Optimist or Pessimist ...

Thursday, August 11, 2011. Are you more an optimist or more some pessimist? What is your view onto the world, your idea about what will happen and how things will turn out to be?

Positive or Negative Expectations? …

There are some people who are optimists. They believe in the future. They live with the attitude that things will turn our to be good. They expect that they will succeed with what they start. They expect good things from life, pleasant developments from the future.

There are pessimists. They see the problems. They realize what could go wrong, and have seen too many things to fail. So they rather expect the worst. They do not believe in positive developments, but rather prepare for failure. Their expectations are shaped by the worst case szenario.

Are the expectations of optimists or pessimists rooted in reality? Are these only attitudes, which cannot be based on facts? Often, optimism or pessimism is more a philosophy or character feature than anything which would be linked to reality. Of course, many things failed in the past. But we can also find many which went well. People are suffering. But many are well. There is no clear indication in reality whether we should rather be optimists or pessimists. And we can not really choose anyway, since our character is only slowly changing over time by our choices.

God's Role …

Was Jesus an optimist or a pessimist? When you read his predictions about human development, that sounds very pessimistic indeed. He talks about wars and about suffering which will come - and history has proven him to be fully correct.

But he also talks about wonders of human abilities. He talks about God's presence in the middle of all of this. He talks about God's love and God's help. He talks about communities which are built on truth and appreciation - his people. He talks about the kingdom of heaven, which is growing in the middle of us. That sounds quite positive!

I think that life is not about being optimistic or pessimistic, but about faith. That means: God will help us in positive and negative experiences. There will be challenges in our life, he will be there. There will be good things, he will be with us. We can expect him to help us, when we pray, and when we live in faith. That is not optimism, but something beyond these two categories. ... more texts