Title: Optimism 101
Text: Joel 2:23-32 (1:4-13, 12-18)
Thesis: The challenge is to choose hope for the future rather than learn helplessness from the past.
Introduction
Learned Helplessness is a term I came across in my reading this week. It is a technical term originally used in reference to animal psychology but is also appropriately applied to human behavior as well. Learned helplessness describes an animal or a person who has learned to behave helplessly, even when there is opportunity to avoid an unpleasant or harmful circumstance. It is essentially, in humans, it is a mental state in which the person perceives he or she has no control over the outcome of a situation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness)
A pertinent example of learned helplessness would be the tragic and heart-rending case of Jaycee Dugard who was kidnapped when she was 11 years old while waiting for her school bus. Jaycee was held captive for 18 years, living in sheds and tents in the backyard of her captor… despite numerous opportunities to escape she felt she had no control over her situation.
Self improvement coach and Guru Brian Tracy couches it a little differently. He sums that kind of behavior up in what he calls “The Law of Belief.” The Law of Belief states, “Whatever you believe, with feeling, becomes your reality; you always act in a manner consistent with your beliefs.” In other words, what we think either inhibits and limits us or energizes and frees us.
For example we cite the story of the chained elephant… a huge elephant can be held in place by a chain around one leg attached to a stake in the ground. The huge elephant could easily rip the stake from the ground or break the chain. But the elephant was chained to that stake when he was a very young elephant.
As a baby elephant he had attempted time and time again to break free but could not and so, at some point the little elephant decided there was no point in trying to break free and stopped trying. Now he is an old elephant who is fully capable of breaking free but does not believe that he can. (http://ezinearticles.com/?Limiting-Beliefs-and-the-Chained-Elephant&id=2446590)
The obvious application is that as people we can, by negative thinking, convince ourselves that we are hopelessly chained or restrained or limited or trapped in an inescapable situation.
So what do we do when we realize we have learned helplessness behavior? The key to unlearning helplessness and learning hopefulness is to replace “limiting beliefs and attitudes” with “empowering beliefs and attitudes.”
Despite the fact that our text today is an ancient text that speaks of a people and a time far removed from us… it is remarkably pertinent and helpful in instructing us in understanding the process of learning helplessness and how we may choose to be hopeful instead.
Learned helplessness is usually rooted in past experiences.
I. Learning helplessness from the past
What the locust swarm has left the great locusts
have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten. Joel 1:4-13
Let me begin by saying that whatever we magnify looms larger than it really. I hate walking into those little cob web strands dangling across walkways and sometimes on my front stoop. And it is the time of year when spiders are looking to find a way into my house for the winter.
One evening I came home and there was a tiny little spider right on my front door. I usually shift into Zen mode and gently remove whatever and go my way but I swatted the thing and it swung down around my feet and began scurrying about… so I went about stamping my feet to get the thing.
It was a tiny little spider but in my mind I had placed it on a glass and slid it under the lens of a microscope… where it became the monster that it really is. Big. Furry. Evil legged. Bulging eyes. Intent on dining on me over the next couple of winters.
When you dwell negatively on something it becomes very large. That’s what the people in our text were doing.
Joel is noted among what we call the Minor Prophets. The book of Joel has the feel of obscurity. Most of us would have to do considerable thumbing through the Old Testament to even find the book of Joel. It is not a text that gets a lot of attention apart from references to the Day of the Lord and the end-time judgment of the nations and the restoration of the nation of Israel. So those who specialize in charting the end times have a special prophetic appreciation for the book of Joel. But while the book of Joel has a certain end-time appeal, it also has a timeliness about it that makes it especially pertinent and instructive for the present.
The people of Israel had in their collective memory the devastating effects of a natural disaster. It was so horrendous that it was a story to be told and retold. The book begins: “Hear this, ye elders; listen, all you who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children and their children to the next generation.”
It was the kind of collective memory that would compare to our Black Thursday in 1929; Black Sunday and the Great Depression in 1935; our memories of war; 9/11; the more recent collapse of Wall Street investment and mortgage banking, stock markets and near miss of another Great Depression.
But what was it that they were supposed to tell and retell and retell to the coming generations?
Tell them, “What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.”
It was a time so horrible that the people were mourning like a new bride mourns the death of her groom. The priests are in mourning. The farmers are in despair… sackcloth and ashes are the order of the day. And all of this is but a precursor to what is to come when the Day of the Lord is upon them and a vast army invades, scorching and burning everything in its path.
While there is undoubtedly some awareness of the coming of the Day of the Lord someday – that day somehow seems far removed from our present concerns which loom large in our minds as did the plague of locusts weigh heavily on the minds of the people in Joel’s day.
The October 18, 2010 issue of Time Magazine ran a cover story, “An American Journey, 6,782 miles. 12 states. 24 days. 576 songs. One road trip reveals the issues people are talking about – but politicians aren’t,” by Joe Klein.
The article begins, “On a blistering evening in Phoenix recently, a group of prominent civic leaders met to talk about America. It didn’t take long for the conversation to get around to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. That’s what happens when smart Americans get to talking about politics these days. Topic A is the growing sense that our best days as a nation are behind us, that our kids won’t live as well as we did, that China is in the driver’s seat…” (p. 38)
On the second page the writer cites, “I found the same themes dominant everywhere – a rethinking of basic assumptions, a moment of national introspection. There was a unanimous sense that Washington was broken beyond repair. But the disgraceful behavior of the financial community, and its debilitating effects on the economy over the past thirty years, was the issue that raised the most passion by far.” (P. 39)
Page 41. And on the last page of the article Klein wrote, “Many Americans were confused and frustrated by the constant state of war since 9/11. But for every occasion they raised Afghanistan, they mentioned China 25 times. The great fear is about American supremacy. We all believed that if you followed the basic compact, worked hard and played by the rules, that we’d have the highest standard of living in the world. And we were always on the front edge of the next new technology – but we’re not anymore. We seem to be mired in mediocrity with China is steaming ahead.” (p. 41)
It is a time in which we may easily learn helplessness. The fear is that it is not going to get better. Nothing ever changes and it is not going to get any better is what we may learn by dwelling on negative past experiences.
In our text, the prosperity of the nation of Israel was severely threatened and the people were afraid… In fact they were so shaken by the events that they could not envision a better future.
But Joel does not let them dwell on the past. He urges them to choose hope instead.
II. Choosing hope for the future
Be glad, O people of Zion; rejoice in the Lord your god for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before…” Joel 2:23-32
It makes sense… if we can learn pessimism, we can learn optimism. We may either let ourselves be pre-conditioned for despair or we may be pre-conditioned for hope. In the film Thelma and Louise, Louise (Susan Sarandon) advises Thelma (Geena Davis), “You get what you settle for.” If you settle for helplessness and hopelessness… that is what you will get.
A young paratrooper was leaning to jump and was given these instructions: First, jump when you are told. Second, count to 10 and pull the ripcord; third, in the unlikely event that it doesn’t open, pull the second chute open; and fourth, when you get down, a truck will take you back to the base.
The plane ascended to the proper height, the men started peeling out, and the young paratrooper jumped when told. He counted to 10 and pulled the cord, but the chute failed to open. He proceeded to the second chute and it also failed to open. “Oh great!” he said. “When I get down I suppose the truck won’t be there either.” I suppose we might construe that bit of pessimism to actually be quite optimistic.
In our lives in the world, the temptation is always to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running strongest. When good things happen, we rise to heaven; when bad things happen, we descend to hell. … I know this to be true of no one as well as I know it to be true of myself. I know how just the weather can affect my whole state of mind for good or ill, how just getting stuck in a traffic jam can ruin an afternoon that in every other way is so beautiful that it dazzles the heart. We are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our own lives but reactors. (Frederick Buechner, The Longing for Home: Recollections and Reflections, p. 109)
The danger of Joel’s day was that people would just go with the flow of the world and the flow was that “What the locust swarm left the great locusts ate; and what the great locusts left the young locusts ate; and what the young locusts left other locusts ate…” It did not appear to be a very promising time and helplessness and hopelessness and despair were easily learned.
Sound familiar?
The circumstances of life can take you soaring into heaven or plummeting into hell. The idea is to choose to react with hope rather than despair. Joel does not want the people to settle for learned helplessness. He wants more for them.
The prophet cites the present calamity as an opportunity to turn their hearts toward God rather than wallow in despair and learn helplessness.
“Even now, return to me with all your heart, and with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart… return to the Lord your god, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love and relents from sending calamity. Who knows, he may turn and have pity?”
“Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends you abundant showers both autumn and spring rains, as before…
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten… you will have plenty to eat, until you are full and you will praise the name of the Lord your God.” Joel 2:12-26
Conclusion
Negativism and pessimism are not healthy spiritual outlooks. Learned helplessness is not an expression of hope and trust in God.
Paul wrote, “We demolish arguments and every pretention that sets itself against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” II Corinthians 10:5
The imagery of taking thoughts captive is of a military operation in which the soldier goes into enemy territory where hostile forces are at work to thwart the forces of good. When sticking thinking or negative thinking or learned helplessness is the word of the day… the bible says you go into that hostile territory and you take those words and thoughts captive, you bring them back and make them submit to the will of Christ.
By the grace of God, you let Christ control your thoughts and attitudes rather than allowing your circumstances to determine your outlook on life.
Every thought… all of our thinking must come from having Christ at the very center. Is having Christ at the center of your life inhibiting or inspiring. Does having Christ at the center of your life instill despair or hope?
Optimism 101 teaches us to choose to hope rather than learn helplessness. Will we learn helplessness or choose hope? We can learn optimism by trusting God, taking every thought captive and choosing hope.
