Hope and healing are both prominent themes throughout the Christian scriptures and core to Christian theology. The Lord God has given us a hope for a better future, but that hope is not suspended somewhere beyond us, waiting on the last day to become real. It is bound up with a person who has already come near. The healing we long for finds its ground in the same event that grounds our very humanity: the incarnation. If Christ is the one in whom we discover what it truly means to be human, then he is also the one in whom our hope for healing is secured, for we do not merely have a diagnosis of what has gone wrong in us. We have a Great Healer who became like us, who entered our condition in flesh and blood so that he might heal it from within. But healing of that kind depends on rightly answering a prior question: what is a human being, that this healing should even apply to them?

Everyone who sits with a suffering person is already working with an answer to that question, what may be called their anthropology. The answer may never be spoken, but it is never absent. Every person carries with them their own image of the human, an image that has been formed explicitly and implicitly by their community and culture and their own experiences. The question is therefore not whether we bring an anthropology into the work of healing, but whether the one we bring is true.

This matters more than it may first appear. What our assumed anthropology tells us about what it means to be human affects every aspect of our being and psychological functioning, and what we understand about Christ, the perfect human, radically changes our understanding of ourselves. Get the human wrong and everything downstream bends—how we read suffering, what we call health, what we dare to hope for.
Christian faith locates the answer to that question in a particular event. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1–5, 14) [1]. In the incarnation, what was eternally true of the Son as the very image of God became historically actual: the presence of God now dwelling in bodily form among his creatures. In this man we see true humanity unspoiled by sin, and in his unbroken faithfulness to the Father we see what human existence was actually meant to be. Dane Ortlund in his seminal book “Gentle and Lowly” put it this way: “Jesus came to do in flesh and blood what God had done only in wind and voice in the Old Testament.” [2]

It would be easy to hear this as repair language only, as though Christ were simply the remedy applied to a humanity that went wrong. But the incarnation is not a divine afterthought prompted by the fall. Before creation, the meaning of human existence was already grounded in the humanity the Son would assume. His humanity is not one instance of human nature that happened to be taken up into God; it is the pattern after which we were made. We are not merely rescued by Christ. We were made after Christ.

That is why the incarnation is a word of hope and not only a point of doctrine. Our healing does not rest on a technique, a framework, or even a body of true teaching. It rests on a person who became like us. To quote Ortlund again, “We do not come to a set of doctrines. We do not come to a church. We do not even come to the gospel. All these are vital. But most truly, we come to a person, to Christ himself.”

The incarnation means everything for understanding what it means to be human and therefore undergirds understanding humans psychologically. If Christ is the perfect human, then who we say he is determines who we understand ourselves to be. That is the question I will dive into in my next post: not what Christ has done for us in the abstract, but who he actually is—and why the answer is the paradigm for everything we call true humanity.

[1]  All scripture references taken from the 2011 New International Version of the Holy Bible.
[2] Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Crossway, 2020), 153.

Nathaniel (Nate) Marino, MA, is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Houston Christian University, with graduate degrees in Research and Experimental Psychology (Rutgers University–Camden) and Theological Studies (Houston Christian University). His research centers on social and personality psychology, with particular focus on moral cognition and behavior and the development of character and virtue. He is also deeply interested in the philosophical and methodological foundations of modern psychology, particularly in reframing them through a distinctly Christian worldview. Flowing from this, Nate is committed to pursuing psychological inquiry that is Christ-centered and biblically and theologically grounded. In future work, he hopes to explore how a Christ-centered psychology might shape Christian culture and church life, including discipleship, spiritual formation, church governance, evangelism, and practical theology.

I recently made a mistake — probably a big one. I made a major career change that I shouldn’t have made. I spent months arguing with myself about it, vacillating quite emphatically. “I should definitely take it — only a fool would pass up this chance. Except that doing so would be a complete waste of time. What a horrible idea, it’s entirely backwards. Unless of course, you look at it this way…” For better or worse, I eventually took the job. Practically, there isn’t much I can do at this point — the contracts are signed, the caseloads are shifting, the path is set. And, at least on paper, it’s hard to say that I made a bad choice: the job is a better stepping stone in a more interesting career path, the position is more prestigious, the schedule is flexible, the benefits are quite decent, the salary is adequate, and the job is reasonably aligned with my skillset. Apart from some practical inconveniences (like a long commute), there’s really no good reason not to take it. But even if all goes well, I can’t shake the quiet, haunting sense that something is profoundly wrong. And when I listen closely, my inner self informs me: I made this change for the wrong reasons, and worse, I feel nearly certain that I was incapable of not making it. This feels like losing my life by gaining it.

But before we get to that, let’s review:

This month, we have been considering what the Christian worldview tells us about what it means to have a healthy personality and arrived at a concise, prescriptive definition of human health: A healthy person is able to both give and receive love in relationship with themself, with others, and with God. Last week, I offered a list of questions as a tool to help us in this journey. In the February edition of this newsletter, I shared a tool for addressing one’s relationship with God (“Looking at Jesus Looking at Me”), so this time, I wanted to focus on the relationship with self instead. Today, I will do so in the context of my own life.

In my own life, there has never been a greater challenge than the struggle for worth and acceptance, which I have always expressed in simple terms: the struggle “to be good enough.” Virtually every problem I’ve ever had shares this root, and over the years, I nearly forgot there was a life without this ever-present companion. Of course, it has worn many masks:

• the fear of poor grades and need to be a straight-A student (or nearly so)
• the terror of being in trouble with parents or teachers for any mistake
• feeling overwhelmed and then completely shutting down in conflict
• avoiding relational connection due to fear of rejection
• ingratiating myself to others to avoid that same feared rejection
• only trying things I believed I could do well (and conversely, purposefully avoiding things in which I felt I might fail)
• a smug pride in “success” and praise from others
• desperation for approval from parents, teachers, and authority figures
• profound shame of discovered/disclosed sins
• overwhelming internal guilt of hidden sin
• commitment to exceptional moral and ethical practice in my profession
• obsessive fears of becoming morally evil
• deferring decisions to others so as not to be responsible for the outcome
• longing for notoriety and recognition for doing excellent work
• defining myself in opposition to worldliness and worldly values
• priding myself in perceived “persecution” for not adopting secular values and for publicly practicing my faith [note the double bonus points here: better than the lost because I’m living rightly, better than other Christians because I actually practice what I preach]
• my joy in receiving professional and academic feedback, which has typically extremely positive
• being drawn to career advancement and dissatisfaction with “unimportant” tasks
• Holding “values” like reliability, intelligence, excellence, and influence
  And the list goes on…

No matter the mask, the face behind it is always the same: mine, a young boy, terrified that if I’m not “good enough,” no one will want me. And that young boy always has the same solution: Excel. To him, life is very simple: if you don’t make any mistakes, don’t offend anyone, are always useful to others, are obviously exceptional to everyone, then no will reject you or leave you, and you will never be alone. You will be needed, loved, and adored. Always and forever. Ahh, safe at last. Of course, this is an exhausting way to live, and it is unmanageably anxiety-prone, since even the smallest and silliest of infractions poses an existential threat to that security.

As I sift through my life behaviors using the lens offered by a Christian perspective of personality health, I see more clearly by considering both function and teleology. Evaluating the function reveals the otherwise healthy-looking behaviors (e.g., having a hard work ethic, maintaining high moral and ethical standards, practicing extra kindness, mastering the Scriptures and theology, etc.) for what they are: excessive attempts to create internal safety and to earn love and acceptance. Evaluating teleology creates room for both compassion and a direction for growth. And this brings us to a series of “litmus test” questions (from last week) that help us discern health in our relationship with ourselves:

• What would I do in this situation if I was going to truly love myself well?
• Does this decision/behavior help me express love to myself more, or make it harder to do so?
• What would I do if I wasn’t afraid? Conversely, what would I do in this situation if I knew I was truly loved?

Let’s apply these to my recent job decision. I have an opportunity, and when I’m honest with myself, I really want it… so much so that saying “no” seems impossible. The rationales can be quite deceptive: “It’s value-congruent,” “it’s got much better benefits,” “the future career opportunities are much bigger,” “the schedules is fantastic,” “these skills will transfer to many other settings…” “the income is more stable.” But none of these reasons really tells me why I need this job. When I ask myself why it matters so much to me, I hear a simple answer: “I want to do something important. Otherwise, I’ll just keep feeling like a nothing, a speck fading into oblivion, who never did anything that mattered.”

This is a huge red flag, because that language isn’t about any practical matters, nor is it even about my “values” (to borrow the ACT framework’s language) — it’s about my value. And the hidden message is clear: “You’re nothing, but with this job, you can be something again.” No wonder I have to have it. Suddenly, the mask is down, and there I am, young and alone, afraid that I’m actually just a worthless failure who no one wants.

Enter the questions:

1. What would I do if I was going to truly love myself well?
   For starters, I would not call myself worthless or a nothing. Second, I would value both the pain that young version of me felt and the ways I feel the same echoes today. I would comfort him then and be compassionate with myself now. Third, I would let myself make the decision that seems best for me and for my family, not the one that I’m desperate to believe will solve an unsolvable problem.
2. Does this decision help me love myself more or make it harder to do so? On the surface, I will like myself more in this job. But does it actually help me love myself well? Not really. In fact, it further enslaves me to performance, because I will only like myself more if I am successful in it. Were I to fail, I would loathe myself. It’s hard to argue that perpetuating the belief that I’m valuable because I perform well is actually self-love; it sounds more like something an unhealthy parent would say.

From this perspective, the ego is revealed as the self trying to manage its existential fragility (i.e., a fundamental loneliness, insignificance, and fearful vulnerability) on its own, separate from God. And this is, of course, is literally the human condition. It’s all of us. And for me, it’s quite young. That self is the one that I must learn to love, even when I’m not particularly impressed with myself as a fragile, afraid, lonely little child. But by doing so, I establish the grounds for self-compassion, which then extends into compassion for others.

So I’ve made the wrong decision… Or, more precisely, a decision for the wrong reasons. What now? I ask the same questions again, and the answers are illuminating. I would compassionately acknowledge the reality. I would not sabotage myself or my job performance, but I would reduce the internal pressure by re-establishing an identity outside of my performance. I would absolutely try to ensure that the things that truly matter to me — my family, my faith, my ability to carry out responsibilities well, etc. — are not sacrificed on an alter of ego. I would value self-care, not just accolades. When maintaining my priorities causes me to fail (or at least perform more poorly than I want), I will accept that pain and value it while appreciating myself for putting more important things ahead of my personal safety project. Perhaps most importantly, I will accept my limitations as best I can – living up to them (not down to them) but not rebelling against them.

In practice, I do most of this internal work by employing IFS-styled exercises (though you really don’t need the framework to use the tools; for example, compassion-focused therapy [CFT] employs very similar, and sometimes better, interventions). These imaginative conversations between my most compassionate, wisest self and those versions of me that are wounded, afraid, angry, or otherwise hurting serve two purposes: promoting self-awareness and, more importantly, engaging in the actual practice of self-love. The goal isn’t really to be “healing” — that happens as a byproduct — but is actually much simpler. It is to do what is teleologically healthy: to give and receive love with myself.

Marvelously, when I do, I become more open-hearted, which allows me to extend love to others and to be free of the quiet lies and neuroses that can so easily pervade my life. And as I experience freedom, I can express that in tangible decisions. I also become more able to receive love from God and to love Him in response. Of course, the opposite is true as well. I’m incapable of being an infinite reservoir of self-love, but God’s love re-opens me. I learn to love myself because, in loving God, I learn to love what and who God loves — which includes me (and everyone else). Thus, the ability to give and receive love with God, self, and others can be mutually reciprocal, enhancing one another. And this, in a nearly accidental yet entirely obvious way, becomes healing to the personality, simply as a result of actively doing what we were made to do: love.

Ben is a licensed psychologist who works with adults encountering a variety of challenges in their lives, including anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, OCD, history of trauma, addiction, and bipolar disorder. He is particularly interested in faith and spirituality as they arise during the course of therapy, and he also enjoys supporting others in the helping professions (therapists/counselors, social workers, doctors, nurses, pastors and priests, etc.).

Last week, I suggested that contemporary diagnostic and therapeutic models are self-limiting in that they approach personality disorders through the lens of functional impairment without articulating implicit assumptions about personality health. Generally, this is grounded in well-intentioned desires to be scientifically descriptive and to avoid imposing cultural norms or oppressing minority perspectives. Accordingly, contemporary Psychology’s discourse on personality purposefully neglects its own beliefs about the moral and spiritual teleology of personhood. However, this is problematic on two accounts: first, it is somewhat disingenuous, as Psychology’s values for personhood are often thinly veiled; and second, Psychology’s personality theories are deprived of a vision for flourishing, purpose, and health. A full exploration of this problem is well beyond the scope of today’s discussion, which is focused on a specific tool — a litmus test — for working with personality disorders. However, to understand the tool, we first have to consider what Christians in mental health have to learn from secular clinicians; only then can we understand what we have to offer them.

To begin, we may benefit from considering some questions to stimulate our thinking. Though abstract, these are also profoundly practical, both for mental health professionals in our work and for the everyday person in daily decisions (like who to be friends with, who to date or marry, who to hire, how to respond to a difficult interaction, etc.). So consider, if you will, these questions, and notice how you would answer them for yourself (or, better yet, for someone else who asked you):

(1) How do you differentiate between appropriate, healthy behavior and unhealthy behaviors that reflect personality problems (for example, is this confidence or narcissism, good boundaries or avoidance, a need for autonomy or a demand for control/power, etc.)?
(2) How do you know when you have encountered someone with a disordered personality?
(3) What even is a disordered personality?

Though they have evolved substantially over time, secular models of psychology’s answers to these questions are quite robust. The two models proposed in the DSM-5-TR describe broad, lasting problems in cognition, emotion, interpersonal relationships, and impulse control (the common model) or lasting, pathological difficulties in identity, self-direction, empathy, and intimacy (the alternative model). Those described in the Psychoanalytic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-3) are more detailed, utilizing classification that makes greater inferences about the inner workings of people’s motivations and inner conflicts, perceptions of reality, defenses, and experience of reality. Regardless of model, personalities have to be patterned (occur in multiple parts of life), protracted (showing up relatively early in life and persisting throughout it), and cause distress and impairment.

The observant reader will notice that these definitions only provide a full answer to the third question (what is a personality disorder?), a partial answer to the second (how do I know?), and no answer to the first at all (is this particular instance/behavior healthy or a problem?). The key psychological insight for the first two questions lies in the concept of “function,” from which we also infer a purpose (e.g., What is this behavior’s “function”?). A person’s way of operating (or “functioning”) — their way of thinking, their relational dynamics, their ability to regulate and manner of communicating, etc. — is motivated by a need and intended to satisfy it. A key distinctive of personality disorders, then, is that there is either a problem with the intensity of a need or a problem with patterned, ineffective ways of meeting it. Hence, we could provide a non-exhaustive list of personality disorder stereotypes:

• the borderline personality’s ineffective attempts to create intimacy and prevent abandonment actually push people away;
• the avoidant personality creates safety from rejection by avoiding risk and intimacy but then ends up exactly as it feared — truly alone;
• the obsessive-compulsive personality that is so driven to control and perfect that it drowns in its own guilt, becoming either unable to accomplish anything or unbearable to all around it;
• the narcissistic personality, so demanding of admiration and love from others to compensate for its own insecurity, yet its self-pity and outbursts at any insult inspire neither love nor admiration but only fear, resentment, and contempt;
• and so on

In this regard, Psychology’s perspective is enormously helpful. Behaviors (and the underlying personality constellations of needs and patterned ways to meet those needs) can be assessed not by content but by function. Any clinicians who neglect this simply will not be able to treat personality disorders effectively. Inexperienced therapists are much too likely to attend to content in session (She told me everything in the first session and broke down in tears right away… I must be a great therapist!) Instead of function (She immediately let down all her boundaries to create closeness and then required me to regulate her emotions).

The most common distinctive in personality disordered behavior is inconsistency in communication and function. Words say one thing, but behavior says another. As an example, we’ve probably all heard someone say, “Oh, I’m good, I’m totally over it now” — but they are so “over it” that they have to spend the next hour telling you passionately about it. Or the spouse who says, “I’m fine,” by which they mean they absolutely will not talk with you at all about what is wrong until you figure it out for yourself. Or the person who says, “Oh, I’m not angry at all, I just think…” and proceeds to show you just exactly how angry they are. Or the person who says, “Tell me all about it,” but proceeds to interrupt you at the first chance to share their own experience with no room for yours. Of course, none of these alone is indicative of a personality disorder — but when the discrepancy between communication and function is persistent for much of the lifespan, extends across multiple domains of life, and starts causing serious problems, a personality disorder is likely present.

Christians are uniquely prone to missing the importance of function when they are concerned with moral expectations, and for this reason, we need secular psychology models to help. We can be too busy asking, “Was that the right thing to do?” Instead of, “Why did they do it?” For example, a client’s display of anger is interpreted as sin but not evaluated for its purpose. Another’s decision not to lose their temper is considered laudable without noticing the ways it was driven not by healthy self-control but by fear and need for others’ approval. Another’s risqué encounter is identified as sexually immoral but not considered for its proximity to intimacy. Still another’s mastery of Scripture and moral theology are admired, but the smug superiority and quiet craving for admiration are lost behind a pretense of humility. And yet another’s guilt is identified either as a healthy awareness of sin or a problematic inability to appreciate grace, but neither considers its function in the context of rigidity. I do not intend to frown on Christian morality or even Biblical counseling for that matter; rather, I am trying to highlight the ways in which moral judgments can be used as permission to ignore the psychological function of a behavior — a mistake that Christian mental health professionals simply cannot afford when dealing with personality disorders.

Yet, it is here that Christians also have something profound to offer. In their emphasis on function, secular models have either abandoned their moral convictions or hidden them like contraband, only acceptable as undiscovered goods smuggled quietly into the science of personality. Perhaps most embarrassing, there is almost no defining way of understanding what it means to be healthy. In this, therapeutic approaches to psychology have been essentially apophatic, so by inference, the definition of personality health becomes whatever is “not disordered”: neither overreactive nor under-reactive, not desiring too much intimacy but not too afraid of it, not having too high or too low an opinion of self, neither being domineering nor under-assertive, not needing too much attention but not isolating oneself either, etc. Put differently, if personality disorders result from extremes of intensity and extremes of traits that lead to ineffective behavior, then the basis of personality health would involve finding the relative middle of the continuum for expressing relevant personality traits. This is unfortunate, as it implies that human thriving involves, at least in part, becoming the world’s most medium person.

Christianity has a better view of flourishing. Personality is nestled within the deeper concept of personhood, and personhood has a teleological purpose: participation in the divine nature and mediation of God’s presence and rule in the world. Jesus sums this up very succinctly and in far less abstract terms:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt 22:37-40).

Rather than rejecting it, Jesus takes morality as expressed in the Law and Prophets (this morality, which previously proved a stumbling block to identifying psychological function) and drops it right into the context its true purpose: love of God, others, and self.

Consider, then, which is the more satisfying view of a healthy person: (1) someone who has the capacity to actively express and receive love in relationship with God, others, and self, or (2) someone with averagely intense needs and exhibits relatively averagely traits while being reasonably good at meeting their own needs. In one, the purpose of personhood is transcendent and beautiful; in the other, the telos is the self purposed on itself in pursuit of self-actualization and self-satisfaction. Christianity, then, has much to offer the rugged individualism of contemporary psychology. Admittedly, some secular Psychologists would disagree with my depiction of their view of personality health (and could do so fairly) — but to say so, they would have to be willing to unpack their bags and disclose those values that have been smuggled into their descriptive science. And that is a second gift we have to offer secular Psychology: an opportunity to get honest about its own religious values and beliefs.

The implications of all that I’ve written so far can be summed up simply: A Christian perspective of personality requires a unity of teleology and function. To misappropriate Christ’s words for a psychospiritual therapeutic purpose, we might say: “By their fruit you will recognize them… Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit” (cf. Matt 7:15-20). Teleology tells us about health, and function tells us whether the behaviors are motivated by love or are likely to bear the fruit of love. From this vantage, we can see through the mask of narcissism, avoidance, dependence, or other behaviors; attending to “function” lets us see what is beneath the behavior, and teleology shows us whether what is beneath is truly healthy.

At last, with all this as context, we can now turn to a simple tool. For those who are still reading, thank you — I hope it is worth your time. These questions are intended to aid as a litmus test, discerning between that which is disordered and that which is healthy. Most often, since our behaviors come from mixed motives and our hearts, minds, and souls are easily divided, the discernment occurs within a single experience rather than between two different experiences (although the latter can be done as well). For example, if a client loses their temper, it is likely that discernment will identify loving and unloving motives within that moment. Conveniently, this discernment also maps nicely onto DBT’s preference for both dialectical thinking and Wise Mind, both of which are mainstays in treatment for many personality disorders.

Relationship with self: a healthy person can give and receive love in relationship with themself.
What would I do in this situation if I was going to truly love myself well?
Does this decision/behavior help me express love to myself more, or make it harder to do so?
An exercise: imaginative exercises (similar to IFS) for self-compassion

Relationship with others: a healthy person can give and receive love in relationship with others. This implies that in a healthy relationship, both people matter to both people.
What would I do in this situation/conflict if I truly valued myself? What would I do in this situation/conflict if I truly valued this other person?
What do I like about how I responded in this situation, and what do I dislike about how I responded? How do these reflect or fail to reflect what is truly loving for both of us?
Exercises: Role-plays, empty chair, and interpersonal feedback and use of the therapeutic relationship

Exercises
1. Does this prayer help me express love for God?

2. How would I be praying if I were to receive God’s love for me?

3. Exercises

a. To build and receive love from God: Looking at Jesus Looking at Me (see Christian Psychology Weekly, February); God-image and God-attachment exercises
b. To grow in love for God: reflection and imaginative prayer on Christ, practice of gratitudes, use of music and worship, use of visual media (art, The Chosen, etc.).

Ben is a licensed psychologist who works with adults encountering a variety of challenges in their lives, including anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, OCD, history of trauma, addiction, and bipolar disorder. He is particularly interested in faith and spirituality as they arise during the course of therapy, and he also enjoys supporting others in the helping professions (therapists/counselors, social workers, doctors, nurses, pastors and priests, etc.).

When I was in Junior High, I did something bad. This was not an understandable error in judgment, or a moment of weakness, or a “victimless” self-indulgence. This was an action that was low, treacherous, and mean. When I think about that day, I can only snarl “you contemptible slime” at my younger self.
I can never forgive myself for what I did. I mean that literally, because in this post I will argue that we misuse the word “forgive” when we apply it to ourselves.

Self-forgiveness is a concept that has become ubiquitous in our society, being found in self-help books, devotional literature, and social emotional learning curricula for use in schools. The message of self-forgiveness is presented in our entertainment media as well, with one particularly-extreme example being the award-winning comedy/drama television show Lucifer, in which Satan learns that the true path to salvation (and averting the destruction of Earth) is to learn to forgive himself (Season 4, Episodes 9-10).

Forgiveness being a thoroughly-Christian concept, many Christian psychologists have carried out admirable work bringing forgiveness to center-stage in our understanding of healthy relational and emotional functioning. Perhaps the leading figure in forgiveness research and practice is Everett Worthington, whose autobiographical chapter in the excellent book Integrating Faith and Psychology: Twelve Psychologists Tell Their Stories gives us his tale of God’s guidance, leading him from serving as a nuclear engineer in the US Navy to becoming one of the world’s foremost experts in the psychology of forgiveness.

Worthington defines forgiveness as a two-step process. In Step One (decisional forgiveness), we choose to view the one who has done evil as a person of value, and we forswear vengeance. In Step Two (emotional forgiveness), we replace our negative emotions toward the perpetrator with positive emotions (Worthington & Sandage, 2016). This is done through a process that Worthington calls REACH (summarized at his website here). Worthington goes on to describe how these steps can be applied to the self, empowering us to accept ourselves as flawed, overcome guilt, resolve emotional distress, and learn to do better next time.

However, as I have argued elsewhere, this approach may involve a theological misunderstanding of forgiveness as shown to us in the Bible. As several theologians and biblical scholars have pointed out (e.g., Bash, 2007; Gowan, 2010; Volff, 2019), the purpose of forgiveness is not the emotional well-being of the forgiver, and the point of forgiveness is not an inner change in one’s attitude toward the perpetrator. Forgiveness in the Bible is grounded in the process of reconciliation, restoring the interpersonal relationship that was disrupted by the evil act. Forgiveness is an act of self-giving love on the part of the victim toward the perpetrator, which creates an inherent inconsistency in the idea that the perpetrator might offer himself a gift, one that is rightfully the victim’s to give, in a self-sacrificial act of self-love. So when I say that I cannot forgive myself for my sinful actions in Junior High, that is because it is not my place to offer myself forgiveness; that belongs to God, and to the person whom I betrayed and hurt.

Of all the positions that I have taken as a Christian psychologist, this is the one that has resulted in the most hard feelings among my colleagues, as if criticizing what I believe to be theological errors in popular approaches to forgiveness means that I am mean-spirited, or against forgiveness in general. On the contrary, I affirm the life-transforming power of forgiveness, and that is why I oppose misconceptions of what forgiveness is and how forgiveness works. As psychologists, we strive for a true understanding of the human condition, because misunderstanding humanity—even if the misunderstandings are well-intentioned—leads to negative outcomes.

Tangney and colleagues (2005), summarizing the empirical research on dispositional self-forgiveness, question the therapeutic value of self-forgiveness by saying that those who are the most willing to forgive themselves “appear to be rather self centered, insensitive, narcissistic individuals, who come up short in the moral emotional domain, showing lower levels of shame, guilt, and empathic responsiveness”. Christian counselors, however, are not left without any resources for working with clients who struggle with unhealthy guilt or self-loathing. There are many theoretical approaches and therapeutic practices that involve acceptance of past misdeeds, restructuring of unreasonable beliefs about moral standards, resolution of past conflicts, and so on.

I cannot forgive myself. But I can accept that I have done wrong, without obsessing over it. I can accept God’s offer of forgiveness, and resolve to do better in the future, God helping me.

Charles Hackney completed his PhD in Social and Personality Psychology at the University at Albany, SUNY. He currently serves as Chair of the Psychology Department at Briercrest College, where his scholarly interests include the positive psychology movement, terror management theory, and the relationship between psychology and Christianity. He is the author of Positive Psychology in Christian Perspective (2021, IVP Academic). Learn more about Charles at his faculty website and his Substack.

Personality diagnoses are expressed in descriptive language but always carry prescriptive
assumptions about what it means to be “healthy” or “disordered.” Unfortunately, contemporary
diagnostic perspectives (for example, those in the DSM-5-TR) excel only at describing the
“disordered” dimension, offering those with personality disorders no rationale for change except
avoiding practical impairments (i.e., avoiding consequences); likewise, diagnostic categories are
intentionally morally shy, purposefully refraining from making their implicit assumptions explicitly
prescriptive, and this shyness results in an underdeveloped vision for healthy personality. As
Christian therapists, we have much to gain from secular psychology in understanding
disorder and perhaps even more to offer by clearly articulating God’s vision for the good.
Not only so, but we also have Good News for those with personality disorders: God made us
good in His image, gave us good teleological purposes that offer deep fulfillment, and can heal
us with His perfect love and power.

Ben is a licensed psychologist who works with adults encountering a variety of challenges in their lives, including anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, OCD, history of trauma, addiction, and bipolar disorder. He is particularly interested in faith and spirituality as they arise during the course of therapy, and he also enjoys supporting others in the helping professions (therapists/counselors, social workers, doctors, nurses, pastors and priests, etc.).

In the 2004 Olympic Games, American shooter Matthew Emmons was competing in the fifty-meter three-positions rifle event. Many considered him the best shot in the world. Two days earlier he had already won a gold medal in another shooting event, and by the time of his last shot in this competition, Emmons held a commanding lead over his opponents. He was easily in first place, and only needed a moderately-good last shot to secure the gold medal. He took careful aim, put the shot into the center of the target… and was awarded zero points, dropping him from first to eighth place. He had done everything right, except for one thing. Emmons was in Lane 2, and he had fired at the target in Lane 3.

It was a great shot. But it was at the wrong target.

In today’s post, I want to say that much of the psychology that we rely on involves brilliant theoretical work, high-quality research, and helpful practical techniques. But aimed at the wrong target.
Targets are built into theories. When psychologists create theories of development, for example, they include ideas about the normative goal of maturity. Jane Loevinger’s theory of ego development directs us toward a goal of becoming an integrated, self-fulfilled, autonomous individual, as does Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, and Dan McAdam’s theory of the healthy narrative self.

Theories of counseling also have targets built into them, in the form of definitions of mental health. Such targets may take the form of self-actualization, as when Abraham Maslow said that our primary life task is “to find out what you are really like inside, deep down, as a member of the human species and as a particular individual.” It may be positive experiences, as when Albert Ellis encouraged the readers of his books to choose as the main purpose of their existence “short-range and long-range enjoyment,” a prescription which is contradicted by Viktor Frankl’s claim that enjoyment cannot be it’s own goal, but must be a pleasant side-effect of the pursuit of the true goal, which is meaning.

Whatever form it takes, these theories incorporate the theorist’s vision of the good life for humans, and how to go about pursuing it. As Gordon Allport put it, “All psychology rests on philosophical presuppositions of some sort”, and if a psychologist does not explicitly identify the philosophy that structures his or her ideas about the human condition, that simply means that the psychologist is being implicitly influenced by that philosophy. These presuppositions are the waters that we swim in, and the air that we breathe, and it is easy to take them as self-evident truths.

Philosopher Charles Taylor calls these presuppositions the “social imaginary,” that is, the way that we collectively imagine our lives and our interactions with others. It is a basic framework, operating by way of images, stories, experiences, and embodied social practices, and may not be explicitly articulated by the one who inhabits it.

In his examination of the social imaginary of the modern West, Taylor describes our current milieu as “the age of authenticity.” In this age, the good, the true, and the beautiful are grounded in the self, and decisions about human flourishing are wrapped up in self-definition. Relationships, careers, and religions are valid and good if and only if they serve the goal of self-fulfillment. Taylor calls this self-focused standard “expressive individualism.”

This expressive individualism can especially be found in my area of specialization: the positive psychology movement. Positive psychology is explicitly about happiness, flourishing, and the good life, and so positive psychologists are required to define these terms. In Authentic Happiness, Seligman presents his formula for the good life as “a life wrapped up in using your signature strengths to obtain abundant and authentic gratification”. Another prominent positive psychologist, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, claims that “Optimal experience is the ‘bottom line’ of existence. It is the subjective reality that justifies the actions and events of any life history”. Ed Diener, another towering figure in the movement, defines happiness in terms of subjective well-being, a combination of more positive emotions, fewer negative emotions, and the subjective evaluation of one’s life as a good life.

Taken together, these examples point to the importance of individual subjective gratification as the target toward which positive psychologists aim when they examine ways and means of living the good life. And they are not shy when it comes to prescribing this vision for everyone else. Diener and colleagues have spent years urging governments to reorient policy around maximization of subjective well-being scores. In a 2019 article in Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, Seligman presents his PERMA theory of happiness as a “grand and believable” point of moral orientation, grand enough, in his words, “to center politics and religion around”.

But what if these giants of positive psychology are aiming at the wrong target? Despite some positive psychologists’ claims to the contrary, this vision of the good life is not universal, but grounded in a particular cultural worldview and a particular point in history. Taylor points out that expressive individualism is a creature of the modern North Atlantic, and does not hold true when describing the rest of the world. Those who operate in a different cultural worldview may be pursuing happiness in ways that are incomprehensible to Western positive psychologists. As another philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, puts it: “[t]he good life, the fulfilled life, may be and often is unhappy by the standards of happiness studies” because these other persons are aiming at targets that are not considered legitimate by the adherents of expressive individualism.

As Christians, we ourselves endorse an alternative target for our pursuit of happiness, one that does not always align well with the goals of our secular colleagues. This is a vision of the good life in which the purpose of existence is not individual subjective gratification, but (to use the terms of the Westminster Shorter Catechism) “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” This definition of happiness involves the cultivation of a Christlike character, such that we come to live in right relationship with God, with each other, and with the created world, fulfilling the role for which we were made, as a royal priesthood in God’s service.

Pursuing this happiness involves cultivating virtuous habits such as gratitude, humility, penitence, and imitation of Christ’s self-sacrificial love. And when we say that the good life is about self-sacrifice and self-denial, let’s not make the mistake of saying that we sacrifice our happiness for the sake of another, because that formulation requires that we embrace the definition of happiness as gratification of the self. Self-giving love is not surrendering our happiness. Within a biblically-formed view of the world, self-giving love is happiness. Imitation of Jesus’ kenotic self-emptying is what we mean when say “happiness.”

If we wish to do psychology as Christians in a way that does justice to both, we have to ask ourselves, as psychologists, as counselors, as mental health professionals: what target are we aiming at? When we carry out research, do we use measures for our dependent variables that define well-being, successful marriages, and meaningful careers in terms of self-gratification? Are we pointing clients in the direction of happiness defined as self-gratification, or happiness defined as self-giving?

Like Matthew Emmons, we have to make sure that we are aiming at the right target.

*Note: An earlier version of this material was presented at the 2023 conference of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies*

Charles Hackney completed his PhD in Social and Personality Psychology at the University at Albany, SUNY. He currently serves as Chair of the Psychology Department at Briercrest College, where his scholarly interests include the positive psychology movement, terror management theory, and the relationship between psychology and Christianity. He is the author of Positive Psychology in Christian Perspective (2021, IVP Academic). Learn more about Charles at his faculty website and his Substack.

In a previous post, I discussed how I have led Boundaries groups over the years helping individual clients with understanding how to instill appropriate boundaries in their lives and yet, it does not seem to be enough. For this last post, I will describe a client’s situation in one of these Boundaries groups that was the inspiration for creating the Christlike Character Self-Evaluation (described in my second blog post) encouraging clients to examine their personal relationships and walk with Christ before instituting behavioral boundary changes. 

Several years ago, while co-leading a Boundaries group with another counselor, I met with a woman who was struggling with appropriate intergenerational boundaries within her family. For the purposes of this post, we will refer to her as Cynthia. Intergenerational boundaries can occur for a number of reasons. In Cynthia’s case, her mother had rejected Cynthia’s choice of husband several years ago, which prompted Cynthia to cut her mother out of her life. However, with Cynthia now having two young children of her own, her mother would like to be a part of her grandchildren’s lives and was willing to make it work. 

At first, Cynthia was very reluctant to have any contact with her mom whom she had not spoken to for several years. She described how she had created a boundary with her mother similar to Jesus’s instructions to his disciples in Matthew 10:14 when encountering a house that is not worthy of the message to “shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town” (ESV). Cynthia shook off her relationship and moved on with her life towards those who would accept her and her husband. As the years went by, though, Cynthia also longed for her mother’s guidance through her pregnancies and the birth of her two children. She wanted her kids to also have a grandma who could invest in their lives and perhaps also help out with childcare from time to time. 

Cynthia, and her husband, were God-honoring Christians and I could tell they wanted to do the right thing, but there was so much past hurt and worry to work through before attempting to renegotiate the boundary they had set several years ago. What if Cynthia’s mother still refused to accept Cynthia’s husband? What if she was verbally abusive about him in front of the children? What if she decided to reject the kids, as well? What could be the long-term effects on them if this reconciliation did not work out? 

In Cynthia’s case, I wanted to be very sensitive to all of her questions and worries. Unfortunately, we oftentimes will not receive direct answers from God about the ‘what ifs’ of relationships. We are encouraged to be strong and courageous and have faith that He will never leave us (Deut. 31:6). In seeing that Cynthia could benefit from individual counseling, we met over a series of several months starting with the Christlike Character Self-Evaluation.

1. Describe your current relationship with _____. (In Cynthia’s case, she was able to go into more detail through individual counseling regarding what led to her decision to cut her mother out of her life). 
2. Is the conflict you are experiencing something new or something that has always been there? (In Cynthia’s case, her tumultuous relationship with her mother had lasted several years, so there was a great deal to work through to pursue a relationship with her). 
3. Have you prayed, fasted, sought out Scripture, or talked with a Christian mentor about this conflict? (At this point in our sessions, I encouraged Cynthia, and her husband, to spend considerable amount of time in prayer. I also encouraged a time each week that they could fast together and perhaps speak to their pastor about their situation and get further spiritual guidance). 
4. Have you felt a conviction from the Holy Spirit about this conflict? If so, how has the Spirit convicted you? (In Cynthia’s case, she had already felt a great conviction from the Holy Spirit, which had prompted her to join the Boundaries group in the first place. I encouraged her to take time to listen to the Spirit. What passages of Scripture were repeatedly coming to her mind? How was God using people in Cynthia’s life to speak to her? Could she discern whether these things were of God or of something else?).
5. Are there elements of the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control) that you would like to work on that could potentially help with this conflict? (In Cynthia’s case, we worked considerably on what it means to be a peacemaker and how to love her mother as Christ loves her). 
6. How would Jesus handle this conflict (What would Jesus do)? (Over time, Cynthia felt convicted that Jesus wanted her and her mother to reconcile). 
7. Would you be willing to practice a more Christlike relationship with this person while learning how to respectfully communicate boundaries and boundary consequences? (Before letting all of those previously instilled boundaries go, we discussed what a step-by-step process could look like for Cynthia and her mother to begin a relationship again. This process included how to communicate her boundaries, as well as the consequences if these boundaries were not respected). 
8. Are you willing to accept that the other person (or people) may not be interested in reconciliation and/or on your terms? What are you willing (and not willing) to negotiate? (Thankfully, Cynthia’s mother was motivated to see her grandchildren, and she did not push back on the limits that Cynthia set for her. However, we did discuss beforehand in what ways Cynthia could be flexible if her mother was reluctant).

Our boundaries with our family, friends, work, and even church, will not always be perfect because we are far from perfect. Our families, friends, co-workers, and brothers and sisters in Christ are fallen, as well. Cynthia had plenty of bumps in the road while trying to have a renewed relationship with her mother. It is important that our clients understand that this is part of the change process. While there are certainly some situations in which clients should not entertain a relationship (abuse), we should be mindful of Christ’s desire for reconciliation for all people to Himself and with one another, as well as the unfortunate reality that some of the people with whom we desire reconciliation may not be interested. With the Christlike Character Self-evaluation, though, we can at least help our clients to be reconciled to God, who is able to provide them with perfect counsel and peace. 

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:17-20, ESV). 

Sarah J. Bracey, PhD LPC MHSP, serves as the program coordinator and associate professor of the undergraduate and graduate psychology programs at Welch College. She also provides soul care counseling and supervision with over 15 years of experience in the college campus setting. Dr. Bracey has led several Boundaries workshops with her clients and enjoys writing and speaking on mental health topics. She lives in northern Tennessee with her husband and son.

I began using this self-evaluation tool with some of the participants in my Boundaries groups several years ago. More recently, I have utilized it with my younger (college-age) clients who were struggling with their parental relationships. Keep in mind that I only use this tool with clients who are self-proclaimed Christians and open to using prayer and Scripture in the counseling setting. This evaluation can be used with anyone in the client’s life who he or she feels is crossing (or not respecting) a potential boundary or perhaps is looking to renegotiate a boundary that has previously been set.

The Christlike Character Self-Evaluation
1. Describe your current relationship with _____. 

2. Is the conflict you are experiencing something new or something that has always been there?  

3. Have you prayed, fasted, sought out Scripture, or talked with a Christian mentor about this conflict?

4. Have you felt a conviction from the Holy Spirit about this conflict? If so, how has the Spirit convicted you? 

5. Are there elements of the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control) that you would like to work on that could potentially help with this conflict? 

6. How would Jesus handle this conflict (What would Jesus do)?

7. Would you be willing to practice a more Christlike relationship with this person while learning how to respectfully communicate boundaries and boundary consequences? 

8. Are you willing to accept that the other person (or people) may not be interested in reconciliation and/or on your terms? What are you willing (and not willing) to negotiate?

Depending on the client and his or her situation, I may adapt these questions or add new ones. I have found that oftentimes the reason why boundaries tend to be rather troublesome is that we do not approach it with a Christlike relationship to the other person. In marriage, for example, we may often find ourselves struggling with loving our spouse as Christ loves the Church. We become too distracted with the needling effects of living with another fallen, sinful human that we forget to practice empathy and compassion. Starting with a Christlike relationship and practicing the fruit of the Spirit, will improve the boundary communications, and underlying belief system, well before making consequent boundary behavioral changes. In my next post, I will describe a case study that inspired the creation of such an evaluation tool for my clients. 

Sarah J. Bracey, PhD LPC MHSP, serves as the program coordinator and associate professor of the undergraduate and graduate psychology programs at Welch College. She also provides soul care counseling and supervision with over 15 years of experience in the college campus setting. Dr. Bracey has led several Boundaries workshops with her clients and enjoys writing and speaking on mental health topics. She lives in northern Tennessee with her husband and son.

The best-selling book, Boundaries (1992), by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, has been in print now for over 30 years. As a popular counseling resource for several decades in managing work and family relationships (as well as the subsequent Boundaries books), why do many of our clients continue to struggle with boundary problems again and again? I propose that our soul care clients may first need a self-evaluation of the quality of their relationships and spiritual walk before attempting behavioral boundary changes. In the next two posts, I will introduce a self-evaluation tool to use with clients, as well as the experience I had with one case study that inspired the creation of such an assessment.

Sarah J. Bracey, PhD LPC MHSP, serves as the program coordinator and associate professor of the undergraduate and graduate psychology programs at Welch College. She also provides soul care counseling and supervision with over 15 years of experience in the college campus setting. Dr. Bracey has led several Boundaries workshops with her clients and enjoys writing and speaking on mental health topics. She lives in northern Tennessee with her husband and son.

In my previous post I walked us through a biblical theology of life and death, grief and hope, and presented several exhortations about how this theology should rightly reorient the ways we encounter and understand loss, grief, and hope. In this final post I’d like to share a personal story about how this kind of theology has framed and grounded my own experience with the loss of my father, the grief that followed, and the hope that I stood on then and continue in till today. 

Where Hope Met Me

My dad was the most foundational person the Lord placed in my life from the very beginning. He was as intellectually sharp as they come—the kind of person who had knowledge about almost anything. But more than his intellectual prowess was his wise character, which was, I think, his most formative influence in my life. I remember that he began pressing me toward reasoned thinking when I was very young, perhaps about 7 years old if not earlier. I can’t ever remember a time he talked down to me—condescending to a child’s level of understanding. He spoke to me as an adult in both demeanor and candor. He asked me questions and probed me to reflect on the points he and I were making in the conversation. Some of my greatest memories of time with my dad were sitting and talking for hours in our living room, him rocking softly in his recliner with his legs crossed and me sitting on one of the other couches. We had the kind of relationship where raw, unfiltered thought was welcome and where ideas were met with critical but always warm consideration. 

In 2021, on a Saturday evening in August, I get a phone call from my mom at 11pm. My wife is in the bathroom getting ready for bed and I’m sitting on the couch in the living room. It’s unusual to get a call from my mom this late but I think it’s probably just something she needs to ask me real quick. I pick up the phone to the sound of her wailing as she cries out, “Dad’s dead!” 

The drive down from Houston to my hometown in South Texas that night is the longest 3-hour drive I think I’ve ever felt. God how I wish in this moment I were living just down the street or had the power of teleportation. Instead, I have to endure a grueling long drive in the middle of the night reeling from the reality that my dad is gone and that my mom is sitting in the house alone. “Why God?” I ask at the beginning of that drive. Now if I could put into words what the Holy Spirit is speaking to my heart in that moment it would be this: “He is with Jesus, his suffering is over, and you will see him again at the resurrection.” My entire soul shifts right there from grief descending to despair to grief overshadowed with hope. As my wife and I continue the drive south we listen to hymns the whole way and I cannot tell you how singing the words of “It is Well With My Soul” and “Because He Lives” is renewed in me. In that moment I can now lift up glorification to the Lord with those sweet and solemn words in a way I have been unable to before. Perhaps my dad having died is somehow part of God’s glory and my good. 

When we finally arrive, I find my mom devastated and in disbelief. She keeps repeating that he had just gone to sleep and then he wouldn’t wake up. I’m in shock as well, but I’m trying to hold it together right there. I just hold her while she weeps. After an hour or so, she starts to calm down a little. I lift her face in my hands and tell her to remember that dad is with Jesus right now. It is a wonder to witness in her—what is perhaps the same experience I had 3 hours earlier—a complete shift in her demeanor that I can only describe as her grief moving from despair to hope. She now has a look of assurance and comfort in her eyes through the tears. 

She remembered what she believed: those who love Jesus will pass through death into his presence. And my dad loved Jesus. 

Despite the pain, the grief, and the loss we had hope. Not later after the grief lessened, but right there in the midst we had hope and joy. Now the grief didn’t suddenly evaporate in the moment or even in the days and weeks after. My heart was broken. And at the same time Jesus was holding it together, filling it with his peace, his joy, and his comfort. The truths I had long held and rehearsed about life and death, grief and hope, had been forming me and building me up to face something as unimaginable as losing my dad. The shift from despair to hope wasn’t something I mustered within myself—it was the active presence of realities I already believed: Christ’s victory over death, the resurrection of those who love him, and the goodness of God even in suffering. The words I spoke to my mom were not improvised comfort; they were the gospel we have always believed and still believe. The grief was real and the lament was honest, but neither tipped into hopelessness because the Christian framework underneath them held their weight. 

From My Life to Others

In the season following my dad’s passing the grief was still present and heavy. And it would come in waves: a sorrowful phone call from mom, the impulse to call my dad with news, the conversations in the living room that will not happen anymore. What changed was not the grief itself but how I coped with grief. I never despaired because I know that the resurrection remains true regardless of how I felt any given day. I will see my dad again—his death was not the end of the story. I am certain of what the future is, that I will see him beside our savior at the end of all things. And I continually remember this truth and remind my mom and all others who have lost a loved one in Christ—as Christ lives, so shall all those who know him. 

Several months later I shared this very testimony at one of my university’s student convocations. I felt moved by the Spirit to be a witness to the gospel through my personal testimony of loss, grief, and hope. I exhorted the students to let the testimony of my dad’s death prompt them to examine their own lives in the light of Christ’s death and resurrection. Death is not the end for Christians, but we will overcome it because Christ has achieved the victory over sin and death. The climactic statement I made was, 

I’m not worried about my dad, he’s good. I’m worried about you. If by my dad’s death some of you would be saved, then praise God for his goodness in taking my dad. I want to see you with me and my dad, worshipping Jesus together.

I didn’t want my hope to be reserved privately but to be witnessed publicly. I wanted this biblical theology to move outward from my life into others. 

A couple of years after I gave that message, a student watched the recording and wrote a reflection—an excerpt of which I had the privilege of reading:

To understand his father’s story, you have to understand the gospel. Since death is the punishment for sin, and Jesus never sinned, death had no claim over him. Death could not hold him because he deserved eternal life. … I always thought that death had no claim over him just because he was God. That is probably partially true, but it makes sense that death had no claim over him because the one thing that gave death claim over humans is sin, which Jesus never did. That is so fascinating. God uses our hard things to give us a testimony for everyone else.

This theology of loss, grief, and hope is not just a personal reorientation but a witness for the entire body of Christ and the watching world. Death is the enemy, but Jesus has conquered death. We grieve, but we grieve differently, standing on the hope of Christ and the resurrection. 

A robust theology of life and death, grief and hope does not make loss painless but bearable, meaningful, and even generative. The goal is not to simply understand these truths but to inhabit them and be formed by them. We should be anchored in the truth that our hope is in nothing other than Jesus Christ, and that when death arrives it has already been defeated—the darkness of loss and grief no longer has dominion but has given way to the light of life that is Christ. Through loss and grief, it is well with my soul; and because he lives, I can face tomorrow. 

Nathaniel (Nate) Marino, MA, is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Houston Christian University, with graduate degrees in Research and Experimental Psychology (Rutgers University–Camden) and Theological Studies (Houston Christian University). His research centers on social and personality psychology, with particular focus on moral cognition and behavior and the development of character and virtue. He is also deeply interested in the philosophical and methodological foundations of modern psychology, particularly in reframing them through a distinctly Christian worldview. Flowing from this, Nate is committed to pursuing psychological inquiry that is Christ-centered and biblically and theologically grounded. In future work, he hopes to explore how a Christ-centered psychology might shape Christian culture and church life, including discipleship, spiritual formation, church governance, evangelism, and practical theology.