Optimism and Pessimism: Humanistic or Biblical?

Robert E. Fugate, Ph.D.

An optimist may be defined as a person having a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome. A pessimist is defined as a person having the tendency to see, anticipate, or emphasize only bad or undesirable outcomes, results, conditions, problems, etc.¹

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Can a person be a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist? For example, is a bearish investor who believes there is going to be an imminent market correction, but who is bullish long-term, an optimist or a pessimist?

Neither “optimism” nor “pessimism” is necessary Biblical. Optimism can be a form of counterfeit faith. The object of Biblical faith is the reliable, propositional Word of the faithful, covenant-keeping God—especially to His elect people. Conversely, optimism is often rooted in a wrong view of God, a wrong view of man, and a wrong view of sin. For example, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Liberalism was characterized by optimism, which was rooted in the adherents’ optimistic faith in man—including his innate goodness and his inevitable progress.² Today, many optimistic theologians are rejecting the negative doctrine of hell.

False religions, such as Marxism and Islam (with the apocalyptic second coming of the 12th imam, Mahdi³), may be characterized as eschatologically optimistic, since both believe they will conquer and rule the world. The New Age movement may be termed optimistic insofar as it portrays mankind as divine and as increasingly entering into the implications of this divinity.

Much American cultural and national optimism is rooted in humanism and pseudo-messianic statism (often couched in terms of liberty, freedom, equality, democracy, and the elimination of the evils of terrorism, totalitarianism, poverty, etc.). Education and psychology are often optimistically (pseudo-messianically) touted as tools by which to eliminate crime and poverty and create a utopian society.⁴ Even the antichristian United Nations promotes the optimistic goals of world peace and unity (apart from submission to the Prince of Peace, the Lord Jesus Christ). Such man-centered, optimistic, utopianism is a false religion.

In many allegedly Christian churches optimism has taken on unbiblical proportions. Biblical faith has been replaced by “the power of positive thinking.” The “Faith Movement” exhorts “little gods” to create their own material reality by speaking it into existence by “faith.” (The “Faith Movement” is indebted to the positive, mind-over-matter teaching of Christian Science.) In many “seeker-friendly churches, God’s holy and just law, human depravity, sin, repentance, and hell are castigated as negative, self-esteem-destroying topics, unworthy to be mentioned from the pulpit.

It is instructive to remember that, in Biblical times, the messages of false prophets were usually messages of optimism (i.e., peace, prosperity, and security)—when God was foretelling impending judgment.⁵ Amazingly, on one occasion God even sent a false spirit to optimistically foretell victory through false prophets, in order to deceive and destroy a rebellious king of Israel (i.e., Ahab, 1 Ki 22)! (Of course, Satan himself can be the master of optimistic promises: “You shall be like God!” Gn 3:5.) In contrast to false prophets, the prophetic word of genuine Old Testament prophets was sometimes quite pessimistic (at least regarding the immediate future). For instance, Ezekiel gave God’s rebellious nation, the southern kingdom of Judah, very pessimistic prophecies of destruction until Babylon defeated her, destroying Jerusalem and the temple in the process; thereafter, his prophecies of restoration were quite positive. Prophesying immediately prior to the fall of Jerusalem, Jeremiah was hardly considered the epitome of faith and optimism when he prophesied two options for God’s covenant people: surrender to their evil Babylonian enemies or die (Jer 21:9; 38:2, 17f; 27:8, 11)!⁶ In Amos’ day, it was the sinners in Israel that God had decreed would be executed that positively confessed, “The calamity shall not overtake nor confront us” (Am 9:10). Even our Lord Jesus was quite pessimistic when He prophesied: His coming death on the cross; curses upon the Jewish leaders (Mt 23); and the utter destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (Mt 24). (Jesus also taught about hell more than anyone else in the Bible.) The key question is always, What time is it prophetically? Is it a time of receiving covenant blessings (e.g., Joshua’s, Caleb’s, and David’s faith to conquer the Promised Land) or, is it a time of covenant curses/judgments (e.g., the times of Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70)? The Bible teaches that there is a time when sin is too pervasive, and it is too late for that culture—even too late for intercessory prayer—God’s judgment will fall.⁷

But what about cultures that are not ripe for judgment? Must the Christian still tear down evil in order to plant righteousness? Apologist Cornelius Van Til answers: “In this world of sin no Christian individual and no Christian organization can be positive and constructive till after they have been negative and destructive”⁸

“I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, To root out and to pull down, To destroy and to throw down, To build and to plant” (Jer 1:10).⁹

“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:4f).

Both John the Baptizer and our Lord Jesus proclaimed the “good news” (gospel) of the inbreaking kingdom of God by issuing the command, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 3:2; 4:17). This was later followed by Christ’s solemn assertion, “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Lk 13:3, 5). Clearly the gospel message contains both negative aspects (God’s hatred of, and judgment on sin) and positive aspects (salvation through Christ for those who repent).

Biblical faith is not optimistic faith in autonomous, depraved man and his institutions. Biblical faith is not optimistic presumption, which expects God to bless what He has not ordered (Nu 14:42–45). Biblical faith is not optimistic antinomianism, which expects God to bless unrepentant, idolatrous, lawless people and nations (Ezk 13:22). (“God bless America!”)

In these and many other ways, optimism or “positivism” is antithetical to Biblical Christianity.

Pessimism is not Biblical, either. Pessimism denies the sovereign, providential God of the Bible, who foreordains whatever comes to pass,¹⁰ working all things according to the counsel of His good will (Eph 1:11). Pessimism ignores the victory Jesus Christ won through His atoning death and resurrection, breaking the power of Satan and his demons, sin, disease, poverty, and death. Pessimism ignores the present implications of the Lord Jesus Christ’s enthronement as the ruler of the universe (Ps 110; Mt 28:18) and as the head of His church (Eph 1:19–23; 2:5–6). Pessimism ignores the fact that God has foreordained victory for Christ’s church (Mt 16:18) and for His kingdom (Dn 2:31–35, 44f)—victory in human history (contra Dispensationalism and amillennialism). Pessimism ignores the fact that “with God all things are possible” (Mk 10:27; cf. 9:23). In these and other ways, pessimism is antithetical to Biblical faith.

In conclusion, both optimism and pessimism are humanistic perspectives. Consequently, Christians are called to be neither optimists nor pessimists. Rather, we are called to be God’s prophets, priests (i.e., worshippers and intercessors), and kings, accurately representing His governmental reign (i.e., kingdom) and the will of God on the earth. As God’s prophetic people on the earth, we must live in the light of God’s times and seasons. May we have God-given “understanding of the times, to know what [our families, churches, and nations] ought to do” “for such a time as this” (cf. 1 Ch 12:32; Est 4:14).

¹ Random House Dictionary, pp. 1360, 1447.

² Even today many evangelicals reject Biblical postmillennialism because they confuse it with Liberal humanistic optimism.

³ Muhammad d’ul Mahdi / al-Mahdi Alaihi as-Salam (http://kataragama.org/al-mahdi.htm). “According to Shiites, the 12th imam disappeared as a child in the year 941. When he returns, they believe, he will reign on earth for seven years, before bringing about a final judgment and the end of the world” (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53964).

⁴ For example, Horace Mann, the nineteenth-century founder of American statist education wrote, “The Common School is the greatest discovery ever made by man. … Other social organizations are curative and remedial; this is preventive and an antidote; they come to heal diseases and wounds; this to make the physical and moral frame invulnerable to them. Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night, property, life and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened” (Common School Journal, vol. 3 [January 1, 1841], p. 15; cited by Rousas J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education, p. 29).

⁵ Jer 14:13; 23:17; 28:1–11, 15; Ezk 13:10, 16; cf. Jer 6:14; 8:11; Is 30:10. According to Josephus, false prophets also prophesied victory prior to the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in A.D. 70.

⁶ “Nearly all of the content of the classical (writing) prophets’ oracles revolve around the announcement of the near-time fulfillment of covenantal curses and the end-time fulfillment of covenantal restoration blessings. They speak of little else than these two topics: how and why God’s people may expect to be punished by a variety of disasters soon, and how and why they may expect to be rescued and restored eventually” (Douglas Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, WBC [Waco, TX: Word, 1987], pp. xxxii).

⁷ Heb 3:11 (cf. Nu 14:25–35); Jer 4:28; 7:16; 11:14; 14:11; 15, 1, 6; Ezk 14:13f, 20; 24:14; Gn 7:16; 15:16.

⁸ Cornelius Van Til, Essays on Christian Education (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1979), p. 187.

⁹ “The true church in every age has a mission to the state, to proclaim the fall of Babylon [Rv 14:8], to declare to the state that civil government can endure only under God and in obedience to His word, that every attempt of civil government to become as god, to be the purveyor of grace and of paradise, is damned and doomed. The cleansing of civil government and the indictment of it by the word must be the task of the church in every age” (Rousas J. Rushdoony, Thy Kingdom Come [Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1978], p. 181).

¹⁰ Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 3; Westminster Larger Catechism, question 12.

 

© Robert E. Fugate, 2007

Lord of the Nations • www.LordoftheNations.world

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Anyone Else but Me!

Robert E. Fugate, Ph.D.

One of Satan’s primary strategies in his warfare against God’s people has always been to discredit God by discrediting the truthfulness, authority, and relevance of God’s Word. Two clear Scriptural examples are Satan’s temptation of Eve (Gn 3) and his temptation of Christ (Mt 4 // Lk 4). In both cases Satan altered God’s Word (compare Gn 3:1 with 2:16-17; compare Mt 4:6 with Ps 91:11-12). When Eve succumbed to Satan’s temptation, she deleted part of God’s Word; she added to God’s Word; and she altered God’s Word (compare Gn 3:2-3 with 2:16-17). In this pamphlet I would like to discuss deleting from God’s Word.

We are familiar with Satan’s success in persuading those people who believe in either religious liberalism or neo-orthodoxy to deny that the Bible is the Word of God—thereby deleting in its entirety the Word of God written. However, even Bible-believing Christians are guilty of deleting from God’s Word. This is primarily done by means of complicated theological systems that relegate—without explicit Scriptural warrant—large portions of Scripture as applicable only to another age (e.g., to the old covenant, to a future millennium, etc.) and to another nation (e.g., Old Testament Israel).

Dispensationalism is a classic example of a theological system used by Bible-believing people to delete from God’s Word. In this system, the Old Testament and the Gospels (including the Sermon on the Mount) are not applicable to the theology and the ethics of the Christian church.

Indeed, the Old Testament is viewed as ethically inferior to the New Testament. Thus dispensationalists (as well as many evangelicals) reject the imprecatory Psalms as being sub-Christian. Ultra-dispensationalists also relegate the book of Acts to a previous dispensation, denying even water baptism.

Lutheranism, while must less extreme than dispensationalism, makes a sharp hermeneutical dichotomy between law and grace so that they are mutually exclusive and incompatible. (Biblically, the Old Testament Law was based upon grace.) Again, the net result is that the Old Testament is rendered second class and somewhat irrelevant.

Reformed churches have had a much more Biblical approach toward the Old Testament. However, they too have often been guilty of deleting from God’s Word. Some reject the use of musical instruments in worship on the grounds that they are connected to Temple worship, which is irrelevant for the New Testament church.[1] Many Reformed people have rejected the civil laws of the Old Testament, claiming that they were only for the nation of Israel, and thus irrelevant for the church. These non-theonomists teach that the Scriptures are not sufficient for the just ordering of state and society. A large number of Reformed people reject the supernatural gifts that the resurrected Lord gave to equip and to empower His church. They do this by adopting a “dispensational” argument that these gifts were only for the apostles (or for the church until the Bible was written) — again manufacturing a complicated theological system without explicit Scriptural teaching. The net result is that significant portions of Acts and the Epistles are deleted as no longer relevant for the church; the ministry of the Holy Spirit, as well as some of the means of glorifying God, edifying the church, and evangelism have been changed after the New Testament was written. Even a portion of the Great Commission is irrelevant (Mk 16:17-18). We are taught to disobey direct apostolic commands of the New
Testament (e.g., “desire earnestly spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy,” 1 Cor 14:1, 39; etc.; cf. Mt 5:19). Some Reformed people go even further, teaching that the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20 // Mk 16:15-20; Ac 1:8) has already been fulfilled, and is therefore not applicable to the church today. Hyper-preterists devise an eschatological system asserting that all Bible prophecies were fulfilled by A.D. 70; thus there will be no future, bodily second coming of Christ, no bodily resurrection of the dead, no final judgment, no new heavens and new earth, etc. Consequently, no Bible prophecy is relevant to the present or to the future.

These brief examples show that Satan has been quite successful in using “dispensational” theological systems to get people — even Bible-believing Christians — to delete much of God’s Word (as far as being applicable to the church today). These deletions have grave consequences in terms of robbing the church of her power and her prophetic message to society, and in terms of altering her worship, edification, and evangelism.

In addition to “dispensational” theological systems, cultural arguments are often used to delete many of the commands of Scripture (e.g., male leadership in the family, church, and state). Bible-believing churches often use the cultural “cop-out” to ignore the Biblical commands to express brotherly affection. (One can learn more about expressing brotherly affection by watching an NFL football game than by attending most evangelical churches!) Many Bible-believing churches use religious traditions (or even psychological explanations) to set aside Biblical injunctions concerning praising God with one’s body and emotions (e.g., joyful clapping, shouting, dancing, instruments, etc.) and worshipping God (by raising hands, kneeling, singing in the Spirit, and prostrating oneself). (It is instructive to note that David — a man after God’s own heart and a type of Christ — praised God with his whole being; his wife Michal rebuked him for his undignified and improper behavior, so God cursed her, 2 Sm 6:12-23.) The command for sick Christians to call for the church elders to anoint them with oil and to pray for their physical healing (Ja 5:13-18) is routinely ignored; it seems that many Christians prefer to go to a doctor instead of requesting prayer for healing since they (as well as many elders) don’t expect God to directly and immediately heal anyway! They make God a last resort, rather than a first response. Similarly, fasting is a neglected practice. The last example I will mention concerns drinking wine. Some “prohibitionist” Presbyterian pastors and elders refuse to use wine in their church’s observance of the Lord’s Supper (in clear violation of the regulative principle of worship). Such leaders ignore the Psalmist’s teaching that God should be praised for His gracious care, which includes His provision of “wine which makes man’s heart glad” (Ps 104:15).

As Christians, all of us have our theological, cultural, and traditional comfort zones that cause us to focus on certain portions of Scripture to the neglect (and rejection) of other portions. Part of the sanctification process is growing in our obedience to all of Scripture. This necessarily involves repenting of those areas in which we have given in to Satan’s temptations and have justified setting aside portions of God’s Word as irrelevant for us. May our gracious heavenly Father faithfully continue His work of conforming us to His Son, who perfectly obeyed all the Scriptures (Mt 5:17-19), and who said and did only those things that the Father directed Him to do (Jn 12:49-25; 5:30; 8:29). May we be doers of the Word (i.e., the whole Word) and not hearers only (who delude themselves, Ja 1:22), that we may glorify our Father in heaven.

Endnotes

© Robert E. Fugate, 1996

Lord of the Nations, LLC • www.LordoftheNations.world

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