I absolutely love movies, especially action or war movies; my wife on the other hand loves a good chick flick or romantic drama. Talk about living up to the stereotypes! This has led to a few disagreements regarding Saturday night movie viewing, often leading to us comprising and ultimately watching a film we both don’t like. Sounds like the making of another blog.
One of my favourite movie characters is Captain Jack Sparrow from The Pirates Of The Caribbean series. Captain Jack often comes out with some of the most well written and challenging lines that I have heard in any movie. One of the best in all of the ‘Pirates’ movies is one about our attitude.
“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem!”
All of us will face problems in life; problems at work, with finances, in our marriage, in our relationships, in fact in almost every area of life. Problems are inevitable; Jesus even warned us in John 16:33 that problems would come.
As the quote from Captain Jack says it is often our attitude about the problem that is actually the problem. Often we ignore the problem and hope it goes away or we take it to the opposite extreme and over analyse the problem, making it so much bigger in our minds than it actually is.
I often meet Christians who seem to be constantly focused on their problems, it’s all they talk about; it seems to be what defines them as people. Often we spend so much time thinking about, talking about or moaning about our problems that we never actually do anything about the problem. Our attitude towards the problem is actually the problem.
When we think back to Jesus’ words in John 16, he is reminding us that in this world we will have problems but he has overcome the world. So let’s take our focus off our problems and onto Jesus and what he has and is doing for us. When we do that the attitude to our problems will change.
As Christians we are called to be different from those around us, if there is no difference, then we have no message. Being different means that our attitude towards problems needs to change. Paul sums it up perfectly in his letter to the Philippians:
Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky. Philippians 2:14-15
Image credit: Photo by krüg / CC BY 2.0
