The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

Recently I was at my local library and they had a copy of this book. I had an instant reaction that this book was a load of tosh, but then I thought, 'Well, that's kind of negative, right?' And the book is about being positive.  I am a fan of joy, and hope, and laughter, and hope, and all of those things are very positive.  And I'm in a place where I'm reading books that I don't always agree with (even with the title, or with my initial reaction to it), so I took it home.

Yep, it's a load of tosh. :) 

The thing is, it's very difficult to criticise a book that's all about positivity.

You feel the book and its author are smiling, smiling, smiling at you, and no matter what you say they are going to smile some more, and laugh, and tell you that you are just being negative. 

The deal is, there's a lot that is good in here. Much of that good comes from the source of all good, the Bible. He quotes verses continuously, and seems sincere when he avers the truth of them, or encourages others (or you the reader) to be encouraged by them as well.  He encourages reading the Bible, spending time with God, being disciplined, memorising Scripture, and many other good things.  It's not (most of) the content itself that strikes a false chord, and it wasn't until I finished the book, thought about it, and then went to church the next day hearing the Word preached that it really hit me.  Peale's book is entirely, completely, one hundred percent about what YOU can get in your life.  It is not about putting God first simply because He is first. Or trusting Him even when your life falls apart (as it can and does, and in my experience can happen more than once in a lifetime).  None of the reading, or praying, or meditating, or memorising is 'simply' because of who God is: it's because of what you can get from it. 

He talks a lot about how he has proved his theories. He tells story upon story of this person who attended a seminar and his life was changed, that person who read his book and was happy from then on.  He casually mentions once or twice that you don't necessarily always get what you ask for, but then he reverts right back to implying that you probably will if you just follow his formula.  "Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade."  It's all about technique. He explains how important faith is, and even quotes a verse from Ephesians about how we need to have faith as a shield to protect us from the devil, and then goes on to say, "Faith, belief, positive thinking, faith in God, faith in other people, faith in yourself, faith in life. This is the essence of the technique that it teaches."  Unfortunately that's not what the verse teaches, at all.  There's nothing in it, or in the entire rest of the Bible, that tells me to have faith in myself or faith in life.  It's not a generic faith: it's centred on the person and work of Jesus Christ.  But Peale's goal is happiness, and the kind that you get down here on earth when things go your way.  "Since a fundamental desire of every human being is for that state of existence called happiness, something should be done about it."

One of the problems I have with the whole concept of positive thinking and positive speak is that I am an ultra-honest person.  I hate lying in anyone, most of all myself, and so sometimes, as I've told my friends, I will tell 'the truth, the whole truth, and a little extra of the truth that you didn't really need to know'.  And so when I'm weary, or tired, or struggling, or unwell, or hurting, or discouraged, I tell people.  If they ask how I'm doing, I answer with how I am really doing. (For the most part, that is. I don't always burden the shopkeeper or the man at the petrol station with my issues, but I've been known to be honest even then.)  But Peale tells me, "Say to yourself, 'Things are going nicely. Life is good. I choose happiness,' and you can be quite certain of having your choice."  I have not had life 'easy', or 'happy' in his sense of the word.  But given the choice, I'll take the suffering, and the challenge, and the hurt, and the confusion, with a God who meets me there.  Because Jesus suffered, cruelly.  The Book of Hebrews says that we do not have a 'High Priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." The glaring problem that came home to me when I was at church on Sunday was not that having happiness is a bad thing, or that we should go around being negative because things are so hard. But it was that Jesus Himself did not come with the purpose of 'making us happy', with the definition Peale uses, in which we have health and strength and enough money and a good family and a good feeling and a smile every day.  Yes, Jesus healed diseases and illnesses everywhere He went: but when they pressed Him to stay, to heal more, to do more good, to make more families happy, Jesus refused. He actually said no.  He tells them, "I must go to preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose."  Jesus' purpose was not primarily to heal, to make better, to make happy.  He does it: oh, yes, He does it.  But it's the eternal happiness, the everlasting peace and healing and wealth that He promises.  And this is what His own people didn't understand when He came. They were expecting a Messiah who would make everything better on this earth - who would destroy their Roman enemies and make life better and bring back the wealth and pomp of the old days, and raise up a physical, golden temple in which they could worship.  And they were so confused and frustrated and angry that Jesus said in one breath "I am the Messiah" and in the next "that is not why I came", that they conspired against Him and killed Him.

The problem Peale has is that of using the excellencies of the Bible to get what you want.  Often, God does give us what we ask for, and what we want. He goes far beyond what we need and blesses us more than we can possibly imagine. But it's not in the blessing that I truly see Him for who He is, that I become who He means me to be.  None of us would ever ask for suffering - and God never tells us to.  But His Word is filled with encouragements to us that when we are suffering, we can look to God for help, and we are being made into the best version of ourselves, the version that we would never become if we were the ones calling the shots.  St. Paul says, "For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead."  And Jesus explains to His disciples that they will be mocked, and beaten, and tortured; that they will have sorrow and will not understand.  He finishes by saying, "I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."  His goal is not that they have no trouble, but that they remember something bigger, something so much greater that the existing trouble appears as nothing - and, even, that we can rejoice.  "We also rejoice in suffering, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope."  If you get everything you want, if you never think a negative thought and always insist on happiness down here, then no perseverance is needed. And no character is built, and therefore you have no hope.  Eternal hope.

In the end, I'd rather have my illnesses and weaknesses and struggles and really bad days, and the God who ministers to me through them, and to be able to comfort others who are suffering, than go round in the kind of happiness that doesn't last.  Several of my very good friends have been through pain and illness and fear and hurt so deep that nothing and no one could reach them but the words of the God who suffered more.  Because there is never, ever anyone who suffered more than He did - and through His suffering has purchased for us such wonder, such beauty, such priceless gifts as we will have on the other side of eternity.   I wonder for some of the people whose stories Peale tells, if they will at the end of their lives be told, like the rich man in one of Jesus' parables: "Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish." If you are looking for transitory happiness, the kind that may last an entire seventy or eight years, perhaps, you might get it from this book. Apparently many people have.  But if you know there is something deeper, that as Jesus said, "Life does not consist in the abundance of what one possesses", then you need much more than just happiness.  You need a release from suffering that will last seven hundred years, seven thousand years, no, time without end. 

It's true that you can't buy happiness.  It's also true that buying this book won't give you real happiness, either.