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Month: July 2012

9

Published on 9 Comments on Questions We're Afraid To Ask

In the autumn a friend of mine is teaching a course on questions Christians are too afraid to ask.  Help him out.  What should he cover?

To get you started, here were the first four off the top of my head:

Hell. Really? Seriously? Eternal torment? For Granny? And I'll spend forever happy about that?
Can heaven and hell really pivot on my intellectual assent to this system of truth?
Where's the joy, freedom, life, hope and change?  Why are Christians (am I) so miserable?
Is this really the best news God could come up with?  Maybe it's true, but it doesn't sound good news to me.

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Over to you...

 

14

Published on 14 Comments on Christian thoughts on CBT

Here's excerpts from a longer paper from my website appraising Cognitive Behavioural Therapy:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a

  • short-term,
  • practical,
  • client-based,
  • collaborative,
  • problem-solving,
  • life-skill learning

‘talking therapy’ which has had excellent and well documented success in alleviating certain emotional problems.

...

CBT represents a small number of different counselling schools which understand the process of change to involve the re-habituation of thoughts and (secondarily) behaviours.  The underlying assumption is that faulty emotions and behaviours flow from faulty thinking.

Thoughts =>  Feelings => Behaviours

These thoughts are themselves the result of faulty beliefs which underlie them and need to be confronted and changed.

...

The chief benefit of CBT for the church  is perhaps the myriad tools that have been developed to uncover faulty thought patterns and beliefs.

Christians have always known that beliefs and thought-patterns are life-altering, but three or four decades of clinical practice at ‘digging down’ into the beliefs of counsellees has produced very useful tools which can also be used by the Christian.

Identifying Negative Automatic Thoughts (NATs)

  • Ask directly – What are you telling yourself when you feel X…
  • Guided discovery (ask around the issues, get them to unearth)
  • Note emotional change as they speak – these are ‘hot cognitions’
  • Worst consequence scenarios – What would be so bad if…?
  • Imagery (some NATs are images) – Do you have a picture of yourself or of your environment when this is happening?
  • Exposure exercises – go to uncomfortable situations either physically or in your mind. How are you now thinking?
  • Offer multiple suggestions of what the NATs may be
  • Offer suggestions opposite to client’s expected response. They will usually say ‘No, no, I’m telling myself X’

Question the assumptions underlying the NATs:

  • What would be so terrible about X?
  • What would it be like for you not to do or feel X?
  • What does it say about you that you have done or felt X?
  • Are there verdicts being passed on you from God, the world and yourself associated with X?  What are they? Could you put them in words?
  • On what basis are these verdicts being passed?
  • On what basis are you believing them?

At this stage, CBT identifies the faultiness of such thinking as certain cognitive errors:

  • Arbitrary inference: e.g. ‘I was much happier when I happened to be X, therefore I must regain X’
  • Selective abstraction: e.g. ‘X (and nothing else) is what makes me special.’
  • Over-generalisation: e.g. ‘Everyone who has X is happier and more successful.’
  • Magnification (of the bad) and minimisation (of the good): e.g. ‘I may have Y and Z, but that’s nothing.  X is everything.’
  • Personalisation: e.g. ‘My performance of X wasn’t bad, I was bad. Everyone must hate me.’
  • Absolutist, dichotomous thinking: e.g. ‘It’s black and white, all or nothing.  Either I’m X or I’m nothing.’
  • Mind reading: e.g. ‘I know what they’re all thinking…’
  • Crystal ball: e.g. ‘I know what’s going to happen now…’
  • Catastrophizing: e.g. ‘It’s all over now. X is out of the bag, all hell will break loose.’
  • Emotional reasoning: e.g. ‘I feel X so strongly, therefore it must be a fact.’
  • Self-labelling / blame: e.g. ‘X makes me an idiot!’ ‘X makes me ugly!’

Beneath these faulty cognitions are the schemas or core beliefs that feed such thinking. CBT also offers helpful techniques in bringing these to the surface.

To identify core beliefs, look for…

  • ‘If…, then…’ statements: ‘If I’m X, then I’m a failure.’
  • ‘Shoulds’ and ‘Musts’
  • Themes in the NATs
  • Family sayings, mottoes, memories

The CBT practitioner should then get the counsellee to put this core belief into words.  Make them identify it as a rule: e.g. “I need everyone in my environment to be ok with me or else I will be destroyed.”  Simply the process of articulating this rule – exposing it as the dominating force in a person’s every decision, act and feeling – is incredibly powerful.  In Christian contexts it should lead to heart-felt and deep confession.

...

[Summary of intervening points]  In John 16:9 Jesus identified the criterion by which the Spirit would condemn the world for its sin - "in that people do not believe in Me."  Through loving Christian community, the tools listed above can be a means of the Spirit uncovering those false faiths.

A key verse in Christian counselling is Proverbs 20:5: "The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters but a man of understanding draws them out."  When I encounter a Spirit-filled 'man of understanding' in these circumstances I am exposed for my sinful beliefs and purposes - not simply my behaviours - and therefore may be brought to a broken and contrite heart.

I say may because it is always the Spirit's work to convict me of sin - never simply the work of logic.  More on this below...

...

Perhaps the chief criticism that could be levelled at CBT from a Christian perspective is this: It is not wise and persuasive words that are required but a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.

At the core of CBT is the challenging of irrational beliefs with logical standards.  However the deceitful and unfathomable heart will take more than good reasoning to shake it from its madness.  The truth of God’s gospel must be driven home to the counsellee with living power by the Spirit.  Faith does not come by reasoning but by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.  Therefore there ought to be a healthy dose of proclamation to pastoral counselling, a worshipping community to surround it and the regular table fellowship of the Lord’s Supper. All the means of grace ought to be employed by the Christian counsellor.  This goes far beyond pointing out faulty cognitions!

It is not our intellects that need changing but our hearts.  The heart is the centre of a person according to Jesus and the source of our thoughts and actions.  Our true hope is in the change of hearts.  This means:

a) we will not look for non-rational means (the heart is not an anti-intellectual concept in the Bible)

b) we will employ emotional, artistic, sensory means also

c) true change is ultimately the work of God

...

The whole article, including a potted history of the development of CBT, can be found here.

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5

Published on 5 Comments on Ever Needy

Passive. Dependent. Weak. Empty.

We hate those words.  We might spend our time indulging in self-pity - brandishing weakness like a sick note from life - but we still hate it.  No-one wants to be needy.  Even the person in our churches most described as "needy" hates their neediness.

But what about our Christian lives?

Just think of the I AM statements of John:

  --  Jesus is Bread - therefore we are the hungry ones, perishing without Him;

  --  He is Light - therefore we are lost in darkness;

  --  He is the Shepherd - so we are helpless sheep;

  --  He is the Resurrection - we are spiritually dead;

  --  He is the Way, Truth and Life - we are lost, ignorant, lifeless;

  --  He is the Vine - apart from Him we can do nothing.

What does a healthy, mature Christian walk look like?  A graduation from such desperation?

Some speak like that.  I remember a few years ago preaching on Matthew 12.  It's the place where Jesus is described as never breaking bruised reeds or snuffing out smouldering wicks.  In commentary after commentary I read Christians who assumed that "bruised reeds" and "smouldering wicks" were a sub-category of Christian.  They were the weak and sinful ones... over there.  And isn’t Jesus marvellous for caring for those special-needs Christians!  Bless 'em.

But just think of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel.  He begins the Sermon on the Mount by defining the kind of people who belong to the kingdom: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the meek… Blessed are those who are persecuted for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The kingdom of heaven is populated by weak and needy sinners. Later in Matthew 9 Jesus says “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick… I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  Christians are not spiritually healthy, we are spiritually sickened by our sin. Elsewhere Jesus calls us “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”  Or “sheep among wolves.” That’s a very weak position to be in.  Or, in Matthew 18:3 Jesus rebukes His followers for their self-importance and self-reliance and says:

“Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom.”

Christ’s Kingdom is for little ones, sick sinners who know they’re sick sinners.  Poor, meek mourners – that’s Christians.

We wish Jesus spoke differently.  We'd like Him to paint a picture of ‘the King with His wise courtiers.’  Or ‘the Commanding Officer with His strong soldiers.’  But while we're meant to be those things, a more pressing reality besets us.  The picture Jesus paints is of a patient Saviour dealing gently with weak and pathetic followers.

Christians – those in Christ’s Kingdom – are not mighty oaks and roaring flames.  Not yet anyway.  We are bruised reeds and smouldering wicks.  Brittle, vulnerable, ravaged by sin and suffering – that is the Christian.

Looking for strength?  Don't look within.  Follow the Father's advice:

"Here is my Servant, whom I uphold, my Chosen One in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.  He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.  A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth."  (Isaiah 42:1-3)

2

Published on 2 Comments on Miserable Busy-ness

From the NY Times

If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”

Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs  who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence....

...Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. I once knew a woman who interned at a magazine where she wasn’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed for some reason. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’être was obviated when “menu” buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter....

Read the whole article.

And from Blaise Pascal:

I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber....

I have found that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.

Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that, if he be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.

Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war and high posts, are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the bustle which averts these thoughts of ours and amuses us....

....Thus passes away all man's life. Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable. For we think either of the misfortunes we have or of those which threaten us. And even if we should see ourselves sufficiently sheltered on all sides, weariness of its own accord would not fail to arise from the depths of the heart wherein it has its natural roots and to fill the mind with its poison...

 ...Consider this. What is it to be superintendent, chancellor, first president, but to be in a condition wherein from early morning a large number of people come from all quarters to see them, so as not to leave them an hour in the day in which they can think of themselves? And when they are in disgrace and sent back to their country houses, where they lack neither wealth nor servants to help them on occasion, they do not fail to be wretched and desolate, because no one prevents them from thinking of themselves.

More from Pascal here

6

Published on 6 Comments on Where’s the danger?

The New Testament has many warnings regarding our natural perversion of the gospel.  We need to take them seriously.  But I wonder if, often, we misdiagnose the problems.

Here are five little warning passages from the Bible.  How do you instinctively characterize the bad guys in the following:

Those who walk away from Christ's 'hard words' in John 6

They're headed for lawlessness right? We imagine they can't handle Christ's heavy discipleship programme, that's the problem, right?

.

The wolves of Matthew 7:15-19.

They're liberal bishops right? (This is probably the association that Anglican evangelicals make most readily!)

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The wolves Paul warns of in Acts 20:29-32

They'll 'devour the flock' by preaching licentious living, right?

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'The doctrine of demons' as outlined in 1 Timothy 4

Orgies and heathen idolatry, surely!?

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The dangerous "drift" of Hebrews 2:1-3

This must be a drift away from the law.  Mustn't it?

.

Come on, admit it.  Your gut reactions cast the bad guys as lawless liberals right?

But no.  The hardness of Christ's teaching in John 6 is his relentless call away from the "works that God requires".  What they find so hard is Christ's insistence on faith alone in His (flesh and) blood alone.  The false prophets of Matthew 7 and Acts 20 are, in the context, the legalists.  The doctrine of demons is asceticism.  The dangerous drift of Hebrews is towards the law.

So, by all means, be warned.  But be warned in the right way.  Watch your life and doctrine closely.  Teach sound doctrine.  Correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction.  Do it because the freedom of the gospel is at stake.  And we dare not enslave ourselves again.

6

Published on 6 Comments on Where's the danger?

The New Testament has many warnings regarding our natural perversion of the gospel.  We need to take them seriously.  But I wonder if, often, we misdiagnose the problems.

Here are five little warning passages from the Bible.  How do you instinctively characterize the bad guys in the following:

Those who walk away from Christ's 'hard words' in John 6

They're headed for lawlessness right? We imagine they can't handle Christ's heavy discipleship programme, that's the problem, right?

.

The wolves of Matthew 7:15-19.

They're liberal bishops right? (This is probably the association that Anglican evangelicals make most readily!)

.

The wolves Paul warns of in Acts 20:29-32

They'll 'devour the flock' by preaching licentious living, right?

.

'The doctrine of demons' as outlined in 1 Timothy 4

Orgies and heathen idolatry, surely!?

.

The dangerous "drift" of Hebrews 2:1-3

This must be a drift away from the law.  Mustn't it?

.

Come on, admit it.  Your gut reactions cast the bad guys as lawless liberals right?

But no.  The hardness of Christ's teaching in John 6 is his relentless call away from the "works that God requires".  What they find so hard is Christ's insistence on faith alone in His (flesh and) blood alone.  The false prophets of Matthew 7 and Acts 20 are, in the context, the legalists.  The doctrine of demons is asceticism.  The dangerous drift of Hebrews is towards the law.

So, by all means, be warned.  But be warned in the right way.  Watch your life and doctrine closely.  Teach sound doctrine.  Correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction.  Do it because the freedom of the gospel is at stake.  And we dare not enslave ourselves again.

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