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"Empty Positivity

Much of the instruction spewing out of harmful megachurch cultures is akin to vague self-improvement books rather than clear, biblical instruction. It's quite obvious that the goal is to be positive and encouraging, regardless of how much sense anything makes. This precedent is so dangerous.

Not all of life is positive. In fact, much of life is disappointing, frustrating, tiresome, or depressing. But the lie of the prosperity gospel, which much of harmful megachurch culture is based on, is that a person's life can be full of positivity and happiness despite the inescapable effects of sin in the world. This false teaching states that the negative forces in a person's life can dissolve only if he or she will do x-y-z to dispel it.

Here's the reality: Creating a life full of positivity is impossible, and any instructions given to help a person achieve it are made-up and foolish. Those people front-and-center on a stage somewhere proclaiming that they are living a completely positive life are lying. They have put up a false front. To those who are encouraged to focus on themselves as their own priority, though, such teaching is deemed inspiring and refreshing.

The result of this teaching is empty positivity -- as opposed to genuine, biblical faith and joy -- and those who buy into it are consequently unable to actually face the trials of life from a biblical worldview. They've been told to speak to their circumstances so that everything will change, but this is an absolutely hollow approach to life that does about as much as one of those "Live, Laugh, Love" signs hanging above a pile of credit card bills in the home of a recently divorced alcoholic.

This empty positivity can be viewed as a drug, like meth. It's well understood that meth is harmful and damaging. It's made with poisonous chemicals and has an incredibly negative impact on the user. However, many people are determined to ingest it because it produces "feelings of euphoria, arousal, reduced fatigue and appetite, loss of inhibition, and increased sociability," as articulated by drugpolicy.org.

Empty positivity also has an incredibly negative impact on people, but they are attracted to it because they get many of the same dopamine effects that people experience when they use a drug like meth. They'll often leave church services on a Sunday, go out into the real world, and experience the emptiness of this teaching, just like when a person comes down from a high. But in the same way a drug addict must return to the harmful substance to get up again, the people who shoot up empty positivity must return the next Sunday to get a hit of the stuff that kills them. Harmful, indeed."

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