Commentary on "Optimism: Happiness and Healing"

MARTIN L. CAREY

 

Day 1: Sabbath Afternoon, June 5, 2010 - Introduction

 

Overview

This week’s Study Guide opens its study of optimism with an illustration of two men in prison. One prisoner looks up at the stars, while the other chooses to look down at the mud. Their choices of focus determine their attitudes and their happiness. The mud-gazing prisoner is “robbed of hope” because he chooses to focus on the mud, while the star-gazing prisoner becomes joyful by gazing upward. The Guide reminds us that scripture gives us “fountains of hope and optimism,” and this hope enables us to be optimistic in spite of circumstances. We can direct our focus on hopeful things and improve our mental and physical health. Or, we can focus on the negative and degrade our health.

This week’s Study Guide explores the benefits of optimism for the well-being of the Christian. The Guide encourages us to develop the habits of positive thinking, and attempts to look at the principle of optimism from a biblical perspective.

 

Observations

Optimism is the disposition that allows us to expect the best outcomes instead of negative ones. Some people are blessed with a naturally sunny disposition, while many are not. For many believers, life has such pain that finding positive things in their lives is a serious challenge. Christians around the world are overwhelmed with poverty and persecution, and many are sitting in prison. When their lives are continually threatened, they cannot attach a happy face to their daily realities.

Finding hope in the darkest places demands much more than an attitude adjustment. There, we need much stronger medicine based on certainty and the firmest reality. When we manipulate our internal reality, we will also tend to manipulate external reality also—often through deceiving ourselves and others. We need someone to pull us out of these false realities, and that rescue will often arrive in the form of trouble. When God sends us the storms, we need a firm anchor for the soul, one that is not grounded in our ability to manipulate ourselves or others. The words of our Lord give us that solid anchorage for the hope we need. This week we will explore the important differences between mere positive thinking and real hope founded on the certainty of God’s unbreakable promises.

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 6:19,20).

 

Conclusions

1. Optimism is a disposition that allows one to expect good things to happen.
2. When in trial, Christians discover that positive thinking is not sufficient to give them real hope.
3. This week we will explore the fundamental differences between mere optimism and biblical hope based on God’s sure promises.

 

GO TO DAY 2

 

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Official Adventist Resources

Standard Edition Study Guide Week 11

Teacher's Edition Study Guide Week 11

Easy Reading Edition Study Guide Wk 11

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