Both optimism and pessimism describe ways of looking at the future, and both are unhealthy in some respects. I’ll offer the lens of Biblical hope as a robust alternative. Hope is the eager expectation that God will keep his promises. This means that if we are to be hope-filled people, we need to know what God has promised, not just what we think or wish he had promised. 

Optimism and pessimism are sometimes portrayed as two ends of a one-dimensional spectrum, with “realism” as the rational, sensible midpoint. A good Christian alternative to optimism and pessimism is to ditch the spectrum entirely and focus on hope.
We all have tendencies toward and moments of optimism and pessimism, and I suspect this is due to our personalities and experiences. What I’m critiquing below is the extreme versions of optimists and pessimists.
The Optimist
An optimist will always “expect the most favorable outcome.” They see good things around every corner and are quick to point out the silver lining to the storm cloud.
When combined with Christianity, this sort of optimist can be hard to talk to. They know God has a purpose behind every difficult turn of events; they urge others to think about the ultimate good God has in store, even when the suffering is great.
While well-intentioned, this optimistic approach leaves little room for lament and grief in the face of sadness and suffering. An optimist is so uncomfortable with pain that they rush themselves and their friends through it. But God may have holy intentions in that pain.
Taken to its extreme, optimism blunts the effects of sin and the curse, and this leaves little need for Jesus. If everything is going to turn out well, why did the Son of God become a man? Why did he suffer and die?
Counsel for the Optimist
Christians can affirm some of the optimist’s instincts: for those who trust in the Lord, there certainly is good ahead! However, God has not promised good at every turn.
Read More
Related Posts:

Formed expression is what our hearts cry out for. We want our preachers to articulate the truth with a kind of clarity that enables us to grasp and retain it. We want our psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to capture and express affections we have had but have not known how to express. We want corporate prayers to be elevated, careful, thoughtful and Scriptural. We want the music to have structural integrity, a tonal center, and a normal and recognizable sense of progression. When people who are trained in the forms of rhetoric, poetry, or music give us a structure, it actually sets us free to express ourselves properly. 

Richard Weaver’s book Ideas Have Consequences is one of the more demanding reads you’ll encounter. I’ll confess it took me more than one reading to grasp his arguments. Throughout the book, Weaver keeps dropping these gems of insight, which one often picks up on a re-read. One of them is this:
Unformed expression is ever tending toward ignorance.
To put it another way, when people express themselves, whether through speech, writing, poetry, music, or other art forms, their expression needs the guidance of form. Speeches need introductions, propositional statements, main points, supporting arguments, conclusions and the like. Poetry needs a particular metre, rhyme scheme, line length, metaphor, and other devices. Music needs melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and so forth. Whatever the device used for human expression, it has a form that such expression must be poured into, like metal into a mould. The mould can be changed, but apart from the mould, molten metal will simply pour chaotically into a shapeless mess.
Weaver is suggesting that human expression is just like that. Remove the constraints of form, and human expression tends towards ignorance. If thoughts and affections are not channelled and disciplined by the structure of speech or poetry or music or the like, they become disorganised, disparate, disjointed and, in a word, chaotic. Chaos does not enlighten or educate anyone; it increases ignorance.
Consider some cringeworthy examples from within the walls of the church: A preacher whose desire to be extemporaneous exceeds his supply of helpful things to say; “testimony time,” where the one testifying cannot make his or her point without saying it twenty different ways over fifteen minutes; prayer meetings where the prayers are meandering rambles of stock clichés and trivial requests; songs written by the song leader earlier that week (or day); “prophetic singing,” where the song leader plays chords and makes up words as he goes along.
In these situations, we grow exasperated. We wish the preacher would simply stick to his notes. We wish the one praying would shorten his prayer to the things needful to ask for.
Read More
Related Posts:

How many goals can occupy the position of first in your life? Only one. “If you stay focused on one mission—seeking first Christ’s agenda of righteousness every sphere of your life and world—then,” says Jesus, “everything else will take care of itself.”

This past week, while studying George Barna’s Millennials in America report, I read “One of the most attention-grabbing attributes revealed in this research regarding the Millennial way of life is their widespread desire to identify a purpose for living. Three out of four Millennials are still searching for their purpose in life.” This evidence that Millennials want a life of purpose reminds me of the popularity of Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, which has been translated into 137 languages and sold more than 50 million copies. There is weighty evidence that human beings are designed to want a purpose for living. This episode series is designed to help the men listening accomplish exactly what so many Millennials—and so many humans in general want: experiencing the satisfaction and joy of knowing that they are accomplishing the purpose for which they were created. Our goal for this episode is to frame a biblical, one-sentence description of the mission that Christ assigned us—so that we can stay focused upon it.
So far in this series, Don’t Waste Your Life: Rule It for Jesus, we saw that the foundational commitment required to overcome a disordered way of life is the conviction that our inner private world of the spiritual must govern the outer physical world of activity. Then we observed that the only way to connect our everyday lives to God’s mission for us is intentionality. We observed Jesus demonstrating this intentionality by shutting out his outer world and retreating to a quiet place to discuss his mission with his CO, as a regular part of his life. Today we examine a third requirement for staying focused on our mission: mission clarity. A clear target on the wall to aim for is essential for living according to our mission. Fuzziness about our calling is a major cause of inaction. Competing internal drives take us down paths that consume our time and energy. I am reminded of the conversation in Lewis Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland, between a disoriented Alice and the Cheshire cat. The cat’s sage wisdom is summarized in the famous quote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
Let’s return to football for an analogy. The more I enjoy a son who coaches high school football, the more complicated I realize the offensive and defensive game plans have to be—and that’s just at the high school level! Nevertheless, as complicated as forming a game plan is, at least the mission is clear and simple. In fact, you could state the mission in one sentence. We need to move the football into the opponent’s endzone more times than they move the football into our endzone. Yes, there are extra points, safeties, field goals, and touchdowns. But at least the mission is clear: move the ball downfield on offense and stop them from moving downfield on defense.
What about our mission from Jesus? Is there some way to bring crisp clarity to our target on the wall by stating our mission in one sentence? After all, there are 7957 verses in the NT alone that relate to our mission. No wonder our understanding of it is so fuzzy! I believe Jesus has given us a one-sentence summary of our mission. It is just nine words: SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS (Mt 6:33). I believe this rich sentence is as accurate a description of the Christian’s mission as saying “The object of football is to get the ball into the opponent’s endzone more times than they get the ball into ours” is of the game of football. But Christians today often miss the simplicity and power of this mission summary. Why? Here are three reasons.
1. Many Christians today come from traditions that misunderstand the term kingdom of God. The Bible-believing Christians of the twentieth century in America were significantly shaped by a movement called Dispensationalism, which believed in inerrancy but denied the significance of the created material world, promoted an overly spiritualized Christianity, denied God’s command to Adam and Eve to shape culture (the cultural mandate), and instead urged separation from the “evil” world. Its view of the end times (called Premillennialism) deemphasized the present rule of Christ’s kingdom, teaching instead that Christ’s kingdom does not come until the return of Christ. This view ignored the command to seek the kingdom, because it saw the kingdom as primarily future. It mistakenly understood the words of the Lord’s prayer, “May your kingdom come. May your will be done” to be a request for Jesus to return soon, instead of a request for Christ’s present kingdom of righteousness to spread over the earth. Tim Keller explains:
Some conservative Christians think of the story of salvation as the fall, redemption, heaven. In this narrative, the purpose of redemption is escape from this word; only saved people have anything of value, while unbelieving people in the world are seen as blind and bad. If, however, the story of salvation is creation, fall, redemption, restoration, then things look different. In this narrative, non-Christians are seen as created in the image of God and given much wisdom and greatness within them (cf. Ps. 8), even though the image is defaced and fallen. Moreover, the purpose of redemption is not to escape the world but to renew it…it is about the coming of God’s kingdom to renew all things (“Our New Global Culture: Ministry in Urban Centers” article).
2. The second reason some believers miss the Matt 6:33 summary of our mission is that when they hear seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, they hear this command primarily as the evangelistic call to be saved. Good theology teaches us that the only way any of us is truly righteous is to be “declared righteous,” i.e. justified by God the judge through our faith. We default to thinking that seeking righteousness any other way means pursuing self-righteousness. To seek righteousness feels like moralism to us.
However, and it is a big however, IT IS THE LORD JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF WHO COMMANDS US TO SEEK FIRST HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS. Righteousness (DIKAIOSUNE) in the NT is not just a term to describe our being declared legally righteous by God the judge; it is also the term that describes our sanctification—our character growth into holiness. DIKAIOSUNE is whatever conforms to the moral will of God. It describes right living. It describes what is just, what is wholesome. To pursue righteousness is to pursue wholeness, the restoration of everything on earth broken by sin. It is to make life the way it was supposed to be before Adam and Eve brought sin’s destruction into the world. It is to restore shalom—complete flourishing over every inch of the earth through restored harmony with God, within ourselves, with other humans, and with the material world. Jesus’ mission was not only to justify (declare righteous) the elect; it was also to transform their character and restore wholeness (“rightness”) to his entire, good creation. Seeking righteousness is not moralism; it is our mission!
Read More
Related Posts: