Week 17 Sunday
Week 17 Sunday
Another Road with a Dead End—Negativism
Philippians 4:11-13
Negativism, or retreatism, is a road with a dead end—it gets you nowhere. There are three possible attitudes regarding reality: (1) escape it, (2) rebel against it, (3) cooperate with it. Many do not want to cooperate with reality; much less do they want to rebel against it; so they try to escape from it. Escapism becomes a life attitude. This, of course, may be almost entirely unconscious. For the self would not try to escape from reality, unless the self could save its self-respect by convincing itself that the attitude is justified. This self-justification takes many forms, sometimes the development of an illness. Such a person says, “I could do this if I were only well, but I am not well, so I am justified in not trying.”
A very conscientious man, given a job that was too big for him, developed asthma every time he got into a jam and couldn’t handle the situation. This was unconscious, of course, for he had to provide himself with a reason for not being able to handle the situation. Asthma was the reason. It was mentally induced. It has been estimated that five-sixths of the cases of heart trouble among servicemen in 1917–18 were wrongly diagnosed as heart disease. “Patients by the thousands were discharged and pensioned on that basis, and, in fact, became chronic heart disease cases,” says Francis Sill Wickware.* These persons, under the stress of battle, would want to get away from it, but it is awful to be a coward. They would reason, “I’m not a coward, but my heart is acting up, so my desire to get away is justified.” To keep up the self-justification, the heart condition has to be maintained—and is, unconsciously. So the person settles down to chronic invalidism. The heart trouble is not structural but functional.
I know of a woman who has an underlying self-pity because of her troubles in life. She has a continuous series of accidents, far more than the laws of chance would justify. Unconsciously, she produces these accidents to justify her self-pity. She has powers that could be greatly used if she could get rid of her self-pity. Another woman, self-centered, has stomach upsets and pains constantly. Her husband had a stroke, and she complains that sympathy is given to him when he has no such pains as she has. She is living by negativism.
O Christ, you came to save us from all running away, all evasion of responsibility, all subterfuge. Save me from all unreality. Help me to be real—in everything. For I cannot evade; I must master. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Be strong, take heart, and do it. . . . The Eternal . . . is with you” (1 Chron. 28:20 Moffatt).
*No published source was found for this quotation.
Week 17 Monday
The Retreat into the Anonymous
Proverbs 5:15; Ephesians 2:2
We continue to look at this road with a dead end, retreatism. A Swedish girl was jilted. She went to bed and was a chronic invalid for six years. She retreated into invalidism from the hard, cruel world. A friend helped her to surrender her negativism and her fear of life to God. She was released, became positive. Now she is a deaconess, a radiant, outgoing, helpful person.
Many are canceling out their lives and effectiveness by more subtle and less obvious negativism. For instance, many people retreat into prevailing attitudes and customs to avoid the responsibility of acting up to their highest light. “Everybody does it,” is the soporific excuse. Society demands conformity. If you fall beneath its standards, it will punish you; if you rise above its standards, it will persecute you. It demands a gray average conformity. So many succumb and become echoes instead of voices, things instead of persons. The retreat into the anonymous is going on all around, “I’m not going to put my neck out.” So convictions are stilled, personality is stunted, spiritual life dies. “Come to the cocktail lounge for smooth sophistication,” says a sign. Note the word smooth. You fit in, no issues are raised, you conform, you are flattened out, you stand for nothing, you fall for everything, including folly.
This creeping paralysis is killing the soul of America. When a service club was about to pass a resolution embodying soul-destroying hate and race prejudice under the appeal of a super patriot, a leading citizen arose, stemmed the tide, and was greeted with prolonged applause. The resolution was defeated. Why did that group applaud the courage and sense of this man? Because they saw in him what they would like to be, but didn’t dare be, for they were under the sway of our most prevalent philosophy of life, the philosophy of not putting your neck out, the philosophy of negativism. This is creating a morally dull, colorless civilization.
Women, as well as men, are often afflicted with this creeping moral paralysis. They look around, not up, before they act. They don’t act; they only react. They are fast becoming a ditto mark. They lock-step down through the innocuous years. “It’s smart” to be innocuous, to fit in, to retreat into vacuity, to be a cipher.
O Christ of the steadfast will, of the unbroken purpose, of the heart that dared die rather than conform to wrong, help me to be positive, outgoing, unafraid. Help me to catch your quiet courage. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The turtle never gets anywhere until he puts out his neck.
Week 17 Tuesday
The Steps Out of Negativism
Acts 5:20-21; 18:9-11
We now come to the steps to get rid of all negativism and retreatism.
(1) Will to be positive. This is important, for you have been willing to be negative, perhaps unconsciously. The first question of Jesus to the man by the pool was, “Do you want your health restored?” (John 5:6 Moffatt). That question was important, for the man had been living by ill health, by arousing pity, by negativism. If he was not willing to reverse his attitudes, nothing could be done. A psychologist said to a nervously upset man, “Do you want to get out of this prison?” He didn’t, since that would make him confess to himself that he was getting a weird satisfaction out of his misery, that his retreatism was a life strategy.
The first thing to decide is: Do I will to be well? To be positive? To go out and meet life and master it? When you decide this affirmatively, then all the resources of God are behind that decision. In the inner quietness of your heart throw your will on the side of freedom.
(2) Remember that you are made in the inner structure of your being for creative activity. You are fulfilling yourself when you are creative and positive. You are frustrating yourself when you are noncreative and negative. Now that you have decided to become a plus instead of a minus, the sum total of reality is behind you instead of against you. All the resources of God are at your disposal.
(3) Remember that your happiness does not come through what happens to you, but through what you make happen to others. Plan to go out of your way to do something for others, and plan it today, plan it now. And don’t let it end with a plan; let it end with a performance. Begin, on however small a scale. You will gather strength as you go.
You have been saying to yourself, “I would be happy if only this would happen to me.” It has failed. It is not-the-way. Now you are saying, “I will make others happy, and I will begin now.” Happiness doesn’t come to you; you join happiness on the way to doing something for others. Like the waves thrown up by the ship as it plows to its goal, happiness will be a by-product of your creative activity.
O Christ, I see, I see. Help me to follow this gleam. I am afraid of failure, afraid of my own fears. But I know that with you anything is possible, everything is possible. So I do will to be positive, creative, and I believe your will is now behind my will. I thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Thou wilt not drop the work you have begun” (Ps. 138:8 Moffatt).
Week 17 Wednesday
I Can Do All Things through Christ
Colossians 1:11; 2 Timothy 4:5; 1 Peter 1:13
We continue our steps to the affirmative life:
(4) Surrender your negativism and retreatism into the hands of God. You are not the center of it anymore; you have transferred that center to God. You and God are going to work it out together.
(5) Say to yourself, “This does not depend on my ability, but on my response to God’s ability.” Or, as it has been put, “This is not my responsibility, but my response to God’s ability.” You are now not alone; you are strong in strength not your own.
(6) Accept the gift of positive, outgoing energy. “The breath of life from God entered them; they stood on their feet” (Rev. 11:11 Moffatt). The breath of life from God is now entering you; you are going to be an upstanding person—unafraid of life and its demands.
(7) Refuse to think negative thoughts. If you think negative, you will be negative; if you think positive, you will be positive. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7 KJV). Squash a negative thought as you would squash a louse, and for the same reason. A louse is a parasite living on life; a negative thought is also a parasite living on life, on the positive. Negative thinking is lousy thinking.
(8) Refuse to speak negative words; cleanse them from your vocabulary. A certain management engineer takes hold of sick businesses and puts them on their feet, and also takes hold of sick personalities and puts them on their feet too. He says that he cannot get a man started unless he says yes twenty times. He has been saying no to himself in various forms and under various guises for so long that he has become a no. You are of the thing you habitually give out. Now you are going to be born of the yes. Go over your vocabulary and, one by one, root out all negative, weak, and doubtful words. Put in their stead words that breathe positive attitudes of faith.
(9) Keep repeating to yourself, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13 CEB). Say it the last thing before you drop off to sleep, for the subconscious mind is susceptible then. Say it the first thing as you open your eyes in the morning, and keep saying it during the day. You will turn from being a nay-saying person to being a yea-saying person—a plus instead of a minus.
O Christ, you are life’s supreme affirmation. I look at you and anything becomes possible. I am merging my life with your creative life. In you I too am creative—we are creative together. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Give me a willing spirit as my strength” (Ps. 51:12 Moffatt).
Week 17 Thursday
Another Road with a Dead End—Inferiority Complexes
1 Corinthians 1:26-29
Another road with a dead end similar to the one we have been considering: the road of inferiority complexes.
Roman philosopher Seneca pictures a child in the womb saying, “I don’t want to be born. I’m afraid to go out into that strange world. I am comfortable and secure here; I don’t want to be born.”* That fear of ongoing life would stunt the child forever. We must yield to the processes of ongoing life with confidence and joy. And we must do it with no sense of inferiority. We must feel our importance to the sum total of things. We must feel that destiny, however limited, is centered in us.
The Way is the way of importance—to everybody. Whenever Christ touches life, that life takes on significance; the nobodies become the somebodies. “Why don’t you accept your inferiority?” someone asked an African American. “How can I?” he replied, “I’m a child of God.”
In spite of this, a great many people develop inferiority complexes. A woman with more than average powers became dependent on her family for support. To justify to herself and others, she developed various ailments. She told herself, and was told by others, that she couldn’t do this, that, or the other thing; she was too weak. She was weak, but it was a mentally induced weakness to justify her dependence. She got herself a pair of crutches, and these crutches further weakened her.
Inferiority attitudes are shown in putting up such high standards for yourself and others that, not being able to reach them, you do nothing. Because you cannot do everything, you do nothing. Because you cannot change the world, you refuse to try to change the situation at all. The reaction is from perfectionism to pessimism. This lets down easy the person with an inferiority complex. We have no right to be thinking of world-changing plans unless we are doing all we can to change the situation around us. The healthy-mindedness of Jesus was seen in the fact that, while he proclaimed an absolute order—the kingdom—he was willing to sit down with an individual and lead that individual to change.
O Christ, you are adequacy and power. So I come to you to get adequacy and power to live by. I throw open every pore of being to let you come in to change me from inefficiency to efficiency. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Happy the man who reverences the Eternal, who finds rich joy in his commands” (Ps. 112:1 Moffatt).
*No published source was found for this quotation.
Week 17 Friday
Steps Out of Inferiority Feelings
Romans 12:5-8
We now consider steps, a ladder, to climb out of inferiority feelings:
(1) There is no superiority and inferiority in the Christian scheme of things. Paul repudiated this whole conception of superiority and inferiority: “If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not the hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that does not make it no part of the body”—here was an inferiority complex; and here a superiority complex—“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’ ” (1 Cor. 12:15-21 Moffatt). To feel and act superior or inferior is wrong. Feel and act what you are—in God.
(2) To cover an inferiority feeling, don’t act superior: Loud, aggressive talking and self-assertion are often based on a fear that people will find out an inferiority. The aggressiveness is the obverse side of inferiority feelings. It shows an inner strain, a lack of confidence and poise.
(3) Don’t struggle against your feelings of inferiority. That might drive them into the subconscious, where they would work against you. Bring them up and look at them calmly. See where you are below par and where you are above par.
(4) Accept correction and improvement from yourself and others. Leonardo Da Vinci put such artistry into two cups in his picture of the Last Supper that friends remarked about them. Da Vinci wiped them out. “I don’t want you to see the cups primarily, but the faces.”* His willingness to accept correction made him a master.
Jack Miner, the Canadian naturalist, could not read or write until he was a grown man. His Sunday school class sat around him—their teacher—and taught him to read. “Wasn’t that lovely of them?” he said in later years when he came to fame. When he was lecturing at the University of Toronto, a man sent up a note afterward, “Don’t use that expression—it is this way.” Again, Minor remarked, “Wasn’t that lovely of him to do that? I’ll never make that mistake again.”** His simple, humble Christian spirit saved him from both inferiority and superiority and made him a great man. When you are on the defensive, you have lost your grip on life.” Don’t defend yourself; accept correction from yourself and others.
O Christ, I am accepting myself, but I am accepting myself in you. In you I am no longer inferior—I take on your adequacy and your power. In you I meet life with a cheer and a song. In you I am strong. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “In Him who strengthens me, I am able for anything” (Phil. 4:13 Moffatt).
*No published source was found for this quotation.
**No published source was found for this quotation.
Week 17 Saturday
Further Steps Out of Inferiority Feelings
1 Corinthians 12:14-26
(5) Accept your limitations and dedicate them. A professor long refused to accept his deafness and was always nervously strained. He finally surrendered his deafness to God, got a hearing aid, became happy, and is now head of an association for the hard of hearing.
(6) If you perceive something as a problem, you can use it as a stimulus to creating solutions. An African American woman pioneered a process to smooth kinky hair in an era when it was not considered fashionable. She had unruly hair herself. Her sisters had smooth hair and always teased her about her hair. She determined to do something for people who had hair like hers and did not like it. She experimented on a kitchen stove, evolved the process, and made a million dollars. More, she helped make other people happier with their hair. She took what she saw as her problem and used it to serve a larger purpose.
(7) Do everything, even the insignificant things, in a significant way. The insignificant things take on significance when you do them significantly. The spirit in which a thing is done makes it significant. I watched a waiter in a railroad diner wait on a table so rhythmically and harmoniously that he made it an art. Later in that diner again, I recognized the graceful flourish of the elbow and knew it was the waiter who did little things in a great way. The professor who bows to his class bows to greatness—to potential greatness.
(8) Do everything for the love of God. The secret of Brother Lawrence’s greatness was that he did everything—the scrubbing of floors, the washing of pans—for the love of God.
(9) When you do the insignificant in a significant way, you are working out a larger plan of God. Here is a telling passage, “The due activity of each part enables the Body to grow and build itself up in love” (Eph. 4:16 Moffatt). When you perform the “due activity” of your part, you are making possible a larger whole. Pray in the words of Margaret Bailey:
God, give me sympathy and sense,
And help me keep my courage high;
God, give me calm and confidence,
And—please—a twinkle in my eye.*
O Christ, I am a part of eternal significance, eternal plans working themselves out through me. I can contribute spirit when I cannot contribute bigness—and maybe the spirit is the bigness. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Your promise puts life into me” (Ps. 119:50 Moffatt).
*Margaret Bailey, in Strength for Service to God and Country, ed. Norman E. Nygaard (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1942), January 15.