Reading: from If Yes Is the Answer, What Is the Question?
   by George Kimmich Beach

     Most of us know far more clearly what we do not believe than what we do.  We may have strong opinions about religion, but when it comes to our personal convictions of religion, we are not so sure.  Those who profess utter certainty about their beliefs often seem narrow and dogmatic; we find them unreliable and sometimes dangerous.  Yeats, in “The Second Coming,” lamented,

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst
  Are full of passionate intensity.

     “To say no to what denies and destroys is also to say yes to what affirms, builds, creates.” [writes Jacob Trapp]  Underlying and nerving our negations – our protests against “what denies and destroys” – are our affirmations, yet to be articulated.  In the name of what, for the sake of what, do we protest?  To ask this question is to become conscious of our affirmations.  The questions implied in our negations, then, are the questions to which we answer yes.  The questions that we pose to ourselves in moments of existential decision give direction to our quest and shape its outcome...

     It is no wonder that we find it easier to say what we do not believe than what we do.  Negation is the beginning of self-differentiation, just as the young child discovers “No!” as a way of asserting, “I have my own will.”  The wonder is that denial is a first and perhaps a necessary step toward affirmation.  Jacob Trapp’s rejection of pure negation points the way to a fundamental affirmation – an “everlasting Yes to existence.”

Sermon 
        Accentuate the Positive.  That was a song from way back before my time, back in the mid forties.  It expressed some of the basic principles of positive thinking, calling on listeners to “spread joy up to the maximum; bring gloom down to the minimum.”  A few years later, in 1952, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale published his long-lasting best-seller, The Power of Positive Thinking, which has since sold nearly twenty million copies.  There has clearly been an audience for his message of positivity.

         What exactly is that message?  Peale articulated it like this in a speech before a group of Merrill Lynch real estate associates:

"There is a deep tendency in human nature ultimately to become precisely what you visualize yourself as being. If you see yourself as tense and nervous and frustrated, if that is your image of yourself, that assuredly is what you will be. If you see yourself as inferior in any way, and you hold that image in your conscious mind, it will presently by the process of intellectual osmosis sink into the unconscious, and you will be what you visualize.

"If, on the contrary, you see yourself as organized, controlled, studious, a thinker, a worker, believing in your talent and ability and yourself, over a period of time, that is what you will become.

         The idea here is that all of our feelings, beliefs and knowledge are based on our internal thoughts, both conscious and subconscious.  We are in control, whether we know it or not.  And so we’re better off if we do know it, so that we can exercise that control in ways to make our lives more positive, less negative.  Of course these aren’t new ideas.  Abraham Lincoln was quoted a hundred fifty years ago as saying “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

         Now I agree with this way of thinking, at least up to a point.  In my experience there is a definite correlation between my attitude and my experience.  If I go into a situation convinced I’m going to be miserable, I usually am, proving  either that I’m prophetic, or that I have helped to create my own misery.

         On the other hand, if I encounter an experience with an air of optimism, determined to extract something positive, there is reliably something positive to be found.  Even if it’s a mere silver lining embedded in a great dark cloud of negative experience.  I’ve said before that I don’t believe that misery and suffering are meant to teach us lessons.  But I do believe that it is nearly always possible to find or make meaning out of difficult life events.  That is, we find something positive in spite of, not because of, our difficult circumstances.

         And so a positive attitude or approach to life can influence the experience of  life in a positive way.  But to what extent is that a matter of controlling our own internal and external responses, and to what extent is it a matter of controlling the external circumstances we face?  Well I would contend that the only thing we can hope to control is our own responses – and even that’s not as easy as we might hope.  We may also have some influence over other people’s attitudes and behavior, to the extent that positivity is contagious.  But we can’t control them.  And we certainly can’t control all those aspects of our world that necessarily follow the physical laws of the universe.

         Good and evil exist in the world, regardless of our attitude.  Let me say that again.  Good and evil exist in the world, regardless of our attitude.  A positive attitude will not banish evil from your world.  It can help you put that evil into perspective, or it can hide it from view at least temporarily, but it cannot banish it.

         There are some who grant more power to positive thinking than I am willing to acknowledge.  That includes some religious movements.  One with which I am slightly familiar is the Unity School of Christianity.  One of the five basic ideas that make up the Unity belief system is that “we create our life experiences through our way of thinking.”  Not “we influence” or “we affect” or “we interpret”, but “we create our life experiences through our way of thinking.”

         To me this takes the idea of the power of positive thinking to an extreme, with implications that worry me.  If we create our reality with our thoughts, then if that reality includes suffering and hardship, it’s in some sense our own fault.  Of course there’s a grain of truth there.  You probably all can think of someone who seems to always find the worst in any situation, and who seems to wallow in misery.  The idea that they bring it on themselves makes intuitive sense.

         But what about the millions of victims of genocide, or the thousands of victims of terrorism, and the millions upon millions of friends and family that suffer those losses?  Did they bring it upon themselves?  Is it their own fault?  Did they fail to think positively enough?  I could not muster the presumption to suggest such a thing to those victims or their survivors.  If they can find some shred of meaning, some ray of light emerging from their darkness, then I admire them for that.  And I think it’s appropriate for all of us to seize on and celebrate signs of hope in the compassionate and healing responses to tragedy.  At least so long as it does not lead us to minimize or deny the evil reality of the tragedy and its accompanying suffering and human misery.

         Another way of dealing with evil and suffering besides blaming the victim, is to deny its very existence.  An illustration:  Today is St. Patrick’s Day, the day when we celebrate the patron Saint of Ireland, renowned for driving the snakes out of that land.  I remember learning that story way back in elementary school.  What I didn’t learn was that those snakes were metaphorical.  St. Patrick actually drove out the Druids, who were the spiritual leaders of the Irish Celts, and whose symbol was the Snake of Wisdom.

        Patrick was sainted primarily for converting Ireland to Christianity, which he did through coercion and destruction of a longstanding way of life and belief.  But that harsh reality of intolerance and violence is lost, or covered up by our light-hearted, positive spin as we celebrate the hero who got rid of all the snakes.

        What I’m trying to suggest this morning is that a positive attitude and approach to life can be healthy and helpful, but not if it means denying or suppressing or rationalizing the darker sides of reality.  Poet Czeslaw Milosz says “on one side there is luminosity, trust, faith, the beauty of the earth; on the other side, darkness, doubt, unbelief, the cruelty of the earth, the capacity of people to do evil.  When I write, the first side is true; when I do not write, the second is.”

        And so Milosz writes.  He does so not to deny the dark side.  He acknowledges both sides, but chooses to throw in his lot on the side of hope, of faith.  It does require faith to maintain a sense of hope for the future.  But a blind faith that survives by closing one’s eyes to harsh realities is a shallow, superficial faith.  Facing the real world – with its hate and terror and death – and yet maintaining a sense of hope, requires a deeper faith.  It requires a faith built on affirmation, not on negation.

         I can say what I don’t believe.  I don’t believe there’s a personal deity guiding my steps and listening to my prayers.  I don’t believe there’s a paradise waiting for me after death if I follow the right rules and say the right words.  I don’t believe all the answers were set down in writing once and for all thousands of years ago.

         I could go on, but all these non-beliefs do not give me any affirmative guidance for how to live positively and keep hope alive.  Rejecting those beliefs that don’t seem to do the job is only a first step, a clearing away that makes room for affirmative beliefs that can ground my life.

        So what are some of those beliefs that can ground a hopeful faith?  Before I consider some specific beliefs that help to sustain me, I’d like to share the thoughts of Religious Educator Sophia Lyon Fahs on some qualities of belief that bear consideration.  She writes:

Some beliefs are like walled gardens.  They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.
Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies...
Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved, friends from enemies.
Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern.
Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one’s own direction.
Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration...
Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.
Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.

         And so it does indeed matter what we believe.  And I choose to seek those beliefs that are expansive, that affirm my bonds with others, that encourage exploration and growth.  Among the beliefs that sustain me: I believe that there is the potential for both good and evil in every person, and that my actions can affect the balance of good and evil in the world.  And so I choose to accept responsibility for doing what I can to tip that balance.  I believe that there is a spiritual reality based on the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things.  And so I choose to live and work in community with others, and to try and find my rightful place in the web of life.  I believe that revelation is ongoing, that there are truths and there is wisdom to be found in the living of life.  And so I choose to hold myself open to embrace meaning wherever it can be found – to continue growing myself and encouraging others to continue their growth as well.

        What affirmative beliefs do you embrace?  To what questions do you answer “Yes”? I encourage you to reflect on these things, and to let your life be defined not by what you reject, but by what you affirm, and by how you live out those beliefs.

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