A Lot Depends on Our Perspective

by Curtis Shelburne

A LOT IN LIFE depends upon our perspective. Is the glass half empty or half full? It depends, I suppose, upon whether you’re the sort of person who sees donuts—or donut holes. You’ve probably long ago noticed this truth: What’s more important than what happens to people in this life is their reaction to what happens. The attitudes they choose to adopt. Their perspective on the pain or the problem is at least as important as the problem itself.

Does that mean that all we need to do to be happy and productive in this life is to be optimistic? That a positive attitude will cure all ills?

No, though I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything that negative, morose thinking helps much. Offhand, I can’t think of too many negative, morose people who consistently accomplish much worth accomplishing. If they do, hardly anyone notices because nobody wants to be around them very long.

So, just be positive and everything will work out? “Don’t worry! Be happy!”? Well, no doubt we’d all have a better shot at happiness if we spent less time worrying. Jesus had some things to say about that, you know.

Christ also had some things to say about our perspective on life. We don’t have to be half-blind! We don’t have to be blindly, morosely pessimistic. Neither do we have to be giddily, and just about as blindly, optimistic. Christians can look reality in the face and adopt an attitude of hope because hope, through Christ, is reasonable. It makes sense. It is true to what is.

I told a friend the other day (on a not-so-great day) that sometimes I vacillate between “This is the day the Lord has made” and “If anything can go wrong, it will.” Then I realized that Jesus himself said something similar: “In this world you will have trouble.” Lots will go wrong. That’s reality. But in the next breath he said, “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” Thank God, that’s reality, too. It is true to say that this is God’s world. That sounds optimistic. It is also true to say that this is presently a fallen world. That sounds pessimistic. But God loves it, he loves us, too much to leave it that way. That, I believe, is absolutely realistic.

Perspective. Is my son’s 1962 Pontiac Catalina just an old car, or is it a classic car? I could make a case either way, but a fellow is coming all the way from Omaha next week who knows that it’s old and imperfect but who also thinks that it is worth restoring.

God came all the way from heaven to earth for the same reasons. His perspective counts.