Negativity

I was beating myself up over negative thinking today. Kind of an ironic statement, isn't it? "Why are you always so negative, you loser?" But in our search for our true hearts, there comes a time when we have to confront what some have called "Stinkin' Thinkin' " - our natural ability to be our own worst critic, our harshest enemy.

You know the old saying "Some people see the glass half-full and some people see the glass half-empty"? Well, if left to my own devices, I'm a classic half-empty. Everything is doomed from the start. The brightest cloud in the sky has a moldy lining. Just like Winnie the Pooh's Eeyore - the pessimist. Why bother? It's all going to go wrong anyway. What makes me so tense every time I go into the exam room with a patient that I think is going to return their hearing aids? Why do I automatically think the worst? It almost never happens that way. What makes me deflect every compliment I get? I don't do it because I'm trying to be humble; I do it because deep in my heart I don't feel like I DESERVE it. I didn't do anything special. I just didn't screw it all up. Yet. I might still mess it up. Why don't you leave now so you all won't be disappointed.

A negative spirit doesn't just spring up in a person out of nowhere. It's planted, like a seed, that grows into a future harvest that is reaped in our lives. Someone or something must do the initial planting. For some, it starts in school. Kids can be downright cruel. As an overweight kid in grade school, I can still remember Gabe DeSarbo writing "Go for it, fat butt" in my yearbook. Ha Ha, very funny. But the more a child is called 'fatso', 'four-eyes', 'retard', etc., it starts to stick. "Maybe they're right. I really am stupid. I am ugly and worthless". The bumper crop arrives.

It can also come from home. I can't stand going shopping much anymore. Stroll through Wal-Mart or a mall and you're likely to hear a mom or dad screaming at their kids - "Sit down! Shut up! I'm going to smack you if you don't behave!" Or worse, shooting f-bombs at them. For me, it was more what my mom didn't say that was hurtful. My mom rarely praised me for things I did; when she did give a kind word, I had to fish for it. "So mom, what did you think of my concert?" "Oh, good. It was...yeah, good." It never seemed very sincere.

I only learned one thing in my class on behavioral science in college: the more you tell a lie, the "truer" it becomes. In other words, people start to create their own reality to surround a statement that they hear over and over again. That's true with the words we hear or the words we use. We jump to conclusions about ourselves to make these lies become more like reality. That's just what the devil had in mind. We were created to bear God's image. Ever since the garden, satan has thrown every lie at us - condemnation, doubt, fear, etc. Our hearts, desperate for answers, took it all in and bought the package. It sure seemed true. We looked in the mirror and we saw failure, hopelessness, ugliness. But as Paul wrote in 1Corinthians 13, that mirror is dimly lit. We couldn't see the full picture of what God intended us to be. Paul also shows us in that passage that when Jesus comes with perfect love, we will see fully and know ourselves truthfully. Shadows pass away. The lies have to come forward into the light of God's truth. When we see the truth, it's often hard to believe. Some never really accept it. "I just can't believe God knows everything about me and loves me anyway. It's just impossible."

But that not living from the true heart. The true heart knows the depth of God's love and really knows it deep in "the knower". The true heart can wade through the swampland of evil thoughts and condemnation and deceptions and stand firm on God's promises, even in the roughest seasons. Paul commends us in 2Corinthians to take every thought captive and to make them obedient to Christ. In Ephesians he tells us not to give the devil a foot hold. We need to be much more alert to the propaganda that gets heaved at us every day. The more we defend our hearts, the easier it becomes to cast away the lies and live in God's reality.

We need to bathe ourselves in the Word to constantly be aware of what God thinks of us. And we need to let God speak His words for us deep into our souls. When we meditate on these things, and God sinks His life within us, we'll recognize the falsehoods much quicker and cast them off easier.

Sometimes, our patients have a tough time hearing their voice amplified with their hearing aids in. They have heard their voice through their hearing loss (a deception) for years. I tell patients to read out loud to themselves. A lot. Prolonged exposure to "the truth" allows the patient to accept it much easier. Eventually, the brain adjusts so that their "true voice" with hearing aids in will seem normal and their "false voice" without the aids seems strange, exactly the opposite of where they were when they started. God wants us to hear His voice so that the way the world sounds is wrong and the way He sounds is right. After all, it is. And it's what our hearts so desperately crave.

So with God's help, I'm becoming more "half-full". In God's economy, it's more "good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over". Full and over flowing - that sounds like the true heart to me.