Positive Thinking and Love

Americans love Positive Thinking - in the late 19th Century, Acres of Diamonds by Baptist Minister, Russell Conwell (a fitting last name), then on to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, a Methodist Pastor who served for years at Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, known for his The Power of Positive Thinking.

From Peale to California's Robert Schuller and his Possibility Thinking, and then, as of late, Joel Osteen, who seems to have but three sermons in him: all of them based upon, 1) God wants you to be happy. 2 ) God wants you to be without disease. 3) God wants you to be rich.

What they all have in common is a high regard for wealth and the wealthy, and how the wealthy love them.

In A People's History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn comments on Conwell's Acres of Diamonds that the message was anyone could get rich if he tried hard enough and suggests that Conwell held elitist attitudes by quoting the following from his speech:

"I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich.... The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community. Let me say here clearly .. . ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men. ... ... I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins ... is to do wrong.... let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings. ..."

Theologically, they're all Anabaptists, in that they teach human action as the prerequisite for divine favor ... if you do such and so, then God will do so and such!

Such thinking is, in fact, pagan: the gods are remote and not particularly interested in humanity, but if you say it right, do it well, and use the formulae suggested by the oracle, priest or preacher, you, too, can have what you want.

All of this has created a self-serving motif in American Christianity, built upon snippets from the Bible, told with amazing stories of health, wealth and happiness.
The self-centered message fits well with American Evangelicalism which has always taught self-concern - "Here's what you need to do, say, believe, to go to heaven and escape the fires of hell."

Going forward at a crusade to save your own neck, or doing such and so to get wealthy - it's one and the same for Americans, who seem to love, above all else, themselves.

Tragically, self-love is a hideous tyrant.

Self-love has no room for other-love.

In fact, others are often seen as wanting in character, or deserving of their sorry lot in life. Charity may be indulged, but the kind of changes needed to make for a healthy society are resisted.

Self-love allows no room for real love.

And must drive out real love in order to survive.

Ill-Advised Zeal

Writing of the Anabaptists (4.1.13), Calvin notes their sinfulness - yup, that's what he calls it, driven, as it is, by "ill-advised zeal for righteousness."

 A few lines later, Calvin writes: they ... sin in that they do not know how to restrain their disfavor. For where the Lord requires kindness, they neglect it and give themselves over completely to immoderate severity. Indeed, because they think no church exists where there are not perfect purity and integrity of life, they depart out of hatred of wickedness from the lawful church, while they fancy themselves turning aside from the faction of the wicked.


 I think everyone of us has done this because it feels so good.

But the sin of ill-advised zeal is still sin, and it results in the same thing as any plain old sin might do - things are broken, and the heart is steeled against the impulse of the Spirit. Pride begets pride, and then the anger, and then further acrimony, and more pride and more fighting and more sadness.

I find it of interest that Calvin writes in this way of the Anabaptists - like the early Donatists, I suppose, the impulse to get it right, and the need to lambast those whom they see as getting it less than right.
We've all done it; there's a little Donatist, or an Anabaptist in nosing around in every heart - that secrete place of pride and power wherein we adjudge ourselves pure and righteous, and the others? Oh well, see ya' in hell!

 I'm entertained with Calvin at this point: he was a man who could dish it out, and now, on the receiving end of it from the Anabaptist, raises the question of "ill-advised zeal."

How fine is the line between "Ill-advised zeal" and "the zeal of the Lord"?

Perhaps the Book of Proverbs might help us ... or the Beatitutdes ... or the simple washing of feet - for who doesn't need cleansing, who doesn't need grace, who isn't saved by grace morning, noon and night?

Ill-advised zeal - a dangerous business!