Positivity

Positivity is defined as “the practice of being or tendency to be positive in attitude.”  Positivity also means “consisting in or characterized by the presence or possession of features or qualities rather than their absence.”  So, a positive person is one who focuses on the presence of specific characteristics as opposed to what is lacking.

Further, the way this word is used in common speech refers to a personality trait where a person focuses on the good things, and not only focuses on the good things but focuses on them all the time, usually to a point where they are always the type of person who creates desirable feelings in other people and in a consistent fashion.

This attitude is highly desired in people.  I think this is because it leads to a more productive work environment.

Positivity has also taken center stage in many self-help books.  Look at titles such as The Power of Positive Thinking, Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, and The Power of Positive Leadership.  And unfortunately, as many churches have been confusing self-help with the Christian message, this attitude has entered our churches.

Yet, this attitude is gravely misguided.  And it can harm us spiritually and by extension socially and personally if it is closely adhered to.

What?!

Consider that one of the oldest images of the Church is that of a hospital.  When people go to the hospital, they don’t talk about the good things. They talk about the bad things.  This in turn leads to healing.

So am I saying that someone should be a negative person?  Absolutely not. That is the other extreme of this continuum.  Negative people can cause others to never see the good, which often times is plentiful in and around us.  They can also cause others to develop emotional dysregulation, and shut down their motivation to do any type of good in the world because they feel like nothing they do can or will have significance.  This is certainly not an attitude anyone should take.

Holy Negativity

Yet, there is a type of negativity, which is modeled for us in the Bible, that leads to holiness and ultimately goodness.  This must be practiced if we are ever to grow spiritually. 

Where is that in the Bible?  And how can we practice it?

First, we see this in the Psalms.  Out of all the Psalms, 60 of them are laments, which are songs of sorrow.  This is 40% of all the Psalms.

The Book of Jeremiah and the Lamentations are also books which model holy negativity.

The Book of Job too is a very negative book because it deals with one of the most fundamental problems of the spiritual life which is: why do bad things happen to good people?

But why though?

Reason # 1: Sometimes there are much more negatives than positives

Because sometimes there is nothing to be positive about.  This is the first reason for holy negativity.

Negativity properly means “characterized by the absence rather than the presence of distinguishing features.”  It does not properly indicate a bad attitude. For example, if we say we are unnoticed, this is negative. It means nobody gives us attention, not that we receive bad attention.

Also, often there are many things that are not present in our lives such as peace, harmony, predictability, and happiness.

In the case of Job, he went from being a very rich man living in comfort and blessed with ten children to being poor meaning lacking wealth, to suffering meaning lacking comfort and peace, to being childless.  He also lost his health and became sick with something similar to shingles.

Had the Judeo-Christian tradition been nothing but self-help positivity, we would never have received the Book of Job.  This book is one of the most thought-provoking texts ever written, and it has inspired reflection from Jews, Christians, and even those outside of these two religious traditions for thousands of years.  Indeed, the longest of all the books of the Church Fathers is The Moral Reflections on Job by St. Gregory the Great, which in modern editions is nearly 2000 pages in length.  This length did not discourage people from reading it; it was the second most produced book in Medieval Europe.  Some even risked life and limb and traveled across countries in order to get copies of this book and bring them back to their own lands.  Why? One of the many reasons is that the Book of Job powerfully destroys the idea that bad things happen due to a person’s sins or due to God’s grace leaving someone.  It elevates us to understand the providence and goodness of God.

Also, the books that Jeremiah the Prophet left us are very negative.  In his prophecies, God told Jeremiah that there was no way out for the Jews.  This was because God gave them the course of action they should follow to escape the destruction of their land, which was to submit to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.  But the Jews were going to continue to listen to the false prophets who told them that they would not fall to the Babylonians, so the Jews including the king and rules resisted the Babylonians.

Jeremiah intercedes with God to prevent this, but God does not hear him. Then Jeremiah even writes down his own thoughts and reflections at the end of many prophecies.  After the final destruction which God has foretold happens, Jeremiah writes a second book called the Lamentations. It is a poem whose imagery is piercing.

In chapter 2:11 of the Lamentations he writes, 

“My eyes fail with tears,

My heart is troubled;

My bile is poured on the ground

Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,

Because the children and the infants

Faint in the streets of the city.”

Then in Chapter 3, we find the most piercing of all the lines Jeremiah the Prophet ever put to paper,

There is the idea that if we are faithful to God and we ask in His name, then whatever we ask for will be granted us.  Our Lord Jesus Himself said this in the Gospels. He said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

Most people think this means that God will answer all of our prayers if we are faithful.  Yet this is due to a misunderstanding of what it means to “ask in His name.” These people think that this means that if we put his name on a prayer usually by ending it “in Jesus’ name,” then the prayer is in His name and will be answered.  This is actually true, but only partially.

What “in His name,” actually means is that what we prayed is within the will of God.  But as becomes clear, the will of God will lead to God not answering some of our prayers.

Many lose hope in God when some of our prayers are not answered, and this leads them to stop praying altogether and even stop believing in God.

But the example of how this situation will arise and how His not answering our prayers can lead to good is that our Lord Jesus Himself, who is the Son of God, had a prayer that was not answered.  This very fact should demand further reflection from us because it teaches us a valuable lesson.

Jesus’s Unanswered Prayer

On the night of His betrayal, our Lord Jesus prayed to God “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will” (Mark 14:36).  This cup referred to His suffering.

Our Lord prayed earnestly, fervently, and even to the point that he was sweating, and sweating blood (Luke 22:44).  Sweating blood is attested in medical research as arising from extreme anxiety that leads to high blood pressure and elevated heart rate.  This is how earnestly our Lord Jesus Christ was praying, and God the Father did not answer His prayer.

Why?  Because it was God’s will that humanity would be saved by the suffering, death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If God the Father granted our Lord Jesus His prayer, then we would not have been saved.

The reality is that it was greater for our Lord to suffer, die, and resurrect and “draw all peoples” to Himself from “every tribe, tongue, and nation” and across the centuries and to restore them to the image and plan God had for them in the beginning than to simply have come and taught like any other prophet.

His death reversed and defeated sin, death, and the powers of evil by exposing them and giving us a model of how to live our lives by imitating Him, the Son of God who became human according to the original purpose for how humanity was to be.

So what does His unanswered prayer and the results that came from it teach us about unanswered prayers in general?

1. Unanswered Prayers Show that God is Ultimately in Control

First, it teaches us that God’s plan is often beyond our grasp, and if we follow Him, then we must be ready to conform to His plan even if it is painful.  Further, if God answered every one of our prayers, then we would be God, and He our servant. But this is not the case because God is the creator, and is all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere.  Since this is the case and since He is our creator, God has a plan for our lives, but that doesn’t mean we have no freewill. When we choose to follow what He says and where He leads us, we fulfill His plan in our lives freely.

It is like a marriage.  When a man first set his eyes on the one he married, he took note of her appearance and her personality.  Those attracted him, and this was out of his control. Yet something was in his control which was whether he continued talking to her or not, and whether he asked her out, and whether he continued dating her, and whether he asked her to marry him, and whether he continued to be married to her.  In all the following actions, he was fully free. And she, if she first found him attractive, and found his personality fitting, every time she said yes, that was fully in her control. In both cases, there was an element that was out of their control, but their responses were not out of their control.

Further, in marriage, challenges arise.  These can be due to life in general or to the marriage in specific.  Assuming both the man and the woman are faithful, when challenges arise, they will face the challenges together and with a mind to solve the challenges together, not to run away from them.  The challenges arising are out of their control, but their responses to those challenges are free.

This is how our relationship with God is.  He has a plan for our lives, and while that is out of our control, our responses to Him and the actions that follow are not.

2. Unanswered Prayers Retune Our Prayer Lives

Second, unanswered prayers also teach us how to pray for the things that last such as our personal spiritual growth, asking God to help us develop certain virtues, and asking God to grant us the grace of serving others to the glory of His name instead of asking God for material objects.

For example, “God please give me to work at this city because it is close to the beach, and my family, and it will be easy there” vs “God please put me at where I will be established, where I will be able to do good work, and where I will be able to make a positive change in the lives of others.”  The first prayer is totally focused on the material; the second prayer is totally focused on the spiritual. You will find that God almost consistently grants the spiritual prayers because they are in line with His will.