Being active on Twitter, now X, has exposed me to the big population of Chicken Littles among us. I expect negativity and doom from the left; it’s built into every one of their little petty Marxist genes, but seeing it so widely on the right is terribly annoying. I’ve come across the word panicans which some creatively use for such people, which captures well the story of Chicken Little, the story of the little doomer chicken. It isn’t commonly taught to our children today, but it’s a helpful warning for not to being overly negative and pessimistic.
First published in the 1820s, It’s a fable or fairy tale of unknown origin with various versions, but the message is the same. Chicken Little, who goes by various names in the different versions, is walking in the woods when she is struck by an acorn falling from one of the trees. Convinced this is a sign the sky is falling in, she rushes from the woods to go and warn the king. On her way to see the king, she meets a number of her friends, who are also birds, usually with rhyming names: Henny Penny, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, Turkey Lurkey, and so on. As she meets each of them along the way, Chicken Little tells them the sky is falling in, and that she has first-hand evidence of this. All of these other birds join Chicken Little as she makes her way to the king, and soon there is a large group of them convinced that the sky is falling on them. On their way, they come across Foxy Loxy (a fox is not a good sign in a fairy tale), who asks them why they’re in such a hurry. Chicken Little explains to him the sky is falling and they’re on their way to notify the king. Foxy Loxy offers to take them to the castle where they will find the king, and the birds agree to accompany him. However, the cunning fox leads them not to the castle, but to his den, and the birds are never seen alive again.
I wish the panicans, the doom and gloomers, would take this cautionary tale to heart, but they won’t. Sinful human nature combined with a fallen world and certain personality types means we’ll always have Negative Nellies among us. But that doesn’t have to be us!
A more modern metaphor for this negative mindset comes from the 1999 hit movie, The Matrix. Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is given a choice by Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne, of a red or blue pill. If he takes the blue pill he goes on his oblivious way and nothing changes, but if he takes the red pill his eyes are opened and he see reality for what it is, an awakening as it were. This metaphor has been extended to positive and negative outlooks. If you’re positive and optimistic, you’ve taken the white pill, but if you’re negative and pessimistic you’re black pilling. There seems to be an epidemic of people OD’ing on black pills in this second year of the Trump presidency, especially with the war in Iran. It seemed to get its start with the whole Epstein conspiracy, which in my mind was much ado about absolutely nothing. The black pillers, however, were convinced there was a vast deep state conspiracy and the evil doers were getting away with it. Whatever.
Be that as it may, or with anything else people complain and whine and moan about, the tendency to catastrophize is a fallen human nature thing, as well as a bad eschatology thing. I’m so naturally inclined to this it’s annoying, even though I’m generally not a conspiracy guy. I’m also naturally an optimist and a glass half full guy. I have to fight the tendency to the negative. Whatever it is, my mind will go right to catastrophe, whatever the worst case scenario is, and 99.9% of the time that isn’t the case at all. So I’ve learned to fight the inclination, and I repent at what I see as my lack of trust in God. To me everything about life, and death, comes down to whether I trust God or not, and far too much of the time I don’t. My aspiration in this regard comes from Isaiah 26:3:
You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.
If I have perfect peace I trust him, if I don’t, I don’t. In my almost five decades of attempting to live a Christ honoring life I’ve come to the conclusion my greatest sin is not trusting God, which is why repentance for it is a common feature of my prayer life.
Human Psychology and Doomerism-Conspiracy Theories
As we were enduring the stolen election of 2020 and the Covid debacle that contributed to it, I became a fan of conspiracy theories. The reason is that anytime anyone questioned the accepted establishment narrative, leftist media lackies would call them “conspiracy theorists,” as if that alone would disqualify them from being taken seriously. It didn’t take long to realize when they trotted out the conspiracy theory trope that whatever was being questioned must either be true or a threat to the establishment. As the early 2020’s progressed and life was moving more online, I began to notice a certain cynical type that actually embraced conspiracy theories, not just to discredit political opponents, but really believed in them. The word cynical is important because while it is a good thing to be skeptical about things going on in the world, cynicism is another level of distrust. For such people behind everything that’s happening they don’t like, there is a pernicious cabal of other people executing a plan to take over the world, or something like that.
As we know, human beings are messed up creatures. We Christians call that fallen, the result of original sin. Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior, and it can help us understand why individuals behave the way they do and how they interact with others. There are a million reasons why people think and act the way they do. Everyone is born with certain personality traits and dispositions. Then they are raised in certain cultures and familial environments that shape who they are and become. Nobody we encounter was raised in a vacuum. Whenever we encounter them in whatever context, they’ve lived through a history that has made them exactly who they are. In a way, although God still treats them as accountable beings, they really can’t help it. And this allows us to deal with them so they don’t drive us nuts. We can have the same effect on others, but we trust the work God is doing in us will teach us what it really means to love others.
Even as I understood all this, I started to see an extremely unappealing dark side to the conspiracy mindset. These people assume the red pill encounters they’ve had gives them insight into everything behind the Matrix. At their worst, they believe they can see things other people are too stupid and blind to see. They become arrogant and dismissive. I’ve encountered a lot of these people online, and some in real life. There is a close connection between the conspiracy minded and doomers. We might say all conspiracy minded people are doomers, but not all doomers are conspiracy minded. For both kinds of people, though, they are sure the worst is yet to come. It’s Chicken Little all the way to the fox’s den. Nothing good comes from a doomer pessimistic mindset. In addition to being a sin, it is impossible to accomplish anything, or build anything of lasting value, if we believe there are forces arrayed against us over which we are basically powerless. We give up our agency to forces we can’t even really be certain exist. When we are tempted to it, we must repent, and we’ll discuss below what we can replace it with.
At the other end of the mental spectrum is Donald Trump. You gotta love the guy (and I know plenty of people don’t, at all). For him, there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome. Everything he does or tries to do is the greatest, the most spectacular, nothing like it has ever been seen before. He also has never met an enemy, whether it be in real estate, the law, politics, entertainment, or as we’ve seen recently, in geopolitics, that he doesn’t believe he can’t overcome. Over time people have come to see his optimistic hyperbole as just who he is, but there is something to it. The man has accomplished a ridiculous amount in his life, and this mentality is part of the reason. He took the leg up his father gave him in the rough and tumble world of New York real estate, and transformed it, often against incredible odds, into an empire. When he entered politics in 2015, everyone, including me, thought it was a joke. He didn’t stand a chance. When he won in spite of the onslaught against him, the political and media establishment of both parties spent four years trying to destroy him. When they were afraid he’d come back, they tried to put him in prison. Yet again, he came back and won, and is reshaping the country and the world. Doomers don’t do that.
I bring up Trump not to affirm everything he says or does; far from it. I only do it to point out the contrast between the mentalities of those who accomplish things in life, and those who do not. Look throughout history, and we see men of action, and some women, changing the world, and not always for the better. It’s easy for sinners to be positive for sinful ends as well, but our goal as image bearers of God and followers of Christ is to advance God’s kingdom on earth. God himself wants us to do that, has given us his revelation and Spirit to do it, and Christ himself prayed we might actually accomplish it, on earth as it is in heaven.
The Christian Mindset-An Historical Overview
The word mindset captures well what I’m trying to convey. It’s an attitude or disposition in how we look at the world. Our theology will very much affect our mindset, how we see things. Life is largely about interpretation. We are confronted with situations and information that doesn’t have one inherent meaning; we must give it a meaning we choose, knowing we’ll never understand it perfectly. As Christians our God is the sovereign almighty Lord of history, which means we must have a providential view not only of history, but of every current and future event. I would argue that because of this a conspiracy minded doomer mentality is sin. Even if doom is our short term destiny as it has been for many Christians throughout history, a negative, pessimistic Chicken Little mindset is still terribly anti-Christian and dishonoring to God.
Looking back through Christian history is a helpful study to see how Christians in the past handled the inevitable challenges and suffering of life. I would challenge you to find a prominent doomer mindset that is common among them. It’s not. I cannot do much of an historical overview in a few words, but I am confident the examples to make my point are legion, or Christianity would have died out long ago. Our religion from the very beginning was always confronted with what seemed like insurmountable odds, but we have a God who controls every single thing on earth for our good and his glory. Reading through Acts at the moment, I think of the Apostles’ response in Acts 4 and 5 to these odds. You’ll notice it’s the exact opposite of doomer. Peter and John are called before the Sanhedrin and are told in so many words to shut up! No more of this talk of Jesus. Of course, they keep talking, then they are arrested again, but God frees them from prison via a helpful angel, and they go right back into the temple courts to “tell the people all about this new life.” They are again brought before the Sanhedrin and told to shut up! They want to put them to death, but are talked out of it by a more level headed member, and just have them flogged. Notice how the apostles respond:
41 The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. 42 Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.
The entire Jewish religious establishment was against them, and soon that would include the entire Roman Empire. But they never stopped proclaiming the gospel and advancing God’s kingdom on earth in their lives. The result was eventual victory over all the forces trying to stop them, the development of Christian Western civilization, and the gospel going to the ends of the earth. All of this would have amazed the early Christians, but it would not have surprised them. They lived what Jesus taught them to pray:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Theirs was not a Christianity of escape from a fallen world, but a Christianity of transformation of that world. I would suggest Chicken Little isn’t welcome in such a world, except that he and his followers are not going anywhere anytime soon. That means for those who refuse the doomer temptation must be eternally vigilant.
The ending of Jesus’ prayer, and ours, about God’s kingdom rule is the critical factor in the mindset Christians should have. The reason God’s kingdom will continue to advance on earth is because as Christ told the Apostles prior to his ascension that all authority in heaven and earth had been given to him. To what end? To disciple nations, not just individuals. I’ve recently written about what I think that means, but it can’t mean pessimism in any sense. In fact, when the Apostle Paul is teaching us about the Ascension in Ephesians 1, and tells us Christ was raised to the right hand of God, he tells us this meant Christ was far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
Notice that Paul assumes his readers take it for granted that Christ’s authority and rule is obvious for this age, but he feels he has to remind them it’s also for the age to come. That smells like victory to me, not doom, no matter how things look at the moment. Which is why we live by faith, and not by sight
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