I’ve noticed that the American Association of Christian Counselors has made many of their magazine (Christian Counseling Today) articles available for free on their www.ecounseling.com website. You can search by author or keyword to find what you might be looking for.
My 800 word essay on repentance after abuse can be found here. A longer and very helpful article by another psychologist on the 12 features of spiritual abuse can be found here.
I was listening to a news story about the Alex Rodriguez steroid scandal yesterday and reading the third chapter in Lauren Winner’s “Real Sex” book and I got to thinking about the confusion in our culture: We demand privacy AND we love the scandal. Follow me for a minute:
1. A reporter asked the “man on the street” whether he thought Alex was no longer a role model for his sons. The man replied something to this effect, “What Alex puts in his body is his own business. Stop reading his mail. He has to make his own decisions and so do my sons. It’s a matter of privacy.” So, this man argued that what Alex does with his own body should be his own business since at the time of his taking the steroids it wasn’t illegal.
2. This thinking is commonly found in conversations about sex as well. Winner, in chapter 3, discusses our culture’s acceptance of the mantra, “what two consenting adults do is none of anyone’s business.” In fact, it shouldn’t even be the topic of conversation. FYI, Winner is arguing the opposite–that what you do in the bedroom is a matter of concern for the Christian community. So, Christians should care about their neighbor’s sexual ethic as it impacts the whole community.
3. Yet, we love the scandal. As a culture, we are more prone now than ever to air someone’s dirty laundry. Haven’t we just been bombarded with some actor’s profanity filled rants? Obama appointees Some actress’ sex tape is “leaked”? Now, Alex Rodriguez is a juicer. I’m sure Joe Torre’s book about his Yankee years will sell big. Why? It’s going to have juicy, PRIVATE, details. We love the scandal. Just not our own.
By the way, the church really isn’t any better. We’ve all heard and repeated things like: “Did you hear about ____ son and what he did?” “Did you hear about ___ down the street and that their pastor was caught doing ____?”
Point: We want the freedom to do what we want in private without others finding out. We don’t want friends and family prying and asking those direct questions about our sex lives or other potentially embarrassing activities. Yes, I know, many of us are in accountability groups because we know we need people prying. But, really, does any human since our fig-leaved first parents really want accountability? No, even though we know that when we have folks asking us the tough questions, we’re less likely to be outed in a scandal.
2nd point: Oh, and we love the scandal for personal reasons. It makes us feel better. I, for one, would NEVER take steroids. That makes me feel better, even though I might have my own private struggles with being honest about taxes, time sheets, how I parent when no one is watching, etc.
At church on Sunday I attended a class discussing Lauren Winner’s “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity” (Brazos, 2005). Her thesis (in the second chapter anyway) is that the church tends to have one of two responses to singles about sex: either be honest and loving (e.g., go ahead) or just don’t do it. She suggests that we look at the larger context of the “say no” passages in order to see God’s larger view of sex as good in the right settings. I won’t go any further here with that thesis but all that to say:
Winner wants us to think about the body as being good. And since the body is a sexual entity, that sex is also good. Got me thinking that most of us don’t see our bodies as something that is good. We focus on the fall and the brokenness we see. We see our lack of health. We see insatiable desire. We see danger. We see something that doesn’t measure up to the image we most want to see.
But here is the challenge. Did God make your body? Is it good? If you only focus on what is not good about your body, what are you missing? How are you marring the true story about your body?
My apologies to those waiting for the next chapter in Wright’s book. Some other writing assignments require me to put down my fun books and pick up some work-related reading these days. But enough of my excuses… In chapter 7 Chris Wright admits that one answer to the question, “How did the cross achieve salvation for us?” is simple and from Scripture: “Because it did.” But he like many others would rather not stop there. And he contends the bible doesn’t stop there either.
He reminds the reader that evangelical interpreters of the Bible regard the most helpful metaphor of the cross as judicial–substitutionary atonement. There are other metaphors used in the bible to explain the “how” but 1 Cor 15:3 underlines and emphasizes that Christ’s death on the cross was sacrificial and substitutionary. Here Wright brings up the controversy surrounding “penal substitution” and the grounds by which some reject this forensic focus to substitutionary atonement. Of the 7 reasons he lists, the primary ones (in my eyes) are the sense that penal substitution focuses too much on guilt, portrays God as mechanistic or always angry, and emphasizes the only way to deal with sin is with violence.
Wright believes the arguments for rejecting penal substitution would be good if in fact evangelicals held them. But he fears that the arguments against the penal metaphor are caricatures. From this point he looks at how the bible paints God’s love and anger. His anger and love must be, he contends, taken together as part of a whole, rather than having one negate the other. The two expressions are not contrary to each other any more than we may be angry with a loved one for bad behavior and yet still love them at the same time. He suggests the Cross satisfies both God’s love and anger.
He further rejects the conflict between God the father and Jesus the son. God is not the angry father and Jesus the loving son who steps between us. That viewpoint would destroy God’s essential unity (see John 17 for this). He uses extensive quotes from John Stott here to bolster his argument
Finally, he addresses the concepts of guilt and shame. The argument has arise that penal atonement only makes sense in cultures with a “developed sense of personal and objective guilt.” Shame cultures, it is suggested, would not be able to identify as well. Further, in a postmodern world it appears that shame is the more likely experience (of not being internally consistent with oneself). But Wright says that both shame and guilt are addressed by the cross and both are related. He points to Ezekiel who talks about being shamed and feeling shamed (36:16-32). The cross (and the forgiveness behind it) takes away the shame quality even though they still feel it when they remember what God has done. Wright suggests that ongoing feeling is healthy. He quotes from another of his books
Israel were not to feel ashamed in the presence of other nations (36:15), but they were to feel ashamed in the presence of their own memories before God (36:31-32). Similarly, there is a proper sense in which the believer may rightly hold up her head in company.
He then talks about how God in the OT and Jesus in the NT publicly affirms those who were shamed. God removes their shame, no matter what others think of them. They now hold their head high. And yet, Wright tries to articulate that this person may still feel shame when remembering past sins but he is quick to point out that this feeling does not crush but fuels “genuine repentance and humility and for joy and peace that flow from that source alone.”
While the content of this chapter seems a bit more about confronting a wrong he sees in the penal substitution debate than about answering how the cross works, nonetheless I find his writing about guilt and shame quite helpful here–especially how he distinguishes the kinds and sources of shame. I think it might be helpful for those who trust in Jesus but who struggle with shame to consider for a moment what their shame drives them to do. To hide? To be grateful for God’s restorative work?
Next week, we’ll look at his final chapter on the cross.
I’ve noticed that personality seems to play a significant part of helping us choose our music, our favorite writers, even our theology. Now, this is not to say that we do not have any cognitive processes involved nor that the Spirit doesn’t speak to us regardless of our personality features but consider these T/F questions:
1. I take comfort in repeating the ancient statements of faith or Lord’s prayer?
2. I take comfort in music, psalms, and other forms of writing that focus on the mystery and unknowability of God
3. I want to know the bottom line about truth.
4. I love ambiguity.
5. I love the praise and victory songs.
6. I love the dark songs that relate to the hardships of life.
Now, I suspect you might change your answers based on life experiences but some really have a habit of hanging out in one area or another. How about you?
Filed under Christianity
Better question: What risks do you take each and every day? Do you drive 70 in a 65 mph zone? Do you use your cell phone while driving? Do you eat without washing your hands? Do you eat foods beyond their expiration date? Do you drive after your gas gauge is below E? Do you spend money on the basis of a hoped for, but not yet received, bonus? Do you try to ride your bike across a slippery wet board, placing your assurance on your ability to keep your wheel straight and not go over the handle bars when you wipe out? Yeah, I did that last one…
It seems we take risks when the risk seems rather minimal or not all that likely. We do drive over the speed limit. We do get in cars or airplanes knowing that we could crash. We do eat without washing our hands. Why? Because we’ve done it so many times before and didn’t have a problem.
Here’s where it gets ugly. Cell phones. There are enough studies to tell us that talking on the phone is akin to driving drunk. We’d never drink and drive but most of us are quite willing to talk and drive–because we don’t feel we are risking our quality of driving.
In your Christian life, do you take spiritual risks? Engaging in private relationships with someone you fantasize about? Neglecting your devotional life? Neglecting your church life? Neglecting any other sin pattern you know you should fight to kill but rather cherish…
Filed under Christianity
Have you ever wondered how a person could participate in a genocide? How was it that the average German citizen either explicitly or implicitly participated in the extermination of millions of Jews? Or consider the more recent genocides in Sudan, Rwanda, and the Congo. If you are honest, you’ve asked this question and have thought, “there’s just no way I would do something like that.”
Or would you? The January issue of the 2009 American Psychologist is devoted to the topic of obedience and the controversial studies by Stanley Milgram. Recall your Psych 101 class and the obedience studies in the 60s where he found that participants would be willing to shock “learners” when they made mistakes despite the learner’s protests. Shocks were administered to the point of the learner becoming non-responsive. Well, no, there wasn’t any real shocks in the study, but participants didn’t know that and agreed to obey the instructor and push buttons for increasing shock levels when the confederate learner made a mistake.
But, we’re more advanced nowadays, right? One of the authors, Jerry Burger (Santa Clara U.) modified Milgram’s study (by eliminating some of the ethical controversies in the study) and found that still obeyed the instructor to apply shocks even when the “learner” cried out and asked for it to stop–EVEN when they saw defiant participants (really, confederates) refuse to obey the instructor.
So, why do we not speak up? Why do we go along with bad ideas? What is it that happens when we know we should not go along with something but do anyway? What happens then to our conscience?
Is the problem the power of the situational factors, as some assume, that make us feel we should obey? Or is it our dislike of being in conflict that causes us to be willing to pass on conflict to another in order to stay free from it?
Consider how you have listened to off-color jokes and said nothing. Consider how you have watched someone do something inappropriate or say something inappropriate to another but decided to say nothing. While we can give ourselves a break due to the surprise and shock factor and time to consider what the best option should be, we have to admit we have times of non-action.
I saw a recent TV show filmed at a deli where someone behind the counter made fun of individuals trying to order but lacking in English skills. It was all staged so as to see what would those waiting behind do. Would they agree with the ethnic comments? Would they stand up and demand the server stop the offensive language? Would they leave? Many did speak up, but some did not and some even participated in telling those immigrants to go back where they came from.
Fact is, we don’t like suffering and we prefer comfort. But, living in a sinful world means speaking up and taking one on the chin from time to time. Some of us have “hero” fantasies where we imagine us taking the high road, but if we are honest, we are just as likely to freeze up and go along with things we ought not.
Filed under christian psychology, Christianity, conflicts, Cultural Anthropology, Psychology
Been blogging through Christopher Wright’s book about things that are hard to understand about the Christian God. In earlier chapters he covered things that make him uncomfortable but now he gets to the third section about the cross–something that puzzles but delights him. He begins with this thought:
As I ponder the cross, three fundamental questions sum up our struggle to understand it: Why? What? and How? Why did God ever consider sending Jesus to die on the cross? Why was it necessary from our point of view? Why was he willing to do it, from his point of view? And then, What did God actually accomplish through the death of his Son? What was it all for? And finally, How did it work? How did one man’s bleeding body stretched on two pieces of wood for six hours of torture and death on a particular Friday one spring outside a city in a remote province of the Roman Empire change everything in the universe? (p.111)
In this chapter he takes up the why and the what questions.
Why?The simple answer is “Because God Loves us.” (p. 112). But he also admits that the answer is “totally inexplicable.” Wright doesn’t believe that we can really answer the question but is convinced we can deepen our understanding traipsing through the OT. Then Wright shows what is not the OT’s answer for why God loves Israel. It is not because they are special in any shape or form. In fact they may have been the unfortunate example of “all that is worst about humanity in general.” The only way to understand why God loves us, says Wright, is to accept that it is God’s character to love. And while that states the truth, “…it doesn’t explain it.”
What? Wright points to 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 and the quick summary of what happened. He then reflects on the metaphors the Bible uses to describe what the cross does for human sinners. Metaphors used to describe the atonement cannot fully capture the “what” but neither are they lacking in reality. Wright then explores these metaphors:
1. Coming home (Eph. 2:11f)
2. Mercy (Eph. 2:3-7)
3. Redemption from slavery
4. Forgiveness
5. Reconciliation with God and other
6. Justification
7. Cleansing
8. New Life
Each of these reveal that God was doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. What is not a metaphor, says Wright, is the word “substitution.” That is, he says, is what he actually did. God accepts the penalty which belonged to us alone.
This chapter, as you may see, has less discussion of mystery and more discussion of the “what” and the “why.” Next chapter will take on some more of the mystery by exploring the “how” of the cross–how it could have such cosmic impact.
Filed under Biblical Reflection, book reviews, Christianity, Doctrine/Theology
For those reading this site interested in christian counseling and more specifically, biblical counseling, I have a quote below for you to muse about. I’d like to hear your reactions to the author. Is he right? If not, what is wrong with his critique of the biblical counseling movement or wrong with his insistence on producing evidence of the effectiveness of biblical counseling?
The quote comes from the website www.christiancounseling.com (The Association of Biblical Counselors) which publishes an ejournal for paying subscribers. On occasion they publish interviews with those outside (but friendly with) biblical counseling. Some of their interviewees, like myself (November issue) have a foot in their world but also one in the professional world. FYI, there are more and more of us who reject the necessity of separating clinical care from biblical care but do not believe the integrative attempts of the past were all that useful either.
In September they interviewed a Dr. Stephen Farra, professor at Columbia International University and director of their psychology or counseling program. You can find him and his writings at www.ciu.edu/faculty/bio.php?id=12. He has one work there on his model of counseling called Accountability Psychology, a biblically based CBT model.
After lauding the biblical counseling movement for its deconstructive work of then accepted notions of christian and secular counseling, he says,
…the biblical counseling movement has been better at critique than positive creation, however. Whenever I seek for an answer as to whether Biblical Counseling has developed clinically powerful counseling methods to help meet the needs of most of those suffering from severe psychological disorders, all I find are a few anecdotal accounts of counselor-reported recoveries for a few individuals… To “get it right,” we do need to move from “integration” to biblical consistency, but we must also move from anecdote to evidence. The Biblical Counseling movement needs to squarely face up to its need to provide solid, empirical evidence of effectiveness and efficiency. Without a solid evidence-based, “best practices” approach, Biblical Counseling will continue to be seen by most Christian counselors in the country as primarily a theological-critique society, making some interesting and valuable points along the way, but without practical means for helping many of the suffering souls who come to us seeking help.
Theological consistency and doctrinal purity is vital, but it is half the battle. The other half is showing that the recommended procedures really work for most people suffering with particular disorders.
Well, what do you think? I’m not looking for anyone to trumpet the superiority of biblical counseling or trash it. In fact, I think biblical counseling has one of the best understandings of biblical anthropology out there. But, should it seek empirical evidence for its methods? While empiricism isn’t the only means of truth, it does tell us something. How would one test the effectiveness of biblical counseling? That all would depend on the outcomes sought–which raises a good question: Does biblical counseling seek to reduce anxiety and depression or sinful or immature responses to it? Is it primarily discipleship or is it counseling to reduce the experiences of what has been commonly known as mental illness?
Good questions to mull over.
So, the other night I had woke up with thistitle in my head that I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Its an academic’s kind of dream/wake state–a book idea. I wondering if you have ideas to flesh this out a bit after reading some of mine.
The title came, I think, as a result of a Miroslav Volf’s comment that consumerism, not religion, was the opiate of the people. Lightbearer provided us with the context of Karl Marx’s quote. And many of summarize his point but saying that something (religion, psychology, anything) is for “the masses.”
So, I got to thinking about the tendency among evangelicals to fall into one of two trap about psychology. Either they use it unthinkingly (cut and paste bible verses on theories without much thought) OR they reject it because psychology is unbiblical and only rank secular humanism. But, I can’t tell you the amount of conversations I’ve had about the benefits of psychological study–whether about medication, therapeutic interventions, professional ethics, etc. where it was clear that few had ever drilled down below pop psychology to understand both its value and presuppositional foundation.
So, here’s my thought. What if we developed a resource for Christians to come to that would give thoughtful, sometimes lighthearted, but always honest answers (and nonanswers when they are better) about psychology, psychotherapy, medications, psychological testing, etc.
Here’s some of the questions that tend to come up most frequently (from my memory of the last 2 months)
1. Is it wrong to take psychiatric medications for my depression? Shouldn’t I be able to either handle it or get over it using spiritual resources?
2. How do you know if the problem is demonic or psychiatric?
3. Should I ever go see a secular therapist?
4. Isn’t Mindfulness really just a Buddhist form of meditation?
5. Should I go for healing prayer for my mental health problem?
6. Isn’t ADD/ADHD just a fad?
7. Can I divorce my spouse because they refuse treatment?
8. Can pedophiles ever return to the church in a safe manner?
9. Can leaders who abuse their roles ever be restored to leadership?
I’m sure there are more. What else would YOU want to read about regarding psychology/psychotherapy from a christian perspective?
Musings on Faith and Psychology 