Picking up on this series that was started last week, we come to the next-to-last step. Thus far I have suggested that whenever you are exploring the next best thing in counseling, you should
- start with a healthy dose of suspicion about the motives and goals of the author. What are they trying to sell you?
- Read with an open mind. Can you see what they observe about life?
- Evaluate the author’s assumptions, worldview, etc. Be willing to be challenged!
Now we come to step four.
Step Four: Let yourself be critiqued
How might their observations and assumptions challenge your own? Sit with this a bit. Don’t worry that you will lose your faith. It never hurts to have our beliefs and values refined and challenged by our critics. Maybe some of your values are uncritically formed. How might these assumptions cause you to refine and renew your own? Can you eliminate some faulty logic?
Be willing to state some of the weaknesses within your own system of beliefs and assumptions. I wish every model builder would start with their own flaws. But, most of us are better at pointing out the speck in our brother’s eye than addressing the log in our own.
Finally, our next step will be to possibly adopt some portion of the model or intervention into our own repertoire.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 