Archive: March, 2011

Mar
30
2011

Every time you make a choice, you are turn­ing the cen­tral part of you, the part of you that chooses, into some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from what it was before. And, tak­ing your life as a whole, with all your innu­mer­able choices, all your life long you are slowly turn­ing this cen­tral thing either into a Heaven crea­ture or into a hell­ish crea­ture — either into a crea­ture that is in har­mony with God, and with other crea­tures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fel­low crea­tures and with itself. To be the one kind of crea­ture is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowl­edge, and power. To be the other means mad­ness, hor­ror, idiocy, rage, impo­tence, and eter­nal lone­li­ness. Each of us at each moment is pro­gress­ing to the one state or the other.

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In: Spiritual Formation
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Mar
24
2011

Just as a per­son can be healthy or unhealthy, so can churches. Recently, I have met with a hand­ful of peo­ple who have come to Ada Bible Church because of wound­ing expe­ri­ences with past churches they have attended, and so there­fore, I have been read­ing some books on these types of prob­lems.  As a sum­mary, here might be some of the typ­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of a legal­is­tic or spiritually-abusive church (or person):

  • At the heart of it, the mes­sage over­all through­out the min­istry that is spo­ken on a weekly basis is that God is a book­keeper, keep­ing a check­list of do’s and don’ts. He is imper­sonal and maybe even vin­dic­tive. If you mess with him, he’s going to get you. The reli­gion and over-all expe­ri­ence is based on fear and not on grace. The church overly empha­sizes and talks about sin (either of your own or of oth­ers). Over­all, you often leave church feel­ing like you are always miss­ing the mark and just aren’t good enough.
  • The church strongly empha­sizes doc­tri­nal or the­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ness. They overem­pha­size minor the­o­log­i­cal issues (e.g., bap­tism, the spir­i­tual gifts, which Bible trans­la­tion you should read, etc.) which in real­ity seek to divide other Chris­t­ian groups from theirs. This may even lead to the mes­sage that they are the only “true” church. This may be lit­er­ally spo­ken from the pul­pit or sub­tly sug­gested in other ways. Lead­ers or the church as a whole exhibit a spir­i­tual arrogance—other churches are not quite as good as theirs and are miss­ing the mark.
  • Scrip­ture is said to be of pri­mary impor­tance, but in real­ity it is the leader’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture that is essen­tial. The Bible isn’t the end-all, rather the leader’s ideas about what they think the Bible says, is what is impor­tant. With this, the lead­er­ship tends to often teach that sub­mis­sion to author­ity is cru­cial to being a “good Christian.”
  • Reli­gious tra­di­tions of the church are what rule the day and bib­li­cal pas­sages are used to man­date these tra­di­tions. Scrip­ture is often mis­quoted or used out of con­text. Verses are sin­gled out-and used to sub­stan­ti­ate the church’s posi­tion on issues they hold dear. These verses are not weighed against what other verses say, which may sug­gest a dif­fer­ent view. The con­text or the over­all mes­sage of the Scrip­tures is not allowed.
  • The church staff and lead­er­ship are dom­i­nated by fam­ily mem­bers or per­sonal friends. There is a lack of objec­tive account­abil­ity: lead­er­ship is account­able to itself only and if any crit­i­cism about this is offered, it is shut down imme­di­ately. Intel­lec­tual devel­op­ment is lim­ited to fit the doc­trines that are taught at the church; schools or classes offered by other churches or orga­ni­za­tions have lit­tle, if any worth and you should prob­a­bly steer clear of “these types of peo­ple.” There are two types of dys­func­tional churches in these cases. Some churches may overem­pha­size the intel­lect (doc­trine over expe­ri­ence); oth­ers may dis­trust any­thing “book­ish” and rely only on the expe­ri­ences of the per­son (expe­ri­ence over doctrine).
  • Church mem­bers who do not con­form to all these doc­tri­nal issues or opin­ions are black­listed, labeled as rebel­lious or ignored for lead­er­ship posi­tions. If you don’t fully agree with the lead­er­ship, you have no voice and may even be asked to leave the church.
  • Per­sonal and emo­tional bound­aries are often over-stepped and rela­tion­ships can become too close. The lead­er­ship asks you to be vul­ner­a­ble emo­tion­ally, but they them­selves rarely, if ever, show or dis­cuss any weak­nesses. These lead­ers have the pro­to­typ­i­cal Savior-complex. If you ask them about their own strug­gles, they always seem to avoid the question.

These are just some of the pos­si­ble traits of a spir­i­tual abu­sive church. If you believe this may be the case for you, you may want to read one or two of the fol­low­ing books to learn more about this impor­tant topic:

In: Faith, Spiritual Formation
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Mar
15
2011

This can often be the process of becom­ing a Chris­t­ian: after get­ting a few years under your belt, you are soon placed in a role of lead­er­ship: per­haps your teach­ing Sun­day school, per­haps your lead­ing a small group, per­haps you are lead­ing a church of three thou­sand. As this begins to hap­pen peo­ple begin to look up to you. They begin to have high expec­ta­tions. They applaud your ser­vice and your life. They think you have it all together. But in real­ity, deep-inside, there are sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems attack­ing you each and every day and because you feel com­pelled for some rea­son, you keep on play­ing the part of the “good Chris­t­ian.” You should be looked up to. You should be applauded. Pretty much, you do have it all together. Or that’s what you tell yourself…however, there is another truth behind your mask:

  • A seem­ingly benign strug­gle with depres­sion has become prob­lem­atic in your life
  • An inabil­ity to feel any emo­tion is cre­at­ing havoc in your mar­riage and has led to a drink­ing problem
  • A recent bout of chest pains which your doc­tor tells you is because of anx­i­ety and stress which has been build­ing up in your life
  • The present emo­tional ram­i­fi­ca­tions of grow­ing up in a fam­ily in which never were you told you were loved and worthwhile
  • A sex­ual rela­tion­ship with your spouse which is less than fulfilling
  • Ver­bal assaults on your spouse and chil­dren which seem to come out of nowhere

As time goes on, you fail to deal with your bro­ken­ness inside, because you are not allowed to be bro­ken because you are a leader in some capac­ity or sim­ply because you pro­fess to call your­self a Chris­t­ian. You feel a hol­low­ness inside, but as time goes on there is not the room in which to really look at your life and expose those places which need to be dealt with in your life. If you did so, every­one would know the real you. If this is where you find your­self, this is what Jesus calls build­ing your house on sand.

There are often many moments in our lives in which God shines a light on our lives and says I need you to change this or I need you to deal with this. At this moment, it is up to us to dig at that area of our lives and unearth the deep-set sin or the deep wound from years past. No one is exempt—each of us are bro­ken and God so much wants us to deal with that bro­ken­ness. With each of us, we have done great wrong in our lives in some capac­ity and God wants us to acknowl­edge that and move in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. With each of us, in some way, whether great or small, we each bring a wound­ed­ness to our lives. With this wounded part of our lives, each of us has learned to respond in neg­a­tive ways in which we harm our­selves and harm oth­ers. We need to go back to the begin­ning and look at our lives and deal with those places which have brought harm to us so that we can heal.

In terms of those I have coun­seled, a lot of folks I have seen sim­ply do not deal with who they are and what their lives have become. They gloss over or deny their prob­lems or issues they are fac­ing in them­selves, in their mar­riages or fam­i­lies. For those who have glossed over their prob­lems, often these indi­vid­u­als have been Chris­tians. We are really good at doing that because we have this propen­sity to feel that we have to “Be per­fect as your heav­enly Father is per­fect.” (Matthew 5:48) We take a verse like that and mis­un­der­stand what it is try­ing to say. That is a good goal, but it is not sup­posed to be a stan­dard we are to meet day-to-day.

In this con­text, a bet­ter verse for us to remem­ber is found in the book of James.

There­fore, con­fess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. (James 5:16)

We need to come clean about our lives with oth­ers and be hon­est with oth­ers about where we stand. Only then, this verse states, can we find healing.

On that note, here is a sug­ges­tion. When I became a psy­chol­o­gist one of the chal­lenges that our pro­fes­sion requests of each ther­a­pist is that we also open up our lives to seek­ing some help from a fel­low coun­selor. It is first for our own men­tal and emo­tional health and also so we have first-hand expe­ri­ence in what it is like to go to coun­sel­ing. I have done this and it has been very reward­ing and helped me sort through some dif­fi­cul­ties I have had in my own life. I think every­one should try it at least for a short sea­son in their lives. To have some­one who is unbi­ased offer­ing you good direc­tion in your life can never be a bad thing. While it is impor­tant to find a gifted and skilled Chris­t­ian coun­selor, I think that any­one can ben­e­fit from going and talk­ing to some­one about where they have wanted to make a change or where there has been a con­sis­tent prob­lem in their lives. Coun­sel­ing is founded on the impor­tance of con­fi­den­tial con­ver­sa­tions and there­fore is a place where you might be able to share some things you’ve never shared with any­one.  Maybe you should give it a try.

In: Leadership, Spiritual Formation
Tags: , , , , , ,
Mar
09
2011

A cou­ple of good quotes on par­ent­ing from Henry Cloud and John Townsend’s Bound­aries with Kids. I am some­times asked for a rec­om­men­da­tion for a good book on par­ent­ing. This is a good place to start.

Train­ing moments occur when both par­ents and chil­dren do their jobs. The parent’s job is to make the rule. The child’s job is to break the rule. The par­ent then cor­rects and dis­ci­plines. The child breaks the rule again, and the par­ent man­ages the con­se­quences and empa­thy that then turn the rule into real­ity and inter­nal struc­ture for the child.

Don’t go over­board in prais­ing required behav­ior: ‘We have only done our duty’ (Luke 17:10). But do go over­board when your child con­fesses the truth, repents hon­estly, takes chances, and loves openly. Praise the devel­op­ing char­ac­ter in your child as it emerges in active, lov­ing, respon­si­ble behavior.

We change our behav­ior when the pain of stay­ing the same becomes greater than the pain of chang­ing. Con­se­quences give us the pain that moti­vates us to change.


In: Parenting
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Mar
02
2011

To end this series on unfaith­ful­ness, I want to add some per­sonal thoughts.

Recently, I read that an infa­mous actor (who starred in a NBC series on Thurs­day nights in the 80’s and iron­i­cally, played the char­ac­ter of a psy­chol­o­gist) left his wife for a woman 26 years his junior. He said this about his unfaithfulness— ‘I needed more love in my life.’

I read that and thought, you have to be kid­ding me…does he really believe his own words? You need “more love” in your life?!

But in truth, I can’t tell you how often I have heard that same sen­ti­ment from oth­ers who have found “some­one else.” When some­one is leav­ing their spouse, they invari­ably say some of the cra­zi­est things.

One of the best ones I heard was this; a woman I  had met with had the audac­ity to tell me, But God just wants me to be happy. This was a woman who was sleep­ing with her next-door neigh­bor while her hus­band of over 30 years was recov­er­ing from a seri­ous surgery.

One final story. In my early years as a psy­chol­o­gist, I can remem­ber I met with this cou­ple in which the hus­band had left his wife for another woman, but he kept on chang­ing his mind whether or not he was going to return to the mar­riage. I remem­ber one March evening he finally made up his mind and he told me this, I love my wife, but I just don’t have the same feel­ings that I have for her (refer­ring to his mis­tress).

I sim­ply tried to explain this to him, that the love he “felt” for his wife really rested on his shoul­ders. If he didn’t feel it, he was the one who wasn’t mak­ing it hap­pen. It was his prob­lem, not hers. He didn’t buy it and even­tu­ally left his wife. He just didn’t get it—love is not a feeling—love is a willed action. He didn’t under­stand this: If I don’t “love” some­body, it’s not their fault.  It’s mine. Just for the record, that con­cept is kind of biblical—the feel­ings of love occur first and fore­most because of what we do.

But in all this, I have an admis­sion. I have very lit­tle judg­ment when it comes to those who have been unfaith­ful. No dif­fer­ent than what Paul said in the New Testament—I too am the “worst of sin­ners” (1 Tim­o­thy 1:15–16) and if I am not actively pro­tect­ing myself and my mar­riage, I also could eas­ily fall. As the life of David shows (2 Samuel 11), nobody is immune to mak­ing really bad choices. If for even a minute I think that I am beyond any type of sin, I then become its eas­i­est prey.

On a final note, I am now near­ing my 18th year of mar­riage, and God has been teach­ing me prob­a­bly the most impor­tant les­son of my life. He is teach­ing me this, and I hope I can con­tinue to apply this truth until the day I die:

As I am faith­ful to you, Kelly, I want you also to truly expe­ri­ence what it means to be a faith­ful per­son. To one woman. To two sons. To me.

So far so good. In these last few years, God has been teach­ing me that as I am faith­ful to Julie—even when I don’t want to, even when things aren’t going my way, even when she isn’t “there for me”—in this act of being faith­ful, I am just a lit­tle bit under­stand­ing how faith­ful Jesus is to me.

I am learn­ing this—his faith­ful­ness to me is pretty incred­i­ble. He has never wavered and he has always been there for me no mat­ter what. And with that, I’m pretty grateful.

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In: Marriage, Psychology
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