Spiritual Psychotherapy Revisited

I had a post about 3 weeks ago on my thoughts about choosing a theoretical orientation. At the end I shared a few thoughts on what I thought it meant to be a "Christian psychologist." I quote it because you would never say a person is a Christian doctor or a Christian janitor because most people think the two realms never cross. I think in fact they do because a Christian janitor has a duty to perform his work as if "working for the Lord" (Colossians 3:23) which means the janitor is obligated to perform his or her work as best they can. But in conventional speech we just don't think they do anything substantially different from other janitors.

So when I hear Christian psychotherapists, I figure they must be doing something in a manner that is different from those who are not Christian. So what is it that the Christian psychotherapist does different from other psychotherapists? Well, I honestly don't have a clue... not because I'm ignorant but because I'm sure that there are many Christian psychotherapists who do exactly the same type of therapy but just throw in a couple of Bible verses and talk about the client's faith a bit more openly. That's not really what I want to do.

So here I will share 6 elements that I have come up with which I think would make Christian psychotherapy standout from traditional psychotherapy. They are sort of a step by step process. I should add that my school openly discusses this issue but I have not taken a course in it yet so these are just gleaned off of my own experience and what I have learned in other classes and in my own life.

1) Affirming openness. It’s okay to be Christian and have problems. I want the client to feel that it is okay to share their secrets and know that there are no perfect Christians. I believe deep down we all long to share our problems with others but we don't trust that we will still be accepted with our flaws.

2) Awareness of one’s own defects. Learning that it is okay to have problems and be a Christian we lose the fear of searching our soul for our secret sins. We come to the conclusion that the manner in which we live our life is unacceptable to God and causes deep hurts within ourselves and to others. We begin to see our need for God.

3) Acceptance of God’s grace. As we get in touch with our true selves, we realize that the simple forgiveness of sins that we thought we knew is not enough. We realize we need forgiveness of self because we realize that we are defective at our core. We learn to accept that our thoughts, actions, and emotions have all become tainted with selfishness. But we see the magnitude of God's grace when we realize that Jesus died for that wretched me I become aware of and we experience real forgiveness, the kind we were missing before.

4) Forgiveness of others. Seeing our own defects and God's willingness to forgive us, we are empowered to give what we have received - forgiveness to others. We learn to accept that others, just like us, are broken at the core. By doing so, we are released from the slavery of resentment towards others.

5) Surrender of one’s will to God. Becoming aware that God's path of living is better than our own, we start trusting God with our lives. We begin to recognize the ways in which our lives clash with how God wants us to live. Although we feel entitled to the way of life that we are familiar with - we feel like we have a right to be angry at someone, a right to control others, a right to do things our own way - we surrender this entitlement because we are convinced we cannot trust our own ways.

6) Need for fellowship. As we experience this new life and begin to see ourselves as continually dependent on God and others, we form real friendships. The client is empowered to be real with others because they see that being real was the first step towards greater faith in God.