Page 50 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 7

Foundational Discussions in Christian Psychology

draw this hard line between the two classes of In most of my conversations with clients, I
people, those who are inside and those who are find myself wondering and asking about their
outside, those who are saved and those who values, the things they hold dear, the life com-
are lost, those who know Christ and those who mitment that they have made, or wish that they
don’t. And we assign all those who don’t know have made. So often I hear of values not lived up
Christ to perdition. We describe them as being to, commitments that have not been kept, and
“in the world,” as not us, as sinners. actions that are contrary to how they would like
to see themselves. I find that conversations that
The function of our efforts at formulating or- bring these values and ideals to the surface of
thodox theology is to describe as clearly as we the conversation, and bring them into the sto-
possibly can where the boundary lies between ryline of the person’s life, have great potential in
those who are inside and those who are outside. turning lives around, in discovering and acting
We devise elaborate statements of faith, bol- on new, healthier and more preferred ways of
stered by long lists of scriptures, so that those living. I maintain that this ubiquitous value-
inside will know exactly what we believe and system that people have can be seen as the echo
what we don’t believe, and that those outside of the image of God. The therapeutic thing then
will know what is required of them if they wish is not to seek to convince the person about her
to come inside. sinfulness – she already knows that. Neither is
it to help the person “accept responsibility” for
The Bible itself, however, points in another di- their problem – she is already over-burdened
rection. Romans 2:14–16 (ESV) by it. Rather, it is to help the person recover, to
hear again, that echo.
14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the
law, by nature do what the law requires, they RE-AUTHORING IN ACCORD WITH PRE-
are a law to themselves, even though they FERRED VALUES
do not have the law. 15 They show that the
work of the law is written on their hearts,
while their conscience also bears witness, and I call it an echo because it is a sound, coming
their conflicting thoughts accuse or even ex- not from the origin of the sound itself (Him-
cuse them 16 on that day when, according to self), but reverberating through the connec-
my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by tions with others that each person has had. As
Christ Jesus. God created “adam” in his image and likeness
(Gen. 1), so Adam begat sons and daughters in
There is in this passage, buried in the long de- his own image and likeness (Gen. 5). But this
scription of sin, a hint at what is possible for is not a merely genetic transmission. The echo
those who are “outside.” The Gentiles, who are of the image of God is passed on, imperfectly
outside of the law, are able naturally to do what to be sure, in the nurture that the new-born re-
the law requires. There is something written ceives from the caregiver. Nature and nurture
on their hearts. They have a conscience. They come together to produce this echo. And thus,
struggle with right and wrong, perhaps in the everyone develops some kind of internal moral
same way that the believers of Romans 7 strugg- compass.
le.
In a delightful article on “blue collar therapy,”
I like to call this capability the echo of the image Steven Stosny (, 2013 Nov/Dec, p. 28) writes
of God in them. C. S. Lewis in his famous Mere that “because I work exclusively with clients
Christianity discusses something similar in his trapped in destructive habits, I prefer the shor-
discussion about the proof of God’s existence. ter route using their core values to motivate
He argues from the moral argument, that eve- practice that will bring about long-term chan-
ryone has some kind of moral compass. Even ges.” Rather than seeking insight about the past
the most morally obtuse person, he says, knows to motivate change, by ferreting out a “root cau-
when something wrong has been done to him. se”, some historical insight into the source of the

49