Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everybody. Thanks for listening to wake up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weirock. And in today's episode, we're talking about natural negativity. We're asking the question, is this spiritually helpful?

This is prompted by an article I read in the Washington Post about how the human brain is more easily connected to negative feedback than to positive feedback. This is actually something called negative bias, and it's just this idea that our brains have some kind of mechanical process where they dwell more on criticism than on kindness, on negative stimuli more than positive. This is because, at least according to scientists, a survival mechanism that we developed over generations is that negative things tend to portend a bad results for us, and so our brains process them quicker we have a stronger reaction to them. By the way, this is true more so even in women than in men. This negativity bias or this being more prone to constructive and critical feedback than the positive affirmation.

Negativity does prompt change. That's why this is not terrible for us or wholly bad. Sometimes seeing something that isn't working or hearing something that we're doing that isn't being well received by our peers can actually elicit change in us. Of course, it can also lead to some pretty dark places like anxiety and depression. Excessive focus on the negative can lead to a kind of warped self image or a warped understanding of your life that starts all of a sudden to seem pretty dark and pretty lonely.

That's why researchers are arguing that humans need to push themselves towards more positivity, more constructive thinking, more positive action and awareness of the ways we are contributing to society and being well received by those around us so that our intake isn't always negative. Well, what I find interesting is this question. As Christians, is it good for us if we're thinking critically or if we're being negative or receiving negative feedback from the world around us, or should we be more positive? And it might surprise you to hear that the answer is a little bit of both, actually. I mean, the bible does talk about negative reinforcement.

It does talk about an awareness of the things that we aren't getting right or doing well and that that awareness actually prompts change. I'm thinking here about what the apostle Paul said in second Corinthians chapter seven when he said that godly sorrow leads to repentance. He meant a recognition of my own sinfulness, of my own brokenness, and the way I'm breaking people around me is actually one of the things god uses to bring me to a genuine desire to change, a genuine place of change. When I'm seeing my sin and the way it's hurting people, the response to that shouldn't be to be positive or to sweep that negativity under the rug. It should be to embrace it at least enough to say, god, I need help.

Thinking about David here in the Psalms when he says, create in me a clean heart. That's a positive request piggybacking on a negative self awareness. And negativity can also be helpful externally. Paul says in first Thessalonians five that we should test everything and hold fast to what is good. That's another way of saying get rid of everything that is not.

Negative, external thinking can be called discernment, an ability to acknowledge what's good for us and what isn't, what's helpful and what is not helpful. But negativity might be an okay starting place for Christians, but it is never ultimately our resting place. Remember that no matter what is true in me or around me, God has done way more good than anything broken in me or anything broken happening around me. This is why Jesus says in Luke 10 to rejoice that your names are written in heaven. He's telling the apostles, no matter what's going on in the world around you, take satisfaction in this.

God knows who you are and he's included you in what he's doing, in the words of Jesus, through me. It's important to remember that not only has God saved us, but that his Holy Spirit lives in us. Paul tells us in Romans eight that the mind governed by the spirit is life and peace. The spirit will point out our sin. One of his roles is to convict us, but it's always to lead us to the righteousness God has for us.

Not to sit in our negativity, but to long for and to want something better. Again, to go back to David in the Psalms saying, create in me a clean heart, that's a negative beginning, but he believes God can and will do that. That's a positive request. It's a reminder that our hope, our positivity is anchored in God and in what he's done for us in Christ. The writer of Hebrews in Hebrews six nineteen says it this way, we have this hope as an anchor for the soul.

Negativity is all around me, but I'm rooted in something incredible. The life, death, resurrection, ascension, and kingship of Jesus Christ. So don't pretend not to see the negative, but leap off of the negative into the positive that is waiting for you in Jesus. Hey. Thanks for watching this episode of wake up look up.

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