Negativity Bias and the Praying Imagination
On the internal struggle to live in the victory of Christ
Recently, I received simultaneous news about two separate situations—one good and one bad. Each one involved people connected to the church I pastor. In the first scenario, a person for whom our church had been praying for years repented and believed the gospel. The second situation concerned a minor complaint against our church’s ministry.
I could not stop thinking about the second situation. In fact, my fixation on the negative news overwhelmed my thoughts and emotions so much that I struggled to even celebrate the good news.
It seems even more ridiculous when I type it out. I fixated so much on a petty complaint that I failed to celebrate an occurrence of the greatest of divine miracles—the spiritual regeneration of a person formerly dead in their trespasses and sins. I let bad news obscure my sight of the best news happening right in front of my eyes. I fixated so much on “the cares of this world” that I lost sight of God’s kingdom advancing.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t my only experience with this dynamic. In fact, I daily struggle with fixation on the negative. Perhaps you can relate. Psychologists call it “negativity bias,” and it seems to be a universal human phenomenon. Negative information has a greater impact on our thoughts and emotions than positive. If you give a person three bits of good news and one bit of bad news, he or she will likely zoom in on the bad news so much that the good news has little impact. Bad news sticks like Velcro.
It’s why news media companies specialize on negative headlines and stories. At any given moment, good things are transpiring all around us. However, human beings aren’t interested in positive stories. We crave negativity. We crave a diet of news about scandals, wars, controversies, and crimes. Fox News and CNN profit by supplying our fix.
Psychologists recommend several strategies for overcoming negativity bias, everything from unplugging from the news to keeping a gratitude journal. One author recommends reframing Jesus’s Golden Rule to make it more appealing to our negative brains: “Do not do unto others what you do not want done unto you.” While I appreciate the effort, Jesus commends positive action in the Golden Rule, not the neglect of negative action. He’s not merely teaching his people to abstain from hating; he’s teaching us to love.
The Christian antidote to negativity bias is faith, and the Bible is filled with practical instruction on how it works. Consider Psalm 73 where Asaph models a stream of negative thinking that anyone can relate to. He admits to experiencing envy when he sees the wicked prosper. He meditates deeply on the godless folly of their lives yet marvels that their actions lead to no visible negative consequence. Instead, they live on in effortless wealth and comfort. Asaph is voicing his negativity bias.
It’s tempting to stay here, wallowing in such thoughts. We may even find ourselves pointing it out to our friends: “Can you believe how they live? They just keep getting richer!” We derive cheap comfort when others validate such emotions—“Yes, it’s ridiculous!”
Asaph, however, finds the ultimate solution. He goes to the “sanctuary of God” where he discerns their end (v. 17). There, in the presence of the LORD, he begins to see reality in full color. He sees, in other words, that there’s much more going on than what his physical eyes can see. By faith, he looks upward and sees that the wicked won’t always prosper and that he is more blessed than he previously realized: “Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory” (v. 23-24).
Eugene Peterson (1932–2018) wrote often about the “praying imagination.” For Peterson, the Christian imagination wasn’t “made-up reality” but “the capacity to make connections between the visible and the invisible, between heaven and earth, between present and past, between present and future.” By faith, the Christian embodies two worlds at once, the world of God’s kingdom and the world of this age. Peterson wrote, “For Christians, whose largest investment is in the invisible, the imagination is indispensable, for it is only by means of the imagination that we can see reality whole, in context.”
The problem with the world, according to Peterson, is that “the modern majority naively assumes that what they see and hear and touch is basic reality…and think that the visible accounts for the invisible.” The gospel, however, invites believers into the invisible but real world of God’s kingdom. We don’t discount the visible, but we flip the order. For us, the invisible takes priority in helping us understand and interpret the visible. God’s word colors the world, absorbing the negative into the positive story of God’s kingdom triumphing in Christ.
We often think of faith as something we possess that lies dormant within us. However, we are called to exercise faith, to use it daily to help us interpret the world. To strengthen it, we need to go to the sanctuary of God like Asaph. We need to open God’s word and ask him to show us the whole story. We need to cultivate our praying imagination. Don’t let negativity bias prevent you from celebrating what God is doing.