On Sundays my Facebook is filled with messages of positive thinking, speaking life, watch what you say, you are what you think, you are the master of your universe, the controller of your destiny, etc. And wow doesn't it sound good. You can call it affirmative prayer, visualisation, a renewed mind or 'speaking life' if you want. This is basic New Age/New Thought/Law of attraction philosophy, popularised by people like William Walker Atkinson (Thought Vibration of the Law of Attraction in the Thought World), Wallace C. Wattles (The Science of Getting Rich), Napoleon HIll ( The Law of Success in 16 Lessons / Think and Grow Rich) and more recently Rhonda Byrne (The Secret).
A lot of people swear by these philosophies, mostly I believe because they want it to be true - after all, who doesn't want to be in control and be successful, rich and happy? You are free to believe what you want, taking the eternal consequences into account, off course. But I am writing this as a warning to well-meaning friends who are being deceived into thinking that these philosophies are Christian, when in fact they are far from it. Yes, these philosophies are being proclaimed as Biblical in many churches today. Not the other way around (i.e. New Age did not get these ideas from Biblical principles, as some may think). You may say 'but I can tell you of 10 people that it worked for!' Then I will say I can show you 100 people that it didn't work for. I will therefore look at a few popular arguments from some streams of Christianity and try to refute them Biblically. If you have any other arguments not mentioned here, feel free to comment.
Prov 18:21
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.
This simply means that a great deal of good or harm can be achieved by the power of the tongue. James teaches (James 3, the great 'Taming the tongue' passage) that the tongue can set a forest on fire, but a Christian's life ought to be marked by the control of his tongue. We must be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger (James 1:19).
I want to be clear on this. Words can have a certain measure of consequences, which is what the scriptures here address, but it is not the same as the power of positive thinking. E.g. if you affirm your husband with words of encouragement, support and love, you will most likely have a better marriage than the complaining, nagging, criticising neighbour's wife. Watching what you say is quite different to the practice of repeating a phrase over and over, avoiding and rejecting the reality (if it sounds negative at all) and concentrating on a desirable outcome in the hope that your wishful thinking will change the course of events. Phil 4:8 does speak about thinking good thoughts, but not because it will change your circumstances, but because it pleases God, (and as people saved by His grace we WANT to please Him!). In fact, God will not only judge our actions, but our thoughts as well. Saying and thinking anything that is not true, honourable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent or worthy of praise is a sin. Its not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person (Matt 15:11).
Let me illustrate with another example. Saying something like 'my sister has bronchitus' will not change whether she is sick or not. It is not sinful to say so. Neither will saying 'she is not sick' change anything, except that I will be a liar. Whether I (or she) says it or not, write it down or not, think it or not, if she has bronchitis she will have to deal with it and get the proper rest and medication in order to become better. But if I say something evil about her, whether true or not, I defile myself (by sinning against God) and my words may cause much harm. Please try to see the difference.
Now there is another verse in proverbs that says:
'A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.' (Prov 17:22) It is a well known fact that certain conditions can lead to other conditions, e.g. depression or stress may lead to other physical problems like headaches, anxiety, obesity, accelerated ageing, heart or gastrointestinal problems. A joyful heart (or positive thinking as some would interpret it) can't fix everything though. If you have a chronic illness like asthma, or were born deaf, a joyful heart will not fix it. Don't overanalyse a simple proverb like this, to say more than what it was intended to (or to say what you want it to say, based on popular philosophies).
Another popular scripture people quote in the 'Christianisation' of New Age philosophy, is Prov 23:7 (NKJV) 'For as he thinks in his heart, so is he'. I wish people would take the time to read the verse prior, or at least the rest of verse 7. Or they can consider reading it in any other translation, which will convey the same original intended concept, but without the opportunity to take one part of the verse out of context and build a sermon on it. Here is the whole passage in the NKJV:
6 Do not eat the bread of a miser,
Nor desire his delicacies;
7 For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
But his heart is not with you.
Here it is in the ESV:
6 Do not eat the bread of a man who is stingy;
do not desire his delicacies,
7 for he is like one who is inwardly calculating.
“Eat and drink!” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
Pretty self explanatory - don't think you know a person by what they say - it's their thoughts that reveal who they really are. It is impossible to derive any positive thinking message from this passage when read as a whole, the way it was intended to be read. On the contrary, this passage speaks of evil thoughts - doing one thing but thinking another (like a hypocrite). It does NOT say that if you think something, you will become it. Rather it says what you think reveals who you already are!
And then another popular one: Genesis 1 - God created the world by simply speaking the words…so you can do it too!
Just writing it down already feels ridiculous. One slight problem - we are not God! If He is the Creator, and we are His creation, how would people come to the conclusion that we have switched roles? We declare and speak into being, and God obeys? Not so! God has not changed, He is still God and He is still in control of the Universe. Being a Christian means you are saved by grace. It does not mean that you have earned certain rights and privileges and that God now follows your orders, just to say thank you. No, everything we ask and pray for is still subject to His will. There is no Biblical basis for 'declaring' your wishes and 'claiming' your wants. People practicing this sort of thing are simply on an egocentric power trip. Reality tells us that they have no real power to change anything. If they really did have the power, I wonder why they don't go around to places of real need like hospitals, orphanages and cemeteries and just 'speak life'. (Really selfish of them to limit that power to themselves and their own churches!)
Anything miraculous that happens today is by God's will and power, not ours. Even Jesus, who said that He came to do the will of His Father, prayed “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luk 22:42) Jesus knew that there was a bigger picture to consider, and therefore submitted to the will of God the Father in fulfilling the Salvation plan.
Our wants/needs/prayers can be very self-focussed. But God sees the bigger picture and therefore answers our prayers by His power, according to His wisdom and love. So to summarise why I have a problem with this movement in Christianity:
• Positive thinking appeals to the flesh, and therefore has universal appeal. (1 John 2:16: For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.)
• Instead of learning to be content, positive thinking teaches to focus on the things that we don't have, resulting in even more discontentment. (Heb 13:5, Phil 4:11-12, 1 Tim 6:6-11, Luk 12:15, 2 Cor 12:10)• It diminishes the need to rely on God by supposedly putting man in the power seat. (Isaiah 26:3 You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.)• It gives the impression that this life is all there is, instead of recognising the imperfections around us as a reminder that our real home is in heaven. (1 Pet 2:11, Phil 3:20)• With this mindset, Jesus becomes no more than a means to an end, a magic charm to throw in there and make it feel all 'Christian', rather than THE ONE who ALONE SATISFIES, because without His substitutionary death we have no means to solve our biggest problem, i.e. our sin problem, but will pay our own debt by eternal death.
Unfortunately some modern churches have lost sight of the bigger picture by not keeping Jesus and the gospel as the centre (first importance - 1 Cor 15:3). Instead they are appealing to people's lusts and taking advantage of people's dire situations by making false promises that sound good and can draw a crowd (even backing it up with scriptures taken out of context), but in the end, it will lead to disillusionment because it doesn't work. It greatly saddens me, because it is a false hope, and a false understanding of the gospel.
The Hope we have in Jesus is not a 'I hope it all works out in the end' or 'I wish this will happen'. It is an unshaken, steadfast Hope that will not change, not now and not for all eternity. Even if everything goes haywire in this life and I never fulfil all my dreams or live up to my potential or become successful or legendary or rich, even if I loose everything like Job, we can still say with confidence, with Peter (1 Pet 1:3-4): 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you…'
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