Eutychus and His Kin: October 21, 1977

Let’s All Think Negative Thoughts

A few months before Donald Grey Barnhouse died he met with Norman Vincent Peale. In the course of their time together Barnhouse suggested that Peale write a new book, The Power of Negative Thinking.

That book was never written, but a variant has just been produced by Donald G. Smith. It is How to Cure Yourself of Positive Thinking (E. A. Seeman Publishing, $7.95; the price establishes a mood for the book).

It’s about time that such a book was written. There’s been entirely too much positive thinking around for years, too much optimism. It’s unreal. Reality is found in a theory I happen to subscribe to: a pessimist is an optimist with experience. So, evidently, does Mr. Smith.

The author takes on positive thinking (aren’t those words a contradiction in terms?) from Peale to the loud-mouthed community leader who jumps to the platform and demands, “Everybody sing!”

“As in the case of Saint George,” Smith suggests, “it was enough to be anti-dragon. There were plenty of proprincess hand-wringers back at the castle.”

Now I don’t want to be a hand-wringer. My mother was one, until we got our first washer, and she developed strong hands. Too strong, I thought as a child.

But after she got the washer, her hand was wrung. I mean that it went through the wringer, which was even worse than hand-wringing.

That’s where I think we are today: between the hand-wringers and the wringer. And it’s hard to be positive in such a situation.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Paul Seen Clearly

I want to express to you my profound appreciation for printing Leon Morris’s “Paul, Apostle of Love” (Current Religious Thought, Sept. 9). Morris is especially accurate in his depiction of the great apostle’s attitude toward women—his teaching of mutual subjection of Christian husbands and wives, his encouragement of theological education for women, his tributes to female leaders and workers in the early church, and so forth. My son was named after the apostle Paul, and Morris’s column is a glad reminder of why I’ve always been pleased with that choice.

VIRGINIA R. MOLLENKOTT

Hewitt, N.J.

Sounding The Alarm

After reading “Is Self-Love Biblical?” (Aug. 12), I found that I was not only disappointed but even alarmed. I was disappointed in that there was nothing given that would help a Christian counselor help others out of the dilemma of selfdepreciation. I was also disappointed in that Piper obviously is attacking a “straw man”.… A Christian counselor using the Good Samaritan parable as the basis of his philosophy of self-love is not seeking to develop a new redemptive system with man at the center. Rather, he is in hopes of leading the counselee to a greater appreciation of the redemption which is already his in Jesus Christ. My disappointment was also increased by the realization that Piper’s concern was evidently intuitively attained rather than thorough careful research.…

However, if disappointment was all I received from the article, I could have closed the cover and forgotten it. That wasn’t possible because of my alarm at the implications of the article and its effect on Christian counselors coming to it with a hope similar to my own. There is the implication that narcissism and self-esteem are equivalent as well as the suggestion that Jesus assumed that self-love is a given. Will these implications lead some who counsel in whatever capacity to assume that to encourage a fellow believer to a greater appreciation of his glorified condition is to promote narcissism?

JOE D. LIVINGSTON

Director of Counseling

California Center for Biblical Studies

Culver City, Calif.

Piper reveals a fundamental misconception. He makes the common error of equating positive self-esteem with narcissistic egocentricity and sinful pride.… It is not falsely striving to find goodness and worth in myself where none exist. Rather, it is a realistic appraisal and acceptance of both my strengths and weaknesses, accompanied by a generally good feeling about who God has made me to be.

The Good News of Christ teaches me to see myself, as well as other people, as God sees us—not only as sinners, but also as essentially valuable persons, created in God’s image and redeemed by Christ’s precious blood. In Christ I can begin to love and accept myself and others because in Christ God loves and accepts us unconditionally. Only then am I truly freed to forget my selfish preoccupation with false feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness and then I can begin to love God unreservedly and to selflessly minister to the needs of others. “All human beings” do not “love themselves” in this way, because they have not known the love of God for them. The prideful, sinful self-love of the priest and Levite is not to be equated with healthy self-esteem, nor is the loving selflessness of the Samaritan to be equated with its opposite. Piper has either never experienced the debilitating pain of low self-esteem, or else he has not yet known the joyous experience of deliverance from it.

ROD MARTIN

Willowdale, Ont., Canada

The Christian And Culture

The Christian’s relationship to secular culture is a serious problem for our generation, as it has been for all those before us. CHRISTIANITY TODAY, more than any evangelical publication I know, provides articles which enable the reader to form enlightened attitudes.

One stunning example is the cover story on Robert Hale, “When You Care Enough to Sing the Very Best” (Aug. 26). As a longtime opera lover and a fan of Wilder and Hale, I am most appreciative for Hale’s dealing with the issues of operatic morality, character assumption, and Christian commitment. And I commend Cheryl Forbes for her finese in interviewing.

The editors who months ago formulated the policy to run cultural-aesthetic material in CHRISTIANITY TODAY deserve credit and thanks.

CAROLYN KEEFE

West Chester State College

West Chester, Pa.

As Concert Co-ordinator for Robert Hale and Dean Wilder, it is my privilege to write and express my deepest appreciation for the review of Robert Hale.

I wanted to … let you know of the many phone calls and letters that we have continued to receive from the time this particular issue reached the news stands and, also, [from] all those who are regular subscribers to CHRISTIANITY TODAY. We have had nothing but praise and continued registrations of approval for the fine article and extremely good taste in which the magazine presented Hale, both as an opera star, and, also, as a gospel singer.

HAROLD J. STEPHANZ

Hale-Wilder Concerts

Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Since Cheryl Forbes demonstrates an otherwise commendable concern about the negative attitude evangelicals too often show toward the arts (her first question for Clyde Kilby is, “Do evangelicals still fear the arts?”, Sept. 9), it is lamentable that [in her introduction to the Hale interview] she calls the music for the Black Mass scene of Boïto’s Mefistofele “sickeningly seductive.” This unfortunate phrase suggests that Boïto appealed to prurient interests, whereas anyone familiar with this powerful opera and with the New York City Opera’s production knows that Boïto suggests both the terror and fascination of Hell.

C. S. Lewis reminds us that “it is a very old critical discovery that the imitation in art of unpleasing objects may be a pleasing imitation.” Boïto’s Mefistofele is a revolting character who sings beautifully, and she should not appear to warn evangelicals away from a superb opera. While her interviews with Kilby and Robert Hale are for the most part commendable efforts to exonerate evangelicals from Martin Marty’s charge in A Nation of Behavers that they are generally anti-intellectual and suspicious of the arts, Forbes ought not to appear to condemn a great work of art.

BYRON NELSON

Assistant Professor of English

West Virginia University

Morgantown, Pa.

Bravo! CHRISTIANITY TODAY gets better with each issue! It’s good to see a journal meet some issues. Three articles in particular were outstanding in the August 26 issue. The interview with Robert Hale … the report on Harrington and O’Hair … and the article by Klaus Bockmühl on the Ten Commandments. Keep up the good work.

KEN WILSON

Decatur Seventh-day Adventist Church Decatur, Tenn.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.