Page 99 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 5

Church Traditions for a Christian Psychology

Sarah Groen-Colyn (USA)
Counseling in the Presence: How Leanne Payne has

Shaped my Practice of Christian Psychotherapy

I was honored and humbled by the invitation (Healing Presence p. 132). This Christian rea-
to write about Christian counseling as shaped lity fundamentally shapes the practice of coun-
by Leanne Payne.God has worked through seling because our very epistemology is incar-
Leanne’s life to profoundly change mine. It was national.
over twenty years ago that I entered graduate
school to study clinical psychology and I have Incarnational Reality transcends the modern
been an eager student of the art and science of worldview. Leanne has much to teach us about
psychology every since. I have studied and been the impoverishment of our modern worldview
a patient in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as the struggles of humanity and the church
and have learned much from psychoanalysts in through history have estranged us from a truly
the British Object Relations school of thought. Christian view of man and reality (i.e. Healing
But of all the wonderful resources I’ve had pri- Presence, chapter 7). She was richly blessed
vilege to receive, Leanne’s work has uniquely in- by the works of C. S. Lewis, who “managed to
fluenced me. One proof of her influence is that transcend, imaginatively as well as intellectual-
I find it most fitting to share a picture of sorts. ly, the spirit and mind-set of our age. His in-
My sense is that Leanne’s writings and ministry sights into man and his cosmos, therefore, and
first settled over me, then descended into me, the imagery and the symbolism with which he
and finally passed completely through me, gi- embodied these insights, are profoundly Chri-
ving truly Christian substance to the founda- stian. They are incarnational” (HP p. 132). We
tion not just of my clinical practice, but of my too can be protected from false ideologies (and
being. And now I’ve gone beyond describing false psychologies) by living in the truth, by
Leanne’s influence and am pointing to Christ abiding in Christ. Christ Himself is our way of
Himself, and the Incarnational Reality of God knowing.
with us and within us. We need to image the healing of the soul incar-
nationally. If we leave this in favor of adopting
Incarnational Reality humanistic psychological systems, we will no
longer think in terms of “grace being channeled
I in them, and You in Me. into us” (Healing Presence, p. 135). Whatever
(John 17.23) issue we may be addressing, we will approach
Christ in you, the hope of glory. it without this awareness of God’s Presence at
(Colossians 1.27) work. For example, we may try to cognitively
or psychodynamically address a person’s “God
At the core of Leanne’s ministry is her procla- concept” as a psychological construct, rather
mation of Incarnational Reality. In her words, than prayerfully tend to the process of God sen-
“The whole meaning of the Incarnation is that ding His healing word. “We alone have a Savior
the Sovereign Lord has become present to us, of the deep mind and heart, One who descends
through His Son and by His Spirit. Jesus me- into it and becomes its righteousness, its sanc-
diates the Presence of the Father to us. By the tification, its holiness” (HP p. 135). “Christ is in
Father’s Spirit, Jesus lives in us. (Healing Pre- us, radiating up through us, granting to us the
sence, p. 91). This great theological truth also holy imagination, the holy intellect…We find
tells the story of the healing of the human soul. genuine integration of all that we are. We are
“God comes down to us, enters into our closed completed in Him. This is by no means a sim-
and alienated minds and worlds, and proclaims plistic view of healing if indeed we believe in
Himself to be not a subjective state of our minds the Real Presence - within, without, forgiving
or bodies, but the one great Objective Real” and completing man” (HP p. 136).

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