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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Christian Association for Psychological Studies Books
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010
Sin. Grace. Christian Counseling. How do these fit together? In Christian theology sin and grace are intrinsically interconnected. Teacher and counselor Mark McMinn believes that Christian counseling, then, must also take account of both human sin and God's grace. For both sin and grace are distorted whenever one is emphasized without the other. McMinn, noting his own tendencies and the temptation to stereotype different Christian approaches to counseling along this theological divide, aims to help all those preparing for or currently serving in the helping professions. Expounding the proper relationship of sin and grace, McMinn shows how the full truth of the Christian gospel works itself out in the functional, structural and relational domains of an integrative model of psychotherapy. Christian Association for Psychological Studies (CAPS) Books explore how Christianity relates to mental health and behavioral sciences including psychology, counseling, social work, and marriage and family therapy in order to equip Christian clinicians to support the well-being of their clients.
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An Integrative Paradigm
SIN ANDGRACE
in Christian Counseling
Knowing just one person of profound grace might be enough to sustain a person through a meaningful life. I have been deeply blessed to know more than one. This book is dedicated to those dear souls who know me well and still choose to walk alongside as family and friends.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Some fascinating instinctual force drives salmon to swim upstream and birds to build nests and humans to seek relationships characterized by unmerited kindness. These things draw me to a deep longing to know God, who has always loved creation with a fierce and relentless love. Whatever wisdom can be found in this book is not mine to claim but merely a faint reflection of the great lover of human people.
Somewhere in my thirteen-year sojourn at Wheaton College, I came to love theology. It seems unimaginable now that I once tried to practice psychology as a Christian without knowing much about theology. I am grateful to the many biblical, systematic and historical theologians who have influenced my understanding of the human soul. And the same could be said of those pioneers in the contemporary integration movement – those who have studied both psychology and theology and done justice to both with their writing, clinical work and teaching.
There are people whose names should be listed here, of course. They are colleagues, authors, teachers and students who have inspired and shaped me with their lives and ideas. But as I stare down my fiftieth year of life, there are simply too many positive influences to name. If I were to try, I would leave out several dozen.
My friends have demonstrated grace to me – as friends do – providing the safety to help me explore my weaknesses and strive to become more fully human. Thank you, dear friends. You know who you are even without me listing your names here.
But one name must be mentioned. Lisa, my spouse of twenty-nine years now, is also an author and college professor. I have watched her grow in grace over the years, and I hope she has observed the same in me. What a gift it is to be her life partner. I see many of her fine qualities in our grown daughters, and I marvel how grace finds its way into genetics and home environments and all sorts of other places too.
The team at IVP Academic has been great to work with again as well.
Introduction
A FORMER FACULTY COLLEAGUE ONCE TOLD ME, “Every day I come to work is a day closer to my next sabbatical.” He said it with a smile on his face, and he loves his work, so I interpreted his words as exuberance over sabbaticals more than cynicism about the daily life of college professors. And he is quite right – sabbaticals are an amazing privilege for those of us afforded the opportunity.
On my last sabbatical, my wife, Lisa, and I took our laptop computers and headed out to various places throughout the world to read, reflect and write. (Lisa is also an academic and was on sabbatical at the time.) My project was a general book, published in 2004 as Why Sin Matters. Despite the title, it was a book about grace as much as it was about sin. At the time, I thought of it as my most important book: what could be more important for the living of our fragile lives than an understanding of sin and grace? Though the book was reviewed favorably – and was named as a finalist for the 2005 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s Gold Medallion Award in the Theology/Doctrine category – the swirling winds of trade book sales are spurious and unpredictable. Before I knew it the book was languishing in the bookstores and destined to soon be out of print. Perhaps the orange cover looked too much like fire and brimstone.
Though my brief misadventure into general book publishing taught me to stay in the more stable and predictable world of authoring academic books, I was not ready to give up on the topic of sin and grace. It seems terribly important for Christians to understand these doctrines and their implications for daily living. So several years later I have tried again, writing this book about sin and grace for Christian counselors, seminarians, psychology students, pastors and others with an interest in soul care. There are a few strategic passages adapted from Why Sin Matters, but for the most part, it is a fresh look at a topic I have been considering for several years now.
Somewhere along the journey of being raised evangelical, and then staying in the evangelical church as an adult, I picked up a view of sin and grace that was quite forensic in nature. That is, sin is a violation of God’s moral will, and grace is God’s decision to forgive our sins through the life and work of Jesus. I still hold to this view, but I am gaining new appreciation for the relational context of the Christian story. It’s not that God comes up with arbitrary rules and then rewards or punishes us based on our compliance. Rather, God is relational, and created us to be relational. The tragedy of sin is the breaking of our relationships with God and one another. But God, whose character and purposes have always been relational, has redeemed and is redeeming us through the grace revealed in Jesus Christ. There is a forensic dimension to this, of course, but the power of God’s love is the most remarkable part of the Christian narrative. In grace, God desires to sanctify us so that we become more and more like the only fully functioning human who ever lived. And as we become more like Jesus, our counseling cannot help but be transformed by the grace that brings such renewal and hope.
This book is an exploration of how Christian views of sin and grace relate to Christian counseling. In the first chapter I consider the gulf between biblical counselors and Christian psychologists, which is often expressed as a disagreement about how one should handle sin when working with clients. It seems to me that much of this disagreement reflects a misunderstanding of biblical counseling and the inseparability of the Christian doctrines of sin and grace. Chapter two is a look at sin from an Augustinian perspective. I argue that an Augustinian view of sin ought to be a source of empathy for Christian counselors because we are all in this mess together. The depth of God’s grace (both common and special grace) is considered in chapter three. If counseling is a process of discovery and recovery, then grace is essential to help clients experience enough safety to explore the hidden places of their lives. Chapter four provides three vantage points for the importance of holding sin and grace together: psychology, theology and spirituality. The final four chapters of the book consider sin and grace from the perspective of Integrative Psychotherapy – a multidimensional approach to counseling that Clark Campbell and I recently described in another IVP Academic book. Integrative Psychotherapy posits three domains of intervention: functional, structural and relational. Each of these is related to a particular aspect of the image of God, so each of them also involves particular nuances for how we understand sin and grace in Christian counseling.
Christian counselors have divided over the doctrines of sin and grace, which is both sad and unnecessary. I hope this small book will prompt us to look again at the central themes of the Christian faith and consider how doctrine informs the soul care we provide. How freeing a sound doctrine of sin can be, because it ushers us into the presence of a surprising grace that touches our deepest spiritual and psychological longings.
1
Divided by Sin
SOMETIMES THE CLEAREST DIVISIONS IN LIFE do not hold up well under scrutiny. In my case, I once divided Christian counseling into two distinct categories: the biblical counselors and the integrationists. On one hand, biblical counselors were – more or less – the bad guys. Trained in conservative seminaries and influenced by writers like Jay Adams, they had one goal in therapy: to root out sin in their clients’ lives. They did not know much about psychology, and they seemed insensitive to relational aspects of counseling. I, on the other hand, was a good guy – an integrationist. Trained as a clinical psychologist at a reputable university, I understood a good deal about psychology and still affirmed the importance of theological orthodoxy. My approach to psychotherapy, I thought, was more sophisticated and nuanced than the biblical counselors’. The division was clear in my mind: they emphasized sin, I emphasized grace.
Philip Monroe messed up my tidy categorization of Christian counseling. Phil and I first met in my office at Wheaton College when I was interviewing him for the doctoral program in clinical psychology that I was directing at the time. Phil was an unusual candidate because he was coming from the “other side.” Trained at Westminster Seminary in biblical counseling, he wanted a graduate degree in psychology also. Before the interview, I was expecting not to recommend him for admission; after all, he was one of them. But to my surprise, I found him a delightful, engaging, compassionate man. I was drawn to his love of theology and people. We accepted Phil into our program, and he came and studied at Wheaton College for five years. I suspect I learned at least as much from Phil during that half-decade as he learned from me. He helped me get beyond my caricatures and misunderstandings of biblical counseling and helped me to see the importance of a theological perspective on counseling. While in our graduate program, Phil wrote an article in Journal of Psychology and Theology about building bridges between biblical counselors and Christian psychologists (Monroe, 1997). Now he is a licensed psychologist teaching at Biblical Seminary where he is still building bridges. Though my audience for this book is mostly intended for those in the integrationist tradition, I hope it helps build some bridges also.
Seemingly, the doctrine of sin has become a watershed among Christian counselors. On one side of the divide are the many seminarians, pastors and biblical counselors who identify themselves with biblical counseling (Powlison, 2000, 2001) or nouthetic counseling (Adams, 1970). On the other side, many pastoral counselors, Christian psychologists, social workers and psychotherapists prefer to emphasize the integration of faith and the behavioral sciences. The dividing line has been drawn, and loyalties run deep. Counselors in one group attend conferences of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (www.ccef.org) and subscribe to The Journal of Biblical Counseling. Counselors in the other group attend the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (www.caps.net) and subscribe to The Journal of Psychology and Christianity. Educational institutions have joined one side or the other – some offering degrees in biblical counseling and others degrees in Christian counseling or clinical psychology. Churches have entered the fray. Some embrace contemporary psychological methods; others insist that all psychology must be rejected. And many practitioners first identify what they do not believe (I am not a biblical counselor, or I am not an integrationist) even before they identify what they do believe. But could it be that these divisions over the doctrine of sin reflect some deeper divide about the nature of what it means to be human and how we relate to a God who longs to draw us close in loving relationship?
If the watershed is about the doctrines of sin and grace – with some Christian counselors emphasizing sin while others emphasize grace – then it is not surprising that most choose grace. Shall I emphasize sin with my clients, causing them to slink further into shame and remorse for their struggles and perhaps take on unnecessary guilt for events over which they have no control? Or shall I emphasize grace, accepting my clients as Christ has accepted me, allowing them to grow into awareness of their strengths and weaknesses? Stated this way, the choice is clear. Who wouldn’t choose grace?
But maybe the matter is not so simple. Dividing the Christian counseling world into a sin camp and a grace camp is misleading and incorrect. I suggest this for two reasons. First, the biblical counseling movement is not primarily about sin. The critics of the movement reduce biblical counselors to counselors who hold naive and simplistic views of sin, often without even reading their work. More accurately, the biblical counseling movement is primarily about Christian anthropology and ecclesiology. They are trying to reclaim a Christian view of health and functioning that keeps the care of souls within the ministries and teachings of the church. The doctrine of sin is a key Christian teaching, of course, so it is one of several tenets emphasized by biblical counselors. Psychology is viewed skeptically by biblical counselors because it has removed the care of souls from the ministry of the church, and because it has supplanted a Christian view of persons with a subtle and pernicious tug toward a secular view of human functioning. Dividing the Christian counseling world into a sin camp and a grace camp, and then associating biblical counselors with the sin camp, does terrible injustice to what they are saying.
COUNSELING TIP 1.1: The Confirmation Bias Affects Counselors Too
Cognitive psychologists write about the confirmation bias, which means that people seek out information consistent with what they already believe and avoid contrary information. Consider how this might work for Mandy, a newly graduated Christian psychologist or counselor who has heard negative things about the biblical counseling movement. Rather than reading what biblical counselors are actually saying, Mandy might be content to read those who criticize biblical counseling. She will be confirming what she already believes, which helps her simplify the world and make sense of her counseling methods. But notice that she may also be quite wrong because she has never read the Journal of Biblical Counseling or a book by a convinced biblical counselor. She might become a much better Christian counselor after reading some of the biblical counseling materials. Even if she disagrees sharply with what the biblical counselors have to say, at least she will be in a position to consider perspectives that she had not considered before.
Second, it is not helpful to divide Christian counselors according to sin and grace because it distorts Christian doctrine. Sin and grace may warrant separate chapters in a systematic theology text, because both are huge concepts and we must divide books into chapters somehow, but the concepts are so deeply and thoroughly interconnected that one cannot possibly be understood without the other; grace cannot be understood without understanding the extent of our sin, and we must have the hope of grace in order to look honestly at the depth of our sin. When Christian counselors attempt to emphasize sin without grace, or grace without sin, they distort both.
The Lost Language of Sin and Grace
There was once a time when the language of sin and grace was understood, both in private and public discourse, but that era has largely been supplanted by a therapeutic culture that emphasizes symptoms more than sin and unconditional acceptance more than grace. The language of sin has been replaced with a language of crime and sickness (Menninger, 1973; Taylor, 2000). One leading psychologist even suggested that the belief in sin is what makes people disturbed (Ellis, 1960, 1971), though he has recently recanted this belief (Ellis, 2000).
I sometimes read Puritan prayers to my students, and then we pause to ponder what sort of response such a prayer might engender in churches today. For example, consider these two phrases from separate prayers:
It is fitting thou shouldest not regard me,
for I am vile and selfish;
yet I seek thee,
and when I find thee there is no wrath
to devour me,
but only sweet love. (Bennett, 1975, p. 46)
No poor creature stands in need of divine grace more than I do,
And yet none abuses it more than I have done, and still do.
How heartless and dull I am!
Humble me in the dust for not loving thee more.
Every time I exercise any grace renewedly
I am renewedly indebted to thee,
the God of all grace, for special assistance. (Bennett, 1975, p. 111)
Imagine how public prayers such as these might be perceived today. The person offering such a prayer might be prescribed a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (e.g., Prozac), sent to a pastoral counselor or referred to a self-esteem group. The language of sin seems quaint, a relic of some old-time religion, and though the word grace has persisted, it cannot possibly mean the same thing as it did before we lost track of sin.
Today we use grace as a synonym for being lenient or tolerant: “I will show some grace and accept late papers,” or “You have a ten-day grace period by which to make your mortgage payment.” This is a shallow, vapid, consumerist sort of grace compared to what was known in previous generations when people went trembling into the confessional booth and emerged with the lightness of step that comes with forgiveness of sin.
The Puritan prayers may seem harsh or old-fashioned, but they remind us of how far sin separates us from God and how desperately we need a solution so that we can be ushered back into relationship with God – a God who has demonstrated a passionate and holy love for humanity from the Garden of Eden until today. The doctrines of sin and grace are ultimately our great hope because they reverberate with some primordial rhythm in the human soul, giving us the courage to believe in a God who is restoring and redeeming all creation.
In his book Whatever Became of Sin? Karl Menninger, a distinguished twentieth-century psychiatrist, describes his eyewitness account of how sin disappeared. “When I was a boy, sin was still a serious matter and the word was not a jocular term. But I saw this change; I saw it go. I am afraid I even joined in hailing its going” (Menninger, 1973, p. 24). Menninger goes on to describe a new social morality, which was introduced with contemporary mental health research and practice; psychiatrists and psychologists became the high priests of this new moral order. While Menninger affirms the importance of mental health professions, he regrets that the concept of sin did not survive the transition. I would add that a true understanding of grace has also been lost, because it cannot exist without a language of sin.
And now we can see what the biblical counselors are saying. They are not saying we should call our clients sinners and demand repentance in the counseling office as much as they are calling us back to a way of thinking that is easily lost in today’s flurry of mental health activity. A theological worldview has been supplanted by a therapeutic paradigm as one vocabulary has been traded in for another. In the process we may have lost our understanding of what it means to be fallen humans in God’s world.
Jennifer was a bright young woman, newly married, trying desperately to recover from that awful Wednesday evening. Finances were tight, as they often are for newlyweds, so Jennifer took a job at the local convenience store. She stepped away from the counter one evening to get something from the back room when she realized that a customer had followed her. The next moments were a horrifying haze of knife-point threats, partial disrobing, the foul stench of unwanted closeness and, ultimately, forced sexual penetration. When the rapist was satisfied, he holstered his knife and walked out the front door as if he had bought a pack of chewing gum or cigarettes. Meanwhile Jennifer lay sobbing beside cases of beer in the back room, forever changed.
In our counseling, Jennifer and I needed the language of sin. She needed a word like sin to understand what had happened. How else could such horror be understood? Her perpetrator had not merely made a mistake. This was not just a bad choice. His behavior was not merely a symptom of some psychological disorder. This was horrendous sin, and it needed to be named and grieved, over and over. We needed the language of sin to exonerate her. This was not her doing. It was not her sin. She was targeted, stalked and devastated by the sin of another. And she needed a caring, gentle listener to help her walk back into memories of the trauma, to help her weep and lament and try to make sense of her future.
This may seem like an easy clinical example because it identifies a sin done to the client rather than by the client. Who wouldn’t view rape as a horrendous offense worthy of the label of sin? But what does a Christian counselor do when a client is struggling with a personal pattern of sin? Here again, the temptation is to bifurcate the world into two artificial categories – those who are sinned against and those who are sinning themselves. As I will explore further in chapter two, this is a misleading and simplistic view of sin. Even in Jennifer’s case, where the source of the problem was so clearly a sin against her, she found it had devastating implications in her own personal choices thereafter.
Events like rape change people. In the months following, Jennifer found herself irritable, aloof and annoyed easily by her husband. She screamed out in rage and anxiety, but the rapist who caused her pain was not there to hear, so her feelings spilled over onto undeserving loved ones. Her relationships became strained, her emotions frazzled, her hope compromised.
Here we see the complexity of sin. It is not merely packaged inside the skin of a single human being. We are social beings, constantly interacting with one another, always being influenced by the sin of the world around us. Jennifer had been violated, and though she had no culpability for this tragic rape, the rape cost her so dearly that it submerged her into a pattern of sinful and damaging interactions with family members. With time and ample doses of grace from God, caring friends, family members and her therapist, Jennifer was able to grieve her loss, recover the majority of her hope, renew strained relationships and move ahead with life.
IN THE OFFICE 1.1: Whispering the Language of Sin
Considering sin in therapy does not mean that a counselor calls a client a sinner. The following counseling dialogue reveals a gentle acknowledgment of sin, struggle and a cry for grace without ever using the word sin.
Jennifer: Things were rough this week with Justin. I know he just wants to help, but sometimes he drives me crazy.
Mark: I know that has been a challenge for you lately. Tell me more about him driving you crazy.
Jennifer: He’s just always asking stuff, like if I’m okay or if I had any dreams last night or if I would favor the death penalty for rape. It’s just nonstop. And I ask him to stop, and he does for a few days, and then he starts all over again.
Mark: Yeah, and it really gets to you. Jennifer: Completely. I’m so annoyed.
Mark: How does your feeling annoyed come out in your relationship with Justin?
Jennifer: I don’t think I treat him very well. Sometimes I just get really frustrated and scream at him. He looks really hurt and walks away, and I feel terrible.
Mark: That’s not how you want to respond. Jennifer: No, not at all. I feel terrible about it.
Mark: Yes, I see that, both in your words and in your eyes.
Jennifer: [crying] I need to handle this better. I just feel all tied up inside, like any little thing sets me off. I’m so tense and upset and afraid.
Mark: You’re trying to move on, but it feels tougher than you could have imagined.
Jennifer: Yes, and I’m so tired and confused too.
The client and counselor are whispering a language of sin and grace, even without using the words.
It seems to me that Christian psychotherapists and biblical counselors might handle someone like Jennifer in similar ways. Both would sit with her in her pain, listen to her story, and allow her to grieve, weep and ask the sort of questions that injured people ask. Both would identify the rapist’s behavior as an evil, horrendous act – a rupture of human civility. Both would notice that Jennifer herself began treating people unkindly in the aftermath of the rape, and whether or not they used the word sin they would be concerned about helping Jennifer reclaim an ability to treat her friends and family better. Biblical counselors might use a theological vocabulary in understanding Jennifer while Christian psychotherapists use a psychological vocabulary – and these different vocabularies are no small matter – but ultimately both are likely to provide competent care for a hurting person.
Transcending the Divide
As an integrationist, I believe there is value in both psychology and Christian theology. We ought to study and learn about human nature – however fallen it has become – and psychology helps us do so with its various theories, scientific findings and methods. But let us not slip into the trap of thinking that we are offering grace while the biblical counselors are preaching about sin. Too often we integrationists are minimizing both grace and sin because our psychological vocabulary does not allow for these notions. Here we have a good deal to learn from the biblical counselors and the theological tradition they represent.
In losing track of sin, we have also lost a careful theological definition of our most basic human problem. For some, the word sin evokes images of angry fundamentalist preachers who seem more intent on condemning and judging than searching for forgiveness and grace. Others think of sin as a word used to manipulate and coerce people into particular ways of behavior. Still others think of sin lightly, as a topic of lighthearted joking or a name for a city where people go to gamble and party (that one can buy a motorcycle at a place called Sin City Scooters in Las Vegas is evidence of how imprecisely and lightly we have come to view sin). Only as we move beyond these distorted views of sin can we reclaim it as part of an essential vocabulary – one that opens the possibility of forgiveness, redemption, and renewed relationships with God and others.
From a Christian perspective, sin is failing to conform to God’s moral law (Erickson, 1985). Sin is evident both in our fallen state (i.e., our distorted dispositions) and in our actions. It is both personal and corporate. It is both forensic – meaning that we have violated God’s will – and relational, causing a tragic distance between humanity and our loving Creator. In an earlier book, which I mentioned in the introduction to this one, Clark Campbell and I presented a model for Christian counseling that is based on three views of what it means to be made in the image of God (McMinn & Campbell, 2007). These same three views of the imago Dei – functional, structural and relational – are helpful in understanding the nature of sin and our desperate need for grace.
From a functional perspective, God created humans and instructed them to manage themselves and creation with goodness and self-control. We have fallen short. Wars divide our world, pollution produced for the sake of convenience and profit threatens the health of creation, and our failures of self-control are evident everywhere – in crime, addiction, poverty, pornography, violence, gluttony, consumerism and so much more.
From a structural vantage point, God created humans with certain ontological capacities, to speak and reason and understand morality. These capacities have been compromised by original sin. (Original sin refers to the state into which we are born as opposed to the sinful choices we voluntarily make later in life.) As King David cried out in Psalm 51:5, “For I was born a sinner – / yes, from the moment my mother conceived me,” so also, centuries later, Augustine reflected: “For in your sight, no one is free from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth” (Augustine 398/1986, p. 7). Because of this sinful nature, our God-given structural capacities are weakened and distorted. Our capacity to think well, to determine the moral alternative, to understand the complexities of the created order have all been tainted by our sinful nature. Our human will has become corrupted and twisted, even before we consciously chose sin, so that we do not naturally love God first and neighbor as self.
Only God, in grace, can break through our blindness and offer us salvation. Relational views of the imago Dei emphasize that God’s character is seen in the relationships humans form with one another and with God. God’s purposes, which arise from God’s character, are revealed in relationship with humanity. It is not so much that any individual contains an ontological stamp bearing God’s nature, but that our relating to God and one another is a reflection of a God who cares so much about relationship that he sent Jesus to reestablish a covenantal relationship with lost humanity. Here again, we see the devastating consequences of sin. Our relationships have been damaged – both our relationships with other humans and our relationship with God. Conflict is all around us, ranging from interpersonal to international, and we have turned away from God – the source of greatest joy – in our relentless quest for personal fulfillment and pleasure.
In all these ways we see the wreckage of sin extending through all creation, but this is not the end of the gospel. Indeed, it is a starting point for understanding the incredible grace God extends. The apostle Paul describes how human sin makes the good news so vivid. “God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 5:20-21). God’s grace is both justifying and sanctifying. Grace justifies those who accept Christ’s gift of salvation, regenerating us and making us pure in God’s sight. “As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault” (Col 1:22). And grace is also sanctifying, sticking with us over time, causing us to be transformed into the women and men God desires us to be.
Sin is offensive and unpopular. Grace is winsome and inviting. If given a choice, we should all choose grace. But we cannot approach sin and grace as separate items on a menu; Christian theology will simply not allow it. As will be explored in subsequent chapters, we cannot possibly understand the Christian doctrine of grace unless we understand sin.
It is a curious thing that those of us involved in the integration movement have not studied and written about sin very much. We are interested in human behavior and theology, so would it not seem reasonable for us to study the meaning and implications of sin alongside our interest in grace? After all, sin is a central doctrine of the Christian faith, and the problems and consequences of human evil are continually confronted in the therapy office. When Philip Monroe (2001) looked for articles about sin in the integration literature he found almost nothing, and most of what has been written has been an effort to view sin through the lens of various psychological theories. Monroe concludes:
No matter what the therapist’s theoretical orientation is, therapy will deal with the sins of clients. But the dominant culture that sets boundaries for appropriate care of persons does not generally consider sinfulness and all of its ramifications as a significant influence on human functioning and behavior. Because we function within the dominant paradigm, we also may be tempted to downplay the effect of sin in our clients’ lives, or at least to remove the traditional vocabulary of sin. It is my belief that we must consider the result of the vocabulary we use when we talk about sin. In our effort to contextualize our message to clients, we often use words that are more palatable…. However, does our new vocabulary cause the concept of sin to lose its… meaning because sin’s devastation and Godward orientation are softened? Does the vocabulary of shortcomings and dysfunction direct our eyes away from the destructiveness of sin and God’s holiness? Does our vocabulary encourage a lifestyle of self-examination and repentance? (p. 217)
SURVEY SAYS 1.1: Sin Matters
With the help of four graduate students, I surveyed a sample of Christian leaders in 2005, asking them, “What do you wish every psychologist knew about the nature of sin?” The survey went out to pastors, theologians, biblical scholars, missionaries and ministry leaders. In all, 171 Christian leaders replied to the question. My students and I organized the answers we received and wrote a brief research article for a journal published by the American Psychological Association (McMinn, Ruiz, Marx, Wright & Gilbert, 2006). We sifted through a number of wise and helpful comments in the process. For example:
I wish all of us – pastors and psychologists alike – were more realistic about sin… its pervasiveness, it’s blinding effect upon us, its persistence in us. We need to communicate without apology that human beings are capable of enormous evil and of enormous good. Both sides of the truth need to come through.
To me, this is the crux of clinical counseling. Is the problem a consequence of sinful choices or of a psychological or neurological disorder? Sin should not be the cause of every disorder. Neither should it be dismissed or minimized as a root cause either.
One can deal with the topic of sin in a compassionate manner in therapy that is not shameful. Most psychologists I know associate discussions of sin automatically with shame.
I will draw on the wisdom of these Christian leaders throughout this book. They have much insight to offer, and many have concerns about the ways Christian psychologists have avoided talking about sin.
Monroe provides an important corrective for those of us involved in integration. The language of sin is important in the contemporary and historic witness of the church, in the lives of individuals and communities, and in the Christian counseling office.
I became convinced of this when I was asked to deliver a plenary address to the Christian Association of Psychological Studies in 2002. The theme of the conference was “Grace, Freedom, and Responsibility.” As I began preparing for my talk, looking into the psychological and theological literature on grace, I realized how little can be said about grace without also attending to sin. Eventually I decided to title my talk, which was scheduled for the first night of the conference, “Prelude to Grace: A Psychology of Sin and a Sin of Psychology.” The premise of that talk, and of this book, is that we Christian psychologists have been remiss in considering sin. We are right to be so attracted to grace, but how much deeper and richer our understanding of grace can be if we reclaim a Christian view of sin.
Amazing Grace
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound… There was a time when I would sing out the first phrase of John Newton’s beloved hymn but then – convinced I was no wretch – sit in rebellious silence for the next six words. I was a young man back then, just finished with a doctoral program in clinical psychology and filled with some shallow version of self-esteem I had learned in the process, crossing the threshold of adulthood with great confidence in human potential. I was wrong.
Back in those days of youthful arrogance, I wrote a book about grace. The book was never published. I sent my two-hundred-fifty-page manuscript to several different publishers, and each of them responded with a permutation of the standard “thanks, but no thanks” letter. Twenty years later, I am grateful that book was never published. It was a book produced by an overachieving, young, assistant professor who wasn’t ready to write about grace. It was written before I began to grasp the depth of brokenness and sin and lostness in our world and in my own heart. Understanding grace cannot be done without understanding sin. Sometimes I ponder what that unpublished book, with its anemic view of grace, would have been titled if it had been published. Perhaps Grace Lite or Grace: Because I’m Worth It or Grace: I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough and, Doggonit, People Like Me.
Like many Christian counselors in our therapeutic culture, I sometimes try to muster amazement about grace without taking sin seriously, searching for the beauty of Easter without the ashes of Lent, insisting I am found before admitting how lost I sometimes get. Sin and grace are part of the same story, and if we leave out either part, we end up with a shallow, life-draining theology and psychology.
Newton himself lived and told a story of sin and grace. I have often heard Christians speak of his powerful story: how Newton was once a slave trader who was gripped by God’s love in the midst of a tumultuous storm on the high seas. But his story is not as simple as the one we tend to tell in our churches. Here is the way we tend to tell the story: Newton grew up in a culture in which slavery was commonplace and ended up lured by avarice into the slave-trading business. But then, during an awful storm in March of 1748, he saw the wretchedness of his greed and was sickened by his crimes against humanity. I once was lost but now am found. From that moment forward Newton turned against slavery, devoted himself to God and became a tireless crusader against the horrendous social evil of slavery. This is the sanitized version of Newton’s life that we often hear from pulpits and read on Christian web sites. But it is not true.
I wish each of our life stories, and the stories of our clients, could be neat and tidy: we are lost in our sin, but then we find God – or, more correctly, God finds us – and we bask in the light of being found as we live happily ever after. All our troubles melt away, our priorities seem clear, our strained relationships are suddenly healed, we cast off our sins and self-deceptions, and we settle into a life of faithful obedience to God. Despite my best wishes, this was not Newton’s story. It’s not my story either, and it is not the story of my counseling clients.
It is true that Newton had some sort of awakening from a shockingly profane and blasphemous existence as he guided the Greyhound –
