Excuses, Excuses

I have a couple apologies that I would like to make this week and I've been thinking about what place "clarification of my intent" ought to play a role in the apology. In other words, what excuses are okay to provide and which will just drive a wedge deeper between us. From preschool we learn that we are not to make excuses for our actions. But every action that we take has a cause and that cause may actually help the other person understand and forgive us. But the flip side is that every excuse that we give can indicate an unwillingness to act differently in the future. If our actions made perfect sense, why would we need to apologize in the first place?

I think that one rule of thumb is that any excuse that we might give for our action ought to come from our vulnerability. Our excuses should not simply state that someone did something to us and therefore we did what we did. No, it should state how we were emotionally affected by another action. It is not simply stating that we felt angry that something happened so we responded in kind. A valid excuse focuses on what need we were hoping to have met that went unfulfilled.

The best emotion to get to the core of vulnerability is, of course, fear. That's because fear is in it's very nature an emotion of vulnerability. And unlike most other emotions, like anger, disappointment, and disgust, there is no condemnation of others in its tone. And people respond better when they are not being attacked. Fear conveys the message that the individual needs one type of response, rather than demands it.

Expressing your fear means that you do not simply state the antecedents of your actions. It means you explain the meaning you interpreted from being treated a certain way. Although this may feel awkward, it opens each person up to the other person, where there is possibility of reconciliation. Rather than "excusing" your behavior, sharing your fear conveys your essential humanity and need for love and acceptance. Finally, the apology can occur because whatever we were expecting from the other person, and fearing that they would not provide, was a need that could be provided by God. Without that connection, we could never really admit our wrongs because we would have responded the only way we could without God.

A Personal Viewpoint on the Elections

I'm scared to tell you who I plan to vote for in the election. I'm afraid that some of you will think I have just jumped on a bandwagon that most young adult men have found themselves on, without really engaging the tough questions. But simply by stating that you can likely guess who I favor. I get excited about Obama because I sense in him a powerful charismatic spirit and a vision for the future that gets me excited about being an American.There is something inside me that longs to witness something historic. Perhaps that's why I was torn between rooting on the Patriots and the Giants. Regardless of what happened, whether an upset or perfect season, it would be a historic game. Yes, I'll admit it's not just about his political stances, I want America to be something different. And I want to be a part of it.

I grew up following in the political footsteps of my parents, who are Republican. They weren't dogmatic and they held pretty sophisticated political beliefs, which I certainly respect, but the upcoming election felt like a change of tide for me personally. I sensed that the Democrats values were closer to the vision of God's world that I've come to hold. Now I must admit, I got a thrill telling my parents I was likely going to vote for a Democrat, just to shake them up. But as the election has come closer, I catch myself feeling like I'm betraying someone or something that I have sworn loyalty to. I've realized that, for me, voting was about more than just deciding who would lead our country in the right direction; voting was about my identity.

I encourage you to take this election time as an opportunity to shake up your identity. Question your motives for why you want to vote for a particular candidate. Discover what draws you away from certain candidates. Of course, fear will creep up at the slightest hint that you would change your political stance. It would mean that part of your identity will be forced to change. It will mean admitting that you were wrong in the past. But exploring these fears and hopes will help you learn about yourself and help you make the best decision.

Assessing the Church

A few months ago, Willow Creek conducted a series of surveys to assess how churches were promoting spiritual growth in the congregation. If you would like to read about the results, you can visit the REVEAL blog. Since my research area is essentially focused on how people grow in their faith and since I work with a small business that does church consulting, I consider myself to have some authority on this topic. Although I have thought about the study quite a bit, I really want to focus this discussion on the place of assessment in the church.

There are four main issues related to church assessment: (1) what do we measure? (2) how do we measure? (3) what do we learn? (4) what do we miss?

1) What do we measure? Or, in other words, how do you measure someone's spirituality? Now there will be some who argue that spirituality is a completely personal affair and therefore it is impossible to measure it objectively. But I find this unpersuasive, as spirituality inherently stretches beyond the mystical, and is full of theological beliefs that we either hold to or deny, religious behaviors we either engage in or don't, and phenomenon we either experience or don't. To say that our spirituality is devoid of anything religious is to say something objective about our spirituality.

Next, on this same point, we need to consider what are the important variables inherent to faith. Sometimes we make these decisions based upon theological reasoning. For instance, it makes sense not to study how food preferences are related to religious behavior. And the flipside could be that it makes sense to study how prayer is related to a sense of closeness to God. These are our a priori theological beliefs that can inform us. But additionally, we can simply use trial and error, in a scientific manner, to figure out what variables are important to study. For example, one study may look at 10 different variables related to church attendance and find that only one is significantly related to it. We would therefore decide to further study that variable, since it seems to be important (if our theological beliefs state that church attendance is a good thing).

2) The question of how we measure spirituality is also an important one. Are we to assume that those who rate themselves as a 10 (out of 10) on closeness to God are really closer to God? Should we even use paper and pencil (or nowadays, computers) to assess someone's spirituality? Should we rely on spiritual exemplars to study what factors are important to spirituality? It is easy to generate more and more questions. But the truth is that we need to start somewhere. Face-to-face interviews are time consuming. Using spiritual exemplars risks finding people who have their outsides clean. And of course paper and pencil measures have plenty of problems. The real place to start is by engaging a variety of different methods. We should not limit ourselves to one way of approaching the problem.

3) What do we learn from assessment? Assessment can tell us whatever we want to know. It can tell us if people like the preacher's sermons. It can tell us how people use their faith to deal with problems. The real task is learning to ask the right questions. What is most essential to the life of the church? This means that we must really dig in to the Word, explore our theology, and dialog with people from other denominational and faith backgrounds. Again, the point is to begin the discussion. Willow Creek seems to have been scared prematurely by their findings. If we learn anything from the REVEAL study, it's that we should not shift paradigm's too quickly but we should also not be afraid to admit we have been doing things wrong.

4) What do we miss? By this I meant that we should always be aware that we have blindspots. Assessment is never going to be comprehensive so we should always be willing to take a step back and look at the full picture, as best as we can. No one in the congregation may realize that using multimedia in sermons is affecting them and assessment is unlikely to evaluate this issue, but that doesn't mean it's not an issue, for instance.

REVEAL is the first large scale step towards something that I have become a huge believer in since being in grad school - using assessment to improve our churches. While there are some limitations and problems in REVEAL, it does add a great deal of knowledge and has opened up the Christian culture to the use of assessment. I hope that this trend continues, hopefully without being abused, and allows the church to repent and grow where it needs to.

Choosing Character Over Effects

Whether or not I am responsible for how my actions affect others is, for me, a big issue. I want to know whether I am to blame for how a person responds to my wrong. I'm not talking about emotionally harming others when a person has done nothing wrong, such as breaking up a relationship, but that is important to the discussion. I'm referring more precisely to whether we should consider ourselves responsible if we commit a small sin against another but that small sin has dire consequences.

Consider the following: I am trying to cut lust out of my life. I look lustfully at a woman then tell myself, "By looking at her in that way, I have turned her into an object." The act is made wrong by its outcome.

But does that mean that we are to judge our sins by the effect they have on others? For some, the temptation regarding looking at sin in their lives is to underestimate their effects. But for others, they choose to imaginatively maximize the possible effect their sin has on others, in order to punish themselves into submission.

I think doing this is rooted in narcissism. We want to believe we have profound effects on others. What we really need is neither minimizing nor maximizing but honest appraisal of what we have done. Rather than concerning ourselves with the effects of our actions, we ought to worry about our character. Does this action reflect the kind of character I want in my life? Will continuing to behave this way make me a better or worse person. This could seem more narcissistic than the last, but this is untrue. Narcissism insists on believing untruth about the self, including our effect on others. Humility knows who we are and deals with who we want to become.

So the next time you do something wrong. Don't worry so much about how it will be a bad witness to others, how catastrophic your actions were, or even how many tears you induced in other's eyes. Think about who you want to be and pursue that.

Human Nature and Sin

I'm taking a class on Christian Ethics that has introduced me to the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr. He wrote about the origin of sin in such a way that illuminates the psychological concepts inherent in our faith. One could conceptualize his theology of sin with two equations:

Freedom + Finitude = Anxiety
Anxiety + Disbelief = Fear

Freedom lies in our free will. We have the power to choose right and wrong. But we are also finite human beings. We are limited by our life experiences and by our nature. The combination of our freedom and limits creates anxiety. We become aware that we are not self-sufficient and that leads to worrying that we will not be satisfied. This is part of how God created us and, in itself, is not sin. The anxiety that Neibuhr speaks about is a precursor for sin but is also the precursor for true faith.

Our reaction to this anxiety is what is important. If we choose not to place faith in God, but to live in disbelief, then we will end up with fear. Humans deal with fear in two main ways: pride and abdication of responsibility. We will accumulate wealth and power to maintain the illusion that we are self-sufficient. This requires self-deception. We need to lie to ourselves in order to believe that we can take care of ourselves.

But there is another sinful solution to the fear we experience. We can pretend we are not responsible for our actions. We become resentful of others or we engage in sensuality. At no point do we claim agency of our actions. Instead, we blame, repress, or rebel.

Psychologically, acceptance of our reality is the solution to this problem. But that leaves us at the point where we can easily despair. Facing the reality that we cannot satisfy our selves can be scary. From this perspective we see the advantage of faith in God that allows us to trust God to satisfy our spiritual needs. By consciously surrendering our freedom to God, we can accept our limitations. Instead of inspiring dread, we gain serenity from our limitations because that only increases where God will work. As Paul wrote, "To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

Shame On You

Shame is a loaded concept. There seems to be more than a few different ways of conceptualizing it. But I like to define it as a response to guilt that creates some degree of self-hate. I define guilt (at least the psychological version, not the legal version) as the belief that you have done something wrong. So shame takes the belief that you have done something wrong and concludes that there is something wrong with you.

I believe that we turn to shame for a reason. Because although we feel bad for what we did, we don't want to do the work to change our actions. Therefore I look at shame as a refusal to learn from what we did and try to change our behavior. Shame works against repentance. Shame is a form of self-punishment that recapitulates the wrong we've done.

Of course we can't discard the place of Christ's death in our shame. The work on the cross means that we are no longer guilty (legally) for our sins. Of course we are still psychologically guilty. But shame returns to the legal guilt and states that we must be punished by calling ourselves names and deprecating ourselves. Shame is therefore a lack of faith in the work of Christ.

Practically shame has the consequence of focusing our efforts on the punishment, rather than a solution. By the time we are done punishing ourselves verbally for something we have done (e.g. I'm such an idiot. Why did I do that again?!?), we have lost all motivation to learn and change. Rather than using our effort to punish, we can accept God's grace then begin the process of clarifying where we went wrong. Asking ourselves questions like: What was I trying to satisfy in myself that led me to do this? What kind of thinking did I have that led me to do this? What emotions led me to do this? Such an approach can allow us to identify problems before we do something wrong.

Divorce and Counseling

Counseling married couples will often lead to talk about divorce. How ought a Christian therapist handle this? Should they refer? Should they tell the client not to get divorced? I have some thoughts on the matter but I wanted to begin with my view of marriage. In Genesis 2, the institution of marriage is introduced as a relationship that places a person in a community. The person moves from being under their parents to being married to another person. I believe that this is because marriage was designed to be a place where people have the opportunity to be understood and cared for. Marriage is designed to produce growth. I like to compare it to Jesus' teaching about the Sabbath, marriage was created for people not people for marriage.

I believe that although marriage is a covenant that we ought to be committed to, there are times when the relational difficulties between a couple are so intense and so intertwined that they are nearly impossible to change. In these situations, when carrying on in a marriage will cause more harm than a divorce will, and all options have been exhausted, a divorce is permissible. As a therapist I would see it as my responsibility to discern both the extent of interpersonal conflict and the ability of the relationship to heal after new interpersonal skills are gained. Some marriages would create greater harm if they remain together than if they divorce - sometimes we need to be honest about the likelihood of recovery and how long such recovery would take.

Divorce is a painful experience for both the couple and any children. Therefore, if a couple comes into therapy with only one intent - how to get divorced with the least amount of damage to the children - I would make it clear to the client that I would first assess their relational skills and the possibility of recovering the marriage. But if I agree with their own assessment of the state of their marriage, that divorce is the best option, then I will have no problem with counseling them in how to have a peaceable relationship through the divorce and afterwards.