Not long ago someone told me about her pastor’s sermons, almost all of which scolded his listeners for being “so negative” and urged them to be “more positive.” That led me to post a question about the topic on Facebook that led to an excellent discussion.
When I posted my question, I wanted to be spurred in my own thinking by my friends, and I wanted to hear the experiences of others. Mostly I wanted to think Biblically about discerning good from evil, warning others about evil, asking for help regarding evil, grieving evil, and other necessary kinds of speech that could be interpreted as “critical” or “negative.”
Note: The quotations that I use in this blog post are from the comments in that Facebook post, some of them edited for brevity or clarity.
Does the Word of God caution us to “avoid those who are negative”?
No. The Bible doesn’t talk about “positivity” or “negativity” at all.
Because it doesn’t, we can’t go to the Bible to find out what the terms mean. This is a big problem, as you can imagine, especially when pastors are talking about “negativity” in their sermons.
Does “positivity” mean saying only things that make us think of rainbows and fluffy bunnies? Does being “positive” mean saying only pleasant things about everyone and only pleasant things about my own life condition?
Are you talking about like…when someone says, “So how are you doing?” and I respond (in a sort of upbeat tone of voice), “As good as can be expected.” And I hear back, “That’s all?” “Yep, how are you doing?” “Blessed better than I deserve.”
How can we get away from the dishonesty of saying, “Great!” and not feel slapped in the face when we try to be honest…but not too negative?
Does “negativity” mean saying things that trouble someone’s rosy paradigm of the world we live in?
Jesus called the Pharisees a brood of vipers. (#negativity! )
Does “negativity,” alternatively, mean pointing a finger at someone when you know you have three fingers pointing back at yourself?
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Go here to download your free Guide, How to Enjoy the Bible Again (when you’re ready) After Spiritual Abuse (without feeling guilty or getting triggered out of your mind). You’ll receive access to both print and audio versions of the Guide (audio read by me). I’m praying it will be helpful.
I found this post very helpful, especially in considering how I respond to others. I certainly know I didn’t bother often to say anything more than, “fine” when asked how I was doing because no one wants to hear the truth, and it made for awkward situations when I would actually say, “not so well today”. I would like to have the compassion hurting people are looking for, having been there myself. I know what it is like not to receive it.
Thank you for this.
A common one is ‘Just be thankful for all that you have / all that is going well in your life. Why are you complaining when God has done so much for you?’
It seems to escape these people that it is perfectly all right to be grateful for everything that is good, and *still* lament for the deep need / deep grief in one’s life. Both – sadness and thankfulness – are honest realities of life, honorable and valid.
Yes, so true.
Bless your heart Rebecca, i so appreciate you! thanks for sharing this… I grieved over the state of the Church for 4 years as I started to realize the appalling abuses of power going on and brought them to leaders attention… Sundays were the hardest days. I wrote up a list of 95 laments… when I shared that I was grieving with several leaders, there was no acknowledgemtn, no response, therefore no follow up or support… one leader did ask me, why don’t you smile more… ugh! what I was finding was deeply disturbing… and not only was there no support, there was resistance… sigh… Thank God, He is good and working it out for His glory and our good, but it was 4 difficult years with no support from my home church, let alone the backlash I received. Thank God, He helped me understanding what I was grieving over… Zeph 3:18-21 NKJV; Ezek 9:4; Psalm 69, esp v9 &20
It is so important for the people of God to understand grief.
This was just the BEST blog discussion to read! Thank you so much. I have worried so about having a critical spirit, good to know that is not a Biblical thing. Also it prompted me to want to help others by listening to them in their grief and pain, as I go through my own marital pain right now. As I professed my desire to help others that way to God, not one but two BlueJays appeared in my yard! What a wonderful sign from God!!!
When Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her donkey and bowed down before David with her face to the ground. 24 She fell at his feet and said: “Pardon your servant, my lord, and let me speak to you; hear what your servant has to say. 25 Please pay no attention, my lord, to that wicked man Nabal. He is just like his name—his name means Fool, and folly goes with him. And as for me, your servant, I did not see the men my lord sent. 26 And now, my lord, as surely as the Lord your God lives and as you live, since the Lord has kept you from bloodshed and from avenging yourself with your own hands, may your enemies and all who are intent on harming my lord be like Nabal.
Was Abigail honoring her husband by calling him wicked? Maybe just as much as Jesus honored the Pharisees by calling them a ‘brood of vipers’. She didn’t fulfill his wishes either. She went behind his back. She even prophesied that David’s enimies would fall. Nabel was David’s enemy. David didn’t rebuke Abigail for saying how terrible of you to speak negatively about your husband. Can you write a blog post about this? We are to bless our enimies and yet we are to discern good from evil and call out wickedness.
Yes, I can see if I can do a blog post about this.
We DESPERATELY need more true Christians with the heart AND the love of speaking truth to and about hypocrisy and evil that Jesus displayed. We need Christians who hate what God hates. Oppression and abuse would fit that category. And His righteous anger at this hypocrisy and evil when it’s DONE by people who call themselves “Christians” TO His true children. We need Christian people who will weep and mourn with those of us who are weeping and mourning for more than a minute only.
I’m an abuse victim-family abuse of every kind by “Christian” parents from my childhood through adulthood-that MANY “Christian relatives” and “church Christians” knew and still know about yet did and said nothing to help us children be safe nor did they speak out against it when it was done in their presence when I became an adult.
I was left to stand alone to set boundaries on parents and codependent siblings and I “called out” in love those “Christian” relatives, with whom I kept relationships, who regularly witnessed the abuses all my life. Did my boundaries and truthtelling change any of their behaviors? It ESCALATED THEM! I became a target of everyone. Especially when I called had to call police on the abusers for a violent attack on my husband-a crime. I was completely shunned by the entire clan and lifelong friends without their blinking an eye. How much value did I have in their lives? Zero apparently.
So now I observe that this abuse issue seems to be something very, very few Christians are willing to just “be present”, to support even their good friends who either have been abused as children and are dealing with it and/or exposing it or still are victims or are processing a lifetime of childhood and adult abuses, like I am doing now. It seems as if the processing isn’t “over and done with” in about 2 weeks or so, they can’t or won’t “hang in there” with the victim. I can’t fathom why. I’d want to be there for my friends. (Are they frustrated that there’s no quick fix? Frustrated that no simple platitudes can make the horrors go away?…) They start backing away. At the very time the LAST THING the victim needs is MORE heartache and abandonment and suffering of isolation.
Exposing abusers means pretty much losing life as one knew it. Losing one’s entire family, including extended family and lifelong mutual friends, who all often side with the abuser to avoid ANY personal cost or even “discomfort” or repercussions themselves, is par for the course. BECAUSE they KNOW what the abuser is capable of when “crossed”. They KNOW the victim is telling the truth about the abuse! Most witnessed it. But they’ve allowed themselves/chosen to be preemptively groomed and polished and bought-off by the abusers specifically for the day when they may be or ARE exposed. To become their Flying Monkeys/enablers/liars/“smear the victims” artists/even abusers-by-proxy.. and they pretty much all easily comply. These evil abusers and their enablers even try to make God a “Flying Monkey” for them too! Twisting His holy Word to victimize the victim more. And to try to justify their evil and betrayals. God is NOT A FOOL. This I KNOW.
We victims are left to feel like we are so valueless that we’ve been sold out for the Judas-like 30 pieces of silver. More blows to the victim’s heart. This betrayal is what I can’t wrap my head around. Sometimes it’s WORSE than trying to process the abuses! I know it’s common “101 Abuser-Enabler Handbook” behavior and to be expected. But to experience it is beyond more stabs to the heart. There are no words. And to have to face processing these betrayals too, on top of the abuses, alone, is almost too much to bear.
Only Jesus and my dear husband, also abused by my family criminally and violently,(the reason I had to call the police on them-no choice) know and are fully with me. I have my Godly REAL CHRISTIAN husband’s full support and he has mine. And Jesus has seen ALL OF IT and cares-I know. He sustains me when I think I can’t go on. But we are wired for human contact and kindness. They are so necessary to heal from severe longterm multiple traumas. I get that NO support from these fake people is far better than having fake support from hundreds of them. But the lonlieness in real suffering is at times unbearable.
Exposing and reporting abusers means losing one’s church family too as one by one Christian friends and also church leadership also deeply disappoint and let down the victim. They disappear too.
There are also financial losses if legal action is rightly taken for crimes they committed. The victim is shunned for “doing this to family” by most everyone! As if violent crimes get a pass because a family member committed it?
Being left alone by “Christians” to process ALL these unspeakable traumas alone isn’t the way of Jesus that’s for sure. I’m clear on that. It’s totally on the backs of all those people that they CHOOSE to do nothing, or worse, to side with known evil when confronted with human suffering they KNOW is true. Going through this can bring one to the brink of insanity.
I’m referring to the betrayals and abandonment of what I’d always considered good Christians and the complete and utter disillusionment I now have with humanity. Especially the “church” and what I thought Christians would act like. That’s a whole other trauma and “stake through the heart” on top of the abuses. I feel I can’t trust anyone. And that’s not paranoia. It’s true and real because these things have happened by people who are supposed to represent Jesus. The sadness people can heap on suffering people shouldn’t come from “Christians” but it does all too often.
Sadly, it does.
Man, Jesus sure was negative! The legalistic know-it-alls would surely have to accuse Him of needing an attitude adjustment.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. “You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?”
Matthew 23:23-33
You said it all so well Rebecca. And you too, Cindy Burrell, using Jesus’ own many words on the subject.
That’s why I love Jesus so much! His Truth. And His abiding Love we can ALWAYS depend on. We clearly know what He thinks of evil and wickedness and hypocrisy. No vagueness or fakeness with Him.
I don’t know how those who “fit the bill” in His categories of evil, wickedness and hypocrisy-“children of their father satan”, He said-ignore the inevitable Holy Spirit conviction when they know what His Words clearly say. “Sociopaths” with no conscience explains the abusers. How to explain the professsing Christians doing more harm to hurting people. Do they have consciences enough for the Holy Spirit to convict them?
So I’ll stick with Jesus. If He’s all I have, He’ll make sure somehow that He’s more than enough for me.
I’m blessed by this post and the wise responses of my hurting, broken and on their way to healing sisters and brethren.
I would say that someone such as myself that have been referred as being negative, needs to look deep in that persons eyes and realize that what they are seeing isn’t negativity, but instead pain.
Thank you for this post. I wanted to respond also to you, Z, your thoughts are mine almost exactly. Thank you for writing them out, I am comforted to hear you and know I am not alone. I already knew that, but I truly appreciate other people communicating these ghastly realities. I feel like they are so hurtful they are unspeakable for me, much of the time. I am so happy for you that you have the fellowship of a believing husband. What a great blessing.
Praise God, “T”, that my experiences put into words, ones similar to yours that you find unspeakable for yourself right now, have provided you some comfort and sense of community. It seems these interactions between commenting fellow abuse victims (on these helpful edifying blogs, like Rebecca’s, about abuses by “Christians” and aimed at helping their victims) are the ONLY support and sense of community we have.
Its very, very sad that this is true of suffering, hurting, broken Christians, who should have the support of their fellow Christians automatically (according to the Bible)! But instead, our local “Christian communities” find every excuse in the book to turn their eyes away from and even to judge our suffering.
“Walk a mile in my shoes”, I say. You’d never ever be able to even imagine the horrors I’ve experienced. And it seems not many want to bother to try to imagine what those horrors are like and leave us to carry them alone. I call Christian indifference to their fellow Christians’ suffering “disobedience to God”. He says to “carry one another’s burdens” because He knows they are too heavy to carry alone. Of course God’s Word says Jesus walks through it all with us. And I know this to be true. But Christians are still commanded to personally share each other’s “too heavy” burdens. Not to do so is disobedience, regardless of their excuses, impatience, discomfort, indifference, judgments, short attention spans,…
And those Christians who are willingly bribed/conned/bought off by the abusers to keep silent about or worse,to side with their known evil, well, they too are 100% complicit in evil. Period.
T, honestly, if I did not have my believing, supportive, truly godly husband by my side, I just don’t know where I’d be. I don’t know if my traumatized mind could handle all of what’s happened completely alone. Counseling by “Christians” was disastrous and caused further harm.
But for those who find themselves in that place of aloneness, please know that I do believe Jesus would “step in” and be ENOUGH if I were left completely alone to deal with all the traumas and the effects of them.
I will pray for you, T, that God would send good, supportive, true, obedient Christian soldiers to stand by your side. And soon!
In the meantime, I pray, “Lord Jesus, come quickly!” Come with Your Righteousness, Justice and Judgment of evil. Come and wipe away every tear from all victims’ faces. Come and right every wrong. In Jesus Name. Amen.