“The greatest psychological
insight, ability, and experience cannot comprehend this one thing: what sin is.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together,
Fortress Press, 2015 (Reader’s Edition), page 94.
On page 95 Bonhoeffer tells us
that in the presence of a psychologist we can only be sick and that psychology
does not know that we are “ruined” by sin and need the healing that comes with
forgiveness in Christ. “Another believer views me as I am before the judging
and merciful God in the cross of Jesus Christ.” Our baseline need is not
therapy but confession of sin and forgiveness.
He goes on to say that when we
live daily in the Cross that we will lose the “spirit of human judgmentalism.” “The
death of the sinner before God, and the life that comes out of death through
grace, becomes a daily reality for them.” For the Christian this is Romans
Chapter Six in practice, considering ourselves dead to sin and alive to God,
living in our identification with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. For the person who does not yet know Jesus, before we can arrive at
Romans Six we must journey through Romans chapters 1 – 5:11; we must repent and
trust Jesus Christ for forgiveness and new life – for all have sinned and
fallen short of the glory of God. Then comes the great transfer of Romans
5:12ff.
Bonhoeffer writes not just as
a theologian and pastor, but he also writes as the son of a famous doctor, Karl
Bonhoeffer, who was chair of the department of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at a
Berlin Hospital and whose research is still cited in psychiatric papers.
Dietrich grew up in an academic and theological environment, so when he writes
about what psychology can’t do in identifying sin and offering hope through
Jesus Christ he writes with an integrated perspective. “The psychologist views me as if there were no
God” (page 95).
Of course in our own time
there are counsellors and psychologists and psychiatrists who are Christian,
the challenge is at least twofold – the first challenge is whether the Bible is
the foundation and the context of their thinking and practice. For unlike
physiological medicine which treats the body (though it should also treat the
whole person), these practices treat the inner person and there is simply no
other foundation upon which a practitioner of the inner person ought to build,
and no other context within which he ought to serve, than that of the Bible and
its anthropology and its doctrine of God.
The second challenge is the therapeutic
mindset of the professing church; just as we have been taught to reach for a
pain pill with every ache and at the first sign of discomfort, so we have been
taught to run to counseling if things go awry within us or with others, or to
watch the latest therapeutic video presentation or read the latest popular therapeutic
book or attend the hottest new program for making our lives and relationships
better. This mindset is so embedded within much of the professing church that
we may not be able to extricate ourselves from it. We instinctively turn to
counselling before we turn to Christ and His Word in the community of
believers, in life together.
It is the Word of Christ that
must form us and heal us and transform us into His image; our goal, our aim, is
not to feel better but to be more like Jesus. Are we living obedient lives to
Jesus Christ? Are we submitted to the Word of God? The Biblical self-image is
not that “I am special” it is that Christ is everything and that when I am in
Christ that I have all that I need – and yes, He has especially made me (Psalms 139), but let me not be deceived
about who I am outside of Christ, outside of Him I am the greatest sinner who
ever lived. I am not called to be preoccupied with myself, I am called to love
God and others and to lay my life down for Christ and my brothers and sisters.
In my own service to others in
pastoral work, when I learned to ask, “Where is the lordship of Jesus Christ in
your marriage?” things took on an entirely different perspective with husbands
and wives in marital difficulty. Then there could be confession of sin, then
there could be healing, then Jesus was Lord and He was bigger than the marriage
– and not only could the husband and the wife repent and confess, but the
marriage could repent and confess. Yes, I could still coach them in
communicating and decision-making and in other areas of marriage, but that was
secondary, the lordship of Jesus Christ was first and that meant confession.
Just as there are healing
properties in our physical bodies, so are there healing properties within the
Body of Christ, in life together;
learning to confess our sins one to another and praying for one another that we
may be healed (James 5:16) presents us with an image of those properties in
action. A healthy body is a body in which the parts are in balance and
relationship, one in which every part, every element, is fulfilling its
God-designed purpose. Can we not see that this is who we are as God’s people?
(Ephesians Chapter 4).
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