[Faith-talk] Pessimism or Optimism?

Wed Mar 30 20:56:06 UTC 2011

The darkness the author in this article is referring to is spiritual
darkness as I read it.

Melody

Pessimism or Optimism? 
Jill Carattini 
________________________________________

Apparently, the month of March has been officially deemed, "Optimism month."
 It is unclear, though, whether the name has been given by the optimists who
generally want the world to practice greater optimism, or the pessimists who
would rather only put up with optimists one month out of the year.  Author
James Branch Cabell distinguishes between the two disparate outlooks, "The
optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist
knows it."  On that definition, I think I would rather be neither!
Filmmaker Woody Allen once disclosed in an interview, "It's hard for me to
enjoy anything because I'm aware how transient things are.  Yes, there are
strategies of surviving... There are times when you think, 'My God, life is
sweet, it's nice,' and thoughts of mortality are in abeyance.  You know,
watching the Marx Brothers or a Knicks game or listening to great jazz, you
get a great feeling of ecstasy... But then it passes, and the dark reality
of life starts to creep back in."  These are hard words from a person whose
films have been described as "nihilism with a happy ending."(1)  But is
there really such a thing?  By his own admission, it seems there is not.  
Many have identified in their lives a plaguing sense of meaninglessness.  If
life as we see it in worldwide headlines and calamities is all there is to
behold, Allen is right to be disillusioned with the novelty of it.  Stirring
music, meaningful relationships, and sublime moments are overshadowed by the
futility of it all.  Pessimism becomes inescapable.  
But perhaps a greater tragedy than this sense of hopelessness is that
Christians sometimes seem to agree.  It is becoming more and more easy to
gather around pessimistic messages and dire forecasts as if my criticism of
the world is its only remaining hope.  But am I not entrusted with far
greater a message than this?  The Christian is right to cling to a sense of
urgency.  Every story and act of Jesus was marked by the urgency of good
news.  Yet his urgency was filled with burning words of hope for even the
darkest of places. 
Is there reason for pessimism?  There is certainly reason to be sobered by a
world of injustice, pain, and death.  Is there reason for optimism?  The
Christian's answer is mixed with tension.  She is not optimistic in the
sense that her hope allows her to live with her head in the sand or her life
so high in the sky that she is removed from the world.  He is not so
optimistic that the kingdom must be only considered in futuristic visions. 
As with our own lives, we know that much of this world too will fall away. 
But we also know that Jesus proclaimed his kingdom among us—hidden like a
treasure in a field.  We are not quite at home, but we are living here and
now and surely not without hope.  For the Christian, Christ has won and
humanity shall win.  There is reason for hope as strong as death, love as
unyielding as the grave, for Christ is both near and returning.  
Theories of where and how the world is awry are ever-present.  While it is
helpful to hear a doctor's diagnosis when we are sick, the diagnosis is
always given with the hope of stopping the disease, not shocking the patient
with realism.  Even if the cure is costly, good physicians know that the
patient who wallows only in what's wrong stands the smallest chance for
healing.  But doctors who speak regularly of the horror of disease and
little of the available cure are not good doctors.  Jesus came for the sick;
he told them they were ailing, but he came to offer a cure.  
Responding to the printed question of a newspaper seeking opinions, G.K.
Chesterton answered the question "What's wrong with the world?" in one
sentence.  "Dear Sirs," he replied, "I am."  In any declaration of dark
realities, we do well not to exclude our own hearts.  But whether it is
ourselves or an entire culture we find ourselves diagnosing, we also do well
to remember we are not the doctor.  It was with visions of war and
brokenness around him that David prayed to the only one who could reach the
depths of him as a start to the darkness around him, "Create in me a clean
heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."  
There is indeed reason to hope.  God hears every plea for health and
wholeness.  The greatest physician has confronted the pains of the world
with a stark diagnosis but with a most promising remedy.  And Christ has
announced the arrival of a kingdom that confronts our infectious despair,
calling us further up and farther into the world where God reigns, and we
are ever the harbingers of this good news.  

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias
International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Allen Bloom as quoted in Ken Myer's, All God's Children and Blue Suede
Shoes (Wheaton: Crossway, 1989), 63. 