Thus far we have established how our purpose in Christian counseling is to develop Christ-likeness in all areas of life. But how does that happen? How do people grow and change?
The psychoanalytic answer is that we need to make the unconscious conscious. The modern psychodynamic response is that we essentially need to re-parent the client to help correct insecure attachment issues. Cognitive and behavioral therapists would argue that people get better by training and practicing new mental and behavioral skills. Existentialists might say that growth births out of the freedom from realizing one’s mortality and the power of one’s free will. Family systems therapists argue that change can only occur when one’s relational context has changed. And of course, Rogerians are convinced that growth occurs naturally because people have an inherent self-actualizing tendency.
There is at least some truth in each of these models. But we must remember that these are secular theories. A biblically based Christian psychology theory may end up matching one of these theories, but that must come as coincidence, for our path to any sort of conclusion must come by Scripture alone.
In traditional 12-step fellowships like AA, they get this. The foundation of its philosophy is that salvation from their problem is in God alone. Of course, the idea of absolute trust in God is repulsive to some people. We need to accept the reality that the notion of faith and surrender to God is not acceptable to everyone. But we must not change it to be more palatable to some people, as some AA chapters are apt to do, such as by allowing the “Higher Power” to be anything other than the God of the Bible–even substituting it for the group itself. Even as a believer, I struggled for some time with accepting even the original, Christ-centric 12-step philosophy. Total reliance on God to the point that they believed they were thoroughly powerless to do anything to better themselves . . . I didn’t buy it. To sincerely believe it, one would not do all the work the people in AA do to stay sober and continue in recovery: going to meetings, working the steps, checking in with the sponsor, etc.. I found the application of 12-step philosophy to be a contradiction to its beliefs . . . until I visited a local AA group one night. This was a profound experience for me. And I will never forget what one of the members told me:
“I’m responsible for the work; God’s responsible for the consequence.”
That reminds me of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:5-7.
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe–as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
If we did not believe we had at least some responsibility in our growth and healing, we would just go around living life as usual, expecting ourselves to naturally change and improve. But as Scott Peck so clearly argues in The Road Less Traveled (2003), spiritual growth is not natural. The natural trajectory of our psyches is to decay.
Rogerian psychology would have us believe otherwise–the myth that we all have a self-actualizing tendency that leads us toward growth. We just need to remove the other distractions and inhibitions blocking us from finding our own way, for we are basically good and if left on our own, we will progress.
This humanistic concept is not entirely new. I consider it a reflection of the Gnostic heresies that permeated the settings of the New Testament authors. The Gnostics taught that the material world was evil but that the spiritual is good, and that the only path to salvation lay in one’s ability to engage in higher levels of knowledge (gnosis), thus allowing one to transcend the physical to the spiritual. This is not the salvation by grace through faith which the Bible teaches. This is arrogance–hubris, for it’s plain to see that humanism and Gnosticism have always been about worshiping the “human spirit.”
God’s Word, however, tells us that we were all dead in our sins (Rom. 3:23, 6:23). Physically, we are all dying after we reach a biological age of maturity, so yes, there is some truth to the idea that the physical is corrupt. But this does not mean that our spirits are naturally any better. And Jesus made it very clear that it is what comes out of a person’s body that makes it clean or unclean.
“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean;’ but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.'”
-Matthew 15:17-20
The human spirit is actually even more corrupt than the body. For when God warned Adam and Eve that if they sinned they would surely die (Gen. 2:17), and yet they continued to live physically after they sinned, God was not made a liar; they indeed did die–spiritually. (Tying into our discussion on Gnosticism, I find it interesting that the tree which God said would lead to death is the one of The Knowledge of Good and Evil, and yet the Gnostics claim that it is through “knowing” that one attains salvation.) And so until God’s grace offers us a new spirit thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we have no “self-actualizing tendency.” No, we have a self-worshiping tendency, which leads to death. If anything, we choose to go against our human nature when we choose to grow.
And then, when we accept through faith the grace God offers us, we inherit a new tendency–an “Image of God-actualizing tendency.” True self-actualization can only occur in right relationship with God through faith in Christ, for our true self is in Christ’s likeness. All other forms of growth are shadows of the actualization God has for us. As Believers, we now have a reborn spirit that desires to honor God and reflect his glory (John 3). And though our new spirit man wants to grow, the flesh is weak and still vulnerable to old patterns (Mark 14:38). Paul illustrates this struggle famously.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
-Romans 7:14-20
Before I go any further, I must address a possible complaint: “Why all this talk about spiritual growth? Can’t people just grow psychologically or behaviorally without getting all spiritual or religious?” I’m not going to deny that people can heal and change psychologically without changing spiritually, but to that I say that there is no point in changing psychologically if your spirit goes to Hell. In fact, that would be a great tragedy! Secondly, part of me questions the long-term stability of any psychological or behavioral growth without a true spiritual renewal. So many things could impede growth . . . in the future, triggers may arise that set back someone’s treasured recovery . . . we need some sort of sure foundation on which to establish our growth and give us security when trials come.
And that security comes when we reflect on the character change we can observe so far. And this character change does not come automatically, as we’ve already established. No, the process of sanctification requires hard work, because the second your spirit wants to grow, your flesh and old mental patterns resist. So, this is how we grow: through the struggle. If the change to our whole being that God promises us came all at once upon salvation, we would learn nothing, leaving us vulnerable to falling back into our old patterns and becoming embittered toward God. Instead, God has designed a system by which he grows us, and it is not through one euphoric gnosis experience after another! When the Israelites entered the Promised Land and scattered the inhabitants, God ordained that some enemies should remain so future generations of Israelites would learn how to fight (Judges 3:1-4). In the same way, we each need to learn how to struggle against our flesh and other trials of life, and in persevering through them, our character changes and builds itself stronger so that when we reflect on this change we see evidence that our hope of eventual transformation will not disappoint us. Only in God’s promises can we say that our hopes are more than wishful thinking.
Not only so, but we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
-Romans 5:3-5
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
-2 Peter 1:5-9
Growth is never on a steady, upward trajectory. It is dynamic. If I were to chart my own growth, it would be a huge zig-zag! At any one point I might have felt that my progress was stalled or that I went backwards, but when I keep at it I later see that my current low point is still higher than my low points in the past. Even basic lifespan human development is marked by crises and the tasks we must complete in order to progress past each crisis (See Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development.). God has designed us in every way to grow through trials and tests. And as we sufficiently pass each test, we acquire qualities required for the next.
And so the surest therapeutic factors that any clinician can employ are those that can foster the development of the qualities that the client lacks: compassion/empathy, love, training in self-control and social skills, and insight. We’ll be exploring these and other therapeutic factors more, but it’s important to always keep in mind that in doing this work, the counselor and client are only planting and watering seeds. It is always God who makes them grow. God, the expert, is the author who is shaping us into his likeness.
References
Peck, M.S. (2003.) The road less traveled (25th anniversary ed.). New York: Touchstone.
PsychoBible 