Positivity Versus Honesty?!

This is quite a spontaneous post, and likely to be very short, at least by my usual standards! This is an issue that I have been thinking about for a long time: how to strike a balance between positivity and honesty, both on my blogs and in life in general.

The Power of Positivity!
On one hand, I desperately want to be positive! I want to talk about good, happy, smiley things, I want to reflect on positive expectations, I want to smile, as a person I like to be happy!

The Need for Honesty
On the other hand, I believe it is also necessary to talk about things which are not necessarily happy. I believe that it is necessary to identify and address matters which are not right with our world, and need to be fixed.

The truth is that I think that I have now gone too far in one direction, to the point of essentially embracing negativity in the name of being honest.

It occurred to me just today that this might be the right attitude to cultivate, to achieve a good balance: that yes, on one hand, there are bad and negative things that happen in the world, and issues that we need to address, sometimes as individuals, within our own selves, sometimes outside our own individuals selves, sometimes even outside our own lives altogether. This is where positivity can come in, even while striving to be utterly honest: Knowing that ultimately, God is in control of this world; no matter how serious any individual situation might seem, God is bigger, God is more powerful than it will ever be. This is how as Christians we can have cause to smile, and to be ecstatically happy even as we acknowledge the darkness; not by pretending that the darkness does not exist, but by knowing that our God is greater, and He has already overcome the darkness and He continues to overcome it everyday.

So even as I seek to address some of these serious, unsmiley issues, at the end of each one, I can lay it before God, and say “But God is greater, thank God for Jesus!” And then of course I must also take time to talk about beautiful things, more lighthearted things, issues of gratitude and joy!