Week 15 Sunday
Week 15 Sunday
Negativism and Inferiority Attitudes
1 Corinthians 1:26-29; 3:21-23; 2 Corinthians 8:11-12
We come now to the sixth outstanding enemy of human living: negativism and inferiority attitudes. One is almost tempted to put this down as Enemy Number One. But as negativism and inferiority attitudes are closely allied to fear, we may put this down as Enemy Number Two.
This enemy is all the more dangerous because it manifests as its opposite—superiority attitudes. One who is not sure of himself talks loud, boasts, swaggers, to impress others, and tries to bolster up himself with outward show. “I am coming to see you in a Cadillac,” phoned a friend of long ago. He had wasted his great possibilities, and so tried to make himself big by talking “Cadillac” instead of “Ford.”
Jesus saw small people trying to be big; so he said, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” (Matt. 6:27 KJV). We try to add to our stature by taking thought of outer decorations to make up for inner inferiorities. A sign on a livestock market appealed to this underlying psychology by saying, “Call Attention through Cattle.” Small people, who could not call the attention of others to themselves because of what they are inherently or because of what they have accomplished, could gather the attention of people through being associated with fine cattle. Standing on a steer’s back to appear taller! A feat that, to say the least, is precarious, for the steer might pull out from under you and let you down—perhaps with a ridiculous bump! That is what usually happens; those who try to appear great end in being ridiculous.
A psychologist says that “there are a million chances to one that those who claim superiority are unpopular.” They defeat their own purpose. “All who want to save their lives” by concentrating on them, dressing them up to appear bigger than they are, are bound to defeat their own purposes; in the words of Jesus, they “will lose them” (Matt. 16:25 CEB). Superiority attitudes and delusions of grandeur are the reverse side of an inferiority complex. Shun superficial superiorities as you would shun the devil, for they are much the same.
O God, I want to be what I am without any sham. But I want to be more: I want to be the person you intend me to be. Then I shall stand with simplicity and dignity in your will and purpose. For everything in your will is great—perhaps I shall be great, too, if I stay in your will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 15 Monday
Touchy People and Unsure People
Romans 12:3, 16; 14:1, 4, 10, 13, 15
Yesterday we began our meditations on negativisms and inferiority attitudes, and we saw that some assert themselves most when they are least sure of themselves. I know of a man who, feeling inferior to his wife, asserts his superiority by insisting on buying her clothes and telling her what to wear, to his wife’s dismay! He insists on bossing her outer life, for he feels inferior before her mental and spiritual life.
Sometimes aggressive attitudes and periods of discouragement and self-depreciation alternate. This cycloid behavior results in moodiness. Such a person ranges in temperament from very high mountains to very low valleys. But often the attitudes of retreat and defeat result, not in mood depression, but in emotional “tics.” Professor David Eitzen, of Southern California School of Theology, says, “Slamming the door, walking rapidly, stamping the floor, arguing with one’s associates, spanking the children—these are manifestations of a difficulty not faced and intelligently approached.”* Whether manifested as moodiness and sulkiness or as an outburst of temper, the difficulty is the same sense of inward inferiority. The person is out of sorts with him- or herself, and so vents ill humor on others and the surroundings. These people create outer earthquakes usually in order to hide their own inner soul-quakes. Just as bodily shivers are an attempt of nature to bring up one’s temperature when it has fallen below par, so these shakes of temper are a psychological attempt to bring up the temperature of the inner self! The person is inwardly slipping, and so takes to outer shouting. This is the law of overcompensation at work.
Touchy people are unsure people. They are looking for slights, for they have a subconscious feeling that they deserve them. You can tell the size of a person by the size of the things that upset her or him. Not long ago I received a special-delivery letter from a woman asking me to come a rather long way to see her, for she was afraid she was going to have a total breakdown. Cause? Her plans for Christmas had been upset!
O God, I come to you to find power to be really strong. Save me from these make-believe strengths that leave me weak. I want to be the kind of person nothing without can upset, for I am so sure within. But only as I am inwardly fortified by your strength can this happen. I expose myself to your true strength. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
* Published source unknown.
Week 15 Tuesday
Made for Positive Achievement
Acts 13:13; Galatians 2:11-13; Hebrews 10:38-39
You and I are made in our inmost being for positive achievement: to be outgoing, to master our circumstances, to create. If we are not positively creating and producing, the machinery of life will get out of gear, for we are geared to creation. Negativism, therefore, not only keeps us from achieving; it also keeps us from being. The personality breaks down under negative attitudes. We are not made for them.
I know a person whose first attitude toward everything new that is presented is no. She lives in the objective mood. And hence her life is frustrated, when, with her powers, it might be fruitful. A more dramatic illustration is that of a woman of intellectual ability who became afraid of life, pulled in, and made retreat her life strategy. When she pulled in on herself and refused to be outgoing, nature began to take its toll; her knees began to stiffen. She became a confirmed invalid. Not only did her knees stiffen; her brain cells also began to decay through worry and anxiety and fear. As the doctors put it, “Her brain cells are rotten with fear.” She became impossible, for herself and others. The life forces were breaking down under this retreatism. So the doctors decided to cut off that part of the brain that resides over foresight, now corrupted through fear and worry, and let it atrophy, so that the rest of the brain would function, but without the fear and worry. That fear and worry had to be got rid of, either by operation or by the cleansing power of faith. She refused the faith: “I have run away too long. If you had got hold of me years ago, you might have headed this off. There is nothing now but the operation.”
Retreatism and negativism are infections that corrupt the brain cells, make flabby the tissues, and poison the spirit. You must decide that they will have no part nor lot within you, since you want to live abundantly.
My God and Lord, I belong to you, you Creator God. I would link myself with your Creative Spirit and become creative and positive and victorious. For I belong to you today and tomorrow and forever. I do not belong to a wistful sighing over a dead past or to a fear of today—I belong to victory! Help me take it. Amen.
Week 15 Wednesday
Do Not Dress Up Negativism as a Friend
John 6:66-68; Galatians 5:1; 2 Timothy 1:7
If we are to get out of negativism and inferiority attitudes, we must take certain positive steps. Our getting out will not just happen. No startling miracle of deliverance will happen unless we cooperate. The miracle of deliverance will work as we work, but only as we work. Don’t sit helplessly and expect either God or humanity to perform a miracle on you. But both God and humanity can perform a miracle through you, if you cooperate. Then take this first step: Recognize negativism and inferiority attitudes as enemies—do not try to dress them up as friends. You will be tempted to look upon negativism as prudence, and inferiorities as humility. Strip off these false cloaks, and see these attitudes in their nakedness—as enemies of you and of your possibilities.
When a hard thing comes before you, you will take one of four methods in dealing with it, according to Dr. M. S. Congdon, a psychologist: “Flee it! Fight it! Forget it! Face it!” The first three ways will end in failure—only the fourth opens a door. Your first step toward release is facing the facts—the whole of the facts. Don’t be like the minister who began by saying, “This is a difficult text; having looked it in the face, we will pass on.” Don’t pass on until you have really looked your difficulty in the face and have seen it for what it is—not something that must be executed, defended, explained away, or rationalized, but something that must be ousted.
A minister took the first step to victory when he arose and said in a meeting: “ ‘I can’t,’ and ‘tomorrow’ are the twin evils of my life, crippling me and my ministry. ‘I can’t do things,’ or ‘I can’t do them today’—these are the paralyzing hands laid on me.” He was on his way to victory in the honest segregation of these enemies and in recognizing them as such. After segregation comes elimination—but first segregation.
You frank and openhearted Christ, help me to be frank and openhearted, for I want to be adequate and contributive. Take from my life all negative thinking, all refusal to accept responsibility, all fearful attitudes, and let me face life with a confidence and with a song. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Week 15 Thursday
Frustrating Myself
Galatians 2:21; Philippians 4:13; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 4:10-11
Now take the second step to release—let this idea grip you: I am made in the inner structure of my being for creative achievement; when I draw back from that I frustrate myself.
One of the outstanding ministers of this country is Dr. Shirkey of San Antonio, Texas, a radiant soul and contagious. But he came near living up to his name—or down to it! For he told me that as a lad he had supersensitive fingertips, and at last his mother consented to let him grow long fingernails to protect them. One day, his schoolteacher called him up before the class and made him cut his nails publicly. This humiliation turned him against school, so he had to invent sicknesses to keep away. One of these make-believe ills was a pain in the hip. The pain became real and grew so serious that a surgeon decided to put him in a cast, for which measurements were taken. When the lad saw what was happening, he broke down and told his mother the cause. He never went back to the doctor. He is an Apollo in health today, but he came near to being crippled all his days. The negative retreatism was arrested in time by an honest facing of the facts.
A doctor was dealing with a patient whose life was running on half of its cylinders. “You were brought up by women,” said the doctor. “How do you know?” the man asked, rather startled. The doctor replied, “I can see all the don’ts you got before five years of age coming out in you now.” It was true—he had been brought up by unreasonable maiden aunts. Those don’ts had got down in his subconscious mind and were controlling his conduct, inhibiting him from being a creative person, and filling him with fears.
In the account of Pharaoh’s refusal to let Israel go is this passage, according to Moffatt: “The whole land was ruined with gnats” (Exod. 8:24). Many a life is ruined by tiny things like gnats; and the worst gnat is a fearful don’t.
O God, you who wills that I will, help this will of mine to will your will. Help me link my littleness to your greatness, my faintheartedness to your loving aggression, my holding back to your ongoingness, my fear to your faith—then nothing can stop me. Amen.
Week 15 Friday
Shut your Mind against All Negative Thoughts
Jeremiah 1:6-10; 2 Corinthians 9:8; Ephesians 2:19-22; Revelation 19:10
We saw yesterday that the second thing to do was to realize that all negativism and inferiorities are unnatural, a sin against ourselves and our possibilities as well as against others and against God. A country girl who had moved to a city fainted every time she saw a cow, even in the city. That cow was connected with something unpleasant back on the farm; so the girl’s mind went into reverse at sight of the animal and she fainted away to escape the cow and what it stood for. It was necessary for her to recognize that such a retreat was unnatural, something imported, something for which she was not made—a mind infection.
The third step toward release is to shut your mind against all negative thoughts the moment they come. Do not entertain those thoughts and give them a seat; for if they get your attention, they will get you. Meet them at the door and slam it in their faces; lock the door and throw the key under a red-hot stove so you cannot get at it. Paul literally says that: “Avoid foolish and thoughtless discussions” (2 Tim. 2:23 CEB).
A nurse disliked a patient exceedingly. On the threshold of going in to see this repulsive patient, she paused for prayer. The words came, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40). Love came. No patient was ever repulsive again. It was well she did not act on the negative thought.
Don’t admit, even to yourself, let alone to anyone else, that you are inferior or afraid. Above all, don’t talk about it as a virtue—it isn’t; it’s a sin. “Why don’t you admit your inferiority?” said a racist to an African American. To which the reply came: “I am a child of God, and out of loyalty to my Father, I cannot accept that I am inferior.” As a child of God, you are not inferior; you are capable of infinite possibilities. So our faith in ourselves is not a lifting-ourselves-with-our-bootstraps faith. It is a faith rooted in the fact of our relationship with God. The American mystic Rufus Moseley puts it in these quaint and beautiful words: “The Holy Ghost makes me put back my shoulders.”*
My Lord, in you how can I be a worm of the dust? I’m not. I’m your child, made in your image, enforced by your mind, empowered by your purposes, rekindled by your love, and remade by your redemption. I cannot be inferior since you are not, for I am in you. Amen.
*Published source unknown.
Week 15 Saturday
No Illusions of Grandeur!
Romans 12:3-8; 1 Corinthians 3:18-23; 6:19-20
If you are to shut your mind against all negative thinking, you must also shut your mind against all illusions of grandeur, the fourth step toward release. The temptation will be to swing back from one attitude to its opposite, and, as mental compensation, to indulge in extravagant notions about yourself. But you are neither a worm nor a wonder; you are just a bundle of fine possibilities, if developed.
A father said to his daughter, who had been slipping in her achievements: “You are not the least bit inferior.” To which the girl replied: “No; the fact is, I’m superior in many things.” That reply was revealing, for it showed the secret of her ineffectiveness. She had rebounded from thoughts of inferiority to illusions of grandeur, nursing the idea that she was not like the common herd, and filling her mind with fantasies and daydreaming. From being in the dust, she had gone to living in fairy castles in the air. She had to get back to earth.
You don’t belong either groveling in the dust or soaring in the clouds; but you belong to the earth, with your feet on it, and walking straight into tasks that you can do.
That leads to the fifth step: discipline your aspirations to possibilities. If you set standards of achievement too high, beyond the reach of your powers even when they are used by God, then you may become discouraged and give up and do nothing. I know a youth who, because he had such high aspirations of achievement that he couldn’t reach those high goals, would lie on his bed and read. Since he couldn’t do everything, he would do nothing. He should have disciplined his goals to the possible.
A minister felt that he should do the work of D. L. Moody. He prayed hard and worked hard, but no spectacular results came. And then he came to the conclusion that when God got hold of Moody, God got hold of a bigger man, and that God expected this man to do his own work, not Moody’s.
O God, stretch me to my utmost—and that utmost means all I can be in and through you; but don’t let me cry for the moon. Help me evaluate what I can be in you, and then let me go out for that goal with all I have and with all you can give to me. In Jesus’ name. Amen.