOCTRINE

The word “doctrine” has gotten a bad rap lately. We think of it as a stuffy notion and a legalistic concept reserved for theologians in their lofty towers. But sound doctrine coalesces the essence of the scriptures as studied and lived out by great men of God over the ages. And a firm grasp of church doctrine can serve as a guardrail to keep us from deviating too far one way or the other. Those claiming to have a new interpretation of scripture or revelation should be measured by those teachings that have endured for thousands of years.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths - 2 Timothy 4:3,4

THE BODY OF CHRIST

I remember when I was a teenager and a member of a Southern Baptist Church back in the 70s and someone would respond to an altar call to join the church. Our pastor would welcome them and then ask the congregation, “all in favor, say ‘aye’...all opposed? And, of course, there could be none.”

As we read previously in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 and Matthew 15:15-17, blatant unrepentant sin was never meant to be tolerated within the church. Evangelism of unbelievers is one thing. In such outreaches we practice the idea that Jesus modelled for us that “it’s the sick who need a physician.” But we need to be more discerning as to who we invite to become a part of our church. Of course, anyone is welcome to attend. But if we’re preaching the whole counsel of God without favor or partiality, then eventually they will be convicted or offended. Then (as I said earlier) one of three things will happen; they will repent, they will leave, or they will be asked to leave.

One of the fruits of our misguided obsession with “staying positive” is that we avoid saying anything from the pulpit which might offend anyone and we want everyone to feel welcome no matter their beliefs or their lifestyle. The inevitable result is that sin is ignored and becomes part of the church, lowering the threshold of acceptable conduct for everyone else and allowing Satan a foothold in the body of Christ. It changes what we teach, what we at least passively approve of, and eventually what we believe. The end result is what we have today; a church that morally is indistinguishable from the world around it and which is willing to “go with the flow” to avoid rocking the boat. That’s how political orientation becomes de facto doctrine and unchristian behavior in the name of Christ becomes rationalized.

That doesn’t mean we should go looking for sin in our brothers and sisters lives or reenact the Inquisition. But we do need to start educating our congregations on what the scriptures teach about church discipline, put a stronger emphasis on the process of sanctification, and be more thorough when evaluating potential members.

RESTORATION

Positive thinking is simply lying. It makes a sacrament of lying. First we lie to ourselves, then we lie to each other, then we fight to defend the lies, then we make the Father of Lies our master and his greatest adept our king.

The benefits that many attribute to positive thinking are primarily derived from learning to relax and not be anxious (thereby, improving your health and easing interpersonal interactions). But the same result can be achieved in any number of ways without deceiving oneself with positive white lies. The simplest way is to have a mature, balanced, realistic expectation of yourself and of life and, as Kipling opined in his famous poem “If,” treat those two imposters “Triumph and Disaster” just the same. But real peace can only be found in one place:

Stop seeking from the philosophies and tricks of men what can only be found through God.

I’m sure that Norman Vincent Peale had the best of intentions when he published his book “The Power of Positive Thinking.” In the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, living with the tension between the exuberance of the Post War Boom while under the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, it is understandable that people longed for someone to tell them that everything was going to be alright. For “a voice in the wilderness’ encouraging us all to disregard the harsh reality and fear and just believe that it would all work out. And, for the most part it did. We survived the Cold War and all the other crises that have come our way so far. But the unintended consequences have continued unabated.

The root of the problem was Peal’s unspoken assumption underlying all of his work that God exists to make us happy, successful, and fulfilled. And the Bible is a collection of tricks and self-help techniques which if we brainwash ourselves into believing will allow us to achieve whatever we wish. It trades truth for pragmatism. How could it NOT have ended badly?

But the fact is that God does not exist for our pleasure…we exist for His. And despite all of Peale’s insistence to the contrary, suffering, loss, and failure are some of the most essential and effective means for God to communicate with, shape, and guide us. It’s His divine sandpaper to remove all the rough edges of our lives that keep us from being transformed into the image of His Son. As C.S. Lewis once stated, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.”

So His plan for each of our lives REQUIRES experiences which are, by definition, negative. They can’t be avoided by changing the way we think. Nor should we want to. Even Jesus Himself “learned obedience from the things which He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). He didn’t avoid them by keeping a positive attitude. The Christian hasn’t been born who has never felt anguish, despair, depression, and hopelessness. They drive us towards God and help us to know Him in deeper and more profound ways. Always rejecting such feelings as an attack of the Enemy, castrating such emotions from our makeup with drugs, handicaps our growth and ensures that we will never get past spiritual adolescence.

How much of the Bible would’ve have never been written if the authors had restricted themselves to Peale’s philosophy? Does Paul’s description of his life in 2 Corinthians 11:23-29 sound like one of Peale’s success stories? How many great works of music, art, and literature would’ve never been if their would-be creators were mere “positive thinking” zombies? Can you imagine Adagio for Strings (Barber), War and Peace (Tolstoy), or Wheatfield with Crows (Van Gogh) being generated by a devotee of positive thinking?

Faith isn’t positive thinking or even wishful thinking. The power of faith comes not from the faith itself but from the object of that faith. Remember my Superman costume story? My faith was in the costume and the myth behind it and it ended with a broken leg. Faith in an attitude or a technique will, at best, have merely superficial results. But faith in The God Who Is There is limited only by His nature and His will. God can’t be manipulated with mind tricks or formulas to get what you want out of Him because it’s not about what you want. It’s about what He deserves, which is your love for Him above all others.

So don’t seek Him for what you think He can do for you. Humbly seek to know Him and please Him out of awe and wonder for Who He is. Forget “positive” and “negative” and focus on what’s of Him which will always be what is true. Instead of trying to manipulate others to get what you want, love and forgive them the way Jesus has loved and forgiven you. And whether you succeed or fail, feel joyful or sorrowful, are loved or hated, abide in Him and humbly allow Him to have His way with your life. Choose the lighter yoke.

As the body of Christ in the United States, if we can acknowledge the depth of our error, focus on what is true instead of what is positive, garner an understanding of the whole counsel of God, stop filtering what the Holy Spirit is saying to us, take seriously the idea of the church as the body of Christ, and unlearn what we’ve assumed the Christian walk looks like, then there is hope. Hope that the credibility and honor of the evangelical church in America can be restored. Hope that the virtues that made our nation admired around the world can once again become true.

It will never be like it was. It will be different. But different can be good, too. We’ve forever lost that naivete that only the young and inexperienced possess, but perhaps because of the price we’ll pay, we can become stronger, more empathetic, wiser. Restoration may take generations to occur if it happens at all. Or in our pride and arrogance, our nation may continue its slide towards becoming a plague on the earth. But while the future is in God’s hands, we are responsible for choices we make or fail to make. Let’s choose to humble ourselves and listen.