I was recently counseling a couple who were really struggling. Their effort at counseling had been quite low; very little of what had been discussed or assigned was being implemented. Oddly, both of them seemed more committed to counseling than the marriage. There was a sincere desperation that marked the conversations.
As we talked about the key dynamics that needed to change, there was agreement on most every point. It was bizarre. They would both admit was they needed to change to each other and did not get defensive when their spouse agreed with them.
The problem was that this was our third session like this. We were like a football team. Everyone was lined up and knew their assignment. We read the defense accurately and were confidant that the play call would be effective. Each of the players had rehearsed his or her function and could execute the play. What was wrong?!
After a little conversation about the repetitive nature of our sessions, we concluded they had given up. They were not leaving the marriage (not yet anyway); they had just given up on it. There was no sense of hope that anything (even if seemingly well suited to their situation) would do any lasting good.
The question became, “How do you overcome giving up?” Every answer seemed to begin with try harder and that was just redundantly restating the problem a second time all over again. It was like the comic book villain whose special power was feeding off of energy. Everything the good guys did to attack him made him stronger.
Here was the solution we reached – gratitude. I began to highlight the difference by telling a story (slight historical fiction) about my son. He comes home from school and is very frustrated by his math homework. The problems don’t make any sense and the longer he tries the more daunting the few pages become. Eventually he looks at me and says, “Papa, I just can’t do it.”
Seeing the sincere despair on his face (and getting the opportunity to respond to a story I authored) I said, “Bud, I’m proud of you. It would be easy to quit and go to your room to play with your toys. But I admire you. You’re the kind of kid who stays at the table. That’s impressive. And that’s why I know you’re going to do great things. You have a character that is stronger than a math problem is hard.” Then we hugged and figured out the math problem (at least when I get to make up the story).
The point to the couple was this. Don’t do anything you are not already doing. Just say “thank you” for the things that are already happening. Any time you see something that your spouse could have left undone or unsaid, affirm them. Any time they are in the room when they could have stayed away, express appreciation. Any time they ask a question when they could have let silence stand, say thank you and then respond.
Why this homework? I believe there is a link between gratitude and hope. Without hope, effort is lifeless. It’s like eating celery; the act of chewing takes more calories than the vegetable contains so the digestion results in a net loss of calories. Gratitude was an attempt to create jumper cables for hope in an attempt to put life back into their most basic efforts.
What do we take away from this case study reflection? First, counseling is about more than giving the right answer. Second, counseling requires flexibility when “the right answer” isn’t working. Third, gratitude can be more effective at overcoming giving up than a new technique.
Posted 2 months ago at 10:43 am. Add a comment
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
– Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Most Christian parents have considered these verses. The application can too often be reduced to, “We should talk about God and the Bible a lot.” This is true, but if left there can result either in multiple prolonged monologues or guilt for not knowing what to say. A second common application is that, “We should decorate our homes with biblical stuff.” This too is true, but if left there our homes can become a VBS crafts museum.
This post seeks to give one example of how to apply the two principles discussed above. There are many other applications that could be made and I encourage families to be creative.
CRAFT: Get three bowls and place them on the kitchen table. Fill the first bowl with pieces of an old towel cut into small pieces and tied with a ribbon. Fill the second bowl with small plastic hearts or pictures of hearts printed on the computer. Fill the third bowl with small plastic shields or pictures of a shield printed on the computer.
TOWEL: The towels represent service. The towel is a gift of recognition given when a member of the family voluntarily serves someone else. Use your concordance to find verses on service. Print these verses and tie them to the small pieces of towel.
SHIELD: The shield represents a lack of defensiveness. In difficult communication we are faced with the choice to protect others or defend ourselves. The shield is a gift of recognition given when a member of the family resists a natural opportunity to be defensive or deceitful. Use your concordance to find verses on other mindedness, confession, honesty, integrity, and vulnerability. Print these verses and place them in the bowl with the shields.
HEART: The heart represents tender, active listening. Whenever someone wants to show love to another member of the family by listening they should ask, “May I hold your heart?” While they listen they should hold the heart with an open hand. Once they have been able to accurately summarize what they have heard, they then return the heart and say, “Thank you for sharing your heart with me.” Use your concordance to find words on love, listening, and compassion. Print these verses and place them in the bowl with the hearts.
By placing these bowls on the dinner table, the family will frequently remind themselves of these important foundations of healthy communication: service, lack of defensiveness, and sincere listening. By placing Scripture with each item, there is the opportunity to highlight the Bible being lived out in the family’s life—this allows the blessing of Godly communication to be captured “in the moment.”
Young children will enjoy being able to collect the various tokens. Parents should take the opportunity to model the principles of each token before their children in role play. Parents should also role play conversations with each of the children. After role playing tokens should be passed parent-parent, parent-child, child-parent, and child-child. The goal is to give the family “eyes to see” good communication—too often we only pay attention to the negative. Also, after discipline in which one of these principles was violated, the parent should discuss how the towel, shield, or heart would have made things different.
As you use this tool, you will get to know the strengths and weaknesses of each family member. Some will have many towels and another will have lots of hearts. This is a great opportunity to celebrate the strengths of each family member. It is also an opportunity to discuss having a balanced character.
If this tool proves to be an effective way to disciple your family, you can use it with other virtues. First, identify the virtue that needs extra attention in your family. Second, select a positively conotated object to represent that virtue. Third, research Scripture passages that speak about that virtue. Fourth, explain to the family the new object and role play its enactment.
I would not advise using an incentive system for this tool (i.e., ice cream for the first person with five shields). The reward for this tool is the peace, affection, and unity it brings. This is not a race or competition. If it has to be “enforced,” then you are dealing with a matter of discipline not instruction. This tool is merely a tool of instruction (hopefully with a cute motivational twist).
The goal for this exercise is to bring Scripture application to life and create a positive context for seeking Christ-like character and expressions of love within the family. If it allows for enjoyable and creative discussions of biblical principles that tend to be abstract, then it has achieved its purpose.
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 12:08 pm. Add a comment
I frequently counsel couples who have a hard time starting difficult conversations. It is not always because they have a track record of doing these conversations poorly. Frequently, these couples (or at least one member of the couple) are just painfully adverse to conflict.
This post is going to assume that a couple has a decent history of resolving difficult conversations well once they are initiated.
The question becomes, “How do we overcome this obstacle so that emotions do not build, while we wrestle with whether to say something, to the point that potentially good conversations don’t go bad? How can we save ourselves the emotional turmoil of waiting even when the end product is a good conversation? How do we get started?”
What I will offer is a highly practical answer. There is a problem with highly practical answers. They come across as cookie-cutter solutions and cause people to believe the remedy is in following the recipe. Such solutions can also come across a bit cheesy and have a propensity to be relatively personality-dependant.
With all that said I will still offer a highly practical answer and simply ask that you not turn it into a rule to follow. Be creative with it. Make it your own. Find a way to express the principle in your personality and as fits your marriage.
Here is my proposal. Give your spouse paper on which to write his/her concern. At the top of the page write (in your own words):
If you have picked up this piece of paper,
then I want you to know I love you and want to hear you.
I pray regularly for you to have the courage to come to me when you are hurt,
and I pray I will listen well and hear your concerns.
I trust you to bring things to me you believe are important,
and want you to know they are important to me if they are to you.
Sign under your note, but leave the rest of the page blank for your spouse to write his/her concerns. Once this piece of paper is received the spouse would know it is a time to listen well and would be less likely to interpret the subject as an attack or treat the subject as trivial.
Now you might say, “That is helpful, but where is the Bible or the Gospel in this type of exercise?” That would be a very good and worthwhile question. I believe in this type of exchange the first spouse is to love his/her spouse as Christ loved the church (Eph. 5:25).
This is a model of the invitation God gives to all his people in prayer. We have an open invitation to come to Him with any concern at any time with no fear of being turned away or dismissed. Too often we miss the fact that communication in marriage should resemble (be modeled after) prayer. We often say that prayer is simply “talking with God” but we fail to learn from this connection when it comes to communication in the relationship that our prayer life is to exemplify.
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago at 12:29 pm. Add a comment
This is not a blog post that endorses the politically correct version of children’s sports. Regardless of how many times I tried to tell my son we were just playing t-ball for fun, he still wanted to know “who won?” after every game. But if I don’t depart from this introduction, I will wind up on my soap box.
This is a blog about a fatal flaw in an approach to motivating your spouse in marriage. Too often we resort to keeping score: how many times we had sex this month, how many more chores I do than you do, how many times we’ve gone on a date recently, how many times you’ve said “I love you” lately, or how few letters you’ve written me.
Marital neglect is a serious issue (not addressed here), but this motivational structure is used in marriages that are far from significant neglect. In this post, I would like to point out one major reason (there are many others) why this approach does not work.
That reason is our self-centeredness (do not read this as selfishness). We experience life from within our own body and consciousness. I am aware of everything I do and all the time, energy, and thought I put into those activities. I notice every unseen thing I do for my wife. I hear every unspoken fond thought I think about my wife.
Simply put, I score a lot of points my wife never knows I score. You can ask the deep philosophical questions “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” or “If a husband loves his wife in imperceptible ways, does it count?” if you like. But the point is, on MY scoreboard I should be winning. If I’m not winning on my scoreboard, then I am REALLY losing.
But my self-centeredness disrupts the process even further. When I am doing all of my perceptible and imperceptible nice things, I am generally in a good mood which positively influences my memory. However, when I am comparing my score with my wife’s (only perceptible to the degree that I am paying attention) score, I can often be in a disappointed mood which negatively influences my memory. Again, advantage me!
But there is more to my self-centeredness. In the midst of the already inequitable system, I will give more emotional credit to the things I like best. Personally, that means that a creative meal gets more points than an organized kitchen and a kiss-like-you-mean-it gets more points than my lunch being fixed every day.
There is a name for that – arbitrary, unequal scales. These things are merely my personal preference. Do I want my wife to understand my preferences and display love by putting forth effort at the things that are important to me? Sure. Do I have the right to grade my wife, her effort, and our marriage based upon a system that is defined exclusively by my preferences? Not really.
So what is the point of this little rant? The point is that we should be humble as we recognize how self-centeredly we experience and evaluate life. It is not an attack on personal preferences. It is merely a warning against allowing our preferences to become the definition of love. If we do this we will create such a “home field advantage” in our marriage that it will be difficult for us to ever experience contentment with our spouse.
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago at 12:20 pm. Add a comment
Stop me if you’ve heard (or lived) this one. A wife comes to her husband to tell him about her rough day. Let’s assume she is a teacher who has a student that is giving her fits. She describes him as a young hellion who hisses at correction and his eyes roll back in his head when punishment is suggested.
The husband replies (I’ll let you project the tone), “The boy sounds possessed. You oughta strike him on the forehead with the palm of your hand and exclaim, ‘Demons out!’ I’m sure it’ll either cure him or get his attention. Either way, that would be a story worth listening to.”
Our wife gives some indication of being less than enthused about his response: a sigh, shaking her head, a response of, “be serious,” or, “I’ve should have known better than to talk to you.”
On a good day our husband blows her off with, “I was just joking. My goodness, I didn’t know listening came with a scoring system.” On a bad day he retorts, “Well, if you didn’t want to know what I thought, why’d you ask me? I get tired of being set up by your bad days.”
Sound familiar?
While the scenario is a bit comically infused (at least attempted), the tendency of men to offer solutions when talking with their wives is prevalent. It’s common enough to be a stereo-type. The strange thing is that even though it’s predictable it is still not corrected (some men just avoid conversation, but that’s not a solution).
Let me offer a solution. Husbands, let’s regularly ask our wives, “How can I pray you? What stresses or burdens are you facing?”
You might be thinking, “That’s nice and spiritual, but how would it help?” I’m glad you asked. When you ask someone how you can pray for them, it takes you out of fix-it-mode. You are gathering information that you want to be able to communicate effectively to Another.
If we, as husbands, are a conduit of our wives’ burdens to the Father, then it becomes more natural to ask follow up questions like, “What is most challenging or disheartening about that situation? What fears are you bracing against? What outcome are you hoping to see? Who else is affected by that situation?”
That’s the kind of thing guys say in romance novels. (Guys, pay attention. “Romance” is a word that has its benefits.) But I believe there is a good reason those things show up in romance novels (I’m purely guessing on that, unless you count The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis a “romance novel”).
This kind of interaction is an example of how Jesus relates to the church. Our Savior says, “Cast your burdens upon me, because I care for you (I Pet. 5:7)” and keeps our tears in a bottle while counting how many times we toss in bed (Ps. 56:8). Christ cares for his bride. Men, we need to “Jesus-Up!”
I believe there are other benefits. These kinds of questions will help us fulfill the command to pray without ceasing (I Thes. 5:17). It will also keep our wife on our mind more regularly. We will see her as someone to be known and cared for tenderly (I Pet 3:7). This God-centered, wife-awareness should serve to protect us from temptation and help us grow in being servant-leaders as “better listening skills” becomes a side benefit.
Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 12:24 pm. Add a comment
Have you ever noticed that you tend to see what you are looking for (unless, of course, you are me looking for my keys – in which case, I can look right at them a dozen times and never see them)? If you go through your day listening for criticism, you’ll probably hear plenty. But if you do through your day listening for gratitude, your likely to hear more “thank you’s” than you expected.
This is particularly true in marriage. We tend to see and hear (not to mention remember) in our spouse what we are looking for. If we are feeling unappreciated, then we will notice everything we do that he/she does not notice. If we want more affection, every moment we are close but don’t touch will show up in neon lights.
Let me offer an exercise designed to give you fresh eyes to look at your marriage. Admittedly, it won’t give you magic eyes to see what is not there. But hopefully it will give you fair eyes to see a reality not distorted by your driving desires.
The game requires mutual participation and has better longevity if other couples are also playing along. Start at the beginning of the month by writing three expressions of love (in any form) that you intend to perform for your spouse. These should be things outside your normal marital routine. Commit to follow through on those intentions during the next month.
Key: Do not tell each other what you have written down.
Side Note: Even if both you only do two for three, then you will still have one intentional expressions of love per week.
Plan a date at the end of the month. During the date try to guess what things your spouse did to show his/her love for you. Most couples find that they guess actions that were not on their spouse’s card and that their spouses already did on a semi-regular basis. The playfulness of the game merely changed what they were looking for during the month. It also causes the couple to set aside some romantic time to talk about what the other is doing right.
As a part of your preparation for the date, prepare a card with a list of three fresh ideas that you intend to enact next month. Enjoy a month of loving your spouse, watching out for how your spouse is loving you, and have another “guessing date” at the end of the month. At that point you can let the cycle continue.
As I said earlier, the game lasts better if you get other couples involved. If you have other couples doing the same thing, you don’t have to be the only one coming up with ideas. You can “cheat” by “stealing” ideas from one another.
In addition, you can serve as positive accountability for one another. When you see one another during the week or at church, you can flash the number of fingers to represent how many of your actions you have already completed.
Too often, marital peer groups are either non-existent or feed the expectation of neglected marriages as “normal.” With only a little intentionality, that can be reversed as you “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works (Heb 10:24)” in your marriages. A healthy marriage is an excellent protection against sin, an example of the Gospel at work to children, as well as testimony to unsaved friends.
Posted 12 months ago at 1:30 pm. 1 comment
What follows is a collection of quotes on this subject. They are not meant to sequentially walk through the subject or to comprehensively cover the subject. Their purpose is merely to expose you to a variety of thoughts and perspectives by Christian men and women.
“The very fact that [God gets angry] tells us that anger can be utterly right, good, appropriate, beautiful, the only fair response to something evil, and the loving response on behalf of evil’s victims (p. 1)… The Bible makes it clear that anger is not a ‘thing.’ It is a moral act of the whole person, not a ‘substance’ or a ‘something’ inside you (p. 2)” David Powlison in Anger: Escaping the Maze
“Anger is easier to describe than to define (p. 14)… Our anger is our whole-personed active response of negative moral judgment against perceived evil (p. 15)… Let’s begin with a humbling observation: most human anger is sinful (p. 27)… The problem lies not in wanting something but in wanting it too badly (p. 51)… James’s answer for angry hearts is not ‘how-to’ but ‘Whom-to’: we must go to God himself (p. 64)… To receive God’s forgiving grace, you must own your anger. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble [James 4:6]. We must not blame our past or present circumstances (p. 70)… True strength in God’s eyes means victory over one’s temper more than ones’ enemies (p. 85).” Robert Jones in Uprooting Anger
“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is probably the most fun. To lick your wounds, smack your lips over grievances long past, roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontation still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.” Frederick Buechner in Better Families monthly newsletter.
“Patience is the evidence of an inner strength. Impatient people are weak, and therefore dependant on external supports—like schedules that go just right and circumstances that support their fragile hearts (p. 173)…God undertakes vengeance against sin not only by means of hell, but also by means of the cross. All sin will be avenged—severely and thoroughly and justly. Either in hell, or at the cross (p. 268).” John Piper in Future Grace
“Talk is not cheap because interpretation is not cheap. The way we interpret life determines how we will respond to it (p. 15)… What is wrong is not just vocabulary and tone of voice, but a way of looking at life that does not agree with what God says is right and true (p. 22)… We confess that our communication struggle is not primarily a struggle of technique, but a struggle of the heart. Our war of words is not with the other people; it is a battle within (p. 30)… John 6 points us to the core issue of our words: Our words are shaped by the dream that resides in our hearts. They are determined by the bread we are seeking (p. 101)… Truth that is not spoken in love ceases to be truth because it becomes distorted by human impatience, bitterness, and anger (p. 228).” Paul David Tripp in War of Words
“If I can hurt another by speaking faithfully without much preparation of spirit, and without hurting myself far more than I hurt that other, then I know nothing of Calvary love (p. 32).” Amy Carmichael in If
“Pride is a mental attitude based upon faulty assumptions about ourselves. The pride that breeds anger usually takes the form of frustration (p. 105)… We are very quick to justify our anger because we think it produces results… We must understand that no matter what evidence we see of anger’s effectiveness, it is a lie… We need to see it for the terrorist it really is and despise it as God really does (p. 107).” Brian Borgman in Feelings and Faith
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 11:53 am. Add a comment
Effective Biblical Counseling can never be reduced to the question, “What does the Bible say about [topic]?” Both life and counseling require more than having the right answer to a question. Counseling (or Christian friendship that seeks to embody the “one another” commands of the New Testament) is when one person joins another on his/her journey to cultivate more of the fruit of the Spirit in his/her life by overcoming some life struggle.
What you find below should be considered the “map” for this journey. God’s Word helps us see both where we are (stuck in sin and/or suffering) and where we want to be. The Summit counseling ministry hopes you find both direction and encouragement for your journey in these passages.
This list is updated periodically.
Our first instinct in anger is to justify our actions/feelings, but Scripture cautions us.
James 1:19-20, “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.”
We must admit that our anger reveals our heart. It really is “me” speaking.
Matthew 12:33-37, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Our anger reveals what we desire most in any given moment.
James 4:1-3, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
Our anger is sinful when it makes an offense primarily about us instead of God.
See Numbers 20:1-13
Jesus’ anger in clearing the temple did not prevent those who needed Him (blind and lame) from coming to Him although it communicated effectively to those who rejected Him (chief priests and scribes).
Matthew 21:12-15, “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.’ And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant.”
Christians are commanded replace their sinful anger with expressions of kindness.
Ephesians 4:31-32, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
The slower an individual is to get angry the wiser that person will likely be.
Proverbs 14:29, “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”
Ecclesiastes 7:9, “Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.”
Sinful anger values “something” more than “someone” and is therefore the root of murder as lust is the root of adultery.
Matthew 5:21-22, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Over 50% (8 of 15) of the works of the flesh are anger-related issues.
Galatians 5:19-21, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Other Passages to Study: Psalm 4; Proverbs 6:34, 14:17, 15:1, 16:32, 19:11, 19:19, 22:24, 25:28, 27:3, 29:22; Ephesians 4:26; 1 Timothy 2:8;
Other Topics to Consider: Character, Change Process, Communication, Domestic Violence, Emotions (General), Forgiveness (Bitterness), Relationships
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 1:27 pm. 2 comments
A Counselor Reflects on Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
“But pleasure, money, power and safety are all, as far as they go, good things. The badness consists in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much. I do not mean, of course, that the people who do this are not desperately wicked. I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way (p. 42).” Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
The phrase, “Is it so bad for me to want [blank]?” is a dangerous question. It is a chief culprit of many a discussion, turned argument, turned broken relationship. The speaker feels completely justified in his/her actions (notice the change from desire/want to behavior/attitude) because his/her motive was legitimate.
The conversation can go in dozens of satirical directions:
- “I guess I don’t know anything if it is wrong to want that.”
- “Well, tell me you wouldn’t be upset if you had to do without that.”
- “I read a book and it said this was a ‘need’ of people.”
- “If you don’t do/give what I want, then you’ll have to do without what you want.”
The problem is that the speaker does not hear what he/she is saying. The reason process goes like this:
- If I have a good desire
- Then my actions are righteous
- You are mean, crazy, insensitive, or stupid if you do not cooperate
The striking thing about what C.S. Lewis has to say is that “desperately wicked” people want good things. That should cause us to pause.
What does it mean to pursue a good thing in the wrong way?
- To love that thing in a way that results in replacing God as our source of joy, security, contentment, identity, hope, or peace. Notice how in the dialogue snippets above the absence of the “good desire” is perceived as a threat.
- To love that thing in a way that allows us to dishonor, ignore, cheat, violate, or abuse another person in the pursuit of what we want. Notice how in the dialogue snippets above the other person is demeaned and trivialized in the pursuit of the “good desire.”
As I consider this (again), I realize how much my greatest battle is within me. It is so easy to be blind to this. I can go through my day pursuing the things God wants me to have and quickly/quietly drift into idolizing those desires and demonizing my closest companions—the whole time providing proof texts and research to substantiate my blindness.
What is the answer to this dilemma? Humility expressed in community. Notice how little listening is going on in the conversation snippets above. Humility invites critique (both of desire and pursuit). However, unless we are regularly inviting people to speak into our lives this way we will not have the attitude or access to receive perspective in our moments of temptation.
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 2:15 pm. Add a comment
I cannot tell you how many folks come in and start a counseling session by saying, “I don’t want to come in and just be a whiner,” or “I feel like I am just whining about my circumstances.” Then they begin to talk about legitimately challenging situations in an awkward tone of embarrassment. When they are finished they apologize again.
This strikes me as odd. First, why would people schedule a counseling appointment and then apologize for discussing their struggles? I don’t think I apologize to my doctor when I am sick. Although I did when I got a bad case of poison ivy while doing something stupid, but that’s another story for another post and I should have apologized to my wife not my doctor.
I fear that the answer to this first question is rooted in how disinterested and detached our culture and (too often) our churches have become. This leads me to my second question.
Second, why do we feel like discussing our struggles is whining? By this definition of whining large portions of the Bible would have never been written.
- Job would have been gutted
- Psalms, which discusses suffering, would be omitted
- Proverbs would not contain many verses on getting counsel or listening to others
- Ecclesiastes would be unnecessary
- Lamentations would be unbearable
- Paul would have had little information to trigger the writing of his letters
- James would have never known of the suffering of the dispersed Christians
- I Peter would also be missing
Consider Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” The implication of this verse is that if we are not bearing one another’s burdens, then we are not fulfilling the law of Christ (strong charge!). This requires knowing each other’s struggles.
A quick definition of true (negative) whining – sharing a problem, not wanting another perspective on the issue, with no intention of doing anything differently, hoping the other person will fix it for you or just be miserable with you.
My burden is that this is NOT what the people in my office are doing, but they still feel like they have to apologize for sharing their burden. This is wrong! Many of our struggles become so intense because we do not share them with others while those struggles are more manageable. By the point of sharing, they may be so overwhelmed that they either only feel like whining or need the help of a well-trained counselor.
THE POINT: The Bible does not expect change to occur in isolation or privately. Actually, the Bible seems to assume that the more private we keep our struggles (both sin and suffering) the more intense our struggles will become. Therefore, let us “whine” like the Bible models. Let us discuss our struggles within our community of faith seeking hope, encouragement, and direction from those God has given us to share life with.
Posted 1 year, 3 months ago at 12:29 pm. 1 comment
