Say “No” to the concept of only using “Yes” words to teach

Nowadays, many experts recommend educators to teach using only positive wordings, and never say no. In Christian point of view, one must be careful on this new-age concept of “only saying the positive words and turning any negative saying to sound positive”. According to the Bible, God uses both positive and negative words to teach His people, with the first one a combination of positive (yes) and negative (no), then the followings contain two positive (yes) and seven negative (no) statements. In fact, there are more negative statements than positive statements to clearly articulate God’s holiness of what His way is and what His way is NOT. God is very clear on His positive and negative, and he is not trying to make the negatives sound positive, vice versa. For example, the ten commandments (Exodus20:1–17, Deuteronomy5:4–21):

 And God spoke all these words:

1.  “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me.
2.  “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
3.  “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
4.  “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
5.  “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
6.  “You shall not murder.
7.  “You shall not commit adultery.
8.  “You shall not steal.
9.  “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
10.  “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

This pattern of teaching found in Old Testament is consistent with the New Testament teaching as well as stated in Matthew 5:37.“All you need to say is simply 'Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one”. Also, in Genesis, the serpent (Satan) modified the negative towards slightly positive to trap Eve, as we can see in Genesis 3:4 “’You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman.”, in which God earlier on had already black and white stated that “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” in Genesis 2:16-17.

I agree that we learn from the positive; however, we must also pay close attention to the negative, without any modification to either. An obedience life is to listen to both positive and negative teachings from God as-is, without any human intervention or modification.