Have a Yes Mindset: Let Your Default Setting Be to Say Yes to the Good

We are called to be like Jesus and say Yes when asked to support good things.  A No mindset shows up in many places, including when people say No to providing SNAP benefits for the hungry.  Choose to say yes to the good, like Christ.

KKPCW, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yes-No_box.jpg.

I was blessed with wonderful parents.  When I was a teenager and I wanted to do something, their default position was to say Yes if they could.  If I was asking for something that would be good for a teenager to do, they would find a way to accommodate me if they could.

I knew of parents who seemed to have the opposite default setting: They would start any conversation with a No, and their child would have to work really hard to try to turn a No into a Yes.

We see the same divide in pastors, teachers, bosses, and politicians.

Where does your mindset start?

The difference between a No mindset and a Yes mindset

My pastor loves to say Yes to good things.  He recognizes good ideas and empowers people to take action to make good things happen.  He has a Yes mindset.

I have worked with fine teachers and administrators with a similar mindset and tried to follow their example.  If I student asked for something – could I have an extra day to turn in an assignment because something is going on in my family, could I do something a little different with my project, etc. – I tried to start with an open mind and the desire to say Yes.  I occasionally saw teachers who were far more skeptical and treated any proposed deviation with an assumption that the student was up to no good or trying to get out of some work or wanted something they didn’t deserve.  That’s the No mindset at work.

I was blessed to work for many years for a member of Congress, Senator Dick Durbin, who took joy in helping his constituents attain the good things they sought.  If a request seemed at first to be a bit odd, he didn’t just dismiss them.  He would turn to his staff and say, “Check it out and see if there is something we can do for them.”

Even with groups that others might assume would be treated as the “enemy,” he did not close the door to the possibility that we might be able to work together to do good.  For example, he loudly and determinedly fought the pharmaceutical industry’s high drug prices, which made it hard for some people to get the medicines they desperately needed.  But a representative of a pharmaceutical company in our state once said to me that despite that disagreement, he knew that we could still find an open door and an honest hearing in our office if he came to us on something else where we might be able to do some good together.

People with a Yes mindset are always on the lookout for how to support the good that can be done, and, as a result, they do a lot more good than people with a No mindset.

Jesus was always willing to say Yes if he could, especially to feed the hungry, help the unfortunate, etc.

Jesus modeled the Yes mindset.  When a blind beggar along the side of a road called out repeatedly to Jesus to take pity on him, the irritated crowd rebuked the man and told him to be silent.  Jesus overruled the crowd, told them to bring the man to him, and healed him (Mark 10:46-52).  Unlike the crowd, Jesus’s default was to say Yes to any opportunity to do good.

Another time, when Jesus had been preaching at length and it was getting late, his disciples told him to dismiss the crowds so they could go find food to eat.  Jesus instead told the disciples to give them food.  When they protested that they did not have enough food, Jesus multiplied what they had so that all could eat (Matt. 14:13-21).  Jesus had a Yes mindset.  If people needed to be fed, Jesus fed them.

At the wedding feast at Cana, his mother asked him to do something when the feast was running out of wine too soon.  Jesus, not having done miracles in public yet, said to her, “My hour has not yet come.”  But people needed drink and Jesus provided it (John 2:1-11).  If something good could be done, Jesus chose to say Yes.

Finding reasons to avoid giving people SNAP benefits is an example of the No mindset

I’m thinking about the Yes mindset and the No mindset right now because our current Administration is doing everything it can to avoid giving hungry children and poor adults the SNAP (food assistance) benefits they are entitled to by law.

Their default position is a No mindset that seeks to avoid doing good.

There is no doubt that the present government shutdown is a challenge.  But our laws include mechanisms to keep funds flowing in emergency situations.  Providing food for a hungry child surely falls into that emergency category.  If we can continue to provide the basic functions of government, we can continue to feed the hungry.  After all, if you are a politician and you refuse to feed the most vulnerable children in your society, what good are you?

Yet the present Administration had to be sued because it refused to provide SNAP benefits.  When a court told the Administration that it not only had the authority but the obligation to release the food assistance funds, it refused to take Yes for an answer and appealed the ruling.

The Administration’s argument appears to be that, if the government shutdown lasts long enough, there might be people in the future who will be harmed if we spend the money now on SNAP benefits.  In other words, we can’t help the hungry child standing in front of us right now, because there might be some other hungry child later who needs help, and helping this child might make it harder to help that other child later.

This is the epitome of the No mindset.  We can’t do good now, because it might make it harder to do good later (a No mindset in the present).  And later, we can’t imagine that we could possible be able to figure out a way to address that next problem (a No mindset for the future).  So it’s No, No – we can’t do anything now because we don’t have the vision to do anything later.

I can’t think of an attitude more unChristlike than to refuse to feed a child today because you are afraid it might make you feel helpless to feed a child tomorrow.

This defeatist attitude is not the America I grew up in.

It most certainly is not an example of Christians in action.

It is a blindness that needs to be healed by the master of the Yes mindset, Jesus.

It’s a question of priorities

With the present Administration, it seems that if you are wealthy or famous or supported the President and you broke the law and have been convicted of your crimes, if you ask the President for a pardon you have a good chance of being pardoned.  That’s a Yes mindset for criminals who are privileged or pals of the President.

But if you are a hungry child, or a poor adult, and you haven’t broken any laws, and all you are asking for is the food assistance you are entitled to under the law, that’s just too difficult for the Administration to provide.  That’s the No mindset for the least among us.

This misplaced set of priorities avoids saying Yes to the good while quickly saying Yes to the dubious and conflicted.  The priorities are backwards.

This is an issue for all of us: What is your default mindset and for whose benefit?

But this isn’t just an issue for the present Administration.  We all have to decide whether we approach life with a Yes mindset or a No mindset, and for whose benefit we are most likely to say Yes.

When someone comes to you with an idea that might do some good, what is your default starting point?  Do you start out wanting to say Yes, or is your default to look for a reason to say No?

We need to follow Jesus’s example and say Yes to the good whenever we can.