Positively Bad!

An important Christian leader and author was recently describing a situation among people who needed to behave themselves with dignity and respect. The Christian leader concluded in several ways that the people were guilty of being negative and that they should be deliberate in finding positive ways of dealing with issues.

Some 30 to 40 years ago, the notions of positive thinking began to invade the vernacular of the church as those ideas simultaneously overwhelmed the minions of pop-psychology. As time went by, the language of the pulpit and the people of the ONE faith (there are not multiple “faiths” as is noised abroad in the media…Christianity is the one Faith – Ephesians 4:5) began to suffer from the inappropriate substitution of “positive” for “good” and “negative” for “bad.” Eventually, the condition became so acute that there are now people in leadership roles that have no capacity to say “good” or “evil/bad” since those terms are definitive of an old way of thinking. Positivism has won the day and Christians can no longer say what they mean.

Perhaps you are reading this and saying to yourself, “What difference does it make? After all, everyone KNOWS that I mean “good” when I say “positive.”” Perhaps you are right, when you are talking to people from the older frame of reference…anyone old enough to remember the 60’s. However, there are younger people that only know the more recent frame of reference; who only know the positive/negative referents. Should we Christians be vague in our communication and then expect them to make a clear decision about Jesus? (Those of you who practice vague communication should stop carping about the dominant movement of Calvinism with its strong and thoroughly inaccurate treatment of theology. At least they are strong enough to have a disciplined position…)

More importantly, this “positive” way of communicating was borrowed from evolutionary doctrine. Now we find ourselves in a diabolical frame of reference. Think about it. If evolutionary doctrine is true, then there can be no value judgments regarding good and evil. If evolutionary doctrine is true, then the first chapters of Genesis are a total fabrication and the tree of the knowledge of positive and negative should be more appropriate than the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Furthermore, the fruit juice of that tree has not been effective in the makeup of Adam’s progeny and there was no real need for Jesus to die for unguilty people (and, of course, if true, then the Calvinists win the day with their ridiculous notion of total depravity…another expression of evolutionary doctrine) since they could never understand when they did something wrong. Again, the terms “positive” and “negative” should be used in their technical capacity to show direction, not value. The very negative activity of digging a proper foundation is GOOD in relation to building a proper house (Matthew 7:26…notice that the man was a fool and not merely working from a negative disposition). The very positive activity of building a casino or brothel (see how the evolutionary terminology has embedded itself in your consciousness when you read this) is evil. Digging a foundation is negative because it removes and discovers (like criticism…so “constructive criticism” is impossible) what lies beneath. Erecting a building is positive because it adds material and purpose that was formerly missing. The value of the activity is established on the basis of its relationship to God (Luke 18:19).

Finally, positive thinking is evolutionary in origin and trajectory because it can be used for value judgment by those who want to join forces with evil and shift the basis of good and evil at will. If homosexuality is truly evil but positivism wins the day, then there is no basis for calling it bad. The minority opinion has to be absorbed into the majority opinion and the language shifted (the basis for this is the expansion of guilt-ridden democracy…Greek laden Americanism that feels guilty because it has departed from the one true God (Romans1:20-22)) to accommodate the “positive” aspect of existence. Evolution says, “All must be incorporated into the whole and we will see in the end which direction was the most positive.” It is another way of saying, “Existence is its own justification.” That idea is as stupid as the entire world in 1939 saying, “Hitler is a part of the whole and we must leave him alone to see whether his negativism is the force of the will to power that evolves and includes us all (Chamberlain).” Thank God that not all of the thinkers of that day had evolved in a positive way and made up their minds to crush evil with force when it was necessary (Churchill). The church of today would be confused as to what side it should be on. Leadership should only be allotted to those who think and speak clearly according to a cruciform frame of reference. The knowledge of good and evil embedded in each of us needs clear direction, not soft sell whoo haah based on Psalm 14.