Negative Reinforcement: The Rightness of Maintaining Negatives

I don't go out of my way to try to be contrarian. Really I don't. The problem of course is that there is so much out there that is wrong that requires contradiction. Naturally one person can't reasonably spend his time battling everything that is wrong out there (though some seem intent on trying). Nevertheless, I am convinced that it is necessary from time to time for Christians to be clear and unequivocal about not only what we do believe, but also what we do not believe. In other words, it is often necessary to maintain negatives.

Now I hardly need to belabor the point that this is not a popular approach these days, especially in many churches. I remember one occasion a few years ago when I was a worship leader for a small church in Florida. The main pastor was talking about what initially drew him to the fellowship of churches that we were a part of. He said that one of the attractive elements of this particular group of churches was that they were always "calling out the positive", and never dwelling on the negatives. Now on the one hand, there is some virtue in that. I know I don't want to be around perpetually negative people who are always going on diatribes on why this or that sucks. I get it.

But this pastor's point was deeper than that. He was essentially saying that as a fellowship of churches, we never, ever spoke about what we disagreed with. We only encouraged the good things we found in others. There was rarely (if ever) any place given for confronting error; only for affirming truth. On the surface, that might sound really admirable and even Christlike. The problem of course is that it isn't.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones saw the danger in his own day. Lloyd-Jones said this, "One of the first signs that a man is ceasing to be truly evangelical is that he ceases to be concerned about negatives, and keeps saying, 'We must always be positive'..."The argument which says that you must always be positive, that you must not define the man in terms of what he is against, as well as what he is for, misses the subtlety of the danger. If that argument is left uncontested the door is open to a repetition of such things as the Galatian heresy..."What was the Galatian heresy? Well, it stated that those people who had led the Galatians astray had not denied the gospel; they were not denying anything; what they were doing was to add something, namely circumcision, which, they said, was essential. Oh yes, they said, you've got to believe the gospel, all these positives are quite right. But then they brought in their addition. So it is important, you see, that the evangelical should also have his negative criticisms and be ready to say that you must not believe this and you must not do that."  (emphasis mine)

(Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (1992). What is an Evangelical? (pp. 37-38). Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust.)

Lloyd-Jones was right. The Judaizers that troubled the Galatians had not taken anything away from the Gospel. As far as we all know, they were in complete agreement that Jesus is the Messiah, that He was sinless, that He died on the cross as a substitute for sinners, and that He gloriously rose again, ascended to the Father's right hand, and will return again in glory to judge the living and the dead. And obviously they advocated faith in Jesus. But they went one step further, and this is the key. They added circumcision, especially to new gentile Christians. And that is what Paul was attacking. Paul was saying absolutely not to circumcision as a means to be made right with God! Paul, in short, was asserting a negative.

Now on the one hand, I could point out the logical absurdity of only making positive affirmations. By definition, when you affirm one thing, you are implicitly denying its opposite. To use a baseball analogy, if I say I like the National League because the pitchers are expected to be able to hit, then I am implicitly criticizing the Designated Hitter rule in the American League. Similarly, a positive affirmation of monotheism is by implication a denial of polytheism and atheism.

On the other hand, I would much rather just state a positive case for maintaining negatives. What I hope to do is provide just a few examples in Scripture when God or his spokesmen actively said no to some false belief and/or practice. Paul's polemic against the Judaizers in Galatia referenced above is but one example. There are many others. I will call attention to only a handful.

One of the most clear examples of making negative cases against a false religious system in Scripture is the Lord's conflicts with the scribes and pharisees. It should be noted that Jesus didn't simply positively teach concerning the Kingdom of God, He was quite forceful in confronting error. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to read of an encounter between Jesus and these religious frauds that didn't prominently feature criticism or even outright confrontation:

So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, "Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?"

He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied of you hypocrites; as it is written:

"These people honor me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me.

They worship me in vain;

their teachings are merely human rules."

(Mark 7:5-7 NIV)

I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”
 “Abraham is our father,” they answered.
“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”
“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”
 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

(John 8:38-44 NIV)

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.

(Matthew 23:1-7)

Likewise the Apostles of Jesus were never shy about stating what not only must be affirmed, but what must be denied. The disciple whom Jesus loved, John, was probably way too black and white for today's church. Nevertheless, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he could write like this concerning false prophets:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

(1 John 4:1-3)

John minces no words here. Most commentators believe that John is combating a nascent form of the heresy known as Gnosticism. A simple description of the Gnostics is that they believed that true saving grace could only come from access to esoteric "knowledge" which was accessible only to an elite few often via certain spiritual experiences. Additionally, the Gnostics believed that the material universe was inherently evil and that only the spirit world was of any value. As a consequence, they posited that the true God only created the spirit world and that a lesser "god" created the physical universe. The upshot to that is that the Gnostics denied the Incarnation - that Jesus truly came in the flesh. Jesus must have been a disembodied phantom or maybe the man Jesus carried the "Christ" spirit in him for a time. Either way, John deliberately takes aim at the false doctrines of the proto-Gnostics. He evidently did not consider it beneath him or beneath God to maintain negatives. In this case, the denial that Jesus was only a phantom or a ghost.

The last case I will consider comes from the Old Testament. There is a section in the book of Isaiah where the Prophet, speaking for Yahweh Himself, attacks the lifeless and useless idols of the nations which the peoples of Israel and Judah had also taken for themselves to worship. This is what God says through Isaiah:

With whom, then, will you compare God?

To what image will you liken him?

As for an idol, a metalworker casts it,

and a goldsmith overlays it with gold

and fashions silver chains for it.

A person too poor to present such an offering

selects wood that will not rot;

they look for a skilled worker

to set up an idol that will not topple...

No sooner are they planted,

no sooner are they sown,

no sooner do they take root in the ground,

than he blows on them and they wither

and a whirlwind sweeps them away 

like chaff.

(Isaiah 40:18-20; 24)

All who make idols are nothing,

and the things they treasure are worthless.

Those who would speak up for them are blind;

they are ignorant, to their own shame.

Who shapes a god and casts an idol,

which can profit nothing?

People who do that will be put to shame;

such craftsmen are only human beings.

Let them all come together and take their stand;

they will be brought down to terror and shame.

(Isaiah 44:9-11)

As I intimated before, there are those who abuse and overdo the biblical position of maintaining negatives. I am sure we can all think of examples of Debbie Downers who only seem to talk about what they don't believe and why everyone else is wrong and has nothing to offer. Despite that though, it is important not to swing the pendulum back to the opposite extreme. It is right and good to state both affirmations and denials. If we don't and only want to be "positive", then wolves in sheep's clothing will have free reign to add their innovations to the truth of the gospel and no one will be able to confront it with biblical (negative) conviction. Amen.