- At the end of one year and the beginning of a new one, it’s possible to place too much emphasis on what should happen in the coming days, weeks, months.
Maintaining a perspective towards the future is a necessary part of a well-rounded mind that operates in the real-world realm of activity. How we view tomorrow is a significant indicator of spiritual and emotional health and of our ability to accomplish what God has called us each to do.
Back in the 1950s, Hans J. Eysenck reviewed 24 studies of over 7,000 neurotic individuals to try to determine what helped them recover from their mental illness. He discovered that when psychoanalysis was used, 44% were cured or much improved. If an eclectic approach was employed, 64% made progress. But the kicker was – if neither of those approaches was utilized, 72% experienced recovery.
At the time, the therapy community went apoplectic over the assertion that keeping people immersed in a continual reflection and analysis of their past was ultimately counter-productive. Eysenck took hits because that same community found his study methodologically flawed; nonetheless, he maintained the premise that mishandled psychotherapy can, indeed, hamper healing.
A good bit of the Bible looks backward and causes the reader to reflect profoundly on the past. But something else is at play in the Word: a serious look into the future. The prophets frequently mention the “coming day of the Lord.” But this future orientation has implications beyond judgment and deliverance to come.
One day God gets Abram’s attention and calls him to go in a new direction that includes promise and blessing….but requires Abram to step forward without knowing the final destination. Is Abram convinced enough to leave his family, his land, and his wealth to grab hold of a tomorrow that contains world-impacting possibilities? He is. And the future he opts for changes not only him but human history.
Later Jesus challenges the disciples: “Come and I will make you…” That call is all about the future. Obedience to it transformed not only their lives but the whole world.
None of this is to denigrate the benefits of therapists or of reflecting on the past and learning from it. But no personality will be healthy, no church will be all that it needs to be, and no nation can maintain or create cultural vigor, solely immersed in rumination of days gone by.
Viktor Frankl was schooled in the ways of Freud but, even before arriving at Auschwitz as a Jew, had largely rejected that (very past-oriented) school of thought for something more transcendent. At Auschwitz, he found that many prisoners were giving up hope and dying before the Germans got around to killing them. Others, motivated by purposes outside themselves—reunification with loved ones, projects they hoped to complete, dreams they longed to fulfill—persevered through that horrific ordeal.
Frankl’s rival school of thought, proven in the suffering of a Nazi camp, maintained that the deepest human drive is firmly rooted in finding meaning in a future worth whatever current travails one might be going through.
At the end of one year and the beginning of a new one, it’s possible to place too much emphasis on what should happen in the coming days, weeks, months. But, like Scripture, perhaps we should look back in analysis that robustly pivots to God’s exciting expectations of our tomorrow. Individuals, families, and nations—and the situations that surround them—can be transformed when His purpose for our lives grips our hearts and our habits.
Matt Friedeman
