Page 11 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 16

All this happens, of course, as we listen to ching about self-examination and rooting
Jesus, our teacher and healer, careful not
to fall back into self-reliance, leading back
to the false self.
We must remain poor of spirit, admitting
our blindness, ready to reframe the stories
we’ve told ourselves and to meekly recei-
ve the story God tells us: from the begin-
ning, our raison d‘être has been to be God’s
children (Rom. 8:19-23; Eph. 4:24), but fal-
ling short of our potential and becoming
enslaved to delusion and sin (Rom. 1:23-
31), we desperately need God’s love for us
in Christ, whose death for us despite our
enmity (Rom. 5:8) radically reorients us,
recentering our life in God (Rom. 6:4-11),
empowering us to increase in wholeness
and wellbeing (Rom. 1:16), until the day of
our bodily resurrection (Rom 8:23), when
we will “know fully” just as we have been
“fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).
Lastly, the Bible prescribes interventions
for true self-understanding.
First, it is an intervention in itself, apart
from what we do with it: the Bible, as God’s
Word, invites us into the truth, and it re-
veals the truth to us. As a “living and acti-
ve” word (Heb. 4:12), the Bible disrupts our
self-delusion.
In Proverbs, the reader is treated as a be-
loved son, with help and insight offered
out of good-will (Prov. 1:8, 2:1, 3:1). Pro-
verbs gently and subtly calls attention to
the reader’s own foolishness, providing a
road map that, if read carefully, will lead to
life. But readers must take responsibility for
themselves (Prov. 23:19), for wisdom or fol-
ly is ultimately their choice to make (Prov.
9:12).
In the Gospels, Jesus the Sage follows Pro-
verbs’ teaching method, providing many of
his own proverbs/parables to help people
see the truth (Mark 4:13-25). In the Ser- humble ascent to God correlates with true
mon on the Mount, he gives us what might
be the most direct interventions against
the false self that we have, specifically tea-
14
out hypocrisy within us (Matthew 5-7).
But Christ provides us even greater hope
for the true self by giving us the way, truth,
and life—himself—in light of which we can
reframe our lives. We not only needed to
become better at constructively critiquing
ourselves, but to have a new criterion for
self-construction, and Jesus is the criterion
we need. In Philippians 3, Paul models how
to re-consider ourselves in light of Christ,
and how to reframe our past, present, and
future no longer from a fleshly perspective,
but according to union with him who died,
rose, and ascended.
Christian Psychologists: Augustine, Luther,
Kierkegaard, Merton
Having discerned these insights in the
Scriptures, I wanted to compare notes with
other Christians who have thought along
these lines.
As I looked to Augustine (2006), I saw him
describing the same kind of phenomena in
different terms: God created us with the
ability to “turn inward” and to see oursel-
ves, so that we would “turn upward” and
see him.
Because we choose not to turn upward,
however, we have become turned in on
ourselves, and this state is what Augustine
calls “living according to man” as opposed
to “living according to God.” Living this way,
we are self-deceived:
“When, then, a man lives according to him-
self—that is, according to man, not accor-
ding to God—assuredly he lives according
to a lie” (Augustine, 1950).
Getting stuck an inner turn that we never
use to move upward correlates with false
self-understanding. On the other hand, for
Augustine, an inwardness that leads to a
self-understanding.
Martin Luther follows Augustine’s line of
thinking, tying self-deception and sin close-