'What is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?' asks the joker. His answer: 'An optimist has not seen all the facts yet!'
There is a profound sense of pessimism in our contemporary world. With social breakdown which even the best politicians find insoluble, with science which now seems to create more problems than it solves, with the worries of redundancy, divorce and death, people seem to have lost the vision of a bright future.
In his book Culture and the Crowd, secularist Derek Regin expresses that sense of pessimism: 'We must resign ourselves to the fact that the age of anxiety, as anticipated by Kierkegaard, has come to fruition as inexorably as the violence endorsed by the thinking of Marx and Nietzche.' Gloom! The 'feel good factor' is missing.
This is true not only for secularist but sometimes even for Bible believing Christians who can take on an eschatological outlook that says 'things can only get worse'!
But I do not believe the Bible calls us to such pessimism. In bold contrast, the Word of God, not only calls us, but commands us, to rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! (Philippians 4.4). Note the always, and note the repetition (can he be serious?).
Paul is against pessimism. So what are the reasons to rejoice?
Constant reasons
There are some reasons to rejoice which never change. They are the same for all Christians in all centuries and in all cultures.
Paul himself is a man who knows suffering and trouble. He is in prison as he writes this very letter. Earlier in Philippians he wrote: 'You are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have. He is not unsympathetic to those in pain. Yet even in our tears and tragedies the Christian has ultimately reason to rejoice'.
1. Easter declares the resurrection. Since Jesus is risen, your life, Christian, has a happy ending - it ends in glory. Christians, like the gloomy disciples on the Emmaus road on Easter evening can sometimes face disappointment. Things had not turned out the way they expected. Yet they were met on the road by the risen Lord. One day he will meet us. face to face in heaven.
Someone has said a pessimist is a person who looks both ways before crossing a one way street! In Christ we are in a one way street but that one way is to resurrection but life! Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who said that 'in this world nothing is certain except death and taxes'? The New Testament tells us that as sure as in Adam people die, so just as sure, in Christ all will be made alive! (1 Corinthians 15.22).
2. Since Jesus is the risen Lord, we can trust God is able to bring good out of the worst circumstances.
You can't get worse than being crucified, dead and buried. Yet God raises the dead! Paul rests on this fact to encourage himself in facing dire straits. If God raises the dead, let us never lose hope (2 Corinthians 1.10). He will care for us and he will build his church as he has promised.
We see a vivid example of such hope in action in Paul's own visit to Philippi. The situation is set before us in Acts 16. Falsely accused, beaten and in prison, he and Silas were in chains. But as the hour of midnight strikes they are rejoicing, singing praise to God. And the Lord intervenes. There is the earthquake, the prisoners are set free, the jailer and his family are converted, there are apologies from city dignitaries and, best of all, a church is founded in the Roman colony! The Lord can turn round the worst situation. So don't let pessimism get a grip.
3. Since Jesus is risen, we have solid grounds for optimism and that is better for us as people. Psychologically it does you good to be hopeful. Socially it does you good to be optimistic (who would you rather spend evening with - an optimistic personality or a grouser?). When our eyes are on Christ he makes us gentle (v. 5). We can relax about our lives. With our eyes on the risen Lord, we are led away from anxiety to prayer which brings peace (vv. 6,7). He's the Lord! All authority is his. So Paul is against pessimism. It is not realistic or mature as it so often pretends to be. It is, in fact, a dangerous attitude, bordering on unbelief.
Contemporary reasons
But there are other reasons for optimism which are specific to our own day. While we should not build too much on changing circumstances, yet it would be wrong to ignore what God is doing in the world today.
1. In our day we are witnessing the breakdown of Enlightenment arrogance. The secular dream is visibly crumbling. The Enlightenment told the world that Reason and Science have all the answers. There was no need for God. In Eastern Europe this philosophy eventually surfaced under the guise of communism. But now it has gone! It has failed in our lifetime. In the West the Enlightenment philosophy took the form of liberal capitalism. The permissive society would be a free and joyous place, so we were told in the 1960s. Instead society is falling apart. The godless visions of the world do not work. It gives us no pleasure to see the wrecked lives left in the wake of these things, but we do see that secularism is not working. What is history? In the spirit of Psalm 2 perhaps we should see it as a contest between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world which rise against him. All ideologies, religions and empires have their day, but dash themselves on to pieces on the rock of Christ. We are clearly witnessing such things and we are strengthened in our faith.
2. In our own day we see also the astonishing growth of the church.
We read the first edition of Operation World, then look at the present edition and we find that things have moved on and often have moved on significantly.
The church grows by 106,000 people a day, while losses through death and defections are 62,000. Jesus said, 'I will build my church'.
It is amazing to think that the world in our time has probably experienced the biggest revival in history. Sadly this has not been in the Western world but in the East. In China at the end of the 1970s we understand the church was about one million strong. But by the beginning of the 1990s it was 50 million! Jesus is indeed building his church.
3. But it is not just that the church grows, but how it grows is so remarkable. Islam is growing. But it does not grow the way the church does. There are of course people genuinely persuaded of its truth. But far more often it grows through offers of money to poor African governments, through threats and Jihad.
But this is not the way the church of Christ grows. The church grows in Africa amid poverty without bribes. It grows in China and elsewhere amid persecution! God is at work!
When Deng Xaioping died recently at the age of 92, it was interesting to read some of the statements from China's house church leaders. They saw him as a modern day Cyrus, the unwitting agent of God to forward God's purposes in that land. One press release read: 'Deng gave us freedom to evangelise, then left all the apparatus in place to punish us when we did. It proved the ideal atmosphere for church growth!' The church is not just growing, but growing by the power of God. Here is reason for optimism.
How to transform a nation
We face peculiar difficulties in Britain. But nevertheless we are not to despair but to look hopefully and prayerfully to the risen Lord.
Writing in the 1950s, American Eric Hoffer recognised the need for optimism: 'Those who would transform a nation of the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope. If the communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.' Communism has proved a lie. In Christ we have real hope and it should show in our joy in him.
Since Christ is risen there is a sense in which we can honestly tell every gloomy non-Christian that they are a happy ending which is just waiting to happen. We have good news. Let us return to our opening question. What 's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? The answer is that a pessimist hasn't understood the Scriptures, or the power of God.
JEB
I am indebted to an article in The Chalcedon Report (Spring 1997) for some of the thoughts in this piece.
Dr John Benton
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