I Wish I Could Do Something!

Posted on July 25, 2010

[Leslie Vernick LCSW is our guest blogger for the month of July, and this is her fourth post. Leslie is a licensed clinical social worker, popular speaker and author of 6 books on Christian living. She is the Director of Christ Centered Counseling and you can visit her at www.leslievernick.com or read her weekly blog at leslievernick.blogspot.com]

I did not originally intend to blog about this, but sometimes God has other ideas. Last week my editor, Paul Gossard, from Harvest House Publishers, e-mailed me a request from one of his other authors and I thought I’d share it with all of you. David Eckman PhD, has a fantastic opportunity to train thousands of counselors, mental health workers, and psychologists in counseling skills with Christian values in China. He’s looking for more help and maybe God would call you or me to step outside our normal professional practice for a few weeks to help him. 

When I was in college I thought  it might be nice to do some missions work but since I hated bugs and loved my blow dryer I didn’t’ think I was a good candidate.  But my church has always been missions minded and many years ago, before it was so popular, began offering short term trips. In the mid 1990’s, during one of our church’s commissioning services I remember thinking,  I wish I could do something like that!  Later on I approached our mission’s pastor and volunteered my services but I never dreamed that he’d actually take me up on my offer.  Before long I received a call from someone at Faith Academy, a K-12 school for children of missionaries serving in the Far East. The principle asked if I would come over to Manila, Philippines for two weeks to teach some counseling skills to their staff around sexual abuse as well as provide counseling for missionaries and teachers in marital distress.

I remember feeling scared to say “Yes” and I quickly began to think of reasons I should say “No”.  For example, I had never been out of the country before, never used a passport, and I would have to travel all by myself. In addition, I hadn’t written any books yet, didn’t have a PhD, wasn’t a professor, and I didn’t read my Bible every day.  Why would God want to use me? I argued with Him that he should pick someone else. The Lord confirmed to me that I was indeed inadequate for the task but he assured me that this was my job if I wanted it. So I said “Yes” and began to learn what it means to walk by faith. Living in this great country doesn’t afford us a whole lot of opportunities to have to totally depend on God. When He took me out of my comfort zone, it put me on my knees!

My first mission trip was around 1995, before laptops were common. To prepare, I photocopied a suitcase full of notes because I knew I would not be equipped to teach for three hours a day for 10 days without lots and lots of notes. Back on my knees!  Since that first trip I’ve returned to Manila twice, taught in Russia, Romania, Hungary and Iraq (I’m still waiting for a call to teach in Paris). It’s been on these trips that my faith has grown and I’ve seen miracles with my own eyes.

For example, there was the time when I was in Siberia, Russia. I invited myself to go along with my husband’s sports ministry mission trip. Since I had no athletic value, I volunteered to train church leaders in counseling skills.  On our way to the Moscow airport where we were catching our plane to Siberia, a van stopped our bus and asked us to hand carry hundreds of Russian Bibles into Siberia in our already stuffed suitcases. We didn’t know if we could fit them all in let alone cover the costs of overweight baggage. But they begged us and told us it was impossible for their ministry to pay shipping charges. By faith, each of us packed as many bibles as our suitcases would hold.  We got them all in, but our bags were so heavy we feared we wouldn’t be able to afford the extra fees.  But as all 20 of us hauled our bags over to be weighed, the airline official miraculously waved us through and didn’t charge us a penny more. We safely delivered all the Russian bibles although most of our suitcases ripped after arriving and we had to duct tape them closed when we traveled home.

While my husband’s volleyball team was teaching evangelistic sports camps, I taught pastors and church leaders Biblical counseling skills.  On the last day of class, an elderly woman came up to me and said, “I heard you were coming on the radio. I’ve traveled 2 hours by bus each day to hear you talk about how to help people from the Bible.  I was raised an atheist, I want you to tell me how to know God.” I was flabbergasted. I had assumed all week I was talking to believers. Little did I know that this precious woman came to the church hungry to know God.

The second week I taught in Siberia, I had the rare opportunity to train secular counselors, psychologists and even several psychiatrists in cognitive behavioral techniques. Although I would not consider myself an expert in this area, I am well trained compared to those in Siberia.  I lectured (always through a translator), we did role plays, shared case histories, and took breaks to sip tea and munch on Russian chocolate. Privately many of them asked me what famous person influenced me the most in my counseling practice.  In those moments I told them about Jesus.

Three years ago through an amazing set of circumstances, two colleagues and I traveled to Northern Iraq at the invitation of the city government to train counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists in post traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicide assessments and other general counseling skills. In the evenings, we ministered to believers who were thirsty for encouragement and sometimes needed specific counseling help. 

I’ll be honest with you. The work is sometimes tough; especially teaching through a translator who you aren’t sure is saying what you mean. The pay is in spiritual dollars and you often have to provide your own transportation costs. But the rewards are great and the opportunity to stretch your faith is enormous.

You and I have training that most of the world does not have. I’d like to challenge you to give some of your time and expertise to teach other professionals in a foreign country what you know. If you’d like to know more about the opportunity in China, go to www.thebeijingproject.org/

I wish I could share more of what God has taught me through these missions’ trips but if you’d like to see some photos, you can view them at http://www.facebook.com/LeslieVernickFanPage?v=photos&ref=ts and go to the photo albums. There are two pages to browse.

Perhaps we’ll meet in China.

A Change of Heart

Posted on July 18, 2010

[Leslie Vernick LCSW is our guest blogger for the month of July, and this is her third post. Leslie is a licensed clinical social worker, popular speaker and author of 6 books on Christian living. She is the Director of Christ Centered Counseling and you can visit her at www.leslievernick.com or read her weekly blog at leslievernick.blogspot.com]

Ten years ago my mother became very ill. A persistent cough and difficulty breathing sent her to her doctor for help. Bronchitis was the diagnosis, antibiotics the cure. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be much better soon.”

My mother didn’t feel better, she got worse. She wheezed. She couldn’t sleep. Her breathing became labored. Her doctor now added asthma to her diagnosis and prescribed an inhaler plus new antibiotics. But my mother’s symptoms didn’t subside and eventually she required an ambulance ride to the hospital. There she received the bad news that she didn’t have bronchitis or asthma after all. She had lung cancer.

Last week I blogged about David’s sin against Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah, and diagnosed it as an abuse of power. David came from humble origins but for some time after he became king, he felt entitled to use his position to get whatever he wanted.  He commanded Bathsheba to his bed and sent Uriah to the front lines of battle when an unplanned pregnancy resulted. This diagnosis of David’s abuse of power startled some readers who e-mailed me privately to let me know that they had never thought of David’s sin in that way.

As Christian counselors, it’s especially crucial that we name a problem correctly. I’m not only referring to DSM-IV TR accuracy. For us to be most effective we must not only look at the symptoms someone presents but also the deeper heart themes that rule him or her.

Whether or not we ever write an official diagnosis on an insurance form, when we counsel someone, we have particular ideas about what is going on in a person’s life and heart that shape the direction we take in counseling. For example, if King David had come to you or to me for counseling over this situation in his family life and ministry, how different would his treatment protocol have been if we had diagnosed his problem as an adulterous affair, an inappropriate sexual relationship, or sexual addiction? What would have been the outcome if we had focused on treating David’s depression rather than confronting his abuse of power as Nathan did?

People come to a therapist because they don’t feel good either emotionally, spiritually, and/or relationally. They want our help and their goal is to feel better. How we define “what’s wrong” impacts not only our understanding of them and their problem, but the kind of treatment plan we implement. An antibiotic is great medicine for someone sick with bronchitis, but it is impotent against cancer. In the same way sometimes I’m afraid that when we focus on treating symptoms, we may inadvertently enable our clients to remain blind to the growing cancer (sin) in their own heart.

Let’s look briefly at an actual case I worked with. I’m providing only the bare bones to illustrate my point but if you’d like, you can read more about it in my book, How to Live Right When Your Life Goes Wrong, (chapters 1 and 8).

Jack came to see me with his wife Mary as a last resort. Mary said “I can’t live like this anymore. Jack’s always mad at me. He screams and curses and I feel like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.” She continued, “We’ve been to lots of therapists and nothing has made any significant difference in our relationship. I’m ready to end it.”

Jack reluctantly acknowledged his behavior was hurtful to Mary but defended himself by saying that he wouldn’t get so mad if Mary didn’t annoy him all the time. She wouldn’t shut up when he didn’t want to talk anymore. She didn’t respect him like he wanted. She was disorganized and from Jack’s perspective not submissive enough.

Mary defined their marital problem as “I don’t know what to do to make Jack happy.”  In the past, counselors focused on helping Mary better meet Jack’s needs, biblical roles for marriage, communication and conflict resolution skills and some anger management techniques for Jack. But just like my mother, those treatment plans weren’t working. Jack and Mary’s marriage was getting sicker and sicker.

It was time to reevaluate the diagnosis. First, Jack’s anger problem isn’t because of Mary or his disappointing marriage. Couples therapy is as ineffective to solve their problem as my mother’s antibiotic treatment was to cure cancer.  Jack’s angry responses are not because of what Mary does or doesn’t do. Jesus tells us, “Out of the overflow of our heart, our mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). A difficult marriage or person doesn’t make us respond with fits of rage. Jesus says however, those angry words that come out of our mouth expose something going on in our heart.

Jack’s ugly temper was the fruit, not the root of his deeper heart issue. What was going on in Jack’s heart that needed radical treatment?  This may sound simplistic but in a sense it was. Jack wanted what he wanted and used biblical support to defend that he should get what he wanted. For example, he’d say, “I’m not asking for anything unreasonable. I just want her to listen to me when I want to talk with her.” Or “I just want her to show respect and stop arguing with me.”

When Jack didn’t get what he wanted, he became demanding and threatening. He used his temper to bully Mary so that she’d give in.  When she refused or failed to do what he demanded, he used ugly words to punish her.

The tricky thing about this kind of case is that there is an ounce of truth in some of Jack’s statements. Of course it would be nice if Mary would respect or accommodate her husband, but if we turned our attention toward helping Mary as a treatment goal, we would be misdiagnosing what’s wrong and allowing Jack’s problem to get worse. No one always gets what he or she wants all the time and important growth is processing maturely our legitimate feelings of hurt, anger and/or disappointment when we don’t get everything we want or feel we need.

James asks, “What is the source of conflicts and quarrels among you? (James 4:1).  Pride and selfishness is James’ diagnostic assessment. In this case Jack felt entitled to get what he wanted from Mary because he believed her role as his wife was to always meet his felt needs. She had no right to say “no”.  Jack didn’t see Mary as a person created in God’s image who had her own needs and feelings, desires and dreams. Rather, Jack related to her as an object to control, someone to use to get love, support, physical affection, and to make his life easier.

Although Jack gave lip service to the sinfulness of his temper outbursts, Jack continued to use rage to get what he wanted because it worked. Jack had never been confronted with his selfishness and entitlement thinking, or his lack of love and his unbiblical ideas about marriage in any of his previous counseling although most of it was done by pastors and Christian counselors.  There is no real change on the outside until we confront and work through what’s going on in the heart.

A change for Jack isn’t merely learning anger management or conflict resolution strategies, but like King David, Jack needed to repent of his self-centeredness and lack of love. Then treatment could focus on Jack learning to love his wife as a person separate from him as well as teaching him how to tolerate his own unpleasant feelings when Mary doesn’t love him perfectly or like he wants her to.

Friends and colleagues, we are not so different from King David or Jack. We may not have the power of a king, but we all seek some kind of control over our kingdoms and the people in them. Just like Jack and David, our heart is full of pride, anger, envy, selfishness, greed, fear, lust, and laziness and if we’re not mindful, we will be just as tempted by them and just as blind to them as King David and Jack were.

As Christian counselors, I pray that we press hard to expose the heart issues, the things that keep us stuck, keep us sick, keep us from being all that Christ calls us to be both in ourselves as well as with those God allows us to serve.

Monitoring Exports: To Favor Group Care?

Posted on June 27, 2010

[Rev. Stephen P. Greggo, Psy. D. is Professor, Counseling Department, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL. His interest areas are in counseling and Christian worldview, contemporary clinical practice, groups, supervision and raising up the next generation of mental health professions for kingdom service.  He is the author of Trekking toward Wholeness: A Resource for Care Group Leaders (2008), InterVarsity Press. Dr. Greggo is our blogger for the month of June, and this is his fourth post.]

My inquiring mind surveyed the surrounding crowd standing in the painfully slow line waiting to present our passports at Borispyl Airport outside Kiev. The invitation for spring break 2010 was to teach an intensive course on Christian counseling in theological perspective to pastors, counselors, and ministry leaders from throughout Ukraine.[i] My eyes took in the appearance, attire, and distinguishing characteristics of fellow travelers. Such diversity! What imaginings, products, ideas, and worldviews were about to be introduced by the vast company gathered in this queue? Related to my own assignment and purpose, I contemplated the material I was about to bring within Ukrainian borders.

In the United States, evangelical seminaries and Christian universities offer a vast assortment of professional mental health degrees and lay counseling training. Each may proffer a well crafted vision statement with claims to be biblical, Christ-centered, Spirit guided and/or unapologetically Christian. These academic programs promote a variety of perspectives on the relationship between modern psychology and Christian theology. The differing positions are so critical and distinct that much attention is given to this subject both formally in courses and informally in clinical supervision. Eric Johnson (Ed.) and Inter-Varsity Press (IVP) will soon release a revision of the popular text, Psychology and Christianity: Five Views (2010).[ii] There has been significant advance in recent years within the various views, and progress has been made in facilitating direct communication between position proponents.

There is no hiding that I have considerable enthusiasm to explore the variety of views on how to manage the interface of faith and counseling. Yet, the invitation to survey such matters with Christians around the world is both an awesome opportunity and humbling responsibility. The invitation to travel to Kiev to address this subject matter in a graduate level seminar was an indication that the evangelical church in Ukraine was alert to complexity of this subject. Trends in US seminary education do make their way overseas. Familiarity with the intricacies of the range of positions on psychology and Christianity affords me the awareness that there is a substantial amount of American church history linked with the leanings and arguments of each carefully articulated perspective. The tension that persists between science and theology stems from heated discussions regarding epistemology that are deeply embedded in the USA context. Central to the historical evangelical movement is an understanding of the fundamentals of the faith and how these are to be rigorously defended against the encroachment of modernist, liberal values. The controversies associated with the connection between Christ and Culture is plainly apparent in Christian counseling. Accordingly, when one lifts such discussion from the American context and exports a view of helping to another culture, it is critical to monitor the cultural weight attached to principles purported to be exclusively biblical.

During preparation, prayer was lifted over the issues, content, and passions that I would offer as a representative of a major evangelical seminary and most importantly, of Jesus Christ. The truth of Scripture is the same, yesterday, today, and for eternity. This core conviction does not imply that the theology or ministry principles developed from the Scriptural text are culturally value-free. The course I was to teach would explore the controversies related to the relationship between psychology, theology, and biblical material as these are fused to formulate a technology of helping. In my own approach, an underlying theme would be cultivated under the premise that these learners would benefit from viewing a practical example of a helping technology that is biblically sound, theologically consistent, and pastorally effective. Small care groups are an effective means to shepherd and mediate soul care within a Christian ecclesiology.  Could it be that small group helping methods offer a culturally relevant fit to address the limitless needs so pronounced in local ministries across the globe? Sample group helping endeavors would be included in this particular course as illustrations of how biblical and empirical approaches might be effectively aligned. The three considerations that directed me to mention groups in an international context will be exposed in this blog. Perhaps readers will have reason to dispute these notions, provide clarifications, or offer additional reasons to extend the effort.

First, given the descriptions provided to me regarding the spiritual and mental health needs of evangelicals in the destination culture, raising awareness of group helping approaches was desirable for pragmatic reasons. If the anecdotal ‘need’ assessments that I was given were at all representative, providing support via one-to-one conversation was bound to be a limiting intervention strategy. Second, group methods were given preference due to cultural considerations. The private and individualized counseling session is the modality given optimum attention by Christian helpers in the USA. The popularity of this format could tie to biblical principles or it may be that the one-to-one counseling session is favored due to our own cultural preferences. In a social framework that esteems the collective over the individual, it might be wise to deliver helping technology via small groups where cohesion and unity itself is a vital intervention. Third, groups may offer a less offensive method to distribute information and support due to role distinctions. In environments where those in need of assistance are leery of authority or have past experience with inconsistent levels of commitment from authority figures, it would be reasonable to downplay helper roles that accent the degrees of separation between the specialist/expert and help seeker.

It is evident that there are divisions between Christians in the USA regarding the relationship between psychology as a science and an orthodox theology grounded in Scripture. Have these divisions and distinctions become our standard academic export? Thinking globally, it may be useful to consider the unique history of Christianity within the host culture before exporting specific epistemic tensions regarding specific disciplines. It would be ideal if those of us who train kingdom-oriented counselors in the US and abroad pray earnestly over this question. During this month of June, these blogs have been aimed at stimulating discussion over the place of groups within our Christian helping efforts. In the not too distant future, group approaches may be an area where Christians from other cultural settings will have community-oriented strategies worthy of importing to the US!

As June draws to a close, allow me to express gratitude to Eric Johnson, Scott Holman, and the board of the Society of Christian Psychology (SCP) as well as to Tim Clinton and the leadership of the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) for the privilege of blogging for the entire month. It’s truly an honor to spread thoughts on groups as a valid helping approach via the valuable and quality web presence of SCP.

[i] It is important to thank Sergiy Tymchenko of the Research Education and Light Center (REALIS) in Kiev for this teaching opportunity and to Nyack Seminary for its support of this REALIS cohort with a counseling emphasis (www.realis.org).

[ii] Eric L. Johnson, Psychology and Christianity: Five Views, with contributions by David G. Myers,

Stanton L. Jones, Robert C. Roberts & P. J. Watson, John H. Coe & Todd W. Hall, David Powlison, (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL; 2010).

ACT with Virtue: Whose Values? Which Commitment?

Posted on May 23, 2010

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of May, and this is his fourth post]

In my last posting I considered the ‘acceptance’ and ‘mindfulness’ phase of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and tried to make some links with Christian prayer.

 The second key component of ACT is, of course, the commitment phase where the client is assisted and encouraged to act in accordance with key values.  But whose values, to what is the client ‘committed’, and how should that commitment be characterized?  I realize that there has recently been much debate in the Christian psychological community as to the nature of values in counseling and therapy (see especially Hodges, 2009 for an extremely useful recent contribution), but I should like to take another brief, sideways look at these issues.

First of all, ‘whose values’?  More technical accounts of ACT relate the method to its behavioral underpinnings in relational frame theory (ACT-RFT).  Proponents of this interpretation typically criticize related humanist and motivational interviewing approaches for being imprecise in their definitions of value.   By contrast, ACT-RFT locates the technique, fair and square, in a functional analysis of behavior and strives for precision.  So, in a recent account of ACT-RFT we read, somewhat reductively, ‘Values are ‘freely chosen’ consequences of patterns of activity which establish reinforcers for that activity that are intrinsic in engagement with that activity’, (Plumb, Stewart, Dahl and Lundgren, 2009, p. 92).

Of course this a tight definition true to the canons and lore of behavior analysis and doubtless useful as far as it goes.  But a close reading suggests it to be effectively an expression of individual, personal preferences implying a commitment to realizing one’s ‘inner self’ As it stands, not surprisingly perhaps, the behaviorial definition aims to be basically ‘scientific’ and morally neutral (as if such were possible), but in practice it turns into a variety of moral emotivism.  Values are the outcome of activities, the ‘goods achieved’ we might say, which establish reinforcers which then become ‘motivators’ for those activities.  All this sounds perilously like, ‘do it if you are motivated to do it and value it because you find it reinforcing’! 

In reality, things are a little more subtle. We are told, ”Clinically clients are encouraged to examine what matters to them in different life domains.  The client and therapist usually work together throughout therapy to clarify the values of the former.  While working with the client in this way it is not the therapist’s purpose to influence which values the client endorses, but rather to help him or her contact naturally occurring reinforcement for living consistently with his or her chosen  values, whatever they may be.”  (Plumb, Stewart, Dahl and Lundgren, 2009, pp. 94-5).

But here we have it again: if something leads to naturally occurring reinforcement for living in accordance with what I, as client, feel to be right, then, subtext, it is right. One doesn’t have to be a Chomsky to spot the circularity. We have ‘freely chosen’ as values those consequences of activity which establish reinforcers for engagement in that activity, which we then deem valuable, presumably simply because we find the engagement reinforcing.  Values are motivating consequences of actions which we find to be reinforcing; consequences which we find reinforcing are valuable!  We always knew that the Law of Effect was circular.  There’s no harm in that for lever pressing, but once ‘values’ are invited into the circle, we spiral too easily into the abyss of moral emotivism.  Admittedly, therapists assist clients in ‘clarifying’ values, but it seems to be inescapable that at root it is the client’s individual values and preferences, ‘whatever they may be’, which are being affirmed here. In many past and cultures this would have been thought astonishing.  Now, we blithely celebrate it as ‘freedom of the individual’.

In which case, the answer to my second question is straightforward. In one sense, that to which the client is committed is ‘themselves’ and their (individually) defined and desired outcomes.  And how is their ‘commitment’ to such values expressed?  Well, we’re told, there is a need for ‘flexible persistence’.

Don’t get me wrong. There is undoubtedly much that is good in ACT and much, I am sure, that genuinely helps people.  I admit I have deliberately caricatured the approach to accentuate some of its key features.  At its best, used by a skilled and wise therapist, secular ACT-RFT is no doubt a valid affirmation and exploration in act of the client’s sincerely held and philosophically defensible inner values.  But at its worst, I fear, it may reflect an individualized culture which has lost touch with serious Christian moral discourse, has lapsed into moral expressivism, and which equates the good with being ‘true to oneself’.

Can the approach be redeemed?  As a non-therapist I am ill equipped to suggest, bottom-up, how a therapeutic technique such as this should be reformulated, maybe some are already doing so.  But I can offer a top-down, framing, Christian architectonic.  For the Christian, values cannot simply be my ‘individual desires’, or ‘augmental reinforcers’ or ‘inner preferences’; they must be shared, Gospel values.  Moreover, a commitment to act in accordance with them seems to me at least to point inevitably to virtuous action.  We act to realize Christian values by enrolling in the school of virtue. What else is possible? 

Encouraged by this, perhaps we can be even more ambitious and put the two reconstructed components of ACT back together, raising up the first, and redeeming the other.  If acceptance (in ACT) potentially has a prayer dimension, since discernment is required, and action potentially has a virtue component, since it should continually aim for the Good, the True and the Beautiful, do the two parts fit easily together?  I suggest that they do, without remainder, and that to ‘pray constantly, and act resolutely and virtuously with God’s grace’ is Christianity-in-ACT. 

My speculative polemics aside, the Collect of the Monday of the 5th week of Easter in the Roman Lectionary is probably a good place quietly to leave this topic:

‘Father, help us to seek the values that will bring us eternal joy in this changing world.  In our desire for what you promise make us one in mind and heart.’

References

Hodges, B.H. (2009). Realizing values in a complex world: caring for other.  Edification: Journal of the Society for Christian Psychology, 3(2), 2-22.

Plumb, J.C., Stewart, I., Dahl, J. and Lundgren, T. (2009). In search of meaning: values in modern clinical behavioral analysis.   The Behavior Analyst, 32(1), 85-103.

Loving God Through Knowing Him

Posted on April 18, 2010

[April is our month for guest bloggers, and this weeks blog is written by Valerie Murphy  LCPC, SD, BCPCC, Director and Therapist for Foundation Counseling and Training]

Over the last few years, I’ve sensed a heart-felt pull to discover what it means to know God in such a way that it leads me to an ever deepening desire to be like Christ… by that I mean to be like Christ in full surrender and in freedom from the attachments to “be like God.”  This being like God has been Satan’s pull into the worldly perspective since the fall, just as He had enticed Adam and Eve through false logic and reason, to pull away from God and to go it on their own.

To expand this theme, I’d like to start with a personal story about my life that I believe pertains.  My husband and I are approaching the empty nest stage of family relationship with our adult children (or at least it appears it will happen in the not too distant future!).  Out of the emptiness we foresee with the upcoming loss of our children’s presence, we now have a new addition of a tiny toy poodle to our family and are expecting one more from another litter shortly.  Clearly the addition of these puppies is a way of adding interest in our home and to fill a love spot for us until the grandbabies arrive. 

As we’ve been learning all the ins and outs of current trends in puppy training, we’ve studied the pack mentality of the dog.  Successful training from this viewpoint requires us, as owners, to become the “leaders of the pack,” or if you will, the Alpha dogs within our home.  In watching videos and reading current literature on this subject, I’ve begun to realize a very deep draw inside myself which is very different from all the pulls over the years where I’ve desired to “do things on my own” or to follow my own visions and plans or my own ideas of what my life should look like.  Rather, this draw is to truly live out life under the “Leader of our pack;” our Alpha Jesus Christ, under the authority of God the Father through the Holy Spirit.

The desire to do things on my own or for the sake of “my own kingdom” is, I believe, the “tragedy” that is referred to by Oswald Chambers in his book, The Place of Help.  Oswald Chambers states that, “not until we realize that there is something tragic at the basis of human life shall we recognize the love of God,” or I believe truly KNOW Him.  As I’ve looked at the “tragedy” of life for myself, my clients and the world at large, perhaps it isn’t so bad after all to follow a Leader that sets a vision for the good of all, has plans in place, disciplines and guides us in our roles, and walks with us on our journey of representing Him.  It is not the vision that I or those I serve might design; yet we have to remember that, like Christ, we do each have a God-given role.   Though the priorities and plans He establishes as our Leader are different than those we envision, we do walk in good stead as we “imitate Christ” in surrender and abandonment to the One True God.

Part of my journey with knowing God and the Biblical encouragement for my clients in falling under God’s leadership has been further developed as I’ve delved into the depth of our Leader’s care and the fulfillments He has shared with mankind from the beginning.  In Genesis there was profound satisfaction innate in the garden; free of the left-empty longings and the desires that exist on the fallen earth.

The 21 P’s

Can you imagine participating in the PRESENCE of the CREATOR (Gen 1:26-27) in the paradise garden that God created for man?  God shared His PERSONAL TOUCH (Genesis 2:7) and very breath with His creation.  He filled the earth with the abundance of His PRAISE (Gen 1:31; 2:12).  There was PERMANENCE (Gen 1:30) with all His shared Words, as well as, the PEACE (Gen 2:2) and rest that only He can bring.

From the beginning mankind was deeply connected to God and held a certain PRESTIGE (Gen 1:27), having been made in Their image.  Man was given a specific POWER (Gen 1:28, 2:19), PURPOSE (Gen 1:26) and set PRIORITIES (Gen 1:28) which included a mandate of PROCREATIVITY (Gen 1:12, 28) and PRODUCTIVITY (Gen 2:15).  Genesis expresses God’s clear PRIZING (Gen 1:28) of His created ones.

God was abundant in His PROVISION (Gen 1:30; 2:7; 9; 10; 16) for man.  He formed a special PLACE (Gen 2:8) full of life and an extravagance of food, drink and PLEASURE (Gen 2:9) for the senses.  There was an abundance of treasures as well.  PROTECTION (Gen 2:17) was given through God’s request to limit the eating of a certain fruit from a specific tree within this garden of delights.

God was full of praise for His creation, yet he also left man with the POTENTIAL PROMISE (Gen 2:18) of relational satisfaction with the coming of the PRESENCE of the OTHER (Gen 2:22) that became a PROMISE FULFILLED (Gen 2:23) in the creation of woman.  This relationship of mankind was truly good and ignited PASSION (Gen 2:24) from a sense of PURITY (Gen 2:25).

As I study the greatness of God within these brief chapters of His Scriptures, I want to be like Christ and to follow Him to God and out of what Oswald Chambers refers to as the “not reasonable but tragic.”  I believe this tragedy is founded on Satan’s lure upon mankind’s thinking from the very beginning for us to imagine what it would be like to “be like God.”  The identification of the left-empty P’s that motivate our clients, as well as ourselves, uncovers the deepest longings, desires and the drives that lead  us away from God’s plans for us and that motivates us to replace our following of Christ and the promptings of the Holy Spirit with our own misguided leadership.     

This is just the beginning of what it means for me to know God and to encourage my clients in knowing Him.  He formed each one of us individually from the beginning.  He has the perfect fulfillment of all that we could ask or imagine according to His plans and work within us.  He knows our deepest hungers, thirsts and needs (and He knows puppies will not fill them)! 

Lord, help us to turn away from our drives to be like You, to satisfy ourselves and our visions, and to essentially replace You as the Alpha and the leader of the pack.  Let us turn towards being image bearers of Yourself through being like your Son in full surrender to You and Your Glory!

I would appreciate any of your thoughts.

Implications of the Resurrection for Christian Psychology

Posted on April 11, 2010

[For the month of April we have a variety of guest bloggers. This week's post is authored by Dr. David Jenkins, Associate Professor of Counseling, Center for Counseling and Family Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA]

When Eric Johnson asked if I would be a guest blogger, I knew the post would take place a couple of weeks after we celebrated Easter.  I have always appreciated the Society for Christian Psychology and the simplicity of its mission statement.  So my first thought on what this blog’s focus would be was, “What are the implications of the resurrection for the theory, research, and practice of Christian psychology?”  While continuing to prayerfully consider what my contribution might be, I became increasingly convinced that this was the direction to take the discussion.  It was reassuring to have the presentation topic confirmed.  I became a bit unsettled, though, because as I spent time pondering this topic, I realized I had taken it for granted and not really thought through this before-at least not in any kind of systematic way.  “Yikes,” I thought, “I’m supposed to blog on this for public display to the SCP!”

So what follows are some thoughts about what difference the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ makes for Christian psychology.  While I hope I can inform to some degree, my intent is more to spur some discussion among you.  I’ll present some general thoughts first and then some implications for the theory, the research, and the practice of Christian psychology.

 General Implications

Because of the resurrection, Christian psychology should be characterized by pervasive qualities of:

 Theory Implications

Higgins (2004) identified aspects of useful theory.  Useful theories are: testable, coherent, economical, generalizable, and explanatory.  Interestingly, he added a sixth aspect beyond these common five-generativity.  Isn’t that fascinating?  Good theory should also “give birth and life” to further theory.  I believe a suitable word to go along with this is “heuristic”-the theoretical work of Christian psychology should guide in the investigation and discovery of who God is, what He’s like, and what that means for those created in His image. 

The resurrection means that what we presently see, touch, hear, smell, and taste is not all there is to this story of being human.  We are not in a “closed” universe, meaning that God has always been and remains active and immanent.  Surely, this ought to stimulate “holy” (i.e., set apart) theory that’s qualitatively different than what modern psychology presently offers.  And as Christian psychology seeks to recover and nurture its historical identity found within biblical Christianity, “resurrecting” that identity after a century of neglect, division, and abuse seems like an appropriate way to describe this effort.  In what ways do you believe the theory of Christian psychology is shaped by the resurrection?

 Research Implications

Jones (2002) described functions of research: modification, illustration, explanation, exploration, affirmation, prediction, and correction.  Although space doesn’t permit elaboration on each of these functions, a couple of examples will clarify this point.  The resurrection “modifies” what I know and believe about persons created in the image of God.  The resurrection “illustrates” the pattern of creation, fall, and redemption present in the universe, but particularly in human beings.  You could construct similar thoughts regarding the other functions of research.

Beyond these implications, the resurrection should affect the “content” of Christian psychology’s research as well as its “process.”  Probably more than any other, the general implication of hope should influence our research.  Topics such as resilience, optimal functioning, and the power of a well-lived life seem uniquely suited to a discipline whose foundational beliefs include the resurrection.  What other research content and process areas do you believe are uniquely shaped by the resurrection?

 Practice Implications

Sizemore (2006) outlined elements of a counseling model derived from a Christian psychology perspective.  He included elements regarding the nature of epistemology, persons, health, pathology, and treatment.  What we believe about what we know and how we know it is radically affected by the resurrection.  Let’s face it-even the apostle Paul identified the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the defining issue of the reality of our faith.  To believe in the resurrection requires us to step outside of naturalistic approaches to our work with persons.  Once again, I believe the general issues of hope, death as a precursor to life, freedom, making God known, transformation, and purpose influence my intentionality as a practitioner of soul care.  How is your work with people affected by the resurrection?

 Conclusion

I love Jesus…and, really more importantly, He loves me!  I am a living example of the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.  Some of you may know part of my story, and the details really aren’t that important to our purposes here.  But just know that God took me from hopelessness, death/destruction, bondage, darkness, distortion, and futility.  He brought me lovingly and radically into hope, life, freedom, knowledge of Him, transformation, and purpose!  I’m certain many of you can testify to the same “resurrection power” in your own life.  May God continue to bless this project of Christian psychology and those who are part of it!

I look forward to your comments and contributions!

 References:

Higgins, E.T. (2004). Making a theory useful: Lessons handed down. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(2), 138-145.

Jones, I.F. (2002). Research in Christian counseling: Proving and promoting our valued cause. In T. Clinton & G. Ohlschlager (Eds.), Competent Christian counseling (pp. 641-657). Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook.

Sizemore, T.A. (2006). The five domains: A Christian psychology model for counseling. Retrieved August 6, 2007, from Society for Christian Psychology Web site: http://www.aacc.net.net/email/media/scp_2.ppt

Is It Biblical?

Posted on March 28, 2010

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of March. This is her fifth blog]

Recently my husband and I were heading to Florida for a much needed vacation. Right after we dragged ourselves through airport security we sat down to reassemble ourselves.  Glancing up at the airport information center, we observed a troubling and odd scene going on behind the desk.

“Inappropriate!”  “Weird” were the words my husband and I muttered to one another as we watched a uniformed male employee repeatedly stroke a female employee’s face sitting in front of him.

What is he doing?” I asked.

“Is he giving her a facial massage?”my husband queried.

“No. I think he’s putting some sort of cream on her face.” I said.

We continued to stare.  “There must be some rules against employees publically touching one another like that,” I said. So taken with this inappropriate display of public affection by these employees I encouraged him to snap a picture with his cell phone. Then as I stood up to leave I saw things from a totally new perspective.

The woman was confined to a wheelchair. Her arms and hands curled tightly at her sides, useless. Her friend and fellow employee was tenderly rubbing moisturizer or makeup in to her parched skin. My heart sank. How quick I was to jump to conclusions and to judge his actions as wrong. How naturally and automatically I made up a story about what I saw when in fact, I did not see clearly at all.  

At first glance this man’s behavior appeared unquestionably wrong and inappropriate. It was only when I saw things from a different vantage point did I discern that his actions were actually the opposite. They were loving, kind and gracious.

 In the same way, Jesus repeatedly attempted to show the Pharisees of his day that everything wasn’t so easily explained in terms of what they thought was lawful or right and wrong.

For example, Rahab the prostitute was spared by Joshua because she protected the spies from being captured (by lying about which way they went) even though one of the Ten Commandments tells us not to bear false witness (see Joshua 6:25). Jesus did not follow the Jewish law when the woman was caught in adultery as the crowd expected. Instead of sentencing her to death by stoning, he said “Whoever is without sin cast the first stone.” (Luke 14:3-6)

The Pharisees condemned Jesus as a lawbreaker when he healed on the Sabbath yet he challenged their deeply held beliefs by asking them, “Which one of you wouldn’t rescue a son or an ox on the Sabbath if they had fallen into a deep well?” (Luke 14:3-6). Jesus taught that doing good, helping others, and loving well was more important to God than legalistic adherence to biblical law.

What does that mean to us as Christian counselors? Each session our clients invite us to peer into a small section of their life story. At times they actually give us the power to judge what they’re doing (thinking, or feeling) as right or wrong, biblical or sinful, godly or not.

On my weekly blog (www.leslievernick.blogspot.com) I’m often asked questions about whether or not something is biblical. In other words, does God approve or disapprove of what I’m about to do?  Here are a few recent examples I’ve blogged about.

“Am I disobeying God or dishonoring my mother when I put boundaries around her contact with my children?” Or “Is it biblical for my daughter to get a legal annulment from her new husband because she’s discovered he lied to her about who he really was? Had she known these things before hand, she would not have married him.” Or “Is it lawful for me to separate from an emotionally abusive husband? My church tells me that God hates divorce and I’m not allowed to leave under any circumstances.”

Sometimes when I read these tragic situations with their final question asking me what I think God says is right and what’s wrong I imagine how Jesus must have felt when the Pharisees tried to trap him. Is there only one right biblical answer for every situation?

At times I see Christians, including some biblical counselors, use the bible as a rule book to find what God says is permissible and/or unacceptable. But even Jesus had exceptions to his laws and the higher law of love always triumphed.  Biblical love never implies that we always do what the other person wants or prefers, but loving means we actively seek the other person’s long term best interest, including setting boundaries, implementing consequences, or initiating separation when those actions are done to help bring a sinful person to their senses and change.

How we answer these types of questions (or don’t answer), has great implications for our counselees. It may shape our client’s picture of God as well as whether or not she learns to discern God’s voice for herself (John 10:4, 27).

In closing, I try to ask myself some crucial questions when facing these kinds of dilemmas.  

In striving to be Christ-centered in my counseling, I am learning more and more that there is often more than one biblical answer.  My job isn’t to judge or decide for my client what’s biblical. Part of my job is to help my client see his or her situation from different vantage points, (for example, temporal, eternal, short term, long term), talk about what God might be up to in her particular situation and how to listen to the Holy Spirit so that she can walk by faith, not by sight.

Two Types of Suffering

Posted on March 21, 2010

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of March. This is her fourth blog]

Scott Peck opens his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled with the statement “Life is difficult.”  Trials and troubles come to saint and sinner alike. No one is immune. But it is often suffering that brings a person to the counselor’s office. As Christian counselors we have a unique opportunity when people are hurting because they naturally seek answers from God, often asking the questions, Why God? Why this? Why now? Why me?

I’ve come to understand that there are two types of suffering; necessary suffering and unnecessary suffering. It’s important that we learn to distinguish them because we will approach them differently in the therapeutic process.

Let’s first look at necessary suffering. Necessary suffering is important. It is part of God’s plan to teach us to stay away from dangerous things as well as to mature us. When a child puts her hand on a hot stove, the pain warns her to remove her hand immediately. If she ignored her pain it would result in more intense suffering and perhaps even permanent damage (which is unnecessary if she listened to her pain).

The apostle Paul tells us that suffering builds character (Romans 5) and James tells that we can experience joy in the midst of our trials and troubles if we remember that they are used to build perseverance which help us run the race of faith with greater endurance (James 1:2,3).

Suffering is necessary because it wakes us up from our spiritual sleepiness and teaches us what really matters. Whether we realize it or not, even as believers, many of us are held captive to the lie that we need something other than God to fulfill us and make us happy. When we put our hope in something or someone other than God to give us what only he can give, he will surely frustrate us. He doesn’t do it to punish us but rather to rescue us from our disordered attachments and delusions; from our foolishness and self-deception. Sorrow teaches us to let go of our love affair with false or lesser things and seek harder after God.

Necessary suffering is used by God to dismantle our internal story line about how life should work, what brings inner happiness and what’s truly important. Life’s disappointments and sorrows are unwelcome but necessary gifts to help us see view reality correctly. C.S. Lewis writes, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Necessary suffering helps us find God and our true selves instead of losing our way through life feasting at the table of cheap substitutes.  

Necessary suffering is a result of living in a sinful and broken world. Things are not as they should be. Our goal with individuals who are in the midst of this kind of suffering is to help them express their honest emotions, grieve their losses, and to eventually find hope or some purpose in the midst of them. Like mining for diamonds in the mud, the Christian counselor helps his/her client extract what’s good from the bad, what is beautiful from the ugly. Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33). We are not alone in our suffering. Jesus knows the pain of living in a broken down world. He is present to help us, to guide us and to comfort us. Our suffering is not meaningless and God will redeem it if we let him.

In contrast, unnecessary suffering results from our poor response to necessary suffering. It rises out of our unrealistic expectations, the lies we believe (our tell ourselves), our bad habits, poor choices, and our negative emotions such as self-pity, envy, greed, jealousy, resentment, pride, and shame. This kind of pain results from our immature or rebellious way of handling life and our inability and/or refusal to see things truthfully.

When working with someone experiencing sorrow upon sorrow, in addition to being empathic with whatever necessary suffering they are experiencing, we must help our client understand the ways she may play an active role in creating unnecessary suffering.

Let me give an example. A woman shared with me that her only son was recently killed in a motorcycle accident. She said, “I can’t be thankful for all things but I have learned I can be thankful in all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

She continued, “I am thankful that I had him with me for 24 years. I’m thankful that he died doing something he loved. I’m thankful that he knew the Lord and I’ll see him someday. I’m thankful that I have so many friends who are helping me through this horrible time.”

This woman was hurting but her grief in facing such a loss was not compounded by additional pain she would have experienced had she told herself such things as, “God must be punishing me for something I’ve done.” Or “If only I hadn’t allowed him to buy that motorcycle, he’d still be alive.” Or “Why my son? It’s not fair. I only had one child and now he’s gone.” Or “My life is ruined, I’ll never be happy again.”

She didn’t isolate or withdraw from her social support and she worked hard to remind herself of God’s goodness and love even in the midst of a tragedy. Necessary suffering was doing its work in her life and wasn’t intensified by additional sorrow that wasn’t necessary.

On the other hand I’ve had many clients who live in a chronic state of misery because of their unrealistic expectations, poor choices, or negative lifestyle habits yet they fail to connect the dots that their suffering is self imposed and unnecessary if only they would change their ways.

 Most of the time there is some combination of both kinds of suffering. Understanding the difference, has helped me to be wiser in the way I approach those that are hurting.

Creativity in Counseling, Part 3

Posted on March 14, 2010

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of March. This is her third blog]

In my past two blogs I’ve invited discussion about creative techniques we can implement to help our clients experience deeper truth or make positive changes. As we’ve learned, showing is always more potent than telling in the counseling process. How we do that can take a multitude of approaches and this week I’d like to share some specific ways I’ve incorporated illustration and story in my practice.

Barker (1996) holds that metaphor and stories are particularly useful to do the following:

Illustrate a particular point

Suggest possible solutions to a problem

Promote insight or awareness

Motivate or plant ideas in a counselee’s mind

Overcome and bypass resistance

Reframe or redefine the problem

Remind people of their resources

The creative use of illustration, story, and metaphor were an integral part of Jesus’ teaching style and are generously woven throughout Scripture. They help us grab a hold of deep spiritual truths as well as bypass the watchdog left brain.

Illustration:  We all experience counselees who typically blame their poor reactions to provocative situations on an external stressor instead of taking personal responsibility for how they’ve handled the situation. During a session they may say something like, “If she wouldn’t have aggravated me I wouldn’t have yelled at her that way.” The implication being that it is his wife’s fault that he lost his temper and that the goal of counseling should be to get his wife to stop doing whatever upsets him.

I don’t have the space in this blog to flesh all the different approaches one could take in this case and there may be a time where talking with the wife about her provocative behavior is appropriate. However, I have found when trying to break through these kinds of circular interactions, quoting scripture (or assigning it as homework) regarding how one should speak or  the consequences of biting and devouring one another, usually fails to produce the desired internal change of greater personal reflection and acceptance of responsibility.

But here is an illustration that stops the blame game. In my office I keep a small jar of seemingly clean water. Unknown to my clients, at the bottom of the jar is some dirty sediment. When a person is habitually blaming outside forces for his or her own poor response, I’ll pull the jar off my shelf and hold it by the bottom so that the sediment is unseen. I ask him if the water looks clean. He usually nods, yes.

Then I vigorously shake the jar of water. The sediment becomes obvious and the water is now dirty. I ask, “Did shaking the jar make the water dirty?”

The immediate answer is often “yes”. Then he pauses and reflects a little more, realizing that shaking the jar didn’t make the water dirty, it was already dirty, shaking only made the dirt obvious.

This opens a window to explore his new awareness and what it means for his interactions with his wife. Certainly people and life provoke us, but what comes out of our mouth in those moments has more to do with the contents of our heart, than the particular situation. My jar illustration shows Christ’s words, “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:46). I could have shaken (provoked) the jar until my arm fell off and if the water was truly clean, it would not have become dirty. Shaking simply exposed the dirt that had been there all along.

This simple yet powerful illustration helps people see that their reactions and responses to difficult people or situations expose the darker contents of their own heart. These qualities usually stay hidden (at least from our client’s own awareness) until provoked. Seeing the dirty contents of one’s heart is a good thing so that we can begin to repent, take responsibility and change.

Story:  In my counseling practice I often tell stories or assign my clients to read stories or watch movies as homework. The editors of Futurist magazine assert that storytellers will be the most valuable workers in the twenty-first century.

I worked with a woman who felt depressed and was morbidly obese. In addition she chronically masturbated and fantasized how her life “could” be but never actually did anything to change it. Please understand that I am not commenting on whether or not masturbation is biblical in this blog nor am I presenting an entire case. I’m showing how I used a story to get her unstuck.

After some time of trying all sorts of approaches, I finally asked my client to read the fairy tale “The Little Match Girl”.  If you recall, the story is of a poor girl who froze to death by lighting matches trying to stay warm while having fantasies of a crackling fire, a Christmas dinner, and a loving grandmother.

The story helped my client see herself and her own impoverished, empty life. She saw how she used masturbation (lighting matches) and fantasy to warm herself instead of connecting with and loving real people as God has made us to do. Most importantly it motivated her to move forward in making healthy changes because she could now see that she too, was freezing to death.  

Let me close with a short story I sometimes use with a client when he or she is quite sure the difficult moment they are in will last forever or means that nothing good will ever come of it. You can find various versions on the internet. It goes something like this:

There was an old farmer that had only one horse and one day his horse ran away. The neighbors came to console his terrible loss. “This is awful,” they cried.

The farmer said, “Oh I don’t know, it could be good or it could be bad.”

A month later the horse came home – this time bringing with her two beautiful wild horses. The neighbors became excited at the farmer’s good fortune. “Such lovely, strong horses,” they exclaimed. “What a fortunate man you are.”

The farmer said, “Oh I don’t know, it could be good or it could be bad.”

Some days later the farmer’s son was riding one of the wild horses when he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors said, “Such bad luck!”

The farmer said, “Oh I don’t know, it could be good or it could be bad.”

A war came and every able bodied young man was send into battle. Only the farmer’s son was exempt because he had a broken leg. The neighbors said, “This is good, he doesn’t have to go away.”

And by now you know what the farmer said.

None of us know what good things can come from the bad things we experience or what difficulties we will encounter even in life’s blessings. Suffering and blessing is in all things. It’s not either/or, but both/and.

 

Barker, P.(1996). Psychotherapeutic Metaphors: A guide to Theory and Practice. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Creativity in Counseling, Part 2: The Art of the Therapeutic Question

Posted on March 8, 2010

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of March. This is her second blog]

As an author, I’ve struggled to show instead of simply tell what I want to convey to my audience. I’ve found that this same writing principle of “show, don’t tell” works best in the counseling office as well. Dr. Burns (from last week’s blog) showed his client that she wasn’t having a heart attack through her experience of jogging in place. Telling her wasn’t enough to convince her. To explore a different avenue for creativity in counseling, I want to look at the art of asking good questions.

Therapeutic questions are most often used to gather information and orient ourselves as clinicians as to what brings the client to our office. We want to understand how she perceives her current life problems as well as explore what precipitated them, how she has coped, as well as what solutions, if any, she has tried to resolve her pain. As a wrench is to a plumber, a scalpel is to a surgeon, and a paint brush is to an artist, the question is the basic tool of the therapist. Learning how to use this tool competently is as much an art as it is a skill.

All of us have learned about asking good questions in graduate school, but perhaps some of us haven’t taken the time to master some of the finer or more subtle ways we can use this important tool in the therapeutic process. Talented artists don’t paint pictures using a single brush. They learn which brush is required to make a bold stroke versus a fine line. They study and repeatedly practice what kind of angle and exactly how much weight to apply to the brush in order to achieve their desired results. In a similar way, as clinicians we can use a well worded or wisely timed question to turn the corner beyond fact finding or data gathering and move our client toward change. 

When I was beginning my counseling career, I often felt like I was stumbling in the dark. After gathering my information and forming my hypothesis, I wasn’t sure how to take my client from point A to point B. I knew where I wanted to go (sort of), but wasn’t sure how to get her there. Instead of asking the right question that might help my client see her way forward, I pushed rather than invited, taught instead of showed, and sometimes preached rather than simply be present. 

Perhaps because I was so guilty of these missteps, I readily see them with the Christian counselors I supervise as well. Instead of helping someone grow to become more aware of themselves and/or God and his truth through the use of good and well timed questions, we lecture, teach, or preach.  But Jesus masterfully wielded the right question at just the right time in order to bring individuals into greater awareness, to challenge wrong thinking, and to influence them toward deep and significant change.

Let’s briefly look at 3 types of questions Jesus asked in order to see how we might sharpen our therapeutic tool in a more creative way.

1. Teaching Questions: Instead of telling someone what to believe, Jesus often used questions to challenge wrong thinking or bring about greater awareness of a spiritual truth. For example, Jesus asked:

“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way…Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them. Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?” (Luke 13:1-4)

  “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish will give him a snake?” (Matthew 7:9)

“Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? …Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life, and why do you worry about clothes?  (Matthew 6:25-29)

Jesus used these questions to correct wrong thinking and help individuals to see God and life in fresh new ways.  

Instead of telling or teaching the truth, here is an example how one might use questions to help a client think more biblically.

“What do you think it means in Romans 12:21 when it says that we’re not to be overcome with evil but to overcome evil with good?  How might that truth help you decide how to handle the situation we’ve just talked about?  What would good look like here?”

2. Challenging Questions: In addition to teaching someone new ways of thinking there are times our clients are caught in faulty and deceptive beliefs. Below are some questions Jesus asked to challenge and cast light upon deeply entrenched beliefs in order to invite a person toward greater truth and healing.

“And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand?” (Matthew 12:26-29)

“Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matthew 7:16)

“If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?” (Matthew 12:11)

In last week’s case example, Dr. Burns could have asked his client, “Do you believe you can jog and have a heart attack at the same time?”  He didn’t directly ask her that question, yet embedded in his request to jog, it was an obvious challenge to her faulty belief.

Here’s an example of a question I’ve used to challenge the head/heart division that many of my clients experience when they say, “I know that in my head, but not in my heart.”

            “When your thoughts and feelings are contrary to what God says, who wins?”

3. Confronting Questions: As Christian psychologists and counselors, we are not merely truth seekers, we are called to be truth tellers. How we tell the truth however, is important. Jesus often used a piercing question to confront a particular sin or heart attitude.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3-5)

“Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46)

Confronting sinful and/or immature attitudes and behavior is not easy while still maintaining a good therapeutic relationship. We have been taught not to use why questions because they usually put someone on the defensive. However, we can ask probing questions without using the word why. Here are some examples.

“You’re right, it’s not fair that your parents (or whoever) treated you so sinfully, but what does it cost you to stay stuck in resentment and anger for this long?

 ”You tell me that you want to honor God and be a good husband. But what happens to you when you also want your wife to listen to you and she is too busy or isn’t interested? What happens to you and in you when you don’t get what you want from your wife?”

Within the therapeutic hour there are many choices and decisions we make regarding what strategy to use for a particular client and his/or her situation. A well timed and thoughtful question can open otherwise closed doors.  I welcome further dialogue on ways that others have used questions to show, not tell.

Creativity in Counseling

Posted on February 28, 2010

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of March. This is her first blog]

I attended a workshop a while back where David Burns, author of the bestselling book Feeling Good, was teaching techniques for managing anxiety and depression. If you have a chance to hear him, go. He’s an outstanding speaker.  What I remember most and have pondered often over the years was a clinical video demonstration he showed where one of his clients, a young graduate student, was in the midst of a panic attack. She was in obvious distress, panting and crying, certain she was experiencing a heart attack. Despite Dr. Burns’s empathic responses that she was in the middle of a panic attack and not going to die, she was not convinced.

No amount of logical or rational argument calmed this woman’s body, although at some level I suppose, she did believe him at least a little bit or she would have demanded he call 911. But the truth was not sinking in as I watched her body and mind continue to be gripped by fear.

As counselors, daily we encounter these kinds of crossroad moments with our clients. They might not be struggling with panic attacks but they are struggling with embracing truth and breaking free from lies. As I watched this video, I thought to myself, how do we convince someone that the lie they so firmly believe is not true? As Christian counselors we know the truth and that the truth sets us free. Yet this woman was not freed from her panic merely by hearing Dr. Burns tell her the truth.

I’m afraid sometimes as biblical counselors, we naively think that instructing someone in correct theology or giving him or her biblical principles on how to live right, will result in a transformed heart and life. Sadly, if you’ve been counseling for any length of time, you know that most of the time, that doesn’t work.

Therefore, I was curious to see how Dr. Burns would handle this case. Instead of arguing his point or disputing this woman’s lie he got creative. He asked her to stand up. Obviously they had a good therapeutic relationship and she trusted him, so shakily she stood up while protesting that she was going to collapse on the floor. Once standing, still trembling with fear and hyperventilating, Dr. Burns asked her to start jogging in place. She resisted, but he assured her that she would not die and reminded her that she was a runner. Slowly she started jogging in place, crying that she could not do what he was asking her to do and that any minute she was surely going to fall down. He ignored her and simply told her to jog faster. While jogging in place, Dr. Burns asked his client how much she believed she was having a heart attack. She answered, “about 95%”.

“Jog faster” was Dr. Burns’s response.  Still protesting, she jogged faster and after another 15 seconds or so, Dr. Burns again asked her how much she believed she was having a heart attack.

“About 75%,” she said, still crying.

Dr. Burns said, “Jog faster”.  The woman complied and a few moments later a small smile began to creep across her face. Once more Dr. Burns asked her how much she believed she was having a heart attack. This time she started giggling, stopped jogging and sat down. She said, “I guess I couldn’t be having a heart attack and jog faster at the same time.”  Jogging helped her experience the truth.

As I’ve thought about this clinical demonstration I’ve wondered just how I might do something like this with my clients who get so stuck in their lies. What kinds of creative things can I do that will help them experience the truth so that they are free to let go of the lie?

Here’s one that provided that “ah ha” moment for one of my clients. My office is located in my home. I have a perfect set up with a walk-out basement that has a separate entrance. Outside my office I have some beautiful gardens.

 I was working with a young woman struggling with mild depression, insecurity and low self-esteem. She constantly compared herself to others and always fell short (in her own eyes). She knew the scriptures, that she was fearfully and wonderfully made, she was unique, and all the things we typically would say to help someone stuck in such lies to think differently, but nothing was really helping her to actually think differently.

So one day I invited her to take a walk with me in my garden. I asked her what she saw. She commented on the flowers, some bold and flashy like the big roses. Others more delicate and hidden like the bleeding hearts tucked under my deck.  “Which one is the best?”  I asked?

“I don’t know” she said. “They’re all beautiful in their own way.”

“You’re right. But what if the bleeding heart had compared itself to the rose?” I said. “What if it thought ‘because I’m not bold and flashy and I don’t have big flowers that people use in bouquets or give as gifts, I must not be important or as beautiful?”

My client smiled. She got it. She was not a rose, but more like a bleeding heart. She was delicate and had smaller flowers that were too fragile to pick or put in bouquets. Nevertheless, she did see that in her own way, she too could be beautiful.

Like Dr. Burns did with his audience that day, let’s share with one another some creative ways we have helped our clients experience the truth.

Using Scripture in Christian Counseling

Posted on February 21, 2010

In my mind, Christian psychology’s value comes from being able to develop a solid foundation and praxis of Christian care of souls-something that grows out of careful biblical/theological work as well as the study of human behavior. Those of us who have been talking about and doing Christian counseling for some time must admit that much of what passes as Christian counseling is either superficial Christianity (verses pasted on a theory that exists just fine without the verses) or superficial psychology (a model based on some tidbit of pop psychology research and then morphed in an exquisite but completely fictional science).

Instead of Sunday school applications (where Jesus is the answer to every question) counselors need solid examples of how to engage the Scriptures in therapeutic settings. In a recent issue of our journal, Edification (2:2), I’ve attempted to introduce some practical steps in using the bible in the therapy office. But, truth be told, many have not had good experience in seeing how one might engage the Bible in real life settings. We’re wary of the Band-Aid use of verses, the bible bullets, the superficial applications. So, it makes sense we don’t know how to engage both counseling and Scripture well.

In stark contrast to biblical superficiality, Dr. Mike Emlet has recently published CrossTalk: Where Life & Scripture Meet (2009, New Growth Press). I would encourage every Christian in the counseling world to read it. Mike’s book provides a great introduction to connecting (more of) the bible to real-life human trials and tribulations (e.g., beyond the Psalms!). Though he is a seminary professor and biblical counselor you won’t get bogged down into esoteric discussions of exegesis or genre (though you can see he understands the concepts) or finding a verse for every problem (though you can see he believes that everyone finds themselves in the pages of the bible).  Rather, Mike focuses on “redemptive dialogue” (vs. mere instruction) and how the Gospel is more than belief but the repetitive, transformative meeting with God. 

Here are three gems from the book to whet your appetite.

If you think your counseling training lacked clear teaching on how to think about Scripture and its application to everyday life (beyond timeless maxims and warnings); if you avoid using Scripture in counseling because doing so sounds trite, then I recommend you take up this book and consider how the narrative use of Scripture might enrich your counseling work.

Do No Harm

Posted on February 7, 2010

(by Philip G. Monroe. Associate professor of Counseling & Psychology at Biblical Seminary. Dr. Monroe is our blogger for the month of February and this is his second post. Dr. Monroe maintains his own blog at http://www.wisecounsel.wordpress.com/)

Every counseling ethics code in existence includes this principle: Do no harm. This maxim is drilled into the heads of counseling students (and any other medical professional as well). Our work should help, not hurt. Who could disagree?

But pause for a minute and consider how you might evaluate whether an intervention helps or harms. What criteria will you use? From what vantage point will you evaluate the criteria you choose? If a medical treatment extends life for an ill patient that would seem good-unless it keeps them alive and in a vegetative state with no possibility of recovery. Some would then wonder if the treatment was indeed best. Or, is it harmful if marriage counseling encourages truthfulness between spouses leading to the revelation of a terrible betrayal leading on to divorce and financial ruin? If honesty is your criteria for helpfulness, then the intervention is sad but helpful. If stability is your criteria, then such counseling is harmful. We could go on and on. Do we use client interpretation of whether treatment is helpful or counselor observation? Do we consider the difference between short and long term evaluation? And importantly for Christians, do we consider only statistical analyses or do we also consider biblical categories (e.g., intervention “A” leads to increased positive affect but encourages clients to pray to another deity).

Despite the muddy water I just churned up, I want to argue that Christian psychology is well poised to help Christian counselors provide treatment that does not harm. This society includes some of the best philosophers, theologians, sociologists, clinicians, and researchers of our day. These members are interested in looking at how people grow and change, how the bible connects with everyday life, common human struggles and effective interventions, etc.

How then do we go about refining our practices and avoiding harm? Let me suggest some steps we might take:

That would be a good start. Now, I’m not under some delusion that we will agree completely on any one of these issues. But, clarifying agreement, identifying disagreement might bring our work into better focus. I suspect we will find much that ought to be fixed and a sadly needed increase in Christian counselor humility.

Should Christian Psychology Become a Profession?

Posted on January 31, 2010

(by Philip G. Monroe. Associate professor of Counseling & Psychology at Biblical Seminary. Dr. Monroe is our blogger for the month of February and this is his first post. Dr. Monroe maintains his own blog at http://www.wisecounsel.wordpress.com/)

Right now, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, lawmakers are considering a bill that would place more restrictions on who can provide counsel. Currently, the state has a number of mental health credentials. Among those is the Licensed Professional Counselor credential for those with a requisite master’s degree and post graduate supervised practice. If passed, the new bill will not only protect the title of “Professional Counselor” but also the practice of professional counseling. Per the law, one may not “style” themselves as a counselor unless they are licensed as such.

Who does this effect? This will especially impact the many Christian counselors who are not licensed but practice a form of counseling (aka biblical counseling, Christian counseling, etc.). While these counselors do not provide diagnoses or bill insurances they do collect fees, keep progress notes, maintain confidentiality, and provide counsel for those struggling with issues such as anxiety, anger, depression, marital conflict and the like. So, the 64 million dollar question: Do these unlicensed Christian counselors “style” themselves as professional counselors? And who decides the line between the two? As an aside, the bill does contain an exemption for pastoral counselors. Pennsylvania does not yet define that title but in other locales that title is reserved for those ordained, trained in a pastoral counseling graduate program, and doing work in church-related institutions.

Here’s where the bill gets interesting. It describes what typifies a profession that might overlap with counseling but have a separate (and thus exempted) identity and practice. Here are some of the criteria they might use to discern a separate profession (note my bolded text to emphasize interesting details):

1.  The group’s activity and focus must be based on an identifiable body of theoretical knowledge which, although it may include areas of common knowledge shared with social work, marriage and family therapy, and professional counseling, is demonstrably different, in the aggregate, from the body of theoretical knowledge underlying social work, marriage and family therapy, and professional counseling.

2.  The group must regulate entrance into professional membership by means of standards of knowledge, training and proficiency generally accepted by the profession with which it identifies.

3.  The group’s activity must be guided by generally accepted quality standards, ethical principles and requirements for an independent profession.

4.  The group must exhibit the ordinary accoutrements of a profession, which may include professional journals, regional and national conferences, specific academic curricula and degrees, continuing education opportunities, regional and national certification and awards for outstanding practice within the profession.

Thus, the state will consider whether one is a qualified member of a profession (and in compliance with that profession’s standards) AND counseling only in the scope of this profession.

This leads me to ask two questions. Does Christian psychology fit the definition of a profession? Should we seek to form our own credentials?

Like all good academics, we like to pose questions and avoid answering them. However, I do have some thoughts. First, we do have a theoretical knowledge base that is unique in its scope even if embryonic in its application. Second, while we do not have our own standards of practice, our parent organization, The American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC), does. And other Christian counseling membership organizations do as well. However, our biggest problem is that we do not limit members to only those who meet an observed standard of practice. There are no proficiency exams to hinder some from entry (again the AACC is now working to change this for their organization). Finally, there are many who would resist the separation of Christian psychology or Christian counseling as a distinct profession on the grounds that it would either ghettoize Christian counselors or lead to innumerable ideological authorities (biblical counselors vs. Christian psychologists vs. Reformed counselors vs. Catholic therapists, etc.). It is my opinion that our Society is enriched because we do NOT see ourselves as a profession. Thus, we have philosophers, theologians, psychologists, pastors, biblical counselors and many more within our ranks. We are well suited to avoid groupthink, in my humble opinion.

What do you think? Should Christian counselors seek their own professional identity and licensing body? What are the pros and cons of doing so?

The Glory of God Composed of Form and Splendor – part 2

Posted on December 28, 2009

[Eric Johnson is our guest blogger for December. Eric is the Director of the Society for Christian Psychology and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is his fourth post].

Last week I began a discussion based on a distinction borrowed from the great 20th century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, that glory is composed of both form and splendor. I will assume the reader has read that introduction as we explore this week the implications of that momentous distinction.

In art, physical form has to do with spatial arrangement of the features, say, of a statue. A beautiful statue looks good. But we are interested in psychological or spiritual form-something invisible-and therefore not something we can see with the physical eye, but something we arrive at by means of inference and wisdom.

God is the source and measure of glory; indeed, glory is the biblical term for the beauty of God. God’s glory is the “sum of his attributes,” his greatness and goodness, his meaningfulness. God is the essence of perfect, infinite form and splendor. So God’s form is the perfect configuration of psychological and spiritual features: God knows everything (including absolute self-awareness); always thinks clearly; is completely content,  but has emotional richness that corresponds to the rest of reality perfectly (including true empathy); acts determinedly and wisely; and (in the Trinity) consists of strong, loving persons-in-communion.

Last week we defined splendor as the depth dimension of a form, its inner radiance that “shines out” from the form. God is also the essence of perfect, infinite splendor, so he is the deepest of beings: he loves that which is lovely-himself supremely and all creatures, especially insofar as they resemble him-and he hates that which is ugly-sin; he regards all things in proportion to their true value with respect to himself; he always acts according to his preeminent values; and he “sees through” mere appearance and promotes depth in those made in his image.

Being the Son of God in human form, Jesus Christ is the perfect human representation of God’s form and splendor. The Gospels are important because they provide narrative descriptions of his glory, “glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Jesus Christ shows the human race flawless human form and consummate depth of splendor. Being increasingly conformed to Christ (in his form and splendor) is the goal of human life (Ro 8:29; 2Co 3:18).

So it is God’s intention that humans made in his image are created to realize the greatest form and splendor of which they are capable as finite creatures. Having good form means having healthy thinking and emotions, well-functioning memory, the ability to freely act so as to realize one’s realistic goals, and good relationships. Modern psychology has explored many of these features.

Having a high degree of splendor means being deep, rather than superficial, being focused on the important things in life: supernatural reality more than natural, people more than things, being and doing good more than simply looking good; but also having regard for the weak, hurting, broken, and sinners, and all creatures in proportion to their actual value before God, yet hating sin. Obviously modern psychology has not focused much on splendor.

This doxological focus (doxa = glory, Gk) makes human development central to God’s purposes. Children obviously manifest God’s glory, but it is good to develop into increasingly well-formed creatures with greater splendor. Because of their limited formal capacities, children necessarily act with less splendor than adults, because adults can do what they do intentionally for the glory of God; children cannot, at least not as fully as adults.

Glory of course is not the possession of anyone except God. To be human is only to be a means of God’s glory; by grace God permits humans to participate in his glory. The more well-formed our souls and the more splendorous their form, the greater glory we are capable of receiving from God in worship, love, and gratitude and expressing in our voices, lives, and relationships.

This glory framework gives Christians a different way of viewing psychopathology.  Sin is the worst kind of psychopathology because it radically compromises our ability to participate in God’s glory. Sin’s essence is anti-glory.  Part of sin’s effects was the damage of the soul’s form evident in distorted thinking, inappropriate emotions, and personality disorders, so this kind of damage should be of concern to Christian counseling, since it can inhibit our ability to participate in God’s glory. However, sin’s effects are most evident in the compromise of splendor. The more sinful we are, the less devoted to God we are and the more focused we are on this creation as an end in itself (so it becomes an idol), so those who live lives distracted by the superficial (fame, fashion, power, possessions) lack splendor. Low levels of splendor, then, is a greater problem than poor form in Christian counseling. Interestingly, having damaged form leads to increased suffering, but suffering promotes our deepening and so our splendor.

Christ came to earth and died and was raised to heal our form and deepen our splendor. Some healing in our form is possible in this life, but its complete healing is reserved for heaven. However, in light of the foregoing, we might expect more healing on earth in our capacity for splendor, as we grow through suffering in worship, wisdom, faith, hope, and love. Christian psychotherapy and counseling is doxological as it participates in the glory of Christ’s salvation by helping to bring healing to the human form and increase human splendor through the resources of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

Levels of Engagement in Christian Psychology: Psychology and Theology (1)

Posted on November 8, 2009

[by Peter Hampson, Head of Department of Psychology, University of the West of England, Bristol. Professor Hampson is our blogger for the month of November, and this is his second post]

 In my last posting I began to suggest that there are two levels of engagement within the CP project.  At the strategic level, the Christian narrative positions psychology hermeneutically, by providing an overarching, meaningful, God-given and Christ-centered framework; within this, at the tactical level, there is space for useful truth-seeking, dialectical engagement between theology, philosophy and psychology. Both levels of engagement are presumably guided by the Spirit.  In line with this, in different though potentially related ways, thinkers seemingly as distinct as St Thomas Aquinas and Friedrich Schleiermacher see the truths of Christianity, (as captured in, say, ‘sacra doctrina’ or dogmatic and historical theology), as being in creative and positive interaction with philosophy and human knowledge (‘scientia‘ or ‘philosophical theology’).  This suggests that there should be room within the CP project as a whole for both the direct application of Christianity to theory and practice, and for more detailed conceptual engagement of psychology with other disciplines, especially theology, to allow us to train properly the next generation of therapists, counselors and practitioners, and to assure that their education is both faith based and intellectually sound.  We should be seeking to produce, I suggest, theologically and philosophically reflective, Christian psychologist practitioners. 

 I wonder, too, do such broad differences in levels of approach reflect in part differences between evangelical and apologetic strategies in Christian mission, with the direct, faith-based application of Christianity evincing the former, and the more dialectical theological engagement the latter? Interestingly, when addressing non-Christians in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas artificially separates philosophical understanding of God from Christian truths in a way that he does not in the Summa Theologiae.  For apologetic purposes, Thomas sometimes found it convenient to use the language of reason separated from faith to communicate successfully with unbelievers.  There may be times when we need to do this and to indicate to our secular psychology colleagues simply and directly where we see psychology as limited within its own framework, at other times we may need to assert and apply the truths of Christianity more robustly, at yet other times we may need to engage in debates by deploying a more nuanced understanding of reason’s relation to faith.

 Is it also the case that the practicalities and real time choices of counseling and psychotherapy, and their meaning seeking and meaning making activities make more insistent the need for the CP architectonic, whereas the requirement to seek truth in the long term characterizes the theology-psychology project?  Do CP and theology-psychology approaches reflect different hidden background assumptions about the relative importance of theology? Finally, I suspect there is work to be done in teasing out how these approaches are positioned relative to long standing Christ and culture debates.

 I’ll leave these questions hanging for now, and begin to articulate how I see the relation between theology and psychology, the ‘tactical level’, being played out.

 Much of my thinking has been profoundly affected by the work of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre particularly as developed from After Virtue (AV), through Whose Justice Which Rationality (WJWR), to Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (TRV).  As is well known, MacIntyre has not only helped re-establish the importance of virtue ethics but has shown how rationality is tradition dependent (AV), but that this need not trap us in postmodern relativism since ‘translatability’ or dialogue between ‘rival’ traditions is possible (WJWR).  A given tradition can in principle establish its superiority over another at points where one tradition experiences ‘epistemic crises’, which the challenging tradition can not only diagnose but also ‘solve’ to the afflicted traditions satisfaction, i.e. in its own terms (TRV).  It is this threefold understanding that allows me to claim, with my colleague Gavin D’Costa, that I am postmodern in outlook in accepting that rationality is tradition dependent, modern in accepting that rational dialogue between different rationalities is possible, and premodern in accepting the ultimate truth of the Christian tradition, and the power and validity of a broadly catholic, Thomist understanding of the relation between faith and reason.  This may sound like having one’s cake and eating it, but I suggest it is a useful way to avoid becoming trapped into either context free or totally context bound rationalities while also holding fast to what we know to be true, rooted as it is in Christ, who is Truth incarnate.

 I will develop this further in my next posting.

References

MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue 2nd ed. (London: Duckworth, 2000, first ed., 1981).

 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice, Which Rationality (London: Duckworth, 1988).

 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia,

Genealogy and Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,

1992).

Practice the Opposite

Posted on October 25, 2009

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of October. This is her fourth blog]

One of the things that I have found very helpful in my own personal life as well is in my professional practice is intentionally practicing the opposite virtue when I get stuck in emotional quicksand.  When unwanted but nevertheless strong negative emotions capture us (or our clients), we often feel powerless to break free from them. We can examine our negative self-talk, journal, pray and yet we still feel caught. 

Good self-control can help us refrain from expressing such feelings but it does not relieve the inner tension we (or our clients) feel and can never be the end goal of good Christian counseling. God aims for a deeper change as we must. He wants our heart to be transformed to be more like his. Practicing the opposite virtue can be both evidence of a transformed heart and a means by which we can help someone grow into it. 

Let me give you a few examples. When I feel impatient waiting in a long line with a slow clerk, I have learned not to blurt out my toxic feelings all over the clerk, but I still feel irritated while waiting. I can take a deep breath and that helps calm me down a bit, but much more effective is when I intentionally focus my attention on feeling compassionate for the overworked, underpaid clerk. I can also practice humility by reminding myself that my needs and my time are not the highest priority but rather faith, expressing itself through love. As I consciously take these steps I am applying a powerful antidote to the emotion of impatience and my irritation vanishes.

When the apostle Paul speaks to thieves about their behavior, he does not merely tell them to stop stealing (self control). A thief has a selfish heart. Greed rules him. Stealing is an outward manifestation of his inward reality. Paul instructs him to work (virtue of diligence) so that he can share his resources with others who have needs (virtues of compassion and generosity – Ephesians 4:28).

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that we should be hypocrites or pretend. Rather, practicing the opposite virtue helps us not to allow our temporary feelings to define who we are. Just because we feel angry at the moment doesn’t mean we have to act that way. People feel many different emotions throughout each day that they don’t act upon. That’s one reason why Jesus commanded us to love our enemy and to do him good (Matthew 5:43-44) and the apostle Paul tells us not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).

Doing good toward our enemy doesn’t mean we don’t feel angry, it just means that we’re not going to give in to our emotions by acting in an ugly way toward our enemy. In fact, in order to counter that ugly feeling, Jesus tells us we must do him or her good. We want to act out of who we are (new creations in Christ), not what we feel. When we choose to do that, our feelings will change.

One virtue that you may want to work on in your clinical practice this next month is that of helping people feel thankful. I have to be honest. For a long time as a Christian counselor I struggled to encourage my clients to apply the biblical command to give thanks in all things (1 Thessalonians 5:18). How could I help a young woman give thanks when she is seething with anger that her father sexually abused her or some other equally horrific story?

Yet recently I met a woman who had a tragic story. Her only child was killed in a motorcycle accident yet in the midst of her grief she was thankful. She said, “I can’t be thankful for all things, but I can be thankful in all things.” She continued, “I can be thankful that my son died doing something that he loved. I’m thankful that he didn’t suffer and that he knew the Lord. I’m thankful for so many wonderful friends who have helped me through this. Gratitude helped this woman through her grief in a much more positive way than had she not practiced it. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky writes, “gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, avarice, hostility, worry, and irritation (The How of Happiness, p 89).

As Christian counselors we regularly listen to people who feel miserable much of the time. They grumble and complain that life, God, or other people don’t give them the things they feel they deserve. This entitlement thinking breeds more discontent and unhappiness. How can they break free from these negative emotions? The gateway is to practice the opposite virtue of gratitude. The psalmist said, “It is good to give thanks to the Lord” (Psalm 92:2). When we don’t feel thankful, practicing gratitude as an act of obedience, pleases God.  Henri Nouwen writes,

Gratitude as a discipline involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint. I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly.

I’d love to hear from others how they are practicing the opposite virtue, both in their own lives and in their clinical practice. I think we can all greatly benefit from sharing the practical application of God’s word in our lives.

Unconditional Love/Conditional Relationship

Posted on October 18, 2009

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of October. This is her third blog]

A small portion of this blog is taken from my book The Emotionally Destructive Relationship: Seeing it! Stopping it! Surviving it! (Harvest House 2008) 

            The scriptures clearly command us to love one another. Biblically that means that we are to seek another person’s well-being, even when it is difficult and may cost us. Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Christ calls us to love our enemies and to do good to those to mistreat us (Matthew 5:44). Yet how do we practically live that out when we are in a relationship with someone who repeatedly lies to us, mistreats us, tries to control us, or abuses us? Too often, we have misunderstood unconditional love as meaning unconditional relationship. There is a subtle but important distinction.

            This past weekend I was speaking at a fund raiser for Focus Ministries, an organization that offers educational and supportive services to victims of domestic violence. A number of women shared with me that the counsel they received from their pastor, church leader or Christian counselor was to reconcile, reminding her of God’s command to forgive and to love unconditionally. Adultery, they said, was the only biblical grounds for divorce.

This blog is not about domestic violence or whether or not there are biblical grounds for separation or divorce. However implied in the counseling these women received is the idea that we are called by God to maintain a relationship with someone even when he or she is repeatedly destructive toward us. But is that counsel truly biblical? Are we ever permitted to end a relationship or distance ourselves from someone because of their unchanged sinful behavior?

God love for humankind is unconditional but he does not offer anyone unconditional relationship. He tells us that our sin separates us from him and that without repentance we have no fellowship with him (1 John 1:6). Our sin does not separate us from God’s love (Romans 5:8) but it does separate us from his presence (Isaiah 59:1-2). Jesus distanced himself from certain religious leaders because he didn’t trust them. He knew what was in their heart (John 2:24). Throughout much of the Old Testament, God withdraws his presence from his people because of unrepentant sin.

God calls people to a covenant relationship that is like a marriage. He not only wants us to enjoy his love, he wants us to love him back (Deuteronomy 6:5). He not only promises us his faithfulness, he requires that we be faithful in return (Deuteronomy 4:23-24). The book of Hosea is a picture of God’s love for his unfaithful spouse (Israel). He longs for her, but his relationship with her will remain broken until she is willing to change.

In this sinful world there is no perfect person and in every relationship there is some brokenness and suffering. That’s why Jesus tells us that when someone sins against us we are to go and talk to that person so that we can be reconciled. However, he also adds, if they refuse to hear you after you have repeatedly tried to get them to listen, he says, “Treat them as you would a pagan and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:15-17). Jesus says, if there is no repentance, the relationship you once had changes. Pagans and tax collectors were not trusted, nor were they friends, although a good Jew would help a pagan or tax collector who was in need, fulfilling the biblical mandate to love one’s enemy.

There are certain basic conditions necessary for any relationship (personal and professional) to be healthy and safe. They are mutual caring, mutual honesty and mutual respect. The operative word is mutual. One person can certainly make a bad relationship better all by herself which may eliminate some strife and dissention, but one person cannot turn a bad relationship into a good relationship all by herself. It is an unfair and heavy burden we have often unknowingly placed on people because we want to be biblical.

What’s the alternative?  When my mother was ill and needed assistance, I was willing to go to her, help her out as I could, and care for her needs despite the fact that we had not spoken in over 15 years due to her alcoholism and abusive behavior. I could love her unconditionally (seek her well-being) and I had long ago forgiven her, but we had no relationship. I did not trust her and I didn’t not expect anything mutual. It was all one-sided, it was ministry not relationship.

We are indeed called to be imitators of Christ and live a life of love (Ephesians 5:1), but let’s not put a yoke on someone to do something that God himself doesn’t do. God is good to the saint and unrepentant sinner alike, but he does not have relationship with both. When someone repeatedly sins against us and is not repentant and willing to change, it’s not possible to have a healthy or safe relationship.

Being in close fellowship with someone is not a right, even if both people are Christians. It is a sacred privilege. The apostle Paul advises us to distance ourselves from people who are continually destructive, especially if their behaviors or attitudes are sinful and unacceptable, both to us and to God (1 Corinthians 5:9-11; 2 Thessalonians 3:6,14-15). Loving a person unconditionally may indeed require sacrifice and suffering but we suffer and sacrifice for another person’s good, not to allow them to continue to sin against us. That is foolishness, not biblical love. Too many counselees have been wrongly instructed that biblical love means they must be nice and suffer quietly, even as they are being mistreated and abused. But as C.S. Lewis wisely wrote, “Love is more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”

Disordered Loves and Depression: A Personal Response to Interpersonal Distress

Posted on October 11, 2009

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of October. This is her second blog]

  One of the essential elements to good mental health is having loving connections with others. Research in positive psychology shows a strong relationship between having a good social support system and the ability to withstand life’s stressors. (See Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness, chapters 5 and 6; and Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom chapters 6 and 7)  An old Jewish proverb wisely reminds us, “Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.  Sticks alone can be broken by a child.”  The consequence of disconnection and broken relationships is often depression.

Listening to depressed people over a number of years and their own explanations as to why they thought they were depressed, led me to look at depression through the lens of relationships.  I’ve often discovered that beneath a person’s depression was a past relationship wound that was affecting present functioning and/ or a present relationship difficulty that was denied, unresolved, or not being addressed in a godly way. I also found that people often struggled with depression because they and/or their loved ones lacked the skills to make or keep authentic, supportive relationships. 

 Psychologist Richard O’Connor confirms this idea in his book Undoing Depression. He writes, “Depression is both caused by and a cause of poorly functioning relationships.”  The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) indicates that the highest rates for depression for both men and women are among those who are separated and divorced.  The condition of a marital relationship is a significant factor in predicting depression, especially in women.  The NIMH reports, “Lack of an intimate, confiding relationship, as well as overt marital disputes, have been shown to be related to depression in women.  In fact, rates of depression were shown to be highest among unhappily married women.” (www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/depwomenknows.cfm). 

 The bible confirms the importance of fellowship and relationship (Romans 12:10).  In addition to making us physical and spiritual beings, God made us relational beings.  The two greatest commandments God gives us have to do with loving connection (Mark 12:29-31).  We are to love him first and to love others deeply from the heart (1 Thessalonians 4:9, 10; 1 Peter 1:22).  God tells us that we will find meaning, purpose, and identity through our connection with him and with others. (See for example Paul’s teaching in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; 6:11-13; 8:5-7.)

 Working with depressed individuals on their relationship distress and helping them build stronger interpersonal connection is certainly part of good treatment. But I’m wondering as biblical counselors, if we are not uniquely equipped (and called) to also help a person recognize and repent of his or her disordered loves.

 Let me give you a couple of cases where I’ve chosen to focus on the latter rather than the former as a strategy in my counseling.  I’d welcome dialogue from readers as to how and when you do this as well.

 Tom was separated from his wife, Joyce. Their marriage was short lived and tumultuous from the start. Both are professing believers, this is Tom’s third marriage, Joyce’s second. They met in a singles ministry and his goal in counseling was to “feel better” and “to learn how he can win his wife back.” We’ve worked on some things he can do to tackle his anxiety and depressed mood as well as to communicate more effectively with his wife but Tom reports, “It’s not working, and I fear she’s seeing another man.” His next question was, “Can I start seeing someone else, just as a friend?” Although he already knew my answer, he added, “It’s easier to deal with the hurt and rejection if I know I have someone else to be with.”

 In another case, Donna has lived with chronic depression most of her marriage. She has been in personal as well as marriage counseling for years to cope with her unhappy marital relationship. She is bitter and feels hopeless that her marriage will ever change. Her main complaint is that she feels gypped that her husband isn’t romantic and doesn’t engage her in intimate or meaningful conversations. I’ve met Donna’s husband. He is kind and has many strengths, but she’s right. He is emotionally unavailable and isn’t likely to change into the man her heart longs for.

 As biblical counselors, how do we encourage Tom to put his hope in God instead of a female friend while experiencing the pain of rejection? How do we speak to Donna’s despair and longings in a way that brings hope to her heart – not the hope of a good marriage, but hope in the goodness and love of God in spite of a mediocre marriage?

 Both Donna and Tom’s love for God was real but secondary to their other loves. They made the love of a human being rather than God’s love primary to their emotional well being. We all know that God commands us to love him first and most, not because he needs our love but because he knows it is in our absolute best interest for us to put him first and order our other relationships around that center.  Without a secure foundation in God’s love, all of us search for human love to fill us up and make us feel valuable and worthwhile.  This strategy always fails because human love was never designed to totally fulfill us and make us happy.  No one will ever understand us and care for us as much as we want.  Only God’s love is that good and his understanding that complete.  Even the best human love is laced with finite limitations and sin.

How a person handles the inevitable disappointment of human relationship limitations will either drive them to seek new relationships in unhealthy ways, engage an addiction for relief, lament in despair and depression, or it will drive them toward God.  C.S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  Relational disappointment can lead us out of illusion and into truth and reality. Sorrow teaches us to let go of our attachments to false or lesser things and to seek after God.

A Biblical Response to Domestic Violence

Posted on October 4, 2009

[by Leslie Vernick, DCSW, LCSW. Leslie is in private practice, Director of Christ-Centered Counseling www.leslievernick.com, and is our blogger for the month of October. This is her first blog]

This blog contains some excerpts from my book, The Emotionally Destructive Relationship: Seeing It! Stopping It! Surviving It!  (Harvest House, 2007).

Psychologist Daniel Goleman, wrote in his book Vital Lies, Simple Truths,

The range of what we think and do

is limited by what we fail to notice.

And because we fail to notice

that we fail to notice,

there is little we can do

to change.

until we notice

how failing to notice

shapes our thoughts and deeds.

 

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I find that many Christian counselors, pastors, and lay leaders are woefully ill equipped to handle this very important issue. We have failed to notice that in every church, neighborhood, and many counseling offices there are individuals and children suffering from the sin of domestic abuse.

Weekly I receive frantic calls and e-mails from Christian women (and some men) who feel scared, trapped, hopeless and helpless because their most intimate relationship is abusive; verbally, physically, economically, sexually, spiritually or all of the above.  God’s word has something to say about the way we treat people and as Christian counselors we should be most competent and wise in how we handle these sensitive family issues. 

Therefore, I want to give you a biblical understanding of domestic violence and steps to take to address it.

1. Abuse is always sin. The scriptures are clear. Abuse of authority or power (even legitimate God given authority) is always sin. Abusive speech and/or behavior is never an acceptable way to communicate with someone (Malachi 2:16-17; Psalm 11:5; Colossians 3:8,19).

2. Abuse is never an appropriate response to being provoked. In working with abusive individuals they often blame the other person. This can be especially tricky when trying to counsel couples. There is no perfect person and victims of abuse aren’t sinless. However, we must be very clear minded that abusive behavior and/or speech is never justified, even when provoked. People provoke us all the time but we are still responsible for our response (Ephesians 4:26; Luke 6:45)

3. Biblical headship does not entitle a husband to get his own way, make all the family decisions, or to remove his wife’s right to choose. At the heart of most domestic abuse is the sinful use of power to gain control over another individual. Biblical headship is described as sacrificial servanthood, not unlimited authority and/or power (Mark 10:42-45). Let’s not confuse terms – when a husband demands his own way or dominates over his wife, it’s not called biblical headship, its called selfishness and abuse of power. (See, for example, Deuteronomy 13; Jeremiah 23:1-4; Ezekiel 34:2-4 for God’s rebuke of the leaders of Israel for their self-centered and abusive shepherding of God’s flock).

4. Unrepentant sin always damages relationships and sometimes people. Unconfessed sin separates us from God (Isaiah 59:2-5) and from one another (Proverbs 17:9). It is unrealistic and unbiblical to believe that you can continue healthy fellowship with someone who repeatedly sins against you. We are impacted in every way (See Proverbs 1:15; 14:7; 21:28; 22:24; 1 Corinthians 15:33).

5. God’s purpose is to deliver the abused. We are to be champions of the oppressed and abused. God hates the abuse of power and the sin of injustice (Psalm 5,7,10,140; 2 Corinthians 11:20; Acts 14:5-6).

Therefore, how does a Christian respond?  Edmond Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” We must not close our eyes to the sin of injustice or the abuse of power, whether it is in a home, a church, a work setting or a community or country (Micah 6:8). The apostle Paul encountered some spiritually abusive leaders and did not put up with it (2 Corinthians 11:20). We should never be passive when we encounter the sin of abuse. 

However, because we too are sinners, it is tempting to react to abusive behavior with a sinful response of our own. The apostle Paul cautions us not to be overcome with evil, but to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).

What does that look practically? Here are some biblical guidelines that will help you empower someone to respond to the evil of domestic violence with good.

1. It is good to protect yourself from violent people. David fled King Saul when he was violent toward him. The angel of the Lord warned Joseph to flee to Egypt with Jesus because Herod was trying to kill him. Paul escaped from those who sought to stone him. We must help people to get safe and stay safe when they are in abusive relationships. This is not only good for her and her children; it is good for her abusive partner. If you are not experienced in developing a safety plan and assessing for lethality (often women are more at risk when they leave an abusive partner), refer or consult with someone who is knowledgeable in this area (Proverbs 27:12).

2.  It is good to expose the abuser.  Secrets are deadly, especially when there is abuse in a home. Bringing the deeds of darkness to light is the only way to get help for both the victim and the abuser. If you are working with a couple and notice that the woman defers to her husband, regularly looks to him before she answers, blames herself for all their conflicts, speak with them separately (Proverbs 29:1; Ephesians 5:11; Galatians 6:1; James 5:19-20).

3.  It is good to speak the truth in love. When someone grievously sins against us and will not listen, it is good to bring the matter before the church or other authorities in order to get additional support. Biblical love is not simply turning the other cheek and putting up with mistreatment. Biblical love is action directed toward the best interests of the beloved, even when it is difficult or involves sacrifice (Ephesians 4:25; 1 Thessalonians 5:14; Hebrews 3:13)

4.  It is good not to allow someone to continue to sin against you. It is not only good for the abused person to stop being a victim; it is good for the abuser to stop being a victimizer. It is it is in the abuser’s best interests to repent and to change (Matthew 18:15-17; James 5:19-20).

5.  It is good to stop enabling and to let the violent person experience the consequences of his/her sinful behavior.  One of life’s greatest teachers is consequences. God says what we sow, we reap (Galatians 6:7) A person who repeatedly uses violence at home does so because he gets away with it. Don’t allow that to continue (Proverbs 19:19). God has put civil authorities in place to protect victims of abuse (Romans 13:1-5)  The apostle Paul appealed to the Roman government when he was being mistreated (Acts 22:24-29). We should encourage victims to do likewise.

6.  It is good to wait and see the fruits of repentance before initiating reconciliation. Sin damages relationships. Repeated sin separates people. Although we are called to unconditional forgiveness, the Bible does not teach unconditional relationship with everyone nor unconditional reconciliation with a person who continues to mistreat us.

A good example of this is Joseph (see Genesis 42-45). Although Joseph forgave his brothers, he did not initiate a reconciliation of the relationships until he saw that they had a heart change. Biblical repentance is not simply feeling sorry (2 Corinthians 7:8-12). Repentance requires a change in direction. When we put pressure on someone to reconcile a marital relationship with an abusive partner before they have seen some significant change in behavior and attitude we can put them in harms way. We have sometimes valued the sanctity of marriage over the emotional, physical, and spiritual safety of the individuals in it.

The apostle Paul encourages us to distance ourselves from other believers who are sinning and refuse correction (See 1 Corinthians 5:9-11; 2 Thessalonians 3:6,14-15). A person cannot discern whether a heart change has taken place without adequate time. Words don’t demonstrate repentance, changed behaviors over time does (Matthew 7:20; 1 Corinthians 4:20).

As Christian counselors we have the opportunity and the responsibility to be champions of peace. I encourage you to forward this blog on to other Christian leaders who may need to learn how to see domestic abuse through the lens of the Scriptures.

On the Psychologist’s Orientation to Human Suffering: Internalizing Hope

Posted on September 27, 2009

[by June L. Phelps, Ph.D. Dr. Phelps is a psychologist in community mental health at Trillium Family Solutions in Canton, Ohio. This is her second post for September as guest blogger.]

Two universal and prime paths of transformation have always been available to every human being God has created: great love and great suffering. Only love and suffering are strong enough to break down our usual ego defenses, crush our dual thinking, and open us up to Mystery. In my experience they like nothing else, exude the mysterious chemistry that can transmute us from a fear-based life into a love-based life. No surprise that the Christian icon of redemption is a man offering love from a crucified position.

Richard Rohr, 2009

I remember what I felt like as a graduate student, a clinician-in-training, as I stepped into the therapy room for the first time. I feared that I would not be able to relieve my clients’ sufferings.  Perhaps what I feared the most were the feelings of helplessness that might arise if I journeyed too deeply with my clients into their suffering.  Even though I had good intentions and wanted to help, my instinct was to withdraw from too much pain, to keep suffering at a manageable distance. I am sure that my fears created subtle barriers between myself and my clients which influenced their willingness to share the unbearable. I became a Christian my third year in graduate school and as my Christianity became more and more central to how I lived my life I began to experience tension with respect to my work; I wanted  Christianity to undergird all aspects of how  I related to clients. Did Christian faith have bearing on my willingness and ability to be present with suffering clients? Could a Christian conception of human suffering help me to not turn aside from client pain in an unconscious effort to protect myself? Not until a few years ago did I seriously begin to explore these questions, utilizing the abundant Christian resources available (theology that focused on human suffering, Christian models who engaged those who suffered and wrote about their experiences, great Christian literature, and most importantly the biblical witness) to discover a “theology of care” – a set of core beliefs about human suffering and the Christian’s role as a caregiver in the midst of affliction. As I began to grapple with questions of human suffering and how to be with those who suffer from a Christocentric point of view I began to develop a strong desire to know Christ more deeply and to more faithfully enact Christian disciplines. The exploration and development of Christian core beliefs about human suffering and the accompanying desire to know and love God more faithfully has helped me to be more receptive to the loving presence of God in the therapy room, in myself, and in my suffering clients. God’s abundant love has settled many of my fears. I am so grateful for the times when I can see God at work in the therapy room, inviting me to be a conduit of his love in the midst of clients’ sorrows. 

What is it that allows a therapist to enter into another’s suffering and provide a healing presence? I believe that in order to not distance oneself from the outpourings of client pain but rather to compassionately take on a client’s suffering, to bear in one’s person the image of a client’s isolation, vulnerability and loss, a therapist needs to have internalized a sense of hope (see Diane Langberg, 2006 for more on image bearing and the therapist).  Where does this hope come from? How does the therapist embody this hope, which is often not expressed in words but communicated nonetheless in attentive presence?  I believe that there are two roads to becoming the type of therapist who has internalized hope and is able to travel into the deepest, darkest parts of the human soul with someone in anguish. The two roads are not mutually exclusive; indeed, they often overlap. The first road is one of experienced suffering, the way of the “wounded healer.”  The wounded healer has developed hope even in the midst of searing pain because she has traveled the road of suffering in her own life yet has come through with a renewed sense of meaning and a capacity for joy. Perhaps it is her own suffering that has led her into the work of helping others in pain. Every human being experiences suffering. The wounded healer is the one who recognizes and engages her own suffering, wrestles with it, and ultimately finds hope.

Kierkegaard in The Sickness unto Death suggests that it is only those who are “transparently grounded in God,” who are conscious of their true identity “before God as spirit,” who will be able to see through human despair and realize hope. The second road to internalizing hope and being able to embody it in the therapy room is through Christian faith that rests on core beliefs about God’s trustfulness, goodness, love. Jesus Christ is our best representation of God’s nature. Through seeking an understanding of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Christian therapist becomes a person who is better able to know and receive God’s love and to internalize hope. The degree to which she gives herself up to this pursuit in study, reflection, prayer, worship, and other spiritual disciplines is the degree to which she can embody hope in her person in the midst of suffering. For through her absorption of Christ, the ultimate personification of God’s love, the therapist is overcome by God’s unreserved, endless compassion for humanity. She experiences mutual empathy; she perceives God’s divine empathy for humans, for herself, for her clients, in how Jesus lived his life and perhaps most profoundly in the cross. In the welcoming, nurturing embrace of the Trinitarian God, the creator of the universe, the sustainer of all life, she is schooled in true compassion. Human suffering is understood by the one who suffered; the one who entered the world to be with us, healed the outcasts, and took on the weight of all suffering but was not overcome. She begins to encounter the one she loves, the suffering Christ, in her suffering clients. She comes to know, through serving God in her clients, that God is with them and with her. However, she leans not only on the cross for hope. The resurrected Jesus Christ is the sign of God’s power in weakness, a broken body raised to life. The resurrection, the vindication and the conquering of despair, radiates Christian hope in seemingly hopeless situations. The Christian therapist who internalizes hope is able to hold three transposed images of Jesus in her heart and mind: the lowly Jesus born into poverty, who lived among the afflicted and returned them to the kingdom of God; the man of sorrows who suffered on the cross; and the glorified Christ who sits at the right hand of the father – the one who will come again to judge the living and the dead, wipe away every tear, and dwell among us. This three-in-one image of Jesus Christ lives in the hopeful therapist and is to be seen, heard, and loved in the suffering client

In order to begin to cultivate a Christocentric view of human suffering a therapist might start by engaging three questions. When dialoguing with these questions the therapist should be willing to embrace mystery and paradox.

The theodicy question: “How can a good and all-powerful God allow for human suffering, particularly the suffering of innocent children? ” At the bottom of the theodicy question is another question – is God trustworthy… just?  A good place to begin to directly grapple with the theodicy question is the Book of Job. See also Revelation 21 and 22. 

 “Where is God when people suffer?”  Some theologians have suggested that through the cross God suffers in solidarity with the hurting people of the world (See the works of Dorothee Soelle and Gustavo Gutierrez).  This understanding of God as co-sufferer has for some theologians, placed the conception of the “impassable” Father God in question. The theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, suggests that God the father, as a father, suffers alongside Jesus on the cross. The Trinity itself is nailed to the cross in their suffering, sacrifice, and unified love.  Mother Theresa, in her work with the poor and outcast, perceived Jesus as immanent in the people who were the recipients of her loving ministry. She believed that the image of God, in His holiness and suffering, was inscribed in their suffering bodies and faces.  She felt closest to God when in the company of the rejected. The novel “Silence,” by theologian Shusaku Endo provocatively addresses the question of God’s presence.

“Does suffering have meaning?”  A Catholic belief is that humans who suffer can join their afflictions with Christ’s suffering on the cross. By offering up their pain to Christ, people participate in his redemptive work on the cross. In this sense redemption was accomplished once and for all by Christ yet is also ongoing. For Catholics, the mystical body of Christ thus can co-participate in the Kingdom of God through the offering up of their pain to God for sake of the body. Pope John Paul II in his apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris, addresses the meaning of suffering in ways that are relevant for both Catholic and Protestant Christians. The question o f meaning can also be approached by reading the autobiographies of Christians who experience mental illness. Kathryn Green-McCreight, an Episcopal assistant priest who has Bipolar Disorder, describes her journey of healing within the context of faith in her book, Darkness is My Only Companion. In addition, I have found it useful to explore the theology of Christian mystics (in particular the works of Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Therese of Lisieux, and Ignatius of Loyola) when engaging the question of meaning.

Below are a few selected resources that I have found helpful as I have sought to develop and embody a Christian understanding of human suffering centered in Christ.

Callahan, Sidney. Created for Joy:  A Christian View of Suffering.  New York:  The Cross Roads Publishing Company, 2007.

Endo, Shusaku. Silence. Marlboro, N.J.: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1980.

John Paul II. Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris: On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering. February 11, 1984.

Langberg, D. (2006). The spiritual life of the therapist: We become what we habitually reflect. Journal of Psychology and Christianity.  25, 258-266.

McCreight-Greene, Kathryn. Darkness is My Only Companion.  Grand Rapids, MI.:  Brazos Press, 2006.

Mother Theresa. No Greater Love. Novato, CA.: New World Library, 1997.

Richard, Lucien, O.M.I. What Are They Saying about the Theology of Suffering? Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1992.  (A good introduction to theologians Gutierrez, Moltmann, and Soelle.)

Shantz, K.A.  (2003). The kyrios Christos as ultimate hope: A response to pain and suffering. Journal of Religious Gerontology. 15, 55-67.

On the Psychologist’s Orientation to Human Suffering: A Call to Christian Psychologists

Posted on September 20, 2009

[by June L. Phelps, Ph.D. Dr. Phelps is a psychologist in community mental health at Trillium Family Solutions in Canton, Ohio. This is her first post for September as guest blogger.]

I see the Society for Christian Psychology blog, among other things, as an opportunity for practitioners to share their hearts and struggles as Christian psychologists and in doing so help establish a community of therapists/academics who together are seeking to root their psychological work in their Christian faith. I am a psychologist who has both practical and academic interests and views the Society for Christian Psychology as a possible home for those intersecting interests – a space where Christian faith, scholarly ideas, and psychological practice can cohere.

For the last several years I have thought about human suffering and wondered whether my Christian faith has affected how I view suffering as well as how I internally respond to and externally react to my clients’ suffering. Furthermore, I have wondered whether a clinician’s responses and reactions to client suffering, as informed by the clinician’s core beliefs about human suffering, ultimately influence therapy outcomes – perhaps through the making and maintaining of the therapeutic alliance. I have sensed that a psychologist’s willingness to be fully present in the midst of client suffering, to deeply hear, see, and take on human suffering, has an important part to play in both Christian and non-Christian clients’ ability to speak out of their agony and begin to heal, irrespective of the specific techniques utilized in therapy.

Those in the field of psychology as well as in the related fields of medicine and social work have for the most part overlooked questions concerning client suffering (see Cassell, 1991 for a notable exception in the field of medicine). A commonly held view in the scientific community is that human suffering is best addressed by theologians and philosophers; clinical psychologists should stick within their purview and focus on the amelioration of mental health symptoms associated with specific disorders.  Mental health symptoms often overlap with but are not synonymous with the components of suffering: feelings of isolation, abandonment, despair, vulnerability/loss, and a sense of meaninglessness (Cassell, 1991; Reed, 2003). 

 Until recently questions regarding the influence of therapist characteristics in the healing process were similarly overlooked by research-minded psychologists. However, the development of an APA task force in 2002 to explore the degree to which participant variables (therapist and client) affect therapy outcomes independent of and in conjunction with technique and relationship variables demonstrates a growing interest in the “person of the therapist” in psychological change (Castonguay & Beutler, 2006). Perhaps now is the time for psychologists to take another look at variations in therapists’ core beliefs about human suffering and whether this practitioner variable has bearing on healing. Christian psychologists, who feel free to draw upon biblical wisdom and the vast body of theology and Christian philosophy that focuses on human suffering, might be best suited to be forerunners in such an exploration.

One question that might be fruitfully explored is whether Christian psychologists who have developed a nuanced understanding of human suffering viewed through the lens of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are better equipped to provide the gifts of loving, non-judgmental presence in the midst of client affliction than Christian therapists who have developed more restricted orientations to human suffering (e.g., bypass Christ’s cross and focus solely on the hope of the resurrection , view suffering primarily as a result of the individual client’s sin) as well as than non-religious therapists who perceive human suffering as meaningless. 

  In my second blog (September 28, 2009) I will advocate that Christian psychologists are called to cultivate a coherent, Christian orientation to human suffering that is based on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ yet considers the biblical narrative as a whole. I will describe aspects of my own journey as I seek to develop such a view and to live faithfully by it. I will also identify resources that have assisted me in this journey.  

 Cassell, E. J. (1991). The nature of suffering and the goals of medicine. New York: Oxford University Press.

 Castonguay, L. G. & Beutler, L. E. (Eds.). (2006). Principles of therapeutic change that work.New York: Oxford University Press.

 Reed, F.C. (2003). Suffering and illness: Insights for caregivers. Philadelphia: F.A Davis Company.

The Confounding Variables of Sovereignty and Sin

Posted on September 15, 2009

[By Jeremy Lelek, M.A., LPC, President, Association of Biblical Counselors. Jeremy is one of our guest bloggers for the month of September]

 How many readers have ever considered the following, “Statistically, how effective is counseling from a biblical worldview?”  As a biblical counselor, this is a very important question for this author. 

 It is common knowledge in the field of counseling and psychology, that in order for a technique or method to be validated by the profession it must undergo scrutiny through the vigorous process of research.  If a particular method is empirically demonstrated to produce a “significant” outcome through the scientific method, the validity of that technique or model increases among those in the professional community.

 While counseling research can produce very interesting and helpful outcomes, the procedures of the scientific method may fall short when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of counseling from a biblical worldview.  This is due to the fact that a Christian worldview embraces many constructs that are immeasurable, therefore offering the potential to skew the final results of a study.  Such constructs are called confounding variables, and researchers seek to adjust for them as much as possible to acquire accurate scores in their research.  So, what does this have to do with the effectiveness of Christian and biblical counseling?

 2 Timothy 2:24-25 says, “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.  God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”

 Within these verses, two confounding variables emerge that will profoundly impact the outcome of the counseling process. 

 First, Paul states the following, “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth”.  Two things are worthy of consideration here.  One, the believer is encouraged to proclaim the Gospel, never assuming someone is hopelessly lost, regardless of how bad things appear.  Two, a counselor has no choice but to submit to God’s sovereignty as it regards the process of repentance and change.  In truth, a counselor may use a variety of effective biblical methods during the counseling process.  However, in the final analysis it is the Lord who will ultimately grant repentance.  This poses a significant problem for the scientific method of measuring effectiveness since God’s sovereignty cannot be placed under the finite microscope of human calculation.

 Secondly, Paul illuminates the reality of spiritual enslavement when he writes, “and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will”. 

 Counselors who seek to operate from a biblical worldview will find it difficult to ignore the reality of Satan in the lives of people.  From this author’s perspective, the devil is powerless to thwart God’s plans, but counselors do well to bear in mind that people who are unsaved are ultimately captured by him to do his will (i.e., rebel against the one true God).  Notice, Paul uses the phrase “they may escape”.  There is no guarantee that when biblical methods are utilized that people will surely escape the snare of Satan or a heart captured by sin.  And should that be the case, it does not minimize the validity and effectiveness of a biblical method.  Such freedom from bondage, as cited here by Paul, comes from the merciful hand of God.  

 At the end of the day, the question of effectiveness in counseling is a profoundly complex one, especially when discussed in light of the Bible.  Two realities exist that bear consideration when working towards change in the lives of people:  God’s sovereignty and the depravity of man.  By no means does this author suggest that research or the scientific method are vain methods of acquiring important knowledge about people.  On the contrary, much can be learned in this regard.  It is simply worth noting that there are many variables (in addition to the two highlighted here) that are not typically considered in the context of secular research in psychology.  As such, Christians are given the glorious opportunity to critically assess how to best account for them (biblically) in their pursuit of human understanding.

What Should Christian Counseling Look Like?

Posted on July 26, 2009

What should Christian Counseling Look like?

(by Philip G. Monroe. Associate professor of Counseling & Psychology at Biblical Seminary. Dr. Monroe is our blogger for the month of July and this is his fourth post.)

This is a question I don’t intend to answer in this little post. However, I want to draw your attention to a book published in 2007 by H. Newton Malony and David Augsburger entitled, Christian Counseling: An Introduction (Abingdon Press).

Malony and Augsburger are well established professors at Fuller Seminary. In this little book they attempt to answer our question, What should Christian Counseling look like?

Here are some clues to what they want to accomplish in their book:

  1. We have no intention of doing a survey and, on the basis of the results, describing what Christian counselors do. In an unapologetic manner, we intend to detail the parameters of what we firmly believe should be the foundations and applications of Christian counseling” (viii).
  2. A change is afoot for them: “We perceived ourselves as training ‘Christians who counseled,’ more than ‘Christian counselors’” (vii).
  3. The change consists of a desire to rethink the foundations of the Christian faith on counseling practice: “We paid too much homage to current psychological theory instead of boldly proclaiming our explicit reflections on the implications of Christian faith for counseling practice” (vii).
  4. What has helped them move in this direction? Postmodern influences on psychology and philosophy of science and of knowing.

We should applaud their attempt and raise one question. We should applaud their willingness to identify how those involved in the integration of psychology and theology have been timid and wary of being explicitly Christian and biblical in one’s psychological theory. We should ask (as we read), however, are they re-thinking the model of integration from top to bottom or merely wishing to remove one specific issue within that model but continue with the same division of disciplines?

Consider Eric Johnson’s critique of the integrative task.

In different ways, the major approaches that most Christians have taken to psychology and soul care have assumed a disciplinary dichotomy between psychology and theology that has made it difficult to understand human nature holistically, through both empirical research and what the Bible teaches. Embedded in the modern conceptual framework that makes this particularly disciplinary division plausible, a more foundation question of this dichotomy has been simply inconceivable. But we must ask, from where did this disciplinary division arise? (p. 131 of his Foundations of Soul Care)

It may be that if we are going to make real progress in defining and delimiting Christian counseling, we have to first start with re-thinking how to deal with an unhelpful but longlasting division of disciplines.

Evaluating Models of Christian Psychology

Posted on July 20, 2009

(by Philip G. Monroe. Associate professor of Counseling & Psychology at Biblical Seminary. Dr. Monroe is our blogger for the month of July and this is his third post.)

Today I received a request to evaluate a new model of Christian counseling. The writer wondered if I had heard of it and did I have an opinion about its quality.

Let me admit to you that I love and hate this question. I love it because I love to discuss concepts, ideas, and approaches. And having read many of the key writers in my field I have some strong opinions too. But I hate the question because many often just want to know if they should put the book in the good book pile or the toss pile. However, in this case, I know my questioner is thoughtful and interested in the deeper conversation.

Have you ever wondered how you might evaluate whether the next new book or model of Christian counseling is faithful to the Christian tradition? To good psychology? Should you recommend it or warn others away? I recommend the following “outside-in” procedure to help you come to that decision: 

  1. Look at the packaging. First, explore how the authors sell the model? How do they place their endorsements? How effusive are they? Do the blurbs overemphasize the qualifications of the endorsers (their degrees, books, positions)? Are the endorsers also clients or users of the model? Second, how is the model advertised? How do they speak of healing? Do they seem to promise more than what seems reasonable based on prior experiences of change? Your findings here may not tell you all you need to know but ought to tell you whether the author is interested primarily in selling a product or participating in the advance of the field.
  2. Model descriptors? All models need descriptor words so that the reader understands and can classify its connection (or opposition) to other models. What words do they use? What do they connect or disconnect from? This will tell you about who they like, dislike, and what they think their new model supersedes. Do they use many neologisms or combinations of words? For example (and I’m making these up), bio-spiritual attachment, theo-neuro healing. New words aren’t always wrong and can be useful. They can also be used to create impressions such as intentionally trying to sound biblical and scientific at the same time. Finally, how do they interact with Scripture? Many verses? A few that are deeply explicated? Stated theological suppositions without much support? Greek/Hebrew word studies leading to some previously unknown understanding of the human psyche or soul? Again, your impressions of descriptors ought to tell you whether or not the person is seeking superficial impressions of solid work or something more.
  3. Observations. Every author or model begins their conceptual work via personal experience. Some may be anecdotal, others may be more scientific. But whichever is the case, the author has made some observations about problems and the way things get better. These are important to evaluate as almost every model builder (even the most naïve or wrongheaded) sees something of value. You may find this portion of your evaluation most helpful to you. What does this person see that you have not? What fresh angle do they have on something that you have overlooked? Have you become pessimistic about change or about the bible’s role in emotional health? Do they challenge your view on things?
  4. Techniques. The interventions used by a model builder tend to be the most attractive portion of their work. They’ve spotted a problem and developed a solution or a process towards a solution. Often, readers skim for these tools in order to add them to their therapeutic belt-without considering how they fit into the larger scheme of things. Notice that interventions may work well but not always for the reasons the author suggests. Second, interventions usually produce an effect but does the effect lead in the right direction? For example, techniques designed to “get the anger out” have proven to have create short-term positive feelings but do not lead to long-term health (since anger’s root has not been touched). In your evaluation of techniques, what does the author see as most important?
  5. Philosophy and Worldview. Now we drill down to the foundation. What is the model really built on? This part of your evaluation is the hardest as many authors don’t explicitly tell you (sometimes they don’t know themselves!). How do they interact with scientific literature? Do they use it to make global and black/white statements about human functioning? Are they willing to identify either holes in their theories or raise questions that still need answering (empirical humility)? Do they deny the value of scientific research? Can you describe their view of human nature? Of the nature of problems (causes and correlations)? Of the sources of solutions to human problems? Of health and optimal living?

Once you have explored your model in question using this outside-in technique, you should have developed some impressions. What have you learned that gives you pause? Sometimes such pause forms the basis of our new learning; of rebuke of erroneous thinking. Other times, pause reminds us that stepping outside the norms of scientific endeavor or historic Christian beliefs ought not be done lightly. Second, what has the author observed about the world we live in that might be useful to you? What techniques might be employed by you that are in keeping with your understanding of the Christian life? What of the model is dangerous and misleading? In your overall review, is there enough of that is worthwhile? Will the casual reader be helped or led astray?  

Why is such careful evaluation necessary? During my recent trip to Rwanda I had a conversation with a Christian man working in an NGO. He started the conversation this way,

“Do you know what is wrong with Rwanda? Christians in name only. Rwanda is supposed to be 98% Christian and yet look what didn’t happen in the country during the genocide. Christians didn’t rise up en masse and say no to this terrible sin. I was in [a Muslim country] recently and their Christian population is under 3%. And yet Christians there are bold and active.”

Sometimes the greatest threat to Christian psychology is not secular suppositions from psychology or a world that has set itself up against the truth claims of Scripture. Sometimes, the greatest danger comes from inside Christian psychology-from those who are “in name only” looking to build their own empire and willing to do so through superficial use of the bible or the science of human functioning.

May the Lord make us wise as serpents and harmless as doves!

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