Samara is a Christian woman who works in healthcare and who was starting to plan ahead for her retirement. [1] She lived alone with her small dog until one day, while taking her dog for a walk at a public park near her home, her dog was suddenly and violently attacked and killed by a larger dog. She presented to therapy a couple of weeks later in a state of shock; she was scared, frequently tearful, easily startled, and experienced low appetite and sleep difficulties. She met diagnostic criteria for Acute Stress Disorder, but it was too early to determine whether her symptoms would persist into PTSD or if her symptoms would remit in a few weeks with some therapeutic support and coping strategies.

The first couple of sessions focussed on emotion regulation strategies and addressing faith-related questions. She was wracked with questions about why God would take this precious companion from her and why He would allow it to happen in such a shocking and violent manner. Like Job’s friends, she wondered if she was being punished for sin in her life. She already knew the Lord and had seen evidence of His goodness to her, so she just could not see any good that could possibly come from this violent and senseless death. She tried to let it go, but variations of “Why, God?” kept replaying over and over again in her mind. She simply could not come up with any satisfying answers to silence these questions… and neither could I.

Weeks turned into months, but her symptoms did not remit. She was sleeping poorly, she had recurrent nightmares and flashbacks of the attack, she avoided going near the park where it happened, she was easily startled by large dogs and other reminders of the attack, she was frequently tearful, and she struggled with brain fog and poor concentration. She felt sad, angry, shocked, and confused. She had been alone for many years and had largely accepted this as her lot in life, but she had never felt as lonely as she did right now. The silence at home was deafening. She did not have any particularly close friends and the people who knew her best offered well-intentioned, but unhelpful advice: It was just a dog. Maybe you shouldn’t have relied so much on this pet for comfort and companionship. Just get a new dog and you’ll feel better. If you sell your house and move in with your adult daughter you won’t feel so sad and lonely. The underlying message: stop feeling this way – it’s time to move on.

Rather than adding to the unhelpful advice or critiques, I simply listened to Samara’s story. As I listened, I discovered that this was only the latest in a long list of complex traumas. Abandonment was a recurrent theme in her life. Samara survived her mother’s attempts to abort her in the womb. She was raised in an orphanage where she was neglected and where two of her closest childhood friends died from preventable illnesses. She was abused and abandoned by her ex-husband, who held positions of power in the church and the military. She raised her two children as a single parent while living in poverty. She survived cancer. Her son died tragically. And then her dog was violently killed in her arms. Her heart cried out: God, why did you let this happen when I was just beginning to feel like myself again after my son’s death? And, even more poignantly: Why did you break my heart again?

We discussed how God sometimes grants peace by providing answers, whereas other times He provides child-like faith to trust Him even when we don’t have the answers. We considered ways that God does not rush us to “answers” or solutions, nor does He expect us to have a stoic and unemotional faith. Rather, God is compassionate and He permits us to sit with unanswered questions and unresolved feelings for a time. We can lament, confess our faith, and wait for Him patiently. She expressed feelings of loss, longing for comfort and relational connection, and a deep sense of unlovability. She felt let down by people and by God, reinforcing her difficulties trusting and seeking emotional closeness with others. We worked on exposure therapy, though this didn’t seem to penetrate to her deeper faith questions. Despite all this, she also recalled clear evidence of God’s provision throughout her life with a deep sense of gratitude. She was heartbroken yet she never stopped trusting God. I knew all of these faith statements were true and yet I wanted to be able to offer more. Aware of my own feelings of inadequacy and helplessness, I had to preach all of these things to myself even as I was striving to model for her how to embrace uncertainty and “not knowing.”

Using a similar list to the one I described in the post last week, we considered the different purposes God has in allowing Christians to suffer. We did not arrive at any definitive answers to her why questions, but she did discover a newfound curiosity about the possibility that God might be using this event for the good of other people beside herself, to reveal God’s character, or to cultivate communion with Christ in His sufferings. For example, we considered the Psalms of lament. We meditated on Jesus’ anger at sin and death despite knowing He would raise Lazarus from the dead just a few moments later. Though the violent death of pet dog might seem insignificant compared to other kinds of suffering, we affirmed that God cared about this small creature and what this beloved pet meant to Samara. We also considered ways that her dog’s death shares some similarities with the shocking, violent, unprovoked, and unjust death of Jesus on the cross – yet, with one major difference in that Jesus willingly faced abandonment and sacrificed Himself in order to save sinners, including her and I. We reflected on themes of patient endurance and the eschatological hope of future restoration.

There are several clients I have worked with who, like Samara, are working through chronic and severe suffering that seems to have no immediate answers or solutions. There is “Hagar” who faces profound isolation and abandonment yet demonstrates fierce survival, resourcefulness, and persistence. Hagar has witnessed the effects of intergenerational trauma following the sexual abuse of multiple family members, including abuse perpetrated by a family member that was dismissed by church leadership. She chronically endures harsh criticism, judgmentalism, and emotional neglect in multiple relationships in her life. She is surrounded by broken people and broken relationships; when she looks around her there is much evidence of sin and brokenness and little of redemption and restoration. Hagar holds on to her faith, but she also questions why God doesn’t do more to protect the vulnerable. She strives to earn God’s approval of her own efforts to care for and protect others, but she has given up on hoping that God would protect her.

There is also “Ona” who endures and suffers in her care for others. She was parentified from a young age. As a child, her parents forced her to be their designated driver for drinking parties. As a young adult, her father did not take responsibility for managing his diabetes, relying on Ona to care for him, and so he died from diabetes-related health complications shortly after she moved away for university. Her mother was emotionally labile and regularly made suicidal threats as a form of emotional manipulation. Ona lives with fibromyalgia and chronic health issues; she is frequently in and out of the hospital for one health issue or another. She never dared to imagine that she could some day have a future with a husband and children. To her surprise, she did get married, but then she and her husband struggled with infertility. Eventually, her first child was born, but her son had significant medical, dietary, and behavioural issues. Then, they were surprised with a natural pregnancy soon after, but their second child miscarried due to a gruesome abnormality. In many ways her life seemed like a living demonstration of Murphy’s Law – that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” One time her husband even got stuck in the elevator when coming to visit her in the hospital. It might have been comical had it not been so unrelenting. Ona desires to trust God, but she desperately wonders if God will ever give her a break from her daily struggles.

I often feel inadequate and helpless when working with clients like these. I am acutely aware that I cannot offer any meaningful solutions to fix their problems or circumstances. I know that I cannot help them on my own when they have few (if any) other people in their life to turn to for support. (Interestingly, all three of these women work in helping professions providing support to others.) Samara’s why questions have not gone away and her work in therapy is still not finished. Neither of us know where this journey will go and if/how this pain will be resolved in her life. Nevertheless, when asked about her perceptions of therapy, she highlighted how comforting and powerful it was simply to acknowledge her pain and to be given permission to lament to God. And so I will continue pointing my clients to God’s sovereignty and (especially) to His compassion and goodness in the midst of suffering. We may not get all the answers we desire, so instead I pray that God’s strength will be revealed despite my weaknesses and limitations, that He will send others into my clients’ lives to embody and demonstrate Christ’s love in action, and that my clients’ trust in God will deepen so that they can endure patiently with and for Him, entrusting themselves to His wisdom and care. This is the best that I can offer.

[1] Samara is a composite, based primarily on one person. Several identifying details have been changed to protect privacy while other details have been added or adapted from other people whose struggles are consistent with hers. The name Samara means protected or watched over by God.

Dr. Strating completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Windsor as well as his residency with the London Clinical Psychology Residency Consortium. His areas of focus include working with relationship concerns, difficulties managing or engaging with emotion, anxiety, panic, anger, grief, depression, self-criticism, perfectionism, trauma, and OCD. He is also experienced in research as well as teaching and supervising therapist trainees.

He is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Redeemer University and a practicing Clinical Psychologist at Abide Psychology.

In the previous post, we considered how the Christian’s response to suffering is not one of bitter resignation or stoic assent to abstract principles of faith. We also considered God’s character in light of suffering; God is neither passive, apathetic, distant, or uncaring in our suffering, nor does He take pleasure in the pain of believers. Instead, God often uses suffering to invite us into a deeper relationship of trust in His sovereignty, goodness, and compassion. The Christian response to suffering, then, is characterized by surrender and lament, which are acts of trust: I do not understand what God is doing, and I may desperately wish that my circumstances were different, but I choose to entrust myself to Him.

Next, we consider following questions: If God really does work in all things – including suffering – for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28), how might I see or understand the good that might come from my current circumstances? But, what if I cannot see or understand the good in my present suffering?  In this post, we will look at two practical tools for engaging with these complex and challenging questions. [1]

Seeing God’s Sovereignty and Goodness in Suffering

As I have walked alongside clients who are wrestling with these kinds of questions, I felt compelled to spend some time this summer reading a book called Suffering and Sovereignty by Brian H. Cosby (2012). This book is a summary of John Flavel’s writings as a representative example of Puritan perspectives on suffering and God’s sovereignty. It covers topics such as the origin and nature of suffering, God’s purposes in ordaining suffering, and proper Christian responses to suffering. I found this short book helpful for identifying ways to respond to suffering by systematically considering a range of purposes for which God permits or ordains suffering.

Regarding the origin of suffering, Flavel affirms that suffering is ultimately due to sin, either as a direct effect of personal sin or an indirect effect of living under the curse in a fallen and broken world. In this way, God is not the author of evil but He does permit evil as a form of fatherly discipline for sin, leading to contrition and repentance, or else He uses evil for His glory and the good of His people (e.g., Gen.50:20). Clients often feel guilt in response to suffering, so one immediate implication is that we must be very careful to help clients discern whether their guilty feelings reflect true guilt over personal sin versus false guilt in response to living in a fallen and broken world (Job; Jn. 9:3).

Next, if God does indeed use suffering for good, then it is helpful to consider God’s purposes in allowing suffering. In general, God uses suffering:

1. to promote the glory of God
2. to promote the good of God’s people, or
3. to serve as signs and effects of God’s warning and judgment on unbelievers

So, how can we carefully and prayerfully consider ways that God might be using our present circumstances of pain and suffering for good? The following is a list of questions for systematic reflection, derived from Cosby (2012). [2]

How might God be using this situation in my life… 

• to reveal, deter, or mortify sin?
  • Is God warning me or calling me to repentance?
  • Confess and repent from willful sin (Ps. 32) or pray for God to reveal hidden sin in your life (Ps. 19:12-13).
• to promote my ultimate good?
  • What long-term benefits might come from this, even if I don’t see any immediate benefits right now?
  • How might this produce godliness and spiritual fruit in my life (e.g., faith and patience)?
• to promote the good of others?
  • How can my response to suffering serve as a witness to other believers or to the world around me?
• to further His kingdom or bring glory to Himself?
• to reveal God’s character?
  • (e.g.) God’s wisdom, faithfulness, fatherly love and correction, goodness, grace and mercy, sovereignty, immutability, justice and righteousness, all-sufficiency
• to relinquish the temporal for the eternal?
  • (e.g.) to loosen my grip on temporal and earthly things
  • (e.g.) to reveal the vanity of earthly things
  • (e.g.) to reveal the true nature of comfort and contentment beyond my present circumstances or my earthly life
  • (e.g.) to make me long for heaven and eternal life in the presence of God
• to produce a sincere faith, devoid of hypocrisy?
  • Do I really trust God as much as I say/think I do? Am I excessively doubtful or fearful?
  • Am I striving to take control of my own life, providing for my own comfort, security, satisfaction, achievement and fulfilment, or ultimate joy?
  • Do I really submit my will to God’s will, seeking to please Him and enjoy Him forever, or do I strive to please myself or others more than God?
• to encourage fellowship with God?
  • Is God using this to draw me closer to Him, for example, through Scripture, prayer, and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper?
• to cultivate communion with Christ, the greatest sufferer (Rom. 8:17; Phil. 3:10-11; Col. 1:24)?

Cosby’s book concludes by briefly considering the believer’s response to suffering. According to Flavel, our response to suffering can provide evidence of the believer’s salvation and assurance of faith. Whereas the unbeliever responds by rejecting God, experiencing excessive sorrow and despair, or turning to oneself apart from Christ, the believer responds with faith, thanksgiving, and obedience. God-glorifying responses contain both passive or “involuntaristic” elements as well as active or “voluntaristic” elements. Passively, the believer responds with humble submission to God’s will, patient endurance, and sustaining joy and thanksgiving. Actively, the believer seeks to reflect on and make profitable use of afflictions for the strengthening of faith and one’s growth in sanctification. Lastly, Flavel reminds us that all suffering and afflictions are momentary and “insignificant” compared to the eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:17), so the believer may find perseverance, joy, and hope by meditating on the believer’s resurrection and hope of heaven.

Trusting in God’s Compassion When We Cannot See the Good

Overall, I found Cosby’s book to be helpful in considering the range of purposes God has in allowing or ordaining suffering, which we can then apply on a specific, case-by-case basis. Pain naturally narrows our focus in on the inner experience of pain or the external source of pain, so we often need wise counsel from others who can help us widen and expand our perspective. This book helps us do this.

However, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for us to see or understand the good that God is working through our suffering, especially when faced with suffering that is severe, prolonged, or seemingly senseless. I see this regularly in cases of complex trauma characterized by chronic loss, neglect, conflict, or sexual abuse – especially when these come at the hands of trusted authorities, such as a parent, spouse, or church leader/community. Many clients in these circumstances greatly struggle with questions such as, What if I cannot see or understand the good in my present suffering? How should I respond to God when my pain is so overwhelming that I can barely function day-to-day, when God feels so distant or absent from me that I am tempted to give up on hoping for His care or protection, or when those around me don’t seem to understand and respond in ways that are either unhelpful or only serve to increase my burdens and pain? What do I do when my faith tells me to trust God, but my lived experience repeatedly seems to tell me that I am alone and helpless?

Cosby’s book emphasizes God’s sovereignty in suffering, yet God’s compassion in suffering remains less explicit. This book ultimately points us to the correct responses of humble submission and surrender, patient endurance, and eschatological hope for the joy that awaits when Christ will bring an end to pain and suffering, when all things will be made new, and when we live eternally in the presence of God. However, this does not mean that God expects us to deny our pain or manufacture positive feelings in this present life of sin and brokenness. Rather, He invites us to go beyond an intellectual profession of faith to a faith that is lived relationally with the triune God and in Christian community. In the psalms of lament, God gives us the blueprint and the language for bringing our pain to Him. We meditate on the ways that Christ intercedes on our behalf as a sympathetic high priest (Heb. 4:14-16), that the Spirit intercedes on our behalf with groanings too deep for words (Rom. 8:26-27), and that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us (Heb. 12:1-2) and the saints before the throne room of God who cry out for justice and mercy, shouting “How long, Oh Lord?” (Rev. 6:10). We are called to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2), speaking the truth in love (Eph. 4:15), patiently and compassionately sharing the comfort we ourselves have received from God (2 Cor. 1:3-4). Though we may feel alone and helpless, we are never truly alone without support.

The pain might not fully go away in this present life and we might not be able to see the good that God is doing through our suffering, but we need not be confined to the limits of our finite perspectives or experiences. Instead of trusting in our faith, we can learn to trust the object of our faith; namely, the God who is sovereign, good, loving, patient, and compassionate. And so we strive to alleviate suffering where we can and we wait patiently for – and with – God in the midst of suffering that persists beyond our understanding or control.

This is expressed beautifully in the full version of the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as Christ did, this sinful world

As it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right

If I surrender to His will;

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life

And supremely happy with Him

Forever and ever in the next.

Amen.

Next, in the third and final post in this series, we will see examples of how this gets worked out in a few select therapy cases.

[1] My plan for the third and final post of this series is to provide some case examples from my own clinical work.

[2] Each question will likely have varying degrees of relevance depending on the particular person and situation.

Dr. Strating completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Windsor as well as his residency with the London Clinical Psychology Residency Consortium. His areas of focus include working with relationship concerns, difficulties managing or engaging with emotion, anxiety, panic, anger, grief, depression, self-criticism, perfectionism, trauma, and OCD. He is also experienced in research as well as teaching and supervising therapist trainees.

He is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Redeemer University and a practicing Clinical Psychologist at Abide Psychology.

Suffering has a way of exposing what we really believe. It is relatively easy to affirm that God is good, loving, and sovereign when life is going well. But when suffering comes – especially when it is severe, prolonged, or seemingly senseless – our theological convictions can suddenly become much more difficult to hold onto. We may find ourselves asking, If God is good and sovereign, why did He allow this to happen? Where is He in my suffering? Can I really trust Him when I cannot understand what He is doing? 

God’s Sovereignty and Goodness

Scripture presents God as sovereign over all things. He directs the course of nations (Prov. 21:1; Dan. 2:21), works through the human heart and will (Prov. 16:9; Phil. 2:13), and exercises His providential care over the smallest details of our lives – even the hairs on our heads (Matt. 10:29-31). Nothing is ultimately outside His sovereign rule or beyond His providential care. And yet, this sovereignty is not arbitrary or detached from His character: “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Rom. 8:28).

Christian faith does not promise that suffering will be eliminated in this life. Instead, Scripture points us toward something deeper: the transformation of suffering. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” illustrates this. He pleaded with God for its removal, but God responded, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Paul learned to receive his suffering differently because God could use it for a greater good. Similarly, believers are encouraged to find joy in trials because the testing of faith produces perseverance and maturity (Rom. 5:1-5; Jas. 1:2-4). This is not bitter resignation or apathy. Christian surrender is an act of trust: I do not understand what God is doing, and I may desperately wish that my circumstances were different, but I choose to entrust myself to Him.

When We Cannot See the Good

The challenge then, especially in suffering, is learning to trust His goodness and wisdom when we cannot see how He is working for our good. Christians rightly turn to the promise of Romans 8:28, yet there is an important distinction between knowing that God is working for good and being able to see what that good is. The story of Job reminds us of this. Job suffers catastrophic losses and repeatedly asks why, yet God never gives him the detailed explanation he seeks. Instead, Job encounters God Himself and is reminded of the vast difference between God’s wisdom and his own (Job 38-42).

In fact, suffering confronts us with the limits of our perspective. We see a small portion of the story; God sees the whole. We experience the present; God sees the beginning, middle, and end. We know what we have lost; God knows what He is accomplishing. And sometimes, at least in this life, we may never fully understand how our suffering fits within His purposes.

This can be difficult when we are accustomed to solving problems and controlling our own lives. When we cannot understand why, we may become consumed with trying to make sense of what happened. We ruminate, replay events, imagine alternative outcomes, and search for an explanation that will finally make the suffering comprehensible. But faith sometimes asks us to live faithfully without having all the answers.

God’s Compassion

There is another danger, however. In emphasizing God’s sovereignty, we can unintentionally portray Him as distant, passive, or indifferent to human suffering. Scripture gives us a different picture: God is sovereign AND compassionate.

God describes Himself as compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness (Ex. 34:6). The Psalms portray Him as a Father who has compassion on His children (Ps. 103:13) and as one who is “close to the brokenhearted” (Ps. 34:18). Jesus Himself weeps at Lazarus’s tomb (John 11:35), even though He knows what He is about to do. Even God’s discipline is described relationally: “the Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Heb. 12:6). His purposes are not sadistic attempts to inflict pain, nor is suffering evidence that God takes pleasure in our distress. Rather, the God who sovereignly works through suffering is also the God who loves His children and desires their ultimate good.

This matters when we minister to those who suffer. Telling someone, “God is sovereign, so you need to trust Him,” may be theologically true but pastorally incomplete. The suffering person also needs to know that the God whose sovereignty they are being asked to trust is good, loving, patient, and compassionate.

Responding to Suffering with Trust, Patience, and Hope

Suffering can test and refine our faith. Peter describes trials as testing the genuineness of faith, like gold refined by fire (1 Pet. 1:6-7). We can therefore see suffering as an opportunity for our faith to move from something we profess intellectually to something we actually live relationally.

Severe suffering can expose the gap between what we say we believe and what we actually trust. Yet Christians sometimes respond to suffering by trying to close this gap too quickly. We may offer explanations or solutions, quote Romans 8:28, or simply encourage someone to “trust God.” These responses are often well-intended, but they can minimize another person’s pain. Job’s friends remind us how easily theological explanations can become unhelpful when they are offered without compassion. Scripture reminds us that God’s apparent “slowness” is not indifference but patience (2 Pet. 3:9); sometimes our expectation that God should act quickly can become an additional source of suffering, when what He invites us to do is patiently wait for – and with – Him.

At the same time, we can become so focused on our suffering that we lose sight of God altogether. Pain naturally draws our attention inward. We become preoccupied with what happened, what we have lost, what might happen next, and how powerless we feel. We are finite, but God is not. We are weak, but God is strong. We cannot see the whole story, but God can. We cannot control everything that happens to us, but God remains sovereign.

Faith does not require us to deny our pain or manufacture positive feelings. The Psalms give us permission to lament, question, grieve, and cry out to God. But lament is fundamentally different from abandoning God. The person who cries, “How long, O LORD?” (Ps. 13) is still turning toward Him.

Perhaps, then, the deepest invitation of suffering is not to understand everything God is doing but to learn to trust the God who is doing it.

This kind of trust is not passive resignation or stoic acceptance. It is an active surrender of our limited perspective to God’s greater wisdom. It is the gradual discovery that we can bring our questions, grief, anger, fear, and confusion into relationship with a God who is both sovereign over our circumstances and compassionate toward us within them.

We may not be able to see the good. We may not understand the purpose. We may desperately wish that the suffering would end. But even there, we can learn to say: “I do not understand, but I trust You. I do not like this, but I will not turn away from You. I cannot see what You are doing, but I believe You are good – and I will entrust myself to Your compassionate care.”

Dr. Strating completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Windsor as well as his residency with the London Clinical Psychology Residency Consortium. His areas of focus include working with relationship concerns, difficulties managing or engaging with emotion, anxiety, panic, anger, grief, depression, self-criticism, perfectionism, trauma, and OCD. He is also experienced in research as well as teaching and supervising therapist trainees.

He is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Redeemer University and a practicing Clinical Psychologist at Abide Psychology.

Many people, Christian and not, have heard the refrain “What would Jesus do?” or the slang “WWJD.” The problem with the phrase is not that it is false—Jesus really is the great ethical exemplar, and there are worse instincts than asking what he would do. The problem is that the question is too narrow in its scope. When we fix our eyes upon Jesus, we should not be examining only his behavior, any more than we should restrict ourselves to only his expressions, or his teachings, or his comfort. When we look upon Jesus our Lord we should see him for all that he is—the full expression of humanity in perfect unity with the divine.
So the question should not be narrowly “What would Jesus… fill in the blank?” It should be more holistically “Who is Jesus?”—and from there we ask what he would do, say, think, and feel. But here is where we must turn from vision to demand. Having beheld him, we cannot leave the matter as a picture we admire. We must become what we have envisioned.

Beholding becomes becoming
Paul makes the movement explicit: “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory” (2 Cor 3:18)¹. Contemplation is not the end of the sentence. Beholding is the means by which we are changed into what we behold. The same logic runs through the renewal texts: believers “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Col 3:10), and are called to “put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24). Alongside these stands the New Testament’s call to imitatio Christi, in which believers are exhorted to pattern their lives after Christ’s humility and sacrificial loving-kindness (Eph 4–5; Phil 2:3–11).

This call to imitation does not demand exact correspondence with every particular of Christ’s life, as though his unique existence could be literally replicated by us. It means rather that Christ, in revealing true humanity, establishes a pattern to be reproduced in the lives of those who belong to him. This is the difference between imitation and impersonation. We are not asked to reenact his biography. We are being remade in his likeness.

The future has already begun
It is tempting to file all of this under “eventually”—a destiny to be received at the resurrection, with the present left to grim maintenance in the meantime. But Scripture will not permit the delay. A thing’s telos reveals not only its future but its present orientation, and if our destiny is conformation to the image of Christ, then Christology tells us not only what we will become but how we were created to function now.
Paul’s own reasoning works this way. The Spirit who raised Christ from the dead already indwells us (Rom 8:11), so the life of the age to come is not merely anticipated but already operative, already exerting real and transforming pressure on the present. Because Christ’s death and resurrection have ruptured the old order, the new self is not a future issue but a present wardrobe: “you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). We live after Christ now—not waiting to do so in the age to come. We are free and alive in Christ now.

Hebrews holds the tension without flinching. Those sanctified by Christ’s offering are described simultaneously as holy and as being made holy, as those who have been perfected and as those still growing toward perfection. That paradox is a pastoral gift in both directions. It refuses the moralism that measures us by our last performance, and it refuses the despair that concludes nothing is actually happening. Something is happening. It is not finished. Both are true at once, and neither cancels the other.

Conformity as the healing of the whole person
This is why conformity to Christ is not one item on a list of spiritual disciplines but the shape of healing itself. Notice what the New Testament’s conformation texts touch. Identity is reconstituted, as those who once located themselves in Adam’s story are relocated in Christ’s. Agency is restored, as the Spirit reconstitutes the capacity for purposive obedience that Sin had disabled. Community is reordered, since Colossians 3 and Ephesians 4 move immediately from the new self to the practices of forgiveness, truthful speech, patience, and love. The body is included, not left behind, because our destiny is bodily resurrection and not escape from embodiment. Affections, thoughts, will, relationships, and flesh are all inside the scope of the promise.
Behavior modification cannot reach that far, which is finally why “What would Jesus do?” is insufficient as a program of healing. It addresses the outermost layer of a person while leaving the deeper layers—what she believes she is, whom she belongs to, where she is going—untouched. A Christological anthropology addresses the person entire, because the Christ we are being conformed to assumed a complete human nature and healed what he assumed.

It is worth adding that this is not a vision reserved for believers alone. Every human being is patterned after Christ’s humanity and called toward the destiny revealed in him, even though not all will finally arrive there. Any discipline that studies human persons in the present, including psychology, is studying creatures whose nature is oriented toward a destiny that transcends what empirical investigation alone can disclose. Natural capacities can be studied in natural terms, and the disciplines have much value to say about them. But those capacities are penultimate realities meant to serve a higher end, and it is only in light of that end that the full significance of the person in front of us comes into view.

Become what you behold
So the exhortation is this: do not settle for a vision. Look long at Christ—his origin as the archetype you were made after, his life as the pattern you were designed for, his likeness as the end you are guaranteed—and then live as one who has seen him. Put on the new self, because you already wear it. Forgive, because you have been relocated into the story of one who forgave. Pray as he prayed, depend on the Spirit as he depended, and orient your whole life toward the end that has already begun. And do it without fear that the project depends on your consistency.

As Dane Ortlund put it:

“Christ loved his own all the way through death itself. What must that mean for you? It means, first, that your future is secure. If you are his, heaven and relief is coming, for you cannot be made un-his. He himself made you his own, and you can’t squirm out of his grasp. And it means, second, that he will love you to the end.”²

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He became like us so that we might become like him. That is our hope, and it is the healing of the whole person.

[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), 211.

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 am a fan of mixed martial arts. My own journey in the martial arts began in 1995, and has included hapikido, judo, jujitsu, bujinkan, bartitsu, and medieval European martial arts. The first psychological study I ever designed involved personality and martial arts training. I watched with enthusiasm the gonzo spectacles of the first UFC tournaments, when nobody knew what they were doing. My first book was about the psychology of the martial arts. I have opinions about the recent match between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano. Now that I’m middle-aged and my body is, let’s say, not what it used to be, my efforts are focused on helping my children in their training (kuk sool won and judo).

But I also have a great deal of uncertainty about mixed martial arts. I see fighters displaying admirable character, but I also see trash-talking and rampant narcissism. Fans are drawn into the destructive world of sports betting, and athletes are drawn into the self-destruction of steroid use. Both as a Christian and as a psychologist, I am troubled by what I see. 

I am not alone, and my concerns are reflected by others when they look at all kinds of sports. Whether we are talking about football, gymnastics, or elite rowing, the moral, spiritual, physical, and psychological effects of sports call out for wisdom among those of us who are in (or adjacent to) that world. In this post, I will very briefly touch on the tensions among Christians when it comes to this topic, and relate them to psychologists’ positions on sport participation.

Christians have a long and complicated relationship with the world of sports, extending back to the early Church. On the one hand, recreation and exercise are unquestionably good for us, but on the other hand, sports are often associated with the more sinful aspects of the surrounding culture. The two sides of the debate have traditionally been either that Christians should get exercise but avoid sports, or that we should figure out how to do sports in a Christian way (Harvey, 2014). 

Early Christians had to come to grips with the ritual displays of pagan worship, and the brutal treatment of athletes’ bodies, in Roman games. In the Fourth Century, excommunication was proclaimed against Christian gladiators and charioteers at the Council of Arles. In the Fifth Century, Emperor Theodoris took a different approach and tried to Christianize the games, including making different chariot-racing teams represent different positions on doctrinal issues. I can only imagine what something like that would look like now: “Be sure to purchase your tickets for tonight’s basketball game, folks! The Cleveland Calvinists are facing off against the New York Arminians, in match-up you won’t want to miss!”

In the medieval era, many clergy condemned tournaments, arguing that competing in them promoted all seven of the deadly sins, while others said that tournaments were ways to cultivating the knightly, and Christian, virtues. In the Reformation, Luther and Zwingli both claimed that Christian education should include physical education classes (including combat sports such as wrestling and sword-fighting). Puritans approved of sports, as long as they did not take place on Sundays, involve violence, or come with an associated culture of gambling and vice (Hoffman, 2010). 

Much of our current discussions about sports are shaped by the “muscular Christianity” movement of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries (Mathiesen, 2008). Christians within that movement emphasized the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, the importance of physical strength for carrying out Gospel work, and the role of sports in developing good character. Opposing them were those Christians who saw the sporting world as a domain thoroughly infested with organized crime, cheating, egocentrism, drunkenness, and gambling.

Psychological research on sports participation seems to support the idea that physical activity is good for us, at multiple levels, but only if we do it right. In general, exercise has been shown to confer psychological benefits at the same level as cognitive therapy (Lawlor and Hopker, 2001) and antidepressant medication (Blumenthal et al., 1999). However, exercise either confers no benefit, or makes things worse, when athletes are pushed too hard, or when the motivation for engagement is tied up with physical appearance (Szabo, 2000). 

The idea that sports build character also shows this pattern. When coaches, for example, reward and model morally-upright behavior, athletes show improvements in character (Bolter & Weiss, 2013; Wandzilak et al., 1988), but when coaches show disrespect and rule-breaking, so do the athletes under their authority.

I am sympathetic to the concerns of my brothers and sisters in Christ who believe that Christians cannot be a part of the world of sports (especially at an elite level) without immersing themselves in the destructive and self-destructive aspects of that world. But as a Christian and a psychologist, guided by scholarship in both domains, I find myself siding with the “muscular Christians.” When done properly, with regard for the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of athletes, Christian psychologists can endorse sports participation as useful in facilitating the growth and flourishing of clients, and of ourselves.

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.

At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus put a question to his disciples that he had not asked before. He began with the safe version—“Who do people say that I am?”—and then narrowed it until it landed: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15) [1]. It is worth noticing what that question does. It does not ask the disciples to assess their own progress, name their failures, or account for themselves. It asks them to look at him. And yet no question reaches further into who they are.

This is the claim I want to press: Christ is the paradigm of true humanity—our origin, our pattern, our end. By paradigm I mean something more than an example to be admired or a model to be copied. Christ is the definitive instance of what human existence is supposed to be, the original against which every other version of humanity is measured and found either wanting or restored. If that is true, then our answer to “Who do you say that I am?” is not a theological preliminary to self-understanding. It is the substance of it.

Our origin: the image we are made in is a person
Scripture links image-bearing to sonship more tightly than we usually notice. Genesis 5:1–3 deliberately echoes the creation language of Genesis 1:26–28, and the logic is telling: as Adam’s son, Seth bears Adam’s own likeness and image. To be made in the image and likeness of someone is to be their child. If human beings are made in the image of God, then their identity and vocation are constituted by a filial relationship, not by their output. The tragedy of the Genesis narrative is the forfeiting of that standing—humanity turning from the Father and losing what it was made to be.

Hebrews 2 picks up Psalm 8 and refuses to let the loss stand as the final word. The psalmist’s wonder that God is mindful of the human creature, crowning him with glory and honor, is not abandoned but relocated: “at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we do see Jesus” (Heb 2:8–9). The vocation of humanity is intact because it is fulfilled in one man, and he is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. What Adam lost, Christ holds—and holds on our behalf.

The psychological weight of this is considerable. A great deal of human suffering is the labor of self-construction: the exhausting project of assembling an identity out of performance, comparison, or the verdicts of other people. The biblical portrait grounds human identity not in self-knowledge or self-construction but in being known by God. That is not a smaller foundation than the one we build ourselves. It is the only one that holds when our performance does not.

Our pattern: what true humanity actually looks like
If Christ is the pattern, we should be able to say concretely what the pattern is. Paul’s hymn in Philippians 2:5–11 gives us the clearest picture, and it discloses three axes along which true humanity is constituted. First, to be human is to exist in service before a lord: Paul sets “taking the very nature of a servant” alongside “being made in human likeness,” indicating that human existence is inherently one of allegiance and subjection. Second, to be human is to be an agent capable of purposive, self-directed action—but Christ’s deliberate self-emptying reveals that true agency is not autonomy but action oriented toward the other. Third, human existence is eschatologically stretched between death and life, humiliation and glory.

In Romans 5–8 Paul shows what happens when all three axes are negated under the reign of Sin and Death. The human dilemma cannot be reduced to a single problem. It involves enslavement to powers that embed themselves in the person, the consequent loss of the capacity for self-directed obedience, and the nullification of any orientation toward life. Paul’s restoration is correspondingly comprehensive—and it is not what we might expect. The movement out of Sin’s dominion is not a movement into autonomy but a transfer from one master to another, from the realm of the flesh into the realm of the Spirit. Under this new lordship agency is reconstituted as a cooperative work in which the human person and the Spirit act together, so that mind and body alike are brought into the service of God.

This cuts against one of the deepest assumptions of the therapeutic culture we live in, which tends to treat autonomy as the goal and dependence as the pathology. Paul will not allow the choice to be framed that way. Every human being lives before a lord; the question is which one. Healing, on this account, is not the achievement of self-sufficiency but the restoration of right allegiance, right agency, and a real future.
Christ’s own life gives the pattern its texture. He withdraws to pray before every major decision (Lk 6:12), declares that he does nothing on his own authority but only what he sees the Father doing (Jn 5:19), and in Gethsemane subordinates his will entirely to the Father’s at the cost of his life (Lk 22:42). His humanity was lived at every point in reliance upon and empowerment by the Spirit. The Spirit is not peripheral to Christ’s humanity but constitutive of it—which means Spirit-dependence is not a spiritual extra layered on top of being human. It is what being human looks like when it is working.

Our end: the destiny we are being made for
The New Testament speaks of our future with remarkable consistency. Those God foreknew “he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Rom 8:29). “Just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man” (1 Cor 15:49). “When Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Our destiny is not merely forgiveness or even repair. It is conformity to Christ—and it was God’s intention for humanity before the foundation of the world.

So our hope is based in who we are imaged after, who has enabled us to live in the way we were designed, and who will keep us to the end and perfect us in him. Each clause of that sentence carries weight for anyone who is trying to heal or trying to help someone heal. Origin secures identity against the verdict of our failures. Pattern gives healing a shape rather than leaving it a vague aspiration. End guarantees that the work will be finished by someone other than us.

The question that heals
This brings us back to Caesarea Philippi, and to the version of the question that presses hardest. The question as Dane Ortlund phrased it, “Who is Jesus, in those moments of spiritual blankness? Not: Who is he once you conquer that sin, but who is he in the midst of it?” ² Everything turns on the answer. If the Christ we picture in those moments is impatient, disappointed, or waiting for us to improve, then our vision of ourselves will take that shape too—and no amount of technique will heal what a distorted vision of God has deformed. In Christ we are given a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence, whose embrace of us does not strengthen or weaken depending on how clean or faithful we happen to be in the moment. The friendliness of his heart toward us is as fixed and stable as the objective declaration of our justification. ³

He is our companion, who goes with us on the journey, a steady friend for the pilgrimage through this wide wilderness of a world. He is king and friend at once, and the condescension of God in the person of his Son means he approaches us on our own terms. ⁴ The mercy of God is not a substance dispensed at a distance; the river of mercy flowing out of God’s heart took shape as a man, and what he sends us is not grace in the abstract but himself. ⁵

This is why the order matters so much. We do not first sort out who we are and then bring that self to Christ for adjustment. We look at him, and in looking we discover what we are—made in his image, patterned after his life, destined for his likeness. Once our vision of ourselves is founded upon our vision of who he is, healing has something solid to stand on and flourishing has somewhere to go.

[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), 91.
[3] Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, 115.

[4] Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, 118–19.

[5]  Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, 177, 211.

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.

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.