Kids, this won’t come as a surprise to you, but I have a sin problem. I can’t shake it. I am selfish. I am hateful. I can be short tempered. I am lazy. I like bourbon too much for what is good for me. I know, intellectually and maybe even emotionally, that none of these sins are good for me. These sins harm me. These sins harm the ones I love the most. I know this from painful personal experience. I know this because “The Bible tells me so,” and yet, even though I know that these things are harmful and I know I shouldn’t engage in selfishness, hatefulness, lust, slothfulness and drinking to excess I still engage in these behaviors. (With some periods of success in between, I am not trying to overstate my problems, but I’m not trying to minimize them either.) Sometimes (although l believe I am improving) I do these things willingly with malice aforethought. In short, “…I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . . . Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!...”
A childhood friend of mine, about whom I know just as much about as someone could know, some time ago made a comment which shook my world view and changed my perspective. (Such conversations are the best ones to have in my opinion.) I have ever since been trying to synthesize my perceived differences between his view of the world and my own.
He said, “I have made more progress in my personal moral behavior through therapy than I ever did from years of guilt and regression in the evangelical church.”
His comment was true to my own experience. It‘s true in what I observe in my other close friends. It’s true of the worst stereotypes of Christians. We’re really not that much better than the dreaded “culture” in avoiding sin. Sure, we (most of us) might not be as bad as those philandering Hollywood Elites so we must be better, right? (No, not right) What’s worse than that is we’re perceived as hypocritical. I believe this criticism is very often justified. The Church has been passive in our call to renewing our minds.
So what do we do? Throw out the Bible? Forsake our Savior? Go on living like this? No! As Peter confessed, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
I truly believe, and have faith, that we have a present and future hope to overcome sin and its effects of death in our lives.
The Bible is not, primarily, a set of rules to live by. While it certainly has rules that is not what it primarily is and if you use it that way, you’re in for hypocritical, pharisaical religious misery.
Instead, the Bible is God’s revelation to man. It’s a story about a loving, holy, Creator who wishes to have a relationship with humanity. But there was a problem. His holiness and our sinfulness were irreconcilable. So he came down as a suffering and blameless Savior, died in our place, so that we can be reconnected to the source of life. He pays for the penalty of sin and resolves the problem of division. This book of life does have profound implications on how we should conduct our behaviors, thoughts and thinking. The Bible gives us a “why.” And it has some “hows”, but I am convinced we can do much better than we have been at living the lives we are called to live. I am convinced we can be less hypocritical and more caring for people, more like who we were meant to be in this life. We overlook that the Bible tells us to engage our thought patterns as part of our spiritual growth.
My friends’ comment helped me engage in looking into cognitive behavioral therapy and its benefits.
I am thoroughly convinced that positive life change can be accomplished through systematic implementation of cognitive behavioral therapy and especially within a Biblical context. And while I have encountered some attitudes within the church that this is in conflict with this notion, I have found that CBT is completely congruent with a Biblical world view. The core of CBT is the CBT triangle:
The principle of the CBT triangle is relatively simple: your thoughts influence your feelings which influence your behaviors. You can, for example, take positive action in your behaviors (even something as simple as going for a walk) and positively influence your thoughts and feelings. You can take this concept and “ratchet” up until your overall well being has improved. The benefits of recognizing negative thinking patterns and realizing all of your negative thoughts are not helpful (or even true) is immensely helpful. So I try to avoid things like “all or nothing thinking” or “catastrophizing” which enables me to move forward when previously, I might have given up or been paralyzed and stuck.
The point is you are not your behaviors. You are not your feelings. You’re not even your thoughts. You can alter and influence all of these things with deliberate actions and focus them on the right things, but sometimes an objective voice helping you recognize your negative and unhelpful patterns is immeasurably helpful. (We’ll discuss “what” or “who” you actually are in a later post). There’s a lot more to it but that’s as simple an explanation as I can offer. Maybe there’s a simpler explanation, “take captive every thought…” (2 Corinthians 10:5) because a powerful weapon used by the enemy against us is our own thoughts. We are challenged throughout scripture to set our minds on the “things above” and love God with our minds (Matthew 22:37), and to “think about such things” (Philippians 4:8-9).
There are a lot of resources out there to get the help you need to better manage your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a way that serves you and those around you better.
The Faithful Counseling App
You can even go to PsychologyToday.com and find a psychologist that fits you (you can do it TODAY, it’s in the title). I hope that you never feel trapped by your own thoughts, feelings and behaviors, but if you do, there are proven methods to get better. I believe it will make you a better human, a better Christian and a better follower of Christ.
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Philippians 4:8-9 ESV
See also: Colossians 3:2-4, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:23