False Assumptions
by
Henry Cloud and John Townsend


 
 FALSE ASSUMPTIONS
	
Requests for information should be addressed to:
	Zondervan Publishing House
	Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
	International edition lSBN 0-310-59577-0
	Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
	Cloud, Henry.
	False assumptions : relief from 12 "Christian" beliefs that can
drive you crazy I Henry Cloud and John Townsend.
	p.  cm.
	Includes bibliographical references.
	ISBN: 0-310-59570-3
	1.  Spiritual life-Christianity.  1.  Townsend, John Sims, 1952-.
	II.  Title.
		BV4501.2.C589	1994
	248.4-dc20
93-40420
	CiP
Some of the names in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the
individuals described.
	All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE:
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.  Copyright C 1973, 1978, 1984 by
International Bible Society.  Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House.
All rights reserved.
	All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any lorm or by any means-electronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in
printed reviews, without the prior permission of tbe publisher.  
	Edited by Sandra Vander Zicht and Tim McLaughlin
Cover design by Cheryl Von Andel  
	Printed in the United States of America  
	94 95 96 97 98 99 I DH /10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1  To our clients,  
	who have worked through  
	all twelve of the  
	false assumptions with us  Contents  
Introduction  
	Assumption #1  
	It's selfish to have my needs met.  
	Assumption #2  
	If I'm spiritual enough, I will have no pain or
sinfulness.  
	Assumption #3  
	If I change my behavior.  I will grow spiritually
and emotionally.  
	Assumption #4  
	I just need to give it to the Lord.  
	Assumption #5  
	One day, I'll be finished with recovery.  
	Assumption #6  
	Leave the past behind.  
	Assumption #7  
	If I have God, I don't need people.  
	Assumption #8  `Shoulds" are good.  
	Assumption #9  Guilt and shame are good for me.  
	Assumption #10  If I make right choices, I will grow spiritually.  
	Assumption #11  Just doing the right thing is more important
than why I do it.  
	Assumption #12  If I know the truth, I will grow.  
Conclusion  
	Notes  
9  
	13  
	29  
	45  
	65
79
93  
	111
129
145
161  
	175  
	193  
	205  
	207  
Introduction  
This book began with a dilemma.  
	Time and time again, we'd find that our patients-
sincere, Bible-loving believers struggling with emo-
tional issues-had a double burden to bear.  Not only
were they depressed, or eating compulsively, or having
trouble dealing with authority figures, but they were
also handicapped by certain teachings that sounded
Christian, but weren't.  
	The ideas appeared true because those who taught
them used religious language and quoted Scriptures.  
These ideas, however, are emotional heresies.  They are
false assumptions about spiritual and emotional growth.  
They aren't biblical, and they don't work.  
	We identified twelve teachings that sound plausible
because they each contain a nugget of truth.  At some
point, however, when Christians try to apply the truths,
a breakdown occurs.  And the person needlessly suffers.  
	A woman who suffered from a deep depression
because she had been abandoned as a child, was told by
a Bible teacher that she simply needed more time with
God.  She was putting too much trust in people, he told
her.  Faithfully she tried to follow the principle, "If I
have God, I don't need people." She isolated herself
more and more from those who loved and cared for her
in order to spend time praying and studying the Bible.  
She spent hours alone, with no human contact.  
	Eventually, her depression deepened to the point
that she was hospitalized.  During her stay, after much
effort, she learned what the Bible really teaches: that a  
great deal of God's healing comes through the members
of his church.  
	The most astounding finding of our informal study
was that Christians who had been raised with minimal
Bible training were less injured by these false assump-
tions - supposedly biblical teachings-than Christians
with extensive Bible training.  In other words, Chris-
tians who know their Bibles the best are often injured
the most.  When their allegiance to the Scriptures was
combined with dangerous teaching, much pain often
resulted.  
	Though sometimes they questioned their faith, more
often they blamed themselves: They weren t faithful to
God, or they were secretly resisting what God wanted
to tell them.  Either way, their emotional symptoms
tended to worsen and their pain increased.  
	The hurting person was then left with one of two
options: Leave God and get well in secular psychology,
or stay in a Christianity that apparently didn't work and
simply cope with being dysfunctional.  
	As we continued to run across this problem, we
searched the Scriptures for answers to these beliefs that
were literally driving people crazy.  We found that there
really is nothing new under the sun: These crazymak-
ing principles have all been addressed in the Bible,
from Jesus' confrontation of the Pharisees, who be-
lieved that authoritative religiosity was actually the
voice of God (Mark 7:5), to John's exposure of the
Gnostics, who believed that human connections should
be avoided in preference to divine connections
(1 John).  The Scriptures present clear corrections of all
these crazymakers.  
	Most of these false assumptions have one thing in
common: They draw the believer away from God's
resources of growth and healing, and toward a system
that sounds Christian, but doesn't work.  
	Several years ago, the Rev.  Scott Rae, at that time a 
singles pastor at Mariners Church in Newport Beach,
California, asked us to speak to his singles group about
spiritual growth.  We put together a series of Sunday
night lessons for an active, questioning group of serious
Bible students-and who also wanted honest answers
about emotional growth.  From that format came the
outline of this book.  
	We wanted to do more than simply react and refute
these crazymaking assumptions.  We wanted to tell the
truth about God's principles of spiritual growth.  So in
this book we explain the origin of these false principles,
show where they go wrong, and present a biblical path
for resolving emotional and spiritual problems.  
	You don't need Bible training to profit from this
book.  It's written for everyone.  But it's meant especially
for people who are searching to find out if the Scrip-
tures actually do apply to their sorrows, their conflicts,
their emotional growth, and their struggles.  
	The dilemma can be solved.  The Bible can help
make you emotionally well, not sicker.  God and his
Word are part of the solution-not part of the problem.  
	We pray that you will be able to identify the pseudo-
biblical beliefs that can make you crazy.  More than that,
we hope that you will use the truth of God's Word, of
his Spirit, and of his people to grow in grace and in
truth.  
ASSUMPTION #1  
	It's selfish to have  my needs met.  
	Exhausted and lonely one Monday afternoon, Sarah  
	reached over and switched on the radio.  It had
been a rough weekend.  Every request she made of the
kids had turned into a battle, and her husband had
remained planted in front of the television.  She
couldn't recall if he had said a caring word to her or the
kids all weekend.  
	It was like the old joke, she thought.  "Ask me how
my day was," says the comedian.  
	"All right-how was your day?"  
	"Don't ask."  
	It was a bitter joke to Sarah.  She didn't even want to
think about how depressed she was.  
	Maybe the radio would help.  She flipped through
the newspaper for the day's radio listings.  The topic on
the Christian station was "Help When You're Down."
She recognized the speaker's name; he was a local,
well-respected pastor.  She tuned in the station.  
	...  so you're down, troubled, lonely, you're under
crushing pressure.  You wonder sometimes if things will
ever change for you."  
	Is he reading my mind?  thought Sarah.  He was
describing her very feelings at that moment.  He under-
stood.  
	"My friend, there's an answer for you from the Word  
of God." Biblically based teaching was important to
Sarah.  
	"The answer, said the pastor, `is to stop thinking
about yourself and start thinking of others.  Just as our
Lord thought not of himself, but emptied himself for
others, we will find joy in self-sacrifice and service.  Get
off the pity pot.  Repent of your self-absorption, and find
peace in sharing.'  
	Sarah's heart dropped.  Peace in sharing?  I've been
sharing myself all weekend, and I'm in pieces, not at
peace.  She had no sooner formed these resentful words
in her mind, than she immediately felt guilty.  After all,
the pastor was quoting the Bible.  I guess he's right, she
told herself bleakly.  I'm just being selfish.  
	She reached for the church bulletin to see what
additional committee she could volunteer for.  Maybe in
serving more, she'd find the happiness she longed for.  
But she was beginning to despair of ever being happy,
of ever feeling satisfied about herself and her life.  
	Every day sincere, well-intentioned Christians lis-
ten to messages similar to the one Sarah heard.  That
message-"Stop thinking of your own needs"-is
taught by sincere, well-intentioned Christian teachers
who only want to help people obey the Savior.  
	The problem is that it's not a biblical message.  It
sounds true, but it's not an accurate interpretation of the
Scriptures.  
	The Root of the Problem  
	Many of us have been taught a self-annihilation
doctrine for so long that it makes sense to us.  After all,
isn't self-centeredness at the core of our sinfulness?  
Aren't we supposed to deny ourselves and give sac-
rificially to God and others?  
	Certainly, self-centeredness is at the core of our
sinfulness.  In Lucifer's heart it all began, as this once-
most magnificent of angels resisted simple obedience,
trying instead to put himself above God.  Through Adam
and Eve, we inherited this tendency to dethrone God
and put ourselves in the center of the universe.  
	This is a serious problem.  When we refuse to see
God for who he is-and ourselves for who we are-we
deny the truth that he is God and we are his creatures.  
We put ourselves on the throne that only God should
occupy.  We idolize ourselves.  We worship and serve
"created things rather than the Creator" (Rom.  1:25).  
	Not only is it true that self-centeredness is at the
core of our sinfulness, but also we are to deny ourselves
and sacrificially give to God and others.  In fact, Jesus
summarized the entire Law and the Prophets under two
simple commands: Love the Lord your God, and love
your neighbor as yourself(Matt.  22:37-40).  Our love for
others shows that we belong to God.  We are to give
from our fullness wholeheartedly as Jesus did.  He made
himself "nothing, taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.  And being found in
appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became
obedient to death-even death on a cross!" (Phil.  2:7-
8).  
	So we hear self-denying passages like this in the
Bible.  We hear the oft-repeated maxim, "God first,
others second, self last." And we conclude that the
Christian life is a life of ignoring and even hating our
own needs, focusing instead on the needs of others.  
	Yet to believe this is to confuse selfishness with
stewardship.  This crazy-making assumption-"It's
selfish to have my needs met"-fails to distinguish
between selfishness and a God-given responsibility to
meet one's own needs.  It's like someone saying, "I saw
you last night at the gas station, filling your car's tank.  I
had no idea you were so self-centered.  You need to pray
about spending more time filling others' tanks with that
gas." Ridiculous, yes-but this is essentially what the
radio pastor told Sarah that Monday morning.  Yet if we
don't fill our own tank with gas, we won't get far.  
	The Bible actually values our needs, which are God-
given and intended to propel us to growth and to God.  
Neglecting them leads to spiritual and emotional prob-
lems; having them met, however, frees us to meet the
needs of others cheerfully and without resentment.  
	Let's take a closer look at the biblical view of needs.  
	Incompleteness  
	In an old TV commercial for aspirin, a doting mother
helps her grown daughter make dinner.  Mom's eager
helpfulness gets annoying, and her daughter's resent-
ment builds.  Finally the younger woman blows up.  
"Mother, please!" she says, "I'd rather do it myself!"  
	We're all inclined to do it ourselves.  Asking for help
and support is inconvenient and uncomfortable.  Some-
times it's unsafe.  Yet God built dependency into all of
us.  We all need God, and we need each other.  "No man
is an island, entire of itself," wrote the seventeenth-
century English poet John Donne.  "Every man is a
piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be
washed away by the sea, Europe is the less."  
	God intended us to be incomplete in and of our-
selves.  Dependency is built by God into the very fabric
of the universe.  Without the sun's warming rays, the
earth would quickly become a frozen tomb.  Without
food and shelter from the elements, animals would die.  
Deprived of light, soil, and water, plants would shrivel.  
	Even God reaches out for relationships, though it is
difficult to imagine an all-powerful God with needs.  In
his very essence, however.  God is a relational being.  
He is love (1 John 4:16), and love always has an object.  
A lover does not love in the abstract.  
	So to whom does God reach out for his relational
needs?  Certainly not to us.  Though God desires close-
ness with us, he doesn't need us.  This would put the
Creator in a creaturely position.  He loves and cherishes
us, but he doesn't need us.  
	God exists in a Trinity-three persons in one:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt.  28:19; 2 Cor.  13:14).  
His triune nature provides for him constant relationship
and connectedness.  In a way that we can't imagine,
God is always attached, never in isolation.  Yet, being
God, he is self-sufficient within the Trinity.  
	Jesus experienced and expressed relational needs.  
He needed his Father.  He "often withdrew to lonely
places and prayed" (Luke 5:16; Mark 1:35).  He used
the expression `Abba, Father" when addressing his
Father in heaven, indicating an especially close, inti-
mate relationship to God.  
	Jesus needed more than his Father-he needed
friends, too.  Though the primary purpose of Jesus'
going to the Garden of Gethsemane was to be alone
with the Father, his secondary purpose was to have a
select few of his disciples share-at some distance-in
his agony.  With Peter, James, and John he shared his
pain: "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the
point of death ....  Stay here and keep watch" (Mark
14:34).  In his own darkest night of the soul, Jesus
reached out to his friends to support him (though they
failed to give him companionship).  
	Incarnational Needs  
	As God's image bearers, created in his likeness, we
also are created to reach outside ourselves to get what
we need.  But it doesn't stop here.  The Bible not only
teaches us about our incompleteness, it instructs us
about our need for people-"Jesus with skin on.  
	While many Christians understand that they can't
live in a vacuum, they feel,uneasy about anyone but
God and "spiritual matters filling that hole up.  Yet  
God wants us to be loved not only by himself, but by
each other.  These needs are called "incarnational
needs" and will be dealt with more fully in chapter 7  
	Why incarnational?  Because Jesus stands alone in
all the religions of the world.  He became man-flesh
(incarnation), to make an attachment to us just as we
are.  He showed us that God wants to connect with
people, as a person.  As John says, "That which was
from the beginning, which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and
our hands have touched-this we proclaim concerning
the Word of life" (1 John 1:1).  
	Christianity is unique in that, while other religions
involve humankind reaching up to God-in Jesus, God
reaches down to our level.  In other words, Almighty
God reached down and baptized human connection by
sending Jesus.  Just as he hungered, thirsted, and felt
loneliness, so can we.  
	Our incarnational needs are taught all through the
Bible.  For example, after he created Adam, God saw
that it wasn't good for him to be alone (Gen.  2:18), 50 he
created Eve.  God built human beings to need him and
to need each other.  "Pity the man who falls," says the
Preacher, "and has no one to help him up!" (Eccl.  4:10)
One of the most spiritual activities you can perform is to
need other people.  
	Our Needs Are Logical  
	In the daily hospital psychotherapy group that I was
conducting, some of the group members were de-
pressed, some had anxiety disorders, some had compul-
sive and addictive problems.  All were Christians, and
all spoke about learning to depend on others for their
emotional neediness.  
	The conversation upset Raymond, however, who
had been in the hospital for three days.  He suffered  
from severe depression.  He resisted coming into the
program because he felt like a spiritual failure.  In his
mind, a depressed Christian was a backslidden Chris-
tian.  
	"This subject of needs just isn't valid," Raymond
protested.  "We are to minister grace to the world and
get our minds off that nonsense.  
	"So it's important to minister to the world?" I asked.  
	"Absolutely.  We are to give comfort, encourage-
ment, and,, hope to those with don't have it, in the name
of Jesus.  
	I certainly have no problem with that," I said.  "But
do you also get comfort, encouragement, and hope?"  
	That's selfish," he replied.  "God doesn't want me
concentrating on myself."  
	"Then God's using you to hurt people."  
	"What?"  
	"If your need for comfort, encouragement, and hope
is selfish, then others' need for that is selfish, too.  If it
ain't okay for you to have it, it ain't okay for you to give
it."  
	Gradually Raymond's theology changed-and so
did his relationships with his wife and kids.  He learned
to accept his own neediness and to reach out and ask for
help when he needed it.  
	The assumption "It's selfish to have my needs met"
makes people crazy not only because it hurts people,
but because it isn't true.  It isn't logical, and it doesn't
make sense.  To give a cup of cold water to those who
need it, we need to have drunk from it ourselves.  If we
are to forgive, we need to have been forgiven.  Paul says
it best:  
	Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all
comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that
we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort
we ourselves have received from God.  (2 Cor.  1:3-4)  20  
Our Needs Are Designed to Drive Us to Growth  
	Scientists have tried for years to invent a perpetual
motion machine, one that can operate indefinitely
without fuel or maintenance-but with no success.  It
would be nice if we could all be perpetual motion
machines, with no need to ask for help, no need to call a
friend when we're depressed or panicked, no need to
ask advice when our finances go awry, no need to talk to
someone when our eating is out of control or our
marriage is shaky.  
	Our neediness forces us to realize that we are
creatures, that we must look up at God in humility and
ask him for what we need.  Our humble position is
designed to drive us closer to God, to others, and
ultimately to maturity, "attaining to the whole measure
of the fullness of Christ" (Eph.  4:13).  
	Jesus' story of the Pharisee and the tax collector
makes this point:  
	Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a
Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee,
standing by himself was praying thus, "God, I thank
you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues,
adulterers,or even like this tax collector.I fast twice a
week; I give a tenth of all my income." But the tax
collector, standing far off would not even look up to
heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God,
be merciful to me, a sinner!" I tell you, this man went
down to his home justified rather than the other; for
all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all
who humble themselves will be exalted.  (Luke
18:10-14 NRsv)  
	The Pharisee was "standing by himself," boasting of
his good works.  But the tax collector would not even
look up to heaven.  He recognized his sins and inade-
quacies, and they drove him to God.  
	If you don't recognize your needs, you stagnate.  You  have little reason to seek God.  Those with no symptoms
don't seek a doctor.  It's easier to deny your mortality
when you don't suffer from high blood pressure, weight
problems, or shortness of breath.  Start putting on
weight, though, or experience dizzy spells, or have to
- gasp for breath-then you call the doctor.  Similarly,
when you feel lonely and depressed, then you draw
closer to others and to God.  There will always be more
demand for curative than preventive medicine.  
	Our needs place us, then, in the position of having to
ask for help.  Just as thirst leads us to drink and hunger
forces us to find food, our spiritual and emotional
neediness compels us to reach for someone else.  The
tax collector asked for mercy, and he "went down to his
home justified" (Luke 18:14).  
	Our Needs Are Designed to Drive Us to Humility  
	As long as we think we're better than most, we will
rarely admit our needs and ask for help.  We distance
ourselves from other people, like Edom.  The Edomites
sought security in being distant and uninvolved, but
their pride proved deceptive (Obad.  1:3).  As the Bible
points out, "A man's pride brings him low" (Prov.  
29:23).  
	Jim and Brenda came to me for marital help.  It was
soon clear to me that Jim was emotionally self-sufficient
to a fault.  When Brenda took the kids on an out-of-state
trip to see her mom, Jim would call every day to see
how they were doing, but he'd never admit that he was
lonely and that he missed them.  
	When Brenda asked how he was doing, Jim would
say, You know me-I'm fine.  Couldn't be better.  You
guys have a great time."  
	Brenda knew her husband, but only after a fashion.  
She knew that nothing threw Jim.  She knew that he
weathered job losses, physical ailments, and friendship  
conflicts with mearly a frown.  She knew that he didn't
need help from anyone.  
	Finally, Brenda had had enough.  She dragged him
to couples therapy.  "I don't know why Jim married
me," she complained.  "I don't feel like I matter to him.  
Sometimes I wish he'd have some huge tragedy just so
he'd ask me for help."  
	Jim seemed arrogant to his wife because he'd been
trained that way.  Jim's father had been absent when he
was young, and his mother was dependent and imma-
ture.  He learned early not to depend on anyone else.  
For him to cry and be lonely or sad was too much for his
weak mother, who'd spiral into depression.  So Jim
suppressed his negative feelings as well as the experi-
ence (but not the need) of needing others.  He also
became resourceful and responsible.  
	Ironically, his resourcefulness and sense of respon-
sibility was tough on his marriage.  Brenda had no
neurotic "need to be needed." She simply wanted to
know her man.  But his resistance to being vulnerable
made him appear to be arrogant and self-satisfied,
further isolating her from him.  
	It wasn't until Jim began seeing his self-sufficiency
as pride instead of responsibility that he began chang-
ing his behavior and rebuilding his marriage.  
	We are responsible for ourselves.  We all carry our
own load of cares, obligations, and problems.  The
apostle Paul tells us: "Each one should carry his own
load" (Gal.  6:5).  This is functional independence, in
which state you carry out your normal responsibilities.  
You don't ask others to work for your living, or to pay
your bills for you.  
	At the same time, however, we are relationally
dependent.  We all need to be loved.  It's the fuel of life.  
Being connected to God and others keeps us going.  We
need empathy comfort, understanding, and reassu-
rance from others.  Jim had learned to be both function-
ally independent (this was healthy) and relationally
independent (this was unhealthy).  He needed to culti-
vate a relational dependence; he needed to need
others.  That is humility.  "A man's pride brings him low,
but a man of lowly spirit gains honor" (Prov.  29:23).  
	Humble people know they can't do it all themselves,
for humility teaches them to ask for help.  They know
they must reach out to survive.  That's why the Bible
tells us that God "mocks proud mockers but gives grace
to the humble" (Prov.  3:34).  
	Our Needs Are Designed to Draw Us
Closer to God  
	Answering an attack from the Pharisees, Jesus said,
"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  
But go and learn what this means: `I desire mercy, not
sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but
sinners" (Matt.  9:12-13).  
	God doesn't rescue perfect people.  He wants people
with problems.  People with nothing to fix have nothing
to say to God.  Those who are poor in spirit, those who
are in mourning, those who are meek-those are
blessed (Matt.  5:3-5) because they can be filled, can be
comforted, can be helped.  He never said, "Blessed are
those who have their act together." If nothing is broken,
nothing can be fixed.  
	We are drawn to this gospel message because we
have problems.  And after joining a church, we spend
our next forty years trying to hide our problems.  Having
no problems is a problem.  
	The self-righteous attitude of thinking we have no
problems is what birthed Alcoholics Anonymous in the
1940s.  People found that in A.A.  meetings they could
still have struggles; they could still be needy.  In fact,
they had to confess their shortcomings at every meet-
ing.  The church today is making great strides in 
embracing this biblical attitude.  The church should be
a place where it's safe to be unfinished, incomplete,
and needy.  
	Neglecting Our Needs Leads to Spiritual and
Emotional Problems  
	If God built us with needs, then it stands to reason
that letting our needs go unmet can cause major
problems.  Just as neglecting regular oil changes will
destroy your car's engine, neglecting our God-given,
legitimate needs will cripple us.  
	Karen, a professionally dressed woman in her thir-
ties, came to see me about her depression.  Concentrat-
ing on her work and sleeping were equally difficult, she
told me.  She had withdrawn from family and friends;
suicidal thoughts occurred to her more and more
frequently.  A complete physical had revealed nothing
wrong.  In severe depression, Karen felt despairing and
hopeless.  And she hadn't a clue about its cause.  
	During our first session, I explored Karen's past and
present relationships.  Karen had maintained a high
position of leadership in her local church, was active in
her community, and was a wonderful wife and mother.  
Yet nearly every significant person in Karen's life-her
mother and father, her sister, her best friend from high
school, her college boyfriend-had either abandoned
her or had no emotional attachment to her.  
	She'd married Peter, a good man who nevertheless
was unable to make deep emotional connections (just
like Karen).  His workaholism kept him away from home
a lot; but in some ways, that was a relief to both of them.  
"Because we rarely see each other," she said, "we
appreciate each other more when we're together."  
	Their kids were being raised by caring parents who
didn't know how to receive what they were giving.  And
the children were having problems.  Their nine-year-old  
daughter tended to be socially withdrawn, and their
teenage son was beginning to run with the wrong
crowd.  
	The more Karen talked, the clearer the picture
became.  Her personal emotional isolation was repeat-
ing itself in her marriage and her church.  For decades
she had been running on emotional empty, getting
along only on her strong will, guilt, and adrenalin.  Now
she needed to learn the humble task of filling her
spiritual tank up-with God and with people.  
	After I gave Karen my diagnosis, she asked, "Isn't
there a book I could read, or a seminar I could attend?"  
	"As disconnected as you are now,~' I said, "your
depression will get worse, no matter how many books
you read or seminars you attend."  
	Karen took the scary, risky step of learning how to
connect, how to ask for help, support, comfort, and
understanding.  It wasn't easy, but she worked hard for a
long time.  As she became more humble, as she recog-
nized her needs and began to ask for help to get them
met, her depression gradually lifted.  
	Karen's depression signaled to her that she needed
something outside of herself-at least a book or a
seminar, she thought.  She responded to the signal and
learned how to be needy and poor in spirit.  God
provided the symptom and the resources; Karen
worked at learning to ask.  
	Psychological symptoms are God's way of letting us
know that something is wrong.  Depression, anxiety,
eating disorders, substance abuse, and compulsive
behaviors are all symptoms of a deeper problem.  These
symptoms the Bible calls "fruit": "Likewise every good
tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A
good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot
bear good fruit" (Matt.  7:17-18).  In other words, bad
fruit is not the problem, but only a symptom of the
problem.  We need to dig until we find the root of the  problem, then heal that.  We must pay attention to our
psychological, spiritual, and relational symptoms, for
they let us know if we are getting our needs met.  
	Getting Our Needs Met Helps Us Meet the Needs
of Others  
	The false assumption that it is selfish to have our
needs met is very seductive to Christians, probably
because all of us want to be loving, caring people.  Yet
our desire to give ourselves to others is what some
teachers use to scare us into thinking that taking care of
our needs will drown us in a whirlpool of self-contemp-
lation, hedonism, or narcissism.  
	Nothing, the Bible says, is further from the truth.  
Having our needs met frees us to meet the needs of
others-without resentment.  Having a full stomach
spiritually and emotionally allows us to give cheerfully
(2 Cor.  9:6-7).  
	The most comforting people in the world are those
who have been comforted; the most understanding
people are those who have been understood; and the
most loving people, those who have been loved.  The
disciple whom Jesus loved the most (John 21:20)
unsurprisingly became known as the apostle of love.  
What he received, he later gave.  
	Jesus confronted Simon the Pharisee with this truth
when a prostitute, overcome with God's grace, washed
Jesus' feet with her tears: "Therefore, I tell you, her
many sins have been forgiven-for she loved much.  
But he who has been forgiven little loves little" (Luke
7:47).  Having found forgiveness, the woman was able to
love much, whereas Simon the Pharisee was blind to
his own neediness and was therefore unable genuinely
to love.  
	Contrary to what the radio preacher had so vigor-
ously taught, Sarah began meeting her own needs first.  It's selfish to have my needs met.  27  
She resigned from a few committees.  People who
depended on her did without her while she got help.  
Most important, when she was in need, instead of
calling and offering to help, she called and asked for it.  
	"It's really different," she told me.  "I didn't expect
what has happened to my ministry.  Hour for hour, I
probably do less for others than I used to, but what I do
is light years better.  For the first time in my Christian
life, I actually want to help.  I want to serve.  I don't feel
resentment or guilt.  I think I'm actually learning what
being loving feels like."  
	One could do worse than sit at the prostitute's feet
and learn from her.  The Pharisees in your life may want
you to stay away from reminders of your neediness.  You
do need to adhere to their truly scriptural teachings
(Matt.  23:2-3), but as you grow more and more aware of
your deep and desperate incompleteness, of your need
for love from God and from others, you truly become-
as the prostitute did, and as Sarah is doing-more like
the Master.  
	Ask yourself,  "Am I asking for what I need?" You
may need support in a crisis, or advice about a problem,
or comfort in a loss.  All these needs the Father of the
heavenly lights welcomes.  "Every good and perfect gift
is from above" (James 1:17), and they often reach us
through other people (Acts 9:6-19).  
ASSUMPTION #2  
	If I'm spiritual enough, I will  
	have no pain or sinfulness.  
	ed was discouraged.  He was becoming more and  
	more depressed every day, so much so that he had
begun wondering if he were really a Christian.  So he
increased his Bible study and prayer and listened to all
the spiritual-life tapes he could get his hands on.  
	His depression only got worse.  And he began
wondering if his life was even worth living.  With
nowhere else to turn, Ted sought professional counsel-
ing.  
	"I just don't get it," he admitted to me.  "I've studied
the Bible and diligently tried to obey it.  I exercise as
much faith as possible.  I memorize Scripture.  I try to
make right choices.  I've sat under the best Bible
teachers in the world.  But I'm still so depressed I can't
function."  
	"What do you mean, you don't get it?" I asked him.  
"Why,, should all those things keep you from depres-
sion?  
	``If a Christian is really walking with the Lord, he
won't get depressed like this," Ted reasoned.  "Depres-
sion is always the result of some spiritual failure.  Only I
can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.  
	what Does Pain Have to Do with Coodness?  
	Ted is not alone in his thinking.  Many Christians
believe that if they have their spiritual lives together.  
they will not suffer from emotional problems and will
somehow avoid sin.  If pain or sin invade their lives,
they conclude that something is spiritually wrong with  
	them.  
	The false assumption under which these Christians
suffer is this: "If only I am spiritual enough, I will have
no pain or sinfulness."  
	When these people do hurt, they cannot explain it.  
Have they failed?  Has God abandoned them?  Should
they do something different spiritually to make the pain
go away?  Are they being punished for some sin?  
	People under the cloud of this assumption see only
two options: try harder at the spiritual disciplines, or
give up on the spiritual life altogether.  
	The Example of Job  
	Perhaps the best-known individual who learned this
lesson was the biblical character Job.  His losses were
horrific: possessions stolen or destroyed, servants mur-
dered, children crushed to death under a collapsed
house, his body covered with excruciating sores.  
	Like Ted, Job wondered why.  How could a loving
God allow these things to happen?  He had done
everything right, and yet he suffered unimaginable
pain.  
	As his depression deepened, Job wished only to die:
"I prefer strangling and death, rather than this body of
mine" (Job 7:15).  This hero of the faith was not living
what we would call an abundant life.  
	When Job's infamous friends came to comfort him,
they were quick to voice this false assumption.  
	Should not your piety be your confidence and your
blameless ways your hope?  Consider now: Who,
being innocent, has ever perished?  Where were the
upright ever destroyed?  (Job 4:6-7)  	If I'm spiritual enough ..  -	31
In other words, you will be protected from pain if
you are truly holy.  
	Does God pervert justice?  Does the Almighty pervert
what is right?  When your children sinned against
him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin.  But
if you will look to God and plead with the Almighty, if
you are pure and upright, even now he will rouse
himself on your behalf and restore you to your
rightful place.  (Job 8:3-6)  
	In other words, you suffer because you sin.  If you
are truly good, you won't hurt.  
	Yet if you devote your heart to him and stretch out
your hands to him, if you put away the sin that is in
your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent,
then you will lift up your face without shame; you
will stand firm and without fear.  You will surely
forget your trouble, recalling it only as waters gone
by.  (Job 11:13-16)  
	In other words, if you depend wholly on God and
stay away from sin, your pain will go away.  
	Yield now and be at peace with Him; thereby good
will come to you.  Please receive instruction from His
mouth, and establish His words in your heart" (Job
22:21-22 NASB)  
	In other words, the remedy for your pain is to yield
to God and study his Word.  
	The message Job received from his friends is
familiar: You suffer because you have failed spiritually.  
Get your act together, and then God will bless you and
deliver you from your pain.  
	Because their message to Job was neither biblical
nor real, God rebuked his friends: "I am angry with you  
	because you have not spoken of me what is right, as
my servant Job has" (Job 42:7).  
	Yet every day Christians are just as sure that they're
suffering because of something they did wrong.  And
their friends can be no more helpful than Job's: "You'll
feel better when you become more spiritual."  
	To the contrary, God tells us that we will encounter
sin and pain within ourselves, others, and the world
around us every day-even if we have regular daily
devotions and we go to church twice on Sunday.  Being
a Christian does not exclude you from problems and  
	pain.  
	But I Shouldn't Have These Thoughts  
	Susan's husband was in his final year at seminary,
preparing for the pastorate.  Despite a zeal for calling,
the seminary years had been difficult.  Susan and Sam
had three children under four years of age, very little
time to themselves, and never enough money.  
	Susan struggled to be what she called "a good
Christian wife and mother." She never complained
about how difficult things were.  After all, hadn't she
been taught that she could do all things with God's
help?  
	But this was her problem: She had an obsessive fear
that she would throw her children out of the car while
driving.  At first she ignored these thoughts, hoping they
would go away.  But mental pictures of this act per-
sisted, so she tried memorizing Bible verses about
prayer and a pure thought life.  
	Never abating, the thoughts continued to disturb her
so much that she no longer dared drive the children
anywhere.  She became housebound.  Terrified, she
came in for counseling.  
	We talked about where the thoughts might be
coming from.  "Have you ever considered that you
might be angry about all of your responsibilities with
the children," I asked Susan, "and that at times you
would just like to be rid of them?"  	If I'm spiritual enough ..	33
The question jolted her.  "Be rid of my children?  
Never!  I love them very much.  How could you even
suggest such a thing?"  
	"I didn't suggest that you do not love your children.  
I just suggested that you might be angry at how difficult
things have been for you and Sam, and that at times you
might resent how much you have to do.  
	"It's not right to be resentful," she said.  "That's not
a fruit of the Spirit.  You shouldn't feel that way, so I
don't."  
	"I understand that resentment is not a good feeling,
and that it is not a fruit of the Spirit," I replied.  "But I
think at some level you must resent your children, or
you wouldn't be thinking about throwing them out of
the car window."  
	"But I can't feel that way,~' she said.  "It's not right.~'  
	"Do you think that you only feel `right' things?"  
	"Well, that's what you're supposed to do," she
replied, less sure of herself.  "You're supposed to feel
love, patience, joy, and things like that.  Not resentment
and hatred for what you have to do."  
	"But what do you do when you do feel hatred and
resentment?"  
	"I don't let myself feel things like that.  You
shouldn't.  It's not godly."  
	"What if it were okay to feel those feelings?  Do you
think that those feelings might be there then?"  
	"But it's not okay.  That would be sin.  
	"What makes you think you are without sin?" I
asked.  
	She looked trapped.  
	Susan's responsibilities, lack of support from her
husband and friends, and her unmet needs over-
whelmed her.  No wonder she was angry.  And denying
her anger only produced irrational thoughts.  As she
slowly understood what the Bible truly says about our
negative sides, she found not only the freedom to admit  that she was full of resentment, but also the courage to
find solutions to her problems.  
	Susan found some safe people to whom to express
all the pain, hurt, and anger she had buried for so many
years.  All of her activity, she discovered, had been only
a strategy to keep herself from feeling pain.  Yet as she
brought her pain to the surface and let it be touched by
loving people, she found she didn't need all the
busyness in her life.  
	Susan's picture of a loving person-one who said
yes to anyone with a need-began changing, too.  It was
not sinful to say no to other people's requests, Susan
began to realize.  A lifetime of shoulds-she should be
patient, should serve others before herself, should not
be angry-had kept her from solving deep problems.  
Now, with permission to not always put herself on the
back burner, to reserve time for herself, to be angry, she
could face the truth and begin solving the real problem:
her anger at her powerless situation.  Regaining power
and self-control in her life eliminated the anger.  In
addition, when she did have sinful feelings and atti-
tudes, she felt free to admit them.  
	These changes inside Susan soon became visible.  So
she learned to set limits on her husband's unrealistic
demands.  She began to ask friends and family for help
when she needed it.  She didn't wait until she got sick
before feeling she could take time for herself.  Instead of
trying to be wife, mother, teacher, neighborhood minis-
ter, and church administrator, Susan adjusted her
expectations of herself so they were more reasonable.  
	In short, Susan recognized her anger and hurt,
letting them stimulate her to solve problems in her
relationships, rather than letting them fester and turn
into bitterness. 
Ways We Try to Avoid Pain  
	Caught in a trap, Susan felt two contradictory truths:
"I should not feel this way.  I do feel this way." What do
you do when you uncover feelings in yourself that
"good Christians" aren't supposed to feel?  Or when you
find yourself doing things a "good Christian" should
not do?  
	There are three common ways we handle our
negative feelings and behaviors if we don't allow
ourselves to own them.  
	Denial  
	When Susan denied the feelings she believed she
shouldn't feel, her denial produced obsessive thoughts  
	King David recognized this truth when he prayed to
God: "Search me, o God, and know my heart; test me
and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any
offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlast-
ing" (Ps.  139:23-24).  He suspected he had offensive
ways in him.  So instead of denying them, he wanted to
face the truth.  He did not fear his badness, for he knew
that the grace of God was big enough to handle it.  
	Besides producing psychological symptoms such as
depression or anxiety, denial compels us to judge others
because we cannot see them clearly.  We often criticize
others harshly for things we deny in ourselves: "You,
therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on
someone else, for at whatever point you judge the
other, you are condemning yourself, because you who
pass judgment do the same things" (Rom.  2:1).  
	The Bible clearly teaches we are wrong to deny our
sinfulness.  Again and again Jesus points out our need to
confess and face our sinfulness.  "What comes out of a
man is what makes him `unclean,"' Jesus taught.  "For
from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, 
sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, mal-
ice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and
folly.  All these evils come from inside and make a man
`unclean"' (Mark 7:20-23).  Jesus wants us to own our
real feelings, not cover them up with religious activity.  
	Those that did deny their sinfulness, Jesus con-
fronted: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees,
you hypocrites!  You clean the outside of the cup and
dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-
indulgence.  Blind Pharisee!  First clean the inside of
the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be
clean" (Matt.  23:25-26).  
	Denial is clearly not a biblical option: "If we claim
to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is
not in us" (1 John 1:8).  The good news, however, is that
we are safe in the love and grace of God.  We can own
our badness and not fear condemnation.  
	Works  
	Another way we try to handle our bad sides is by
working harder, usually to make up for our faults,
improve ourselves, or ease our guilt.  The Bible calls
this "salvation by works" (Eph.  2:9); we try to save
ourselves by working harder.  More accurately, we try to
perfect and sanctify ourselves by working harder (Gal.  
3:3).  
	Joe tried this.  He truly hated Scott.  Yet whenever
Joe felt his own hostility rising, he would instantly feel
guilty and ashamed.  
	Instead of admitting his hatred and trying to resolve
it, he put his hostility out of his mind and tried instead
to be especially kind toward Scott.  In his courteous
behavior, Joe told himself, he had "put on the new self'
(Eph.  4:24).  His forced civility toward Scott, Joe rea-
soned, was truly righteous and holy.  The problem with
this approach to his dark side, though, was that he never
owned and confessed his old self first.  He tried to work
himself out of his hatred instead of confessing it.  
	The more he tried to be nice to Scott, the more Joe
found himself slandering Scott behind his back or
saying sarcastic things about him.  Trying harder was
not making him a more loving person.  
	One day Joe came across this verse in Proverbs, and
immediately knew what he had to do: "He who
conceals his hatred has lying lips" (Prov.  10:18).  He
saw that his flattery and kindness was merely a cover for
his hatred.  
	We try other works as well-reading the Bible and
praying daily, for example, thinking that these alone
will somehow transform our inner selves.  But religious
efforts like these done by rote, without facing our
problems, are useless.  They become empty unles,
lacking "any value in restraining sensual indulgence"
(Col.  2:23).  
	The Law  
	Another trick .we pull trying to deal with our
badness is to put it under the law"-that is, condemn-
ing it, feeling guilty about it, and getting angry at it.  We
actually believe our guilt will cause us to change.  
	Becky tried putting her envy of her sister "under the
law." She was too healthy to deny her feelings and
impulses, but whenever she felt envious, she got angry
at herself and said, "I'm so bad." She would get angry
at herself for failing to control her negative feeling, and
then try to scold herself into feeling more loving.  (See
False Assumption #9 for a more complete treatment of
how guilt fails to change us.)  
	Guilt is a key feature of the law.  As Paul and others
frequently mention in their letters, the law brings
wrath, makes us sin more, holds us prisoner, and
condemns us as complete failures when we break even  	____	~--- -
one point of the law (Rom.  4:15; 5:20; 7:5; Gal.  3:23;
James 2:10).  The law has an angry nature to it; and
when we are angry with ourselves and condemn
ourselves for our sinfulness, we are acting out the law of
sin and death.  We are destined to repeat this pattern
until God overcomes it with grace (Rom.  7:9-10).  
	But guilt and condemnation are helpful, some
Christians maintain, leading us to confession.  The
Bible is very clear, however, about the destructiveness
of guilt.  Christ died to set us free from condemnation; it
has no place in the life of the believer (Rom.  8:1).  
	These methods of dealing with our sin-denial,
works, and the law-are all fruits of the false assump-
tion that if we are Christians, we will have no sin-
fulness.  
	Not All Negative Feelings Are Sin  
	Denying our sinfulness is natural.  Who wants to
claim ugly sins such as bitterness, envy, or hatred?  
	But what about negative feelings that are not
sinful-the ones that result merely from living in a less-
than-perfect world or from getting sinned against?  What
is one to do with pain, grief, anger, sadness, or fear that
results from sexual, physical, or emotional abuse as a
child?  
	Some in the church say that to still suffer from these
things indicates unrepented sin.  The sufferer is accord-
ingly condemned for feeling pain.  
	This was the message that Job heard from his
friends.  But contrary to it, he was just a victim of
circumstances.  Tragic events befell him.  Though some
of his ideas about God may have been distorted, his sin
did not cause his hurt.  Enormous loss did.  
	When we feel hurt and anger over what happens to
us, we need to respond to our pain correctly.  The Bible
talks about the importance of dealing appropriately
with sadness (see Rom.  12:15; Eccl.  3:4; 7:2-4).  It talks
about how to deal with anger (see Eph.  4:26-27).  It
explains how suffering refines us (Rom.  5:3-4; Heb.  
2:10-11).  But nowhere does the Bible say that pain
resulting from an act against you is sin.  Nowhere.  
	Yet in some Christian circles, victims of child abuse,
divorce, and emotional abuse are told that, because
they feel pain from past hurts, they are somehow not
appropriating the sufficiency of the gospel-and are
therefore sinning.  (Such teaching is actually close to
Christian Science doctrines, which deny the reality of
pain and sickness.)  
	To blame victims for their pain is a sin against the
wounded, against the brokenhearted, against the op-
pressed; it is a sin against God himself, whose heart is
with those who hurt (Ps.  34:18).  Throughout the Bible
God sides with the wounded victim.  Scripture com-
mands us to heal the brokenhearted: "And we urge you,
brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint,-,
hearted, help the weak, be patient with all men  
	(1 Thess.  5:14 NASB, emphasis mine).  
	Nowhere does Scripture tell us to confront the
wounded.  It tells us instead to love them.  Admonition,
we are told, should be reserved for those who are
unruly or rebellious (1 Thess.  5:14).  Job, the model
sufferer, gave us clear advice about approaching those
who hurt: "For the despairing man there should be
kindness from his friend; lest he forsake the fear of the
Almighty" (Job 6:14 NAsB).  
	Too often the church confronts hurting people about
their pain instead of treating them with kindness and
compassion.  Because of this false message, the wound-
ed person forsakes God and the church.  
	The Fallout of This Teaching  
	If you are taught that spirituality means no pain or
sinfulness, you will bear bad fruit-in particular fruit
such as feelings of failure, wasted energy, hiding,
unforgiveness, and lack of love.  
	Feelings of Failure  
	The Bible makes failure normal for us.  "We know
that the law is spiritual," says the apostle Paul, "but I
am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.  I do not under-
stand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but
what I hate I do.  ...  For I have the desire to do what is
good, but I cannot carry it out....  So I find this law at
work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with
me" (Rom.  7:14-15, 18, 21).  It is normal to fail.  To
teach that people should be without pain or sinfulness
puts them under great and undeserved guilt for fail-
ing-for being normal, struggling, human sinners.  
	If the only way I can deal with my pain is to deny it,
by trying harder to not feel it, or by condemning myself
for it, I am setting myself up for failure.  The Bible,
however, offers us the freedom to accept our problems
and the freedom to face them.  
	Wasted Energy  
	Because trying harder to overcome pain and sin is
another way of dealing with this false assumption, it is
inevitable that such Christians waste their energy.  
Their white-knuckle efforts only demonstrate that they
are compensating for personal sinfulness they have not
yet accepted.  Remember Jesus' words: "For whoever
wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his
life for me will save it" (Luke 9:24).  Human effort never
transformed anyone.  
	Hiding  
	The only viable answer to sinfulness is repentance,
forgiveness, and grace.  We must bring our badness and
pain "into relationship with God and others" to be
healed (1 John 1:9; James 5:16).  We bring our badness
into relationship by repenting and asking for forgive-
ness.  Only then do we receive grace.  If we believe that
it is impossible to stumble and fall, then we will do
what Adam and Eve did when they fell out of relation-
ship with God-hide.  
	When we are severed from the love of God and
others, we hide.  Unless we believe that it is okay to
reveal badness and pain to the grace of God and his
church, it will never be healed.  What we hide is not in
light, but in darkness (Eph.  5:13-14), and it cannot be
transformed by the grace of God.  Healing always comes
through unconditional acceptance, which comes only
through relationship.  
	Unforgiveness  
	If people hide the pain of their past, they cannot
forgive those who injured them.  Yet forgiveness is
God's way of taking the power out of past hurts.  
	Wounded and hurting Christians who are taught to
forget their pain and sins against them have not yet
gone through the forgiveness process.  They bury unfor-
giveness in their heart.  Yet to get on with forgiveness
and untie ourselves from those who hurt us, we must
name and feel the sins against us.  If you forbid dealing
with pain in your past, then you forbid forgiveness.  
	There are other traps, too.  Some teachers give only
lip service to forgiveness by advising you to forgive as
an act of the will-despite the fact that the Bible tells
us to forgive with our heart (Matt.  18:35).  It takes more
than an intellectual forgiveness of those who betrayed
us.  We must forgive them with our whole being-mind
and emotions, as well as will.  
	This is, after all, how God forgave us.  He expressed
his anger, sadness, and hurt.  He named the sin against
him, and he let it go.  He is our model.  
	This false assumption-denying pain and badness-
blocks people's ability to follow Christ's model.  Some
have forgiven with their will, but in their hearts still
lurk pain and anger.  
	Furthermore, when we are out of touch with our
own sinful nature, we will not experience the forgive-
ness of God.  Many people understand the fact of their
forgiveness, but they do not feel it emotionally.  They
are hiding their real selves, including their sinful
nature, from God and others.  
	We can know in our hearts only what we have
experienced.  If we have not experienced the love and
forgiveness from God and others, then grace will not
have its full effect on us (1 John 1:9; James 5:16).  If you
sidestep your own sinfulness, hiding it from God and
others, then you probably won't avail yourself of the
grace of God.  Nor will you be able to extend forgive-
ness to others.  The Bible says we forgive others based
on having first received forgiveness from God (Matt.  
18:23-35; 1 John 4:19).  
	Lack of Love  
	We are not born with the ability to love; we learn by
being loved, by seeing love modeled.  "We love be-
cause he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).  Furthermore,
Jesus teaches that our ability to love is tied to how
much we have been forgiven.  To the generous love of
the prostitute who washed his feet, Jesus pointed as
evidence of being forgiven much.  Then he warned,
"But he who has been forgiven little loves liffle" (Luke
7:47).  
	If we believe that spirituality is the absence of
sinfulness, we are out of touch with our sinfulness.  If
we are out of touch with our sinfulness, we are out of
touch with our need to be forgiven (like Simon the
Pharisee).  If we have been forgiven only of little, then
we love only little.  
	The more we face our shortcomings and bring them
to grace, the more loving we will become.  People who
are comfortable confessing their own sinfulness be-
cause God and his people are gracious become more
and more loving people.  Love is a fruit of forgiveness.  
	You Will Suffer pain, You Will Sin  
	If it is erroneous to believe that Christians should
have no pain or sin, then what does the Bible teach?  
	The exact opposite-that we will have pain, that we
will sin, and that, because of the grace of God, we are
free to face these things.  
	If confession is agreeing with the truth, then we
must understand the Bible's truth about badness.  
	1.  Sinfulness is normal.  Expect failure.  That is why
Jesus had to die for us, after all.  To believe we can
become perfect after we become Christians is denying
our fallenness (1 John 1:8).  So expect to find within you
all that Jesus mentions in Mark 7:20-23.  But do not fear
it.  Own it, because God is gracious.  
	Seeing sin as normal does not contradict other
teaching about becoming victorious over sin.- It means
only that as long as we're on earth, we can expect to be
sinners.  
	2.  Negative feelings are normal, not sinful, when
they arise from a sin against you.  It is natural to feel
angry when someone betrays you, or hurt when some-
one lies to you, or sad when someone omits your name
from the party list.  We will inevitably have pain to work
through, for example, if we have been sexually or
physically abused, or if we suffered the loss of a parent.  
To get well, we must process these normal responses to
being hurt in a fallen world (Eccl.  7:3-4).
3.  We need to deal appropriately with both sets of
feelings.  We must confess and forsake our sin-our
envy, jealousy, bitterness, pride, and being judgmental.  
We must also take our pain-our sadness, hurt,
abandonment, woundedness, and rejection -to God
and to others, where it can be loved and healed.  
	This is what David speaks of in the Psalms of
healing (see Ps.  13; 30; 31:9-19; 32; 38; 102; 103:1-5).  
He poured out his heart to God and gave thanks for his
deliverance (Ps.  116:5-9).  Likewise, after we receive
grace, we must forgive those who have wronged us.  
Freedom from the past is both receiving and giving
grace.  
	4.  The gospel is grace, and we must grow in it.  Any
feeling or behavior that we feel condemned for is a
signal that we have not accepted the grace of God.  
	In short, we need to accept the presence of badness
in us.  We need not fear it, for Christ died for us.  He
made it safe for us to own our badness and not fear it
anymore.  Through that gospel, he brings us back
together with him and others.  As the writer of Hebrews
tells us:  
	Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full
assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to
cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our
bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold unswerv-
ingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is
faithful.  And let us consider how we may spur one
another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not
give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of
doing, but let us encourage one another-and all the
more as you see the Day approaching.  (Heb.  10:22-
26)  
	Because God accepts our fallenness, we can too.  We
need not hide anymore.  We can take our fallenness to
each other and to God, and through those safe relation-
ships find healing that leads to love and good deeds.
ASSUMPTION #3  
If I change my behavior,  
	I will grow spiritually  
	and emotionally  
	knot in her stomach, Debra piloted her minivan  
	into the driveway.  She knew what awaited her
inside: sullen, resentful children and a critical husband.  
Barry and the kids weren't bad people-but no one in
the family was getting along these days.  
	Yet much of the blame rested on her shoulders,
Debra thought.  She hadn't been much of a wife and
mother lately.  Tired and depressed, she had to force
herself out of bed in the morning to get ready for work
and to fix breakfast for Barry and the kids.  In her most
dejected moments, she had even thought, "What's the
use of going on?"  
	Reaching out for help, Debra poured out her story to
Sharon, the wife of an elder at their church and known
for her piety.  "The worst part," Debra concluded, "is
that I just don't feel like being the positive one in the
family anymore.  I can't pull it off."  
	The older woman nodded her head sympathetically.  
"Debra, your negative feelings are coming from a lack
of caring acts.  Emotions always follow behavior."  
	"But what can I do?" Debra asked.  
	"Reverse the process.  If you act loving, you'll feel
loving.  So act more loving toward Barry.  Do special
things for the kids.  Do one helpful act for each person
every day.  Smile more.  You'll be amazed at the changes
in your heart.  The Bible says we're to `put on the new  
self'-and that means to behave like a loving Christian.  
Then you'll feel like a loving Christian."  
	It seemed dishonest to Debra to act differently than
she felt, but she was desperate.  So that night she
walked into the family room of their home, saw Barry
sitting in his easy chair, took a deep breath, and told
herself to apply Sharon's words.  "Hi, honey!" she said
cheerfully.  "I'm making pepper steak for you and the
kids tonight."  
	Barry and the kids enjoyed both the dinner and
Debra's bright attitude.  There was only one problem:
Debra still felt depressed.  She felt better for a few
minutes after behaving lovingly, but that's all.  
	"It's like I'm falling down a deep tunnel into
blackness," she told me a few days later.  "Every now
and then I'll do something positive, but it feels like I'm
only digging my fingernails into the wall of the tunnel.  
My nails can only hold on so long."  
	The Behavior Trap  
	Many Christians seeking help are plagued by this
third supposedly biblical idea that can make you crazy:
"If I change my behavior, I will grow spiritually." This
crazymaker says that behavior change is the key to
spiritual and emotional growth.  As Debra's older friend
put it, "The more we act right, the more we feel right."  
	This teaching holds that our emotions will simply
fall in line as we behave better and better.  For example,
to feel loving towards someone, act loving.  To combat
depression, act happy and think positive thoughts.  To
deal with angry feelings, behave kindly toward others.  
To overcome destructive habits (compulsive eating,
substance abuse, money problems, sexual addictions),
just say no to that piece of cake, the glass of wine, a new
pair of jeans, that pornographic magazine.  
	This false assumption, taught widely among Chris-
tians, has been deeply influenced by the behavioral
school of psychology, which believes that all that
counts is actions.  Over time, behaviorists say behavior
can change feelings.  
	So what is the Problem?  
	Of course, there's a grain of truth in this scriptural-
sounding crazymaker.  Aren't we're supposed to "spur
one another on toward love and good deeds" (Heb.  
10:24)?  How can doing good deeds be a problem?  
	The problem is not doing good deeds, but the role
doing those deeds plays in our spiritual and emotional
growth.  
	Problem #1: Changing only our behavior confuses
fruits with roots.  
	Over and over again, the Scriptures point out that
our actions are the result of spiritual change, not the
cause of it.  Good behavior is the cart, not the horse.  
Changes in behavior, such as becoming more loving or
more responsible, indicate that God is doing an invis-
ible, internal work of grace within us, transforming us
to be more like him "with ever-increasing glory"
(2 Cor.  3:18).  
	Look at all the ways that God wants to bear fruit in
us: "The fruit of the Spirit is love" (Gal.  5:22); "the fruit
of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and
truth" (Eph.  5:9); "And this is my prayer: that your love
may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of
insight, so that you may be filled with the fruit of
righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ" (Phil.  
1:9-11).  Paul asks God to fill the Colossians with the
knowledge of God's will so that they "may live a life
worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way:
bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the  
knowledge of God" (Col.  1:10).  Positive behavior,
whether it be defeating a compulsive eating disorder or
working in a soup kitchen, comes from God's work in
our hearts.  
	In fact, the Bible sees destructive behaviors not as
the cause of a bad attitude, but as the result of the
heart's sinful condition.  "For the sinful nature desires
what is contrary to the Spirit.  ...  The acts of the sinful
nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and
debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord,
jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions,
factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like"
(Gal.  5:17, 19-21).  In other words, problems inside us
result in selfish, hurtful acts.  
	If doing good deeds-that is, changing my behav-
ior-does not lead to spiritual and emotional growth,
what does?  
	The answer lies in this fact: Spiritual and emotional
growth doesn't occur all at once.  Just as we physically
pass from infancy to toddlerhood to youth to adoles-
cence and, finally, into adulthood, we also pass through
specific developmental stages of our emotions: bonding
to others, separating from others, sorting out good and
bad, and becoming an adult.1  
	Bonding to others.  Bonding to others, or attachment,
is our deepest and most primary spiritual and emotional
need.  God is relational, and he created us as relational
beings (1 John 4:16).  From the womb, we need connec-
tion with God and others for comfort, safety, a sense of
belonging, nurturing, and meaning.  People who are
injured during this developmental stage, who do not
bond as infants and children, have great difficulty
trusting, being intimate, and depending on others.  As a
result, they may become depressed or may compulsive-
ly overeat, trying to find comfort in food rather than in
the love of others.
Separating from others.  Our second developmental
need is to separate from others in order to take
ownership of our lives.  We must learn what is us and
what is them.  We must learn to distinguish between
what God has and has not given us responsibility for.  
This principle of learning responsibility applies all the
way from taking care of the earth (Gen.  1:28) to saying
no when a friend asks you to lend him money that you
have pressing, legitimate need for yourself.  In this
developmental stage we need to learn the skill of
setting limits, or boundaries, around our personal
spiritual property.2  
	People who are injured during this developmental
stage-those who have inadequate personal bound-
aries-often can say no only with great difficulty.  They
have trouble staying focused, getting organized, and
controlling their lives.  They may fly into a fit of rage,
suffer a panic attack, or get depressed when they feel
overwhelmed by all the projects and people for which
they feel responsible.  
	Sorting out good and bad.  After learning how to say
yes to love (bonding), and no to evil (establishing
boundaries), our third developmental need is to resolve
the problem of good and bad.  It is in this stage that we
learn that we and the world aren't black and white.  We
learn that we are imperfect people living with imper-
fect people in an imperfect world.  From holding
impossible ideals for ourselves and others, we move to
grieving over our losses, forgiving others, and receiving
forgiveness ourselves.  Jesus said that he didn't come for
the well, but for the sick (Matt.  9:12).  When we accept
our sinfulness as something that draws us to Jesus, we
are becoming wise.  Those who are injured in this third
stage often struggle with perfectionism, overoptimism,
denial, and shame.  They feel that life isn't fair.  The
fruits of this kind of injury can include bulimia or sexual
addiction, in which the "bad" part of a person's
character becomes sexualized, causing him or her to act
out sexually.  
	Becoming an adult.  In this final stage, a person
moves from emotional childhood to emotional adult-
hood.  God desires that we be mature and take authority
over what he has given to us: our gifts, values, careers,
marriages, friendships, and callings.  No longer can we
depend on the approval of parents; as emotional adults,
we value their input, but make our own way in the
world.  As Jesus said, we have only one Father, and we
should not call anyone on earth "father" (Matt.  23:9).  
People injured during this fourth developmental stage,
who do not grow up, either have problems submitting
to authority, or they are overcompliant and rule-bound.  
They either question authority at every turn, or they
never do.  They either break the rules, or they follow
them to the letter.  The fruit of such injuries includes
scrapes with the law as well as obsessive-compulsive
disorders, in which a person has a persistent preoccupa-
tion with an unreasonable idea (like worrying about
getting fired or getting cancer) or has an irresistible
impulse to perform an irrational act (like frequent hand
washing).  
	Many people are damaged during all four stages.  For
example, you might have trouble making attachments
with people.  So you set to work on that-only to
discover in the process that you can't set limits with
others.  And this inability, in turn, causes you to avoid
people instead of confronting them.  Your isolation
consequently increases.  
	You might also become keenly aware of what
psychologists call a good-bad split in you, which causes
you to condemn yourself any time you experience
failure or loss.  This only makes you withdraw further
and some time, you may cave in to those
in authority around you, afraid to challenge them or
voice your opinion.  Your fear of criticism from your
superiors may further distance you.  
	In all these cases, destructive actions do not cause,
but follow spiritual and emotional problems.  Yes, we
are responsible for what we do; but we must recognize
the source of our actions before we can change them.  
- Let's "clean the inside of the cup and dish," as Jesus
said, "and then the outside also will be clean" (Matt.  
23:26).  
	The process of belatedly leading yourself into
emotional adulthood can be discouraging at first.  But as
you deal with all the issues, you are deepening and
strengthening your bonds with your support network.  
You are working work step-by-step and shoulder-to-
shoulder with a patient God, who wants you to handle
only what you can handle today (Matt.  6:34).  The
result?  A gradual increase of your loving feelings, of
your emotional connections, and of your loving atti-
tudes and behaviors toward others.  And then your fruit
will begin changing.  
	Behavior is a spiritual barometer.  It reflects change
more than it causes change.  The Bible teaches that
what we do and how we behave reflects who we are.  "A
good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot
bear good fruit ...  by their fruit you will recognize
them" (Matt.  7:18, 20).  In other words, we are to
observe the results of our lives-our actions-and
evaluate if they are good.  Then we'll have a handle on
evaluating our spiritual state.  
	For example, the giver who allows others to control
her time often appears fruitful.  People speak well of her
loving actions.  Yet her fruit is actually a halfhearted,
resentful compliance (2 Cor.  9:7).  If she continues to
give reluctantly, depression or compulsive behaviors
will surely follow.  Depleted, she will begin to emotion-
ally and spiritually withdraw.
Depression and compulsive behaviors are often
blessings in disguise.  These distressing symptoms
signal that something is wrong inside, and that we need
to seek help.  What a contrast to the idea that we are to
"behave" well to get well!  The Bible teaches us just the
opposite: Getting well brings better behavior.  
	How then do we grow spiritually and emotionally?  
Just as the correct mixture of sunlight, water, air, and
soil nourishes a plant through its seed, shoot, bud, and
adult states, we also need ingredients to help us grow.  
God provides three elements that nurture our passage
through the four different stages of growth: grace, truth,
and time.  
	Grace.  Grace, the first ingredient necessary for
growth, is something we get from God.  We don't
deserve grace; we can't earn it.  God just gives it to us.  
God created us to need relationship, and when relation-
ship was broken in the Garden of Eden, he restored us
into relationship with him through grace.  "When we
were God's enemies," the Bible says, God "reconciled
[us] to him through the death of his Son" (Rom.  5:10).  
	Despite the violent problems spawned by gangs in
urban centers throughout the country, it is in gangs that
many young people, ironically, find grace.  Here they
are accepted.  They may have been kicked out of their
childhood homes, they may have run away from home,
they may feel alienated.  To compensate they chose a
new family, albeit a destructive and damaging one.  But
they feel permanently attached.  As a thirteen-year-old
girl said about the prospect of being killed in a gunfight,
At least I'll die with my gang.  
	Grace says you belong, no matter who you are or
what you do.  You are part of the family.  You matter.  A
safe relationship can fuel your spiritual and emotional
growth.  Just as the branch can't survive long without
the vine (John 15:6), you can't flourish without being
spiritually and emotionally attached and connected to
God and his people.  
	Truth.  If grace is the heart of growth, truth is its
skeleton, its structure.  Truth is the information we must
learn to live life.  Truth may nudge us to assume
responsibility in one area or to confront the sin in
another.  Truth may impel us to learn a new skill, like
setting boundaries.  The truths of the Bible, for example,
relate to our need to be "thoroughly equipped for every
good work" (2 Tim.  3:17).  
	Phyllis came to therapy disturbed that she preferred
her nine-year-old daughter over her twelve-year-old
son.  The active boy constantly rubbed her the wrong
way, frequently challenging her authority.  Phyllis dis-
covered that she resented him daily.  The girl, on the
other hand, was helpful, cooperative~just more like-
able.  
	It wasn't that Phyllis didn't understand her son's
boyishness.  She understood his need for more controls.  
She also recognized that he and her daughter were at
different developmental stages.  Yet try as she might,
Phyllis couldn't make herself feel closer to her boy.  
	One day in therapy, Phyllis realized that her son
reminded her of a lost part of her personality.  She'd
been raised to be compliant~very much, in fact, like
her own daughter.  Her parents had discouraged any
disagreement in the house.  Phyllis's son revived in her
deep feelings of self-hatred, which in turn reflected her
hatred of her parents for rejecting her innately aggres-
sive and challenging nature.  
	The truth behind her feelings liberated Phyllis.  
Now that she knew where the feelings originated and
why her son pushed so many angry buttons in her, she
could deal with her feelings and learn to love her son
more.  In addition, she began to develop the sassy part
of her personality she had buried in childhood.  The
truth had indeed freed her (John 8:32).  
	Time.  Time is the incubator in which grace and truth
produce their fruit.  Time allows us space to learn the
maturing truths we need, with no condemnation.  When
Jesus told us to take up our cross daily (Luke 9:23), he
was referring to, among other things, the ongoing
process of taking ownership of our lives.  Spiritual
growth is not instantaneous.  It's more like what an oven
does than a microwave, slowly and gradually heating
and melting the ingredients together to produce a new  
	person.  
	Phyllis, for example, didn't change her feelings for
her son overnight.  It took time to deepen her under-
standing of her own fear of being aggressive, time to
distinguish her son's behavior from her past, time to get
to know him in a new way, time to forgive her parents.  
But slowly and gradually, she began to accept her son
with more grace and less resentment.  
	These three elements unite in our lives to make us
recovered, whole, loving, and functional beings.  Grace
and truth come to us through Jesus (John 1:17), and one
purpose he makes of them is to mature us.  
	Like Debra, Jeff was depressed.  The thirty-five-
year-old businessman couldn't concentrate on work,
had no energy, and couldn't sleep at night.  Fights with
his wife were getting more frequent.  
	"I feel like I'm a walking dead man," he said during
his first therapy session.  "I can't feel alive.  I can't feel
sadness.  I can't feel my wife or my kids.  And I want to."  
	The Christian therapist diagnosed an attachment
disorder; in other words, Jeff had difficulty making
emotional connections.  So at some point in life, he
learned to cope by being competent, responsible, and
self-sufficient.  
	In weekly sessions with his therapist, Jeff found a
safe place to explore why feelings and closeness were
so difficult for him.  He also joined a relationally
oriented Bible study at his church, where he gradually
opened up and began sharing his deepest fears and
desires.  
	Through a difficult process, Jeff came to terms with
the fact that he came from an emotionally detached
family.  Though he had always thought his parents were
near perfect, he began to see that their perfection was
- merely polite distance.  Then he felt in himself loss and
anger.  
	Jeff also had to learn to take responsibility for his
disconnection.  Although he did not cause it, it was his
problem, not the problem of his parents, his wife, or his
friends.  He had to take ownership for every time he
withdrew when he should have reached out for comfort
and help.  With his support group's help, he became
acutely aware of all the ways he maintained distance
from others.  
	All three elements of growth gradually fell into
place for Jeff: grace (through his therapist and support
group), truth (in the form of the biblical information he
learned and how it applied to the insights of those who
knew him), and time (as week after week he dealt with
his tendency to withdraw rather than reach out to
family and friends).  
	Growth is a process.  We need a safe place of love,
helpful information about ourselves, and time to prac-
tice and fail.  
	What does this view of growth tell us?  Simply that
good, mature, loving, responsible behavior follows
God's pattern-it comes after long, hard periods of
work on root issues.  
	Consider this scenario: You contract a fever and visit
your doctor.  He diagnoses you with a bacterial infec-
tion.  Then, instead of writing up a prescription for an
antibiotic, he looks you in the eye and says, "Here's  how to cure your fever: Three times a day, act 98.6
degrees.  Behave as though you had a normal temp.  I'll
see you in a couple of weeks."  
	Remedies as unsound as this are urged on Christians
when they're told to change their fruit-while ignoring
the root.  
Problem #2: Changing only our behavior forces us
first into phariseeism, then into despair.  
	In essence, the elder's wife told Debra to pretend
she loved others.  So Debra tried to cover up her
conflicts.  This covering up of resentment-the spiritual
thing to do, according to Debra's friend-sounds omi-
nously like what the Pharisee did, and what Jesus
reserved some of his most harsh words for.  
	Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you
hypocrites!  You clean the outside of the cup and dish,
but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  
Blind Pharisee!  First clean the inside of the cup and
dish, and then the outside also will be clean (Matt.  
23:25-26).  
	The Pharisees had it together.  They behaved cor-
rectly in all circumstances, on all occasions.  They were
scrupulous.  Yet judging from Jesus' words to them, God
is more interested in Debra's understanding why she is
depressed (so that she can resolve her depression) than
he is in meticulous correctness.  He is more interested
in our searching our hearts (Ps.  139:23) to find out why
we act out, are sad, or have impure thoughts.  He wants
to get at the actual problem-the spiritual problem-
and heal it, because he knows that then and only then
will the outside of the cup be clean.  
	Some people can pretend good behavior for a while.  
Like actors waiting in the wings to perform, they ready
themselves for acting happy and positive, for behaving
correctly, for appearing spiritual.  It takes lots of effort,
too.  
	People who extend their pretend existences for a
lifetime often control others by becoming their
teachers, just as Sharon, the elder's wife, controlled
Debra.  Such control keeps the Sharons of the world
away from their own problems.  Debra, however, was
headed in another direction.  Despite Sharon's "behav-
ior" answer, Debra was headed for despair.  
	When our hope is not realized, we despair: "Hope
deferred makes the heart sick" (Prov.  13:12).  That's
what happens to some when they attempt to live life
according to this crazymaker.  Years and years of trying
to do the right thing, of trying to behave in right ways-
yet with no deep sense of emotional connectedness to
God or others-sooner or later loses steam.  These
disappointed and frustrated people often leave the
church-Christianity just didn't work out," they say.  
They feel like spiritual failures because they couldn't
act "like a Christian."  
	Yet the very word "Christian" signifies "problems."
We are saved only when we are aware of our grave
spiritual trouble, only when we are convinced we can't
live life on our own without God.  Christians, then,
behave like everyone else-that is, like people with
problems.  We may be forgiven, but we're not perfect.  
	The distinction Jesus pointed out between the
prayers of a Pharisee and a tax collector illustrate this.  
The Pharisee fasted, tithed, and thanked God that his
behavior was proper.  The tax collector simply pled for
mercy with a humble and repentant heart-and left
justified (Luke 18:10-14).  Beware of those who seem to
have their spiritual act together.  They may recruit you
to their fasting and tithing program, without checking
first with God.
Problem #3: Changing only our behavior denies
the power of the Cross.  
	The "good behavior" approach insults the redemp-
tive power of God to heal us.  It places the power for
change squarely back onto our shoulders.  It assumes
that we have the power to stop our selfish, lusfful,
hating hearts-by changing our behavior.  (See Assump-
tion #10.)  
	Changing one's behavior in order to change one's
heart also fosters a proud, omnipotent self-dependency
that leaves God out of the picture.  Instead of God, all
we have is an impotent deity who feebly wishes us well
while passively watching our pain and struggle.  
	This is hardly~the case.  God is the source and being
for our recovery: `For from him and through him...  are
all things" (Rom.  11:36).  He is at work within us "to
will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phil.  
2:13).  He forms, fuels, and forges our growth and
emotional repair.  
	This teaching that "If only I change my behavior, I
will grow spiritually and emotionally," is, at its heart,
an idolizing of humans.  Colossians 2:23 calls this "will-
worship" (NKJv), or the worship of our willpower, our
own power to sanctify ourselves.  It turns its face from
humility, from dependency on God and on his church.  
It turns its face from inability, from brokenness, and
from failure.  And it depends on our own internal power
to choose maturity every time-a power we lost at the
fall.  
	How Should We Then Behave?  
	If changing your behavior does not produce long-
lasting differences in your spirit, then should you
simply "let go and let God"?  Should you become a
passive observer in your own spiritual recovery?  
Should you sit back and let God fix you?  
	This perspective isn't any more biblical than the
"behavior" answer, its opposite.  God places a high
value on personal responsibility in the part we have to
play in our growth.  We are to "work out [our] salvation
with fear and trembling" (Phil.  2:12).  
	Remember that God wants to help you develop an
increasing sense of responsibility over your life.  He
wants you to become fully adult.  Children need others
to be responsible for them; but to grow into emotional
and spiritual adulthood is to become stewards of our
feelings, thoughts, and behavior.  
	Then what can we do?  If both are true-that our
actions are signals that indicate our spiritual condition
(rather than causes that determine our condition), and
also that we bear responsibility in getting well-then
what can we do to help ourselves without trying to do
God's work for him?  
	The Bible presents an answer: Instead of attempting
to fix our symptoms, we can actively take ourselves to
good nutrients.  Just as a tree planted in rich soil can
flourish, so can we expose ourselves to God's healing
resources.  
	The only behavior we can practice that will move us
to emotional and spiritual adulthood is picking our-
selves up and taking ourselves to good nutrients-that
is, to God and his people.  Yet even this action on our
part is God's work within us: "No one can come to me
unless the Father who sent me draws him," Jesus said
(John 6:44).  It's hard to admit that we are powerless to
change our behavior.  It takes deep humility to take our
failure, shame, and pain to the right kind of people-
people who will move toward us, comforting us as they
themselves were comforted (2 Cor.  1:3-4).  
	The alcoholic who tries to stop drinking by using
willpower and commitment is wasting his time.  He's
much better off using that willpower to take himself to
the next support meeting.  The depressed individual
who tries to act positively is stuck in a cycle of despair.  
She needs to find places of grace and truth where her
weary heart can find healing.  As we use our behavior to
propel us to love and responsibility instead of trying to
fix ourselves, we use our actions to bring about true
change.  
	Actions Can Be Confusing  
	Yet even positive behavioral change can actually be
a warning that all is not well.  And negative actions can
actually be a good sign of growth.  Even no change can
be a sign of growth.  
	The "Sprinter": Resentment-driven  
	Bursts of Good Behavior  
	Frank sat on the edge of his seat during his first
session of therapy, painting himself a picture of ea-
gerness and cooperativeness.  You wouldn't have
thought that a man whose wife had kicked him out of
the house until he got therapy would be this positive
about getting help.  You wouldn't have thought that a
man with a long history of rage attacks, work perfor-
mance problems, and chronic lateness would be this
eager for help.  Yet he seemed to be just that.  
	"Just tell me the program, Doc," Frank told me.  "I'll
do whatever you say.  
	"Okay," I said.  "It's pretty simple.  The program is
this, Frank: Disagree with and rebel against everything
I say."  
	There was a long pause.  "Why?" he finally asked.  
	"Because it will help you stop lying,~' I told him.  
"Your lifelong history shows that you can't disagree
with others until you feel pushed against the wall.  You
have tremendous needs to be approved, and yet you
hate complying in order to get approval.  I'm suggesting  
	we see who you really are.  
	Frank also had a long history with therapists.  First
persuading them that he was a highly motivated client,
he would then improve his behavior significantly,
attributing it to the brilliance of the therapist.  Then for
no apparent reason, he would "relapse"-lose his job,
get in a fight, or terminate therapy abruptly.  
	Frank's sudden burst of positive behavior had
nothing to do with his spiritual development.  He was
merely appeasing a feared and hated authority figure.  
Years earlier, I discovered, Frank had learned to placate
his angry father the same way.  Frank was a man pleaser
instead of a God pleaser (Gal.  1:10).  And it never stuck,
because it was based on the fear of disappointing
someone rather than on gratitude for being loved.  Frank
had learned to sacrifice his true feelings to avoid the
anger of others.  
	Frank didn't say much the rest of that first session,
but during the second one he had plenty to say.  He
began telling the truth about how deeply he resented
having to see me, how angry he was at what he
perceived as his wife's leveraged power play, and
ultimately how afraid he was of being controlled by
others.  
	Initial bursts of good behavior are often based on
fear.  However, no growth comes unless love is pre-
sent-and love and fear can't live in the same heart:
"There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out
fear, because fear has to do with punishment" (1 John
4:18).  For Frank, doing the right thing was only a way
to keep from being hurt.  There was no fruit of love in
his heart.
When Worse Means Better  
	The second reason we can't always trust behavioral
change is that what looks like regression is sometimes a
good sign.  For example, Frank finally underwent a
period during which he was more oppositional, rebel-
lious, and hard to live with than ever.  Some Christians
would have assumed he was only backsliding and
needed to be confronted with his sin.  
	Yet Frank was in the process making the outside of
the cup consistent with the inside (Matt.  23:25-27),
bringing out conflicts and injuries he'd been hiding for
years.  And as he began responding to attachment and to
nonpunitive limits, he was able to bring his behavior
under control.  
	Spiritual and emotional injuries and deficits are
often hidden in darkness inside our hearts, away from
relationships marked by the grace of God and his
people.  When these painful and negative thoughts and
memories begin emerging in relationships, people
sometimes act for the first time as they have actually felt
for decades.  
	Some get angry.  Some mourn their losses.  Some feel
dependent for the first time in their lives.  Such feelings
can be unpleasant for both the person feeling them and
for those around him or her.  But expression of these
feelings indicates that God is bringing what has been in
isolation into relationship.  
	The story of the prodigal son and his "good" elder
brother points this out.  After the younger son had
squandered his inheritance in wild living, he felt empty
and realized his need for help.  However, the elder
son-the "good" one-was full of envy: "All these
years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed
your orders," he lashed out at his father.  "Yet you never
gave me even a young goat" (Luke 15:29).  
	In other words, the elder son behaved well because
he feared losing the inheritance, not because he wanted
to be good.  The prodigal son, however, dealt honestly
with his sinfulness and rebellion and was able to repent
and be close to his father.  
	What appear to be dangerous and even bad periods
in some lives can actually bring them closer to the Lord,
because these individuals honestly wrestle with God,
as did Jacob at Jabbok, rather than fearfully comply.  
	No Change Isn't Necessarily Stagnation  
	When one gets emotional help, there may be no
immediate results.  Depression hangs on.  Their eating is
still out of control.  The marriage still teeters on the
edge.  
	At this point, well-meaning friends often enter the
scene to say something like this: "If your therapy [or
support group, recovery program, etc.]  is working so
well, why aren't you different?  Isn't it supposed to
produce results?" The person in recovery begins to
doubt the process, his own intentions, or God himself.  
	Again, spiritual and emotional growth isn't instanta-
neous.  In Scripture God continually compares our
maturity and recovery to how plants thrive: the one
who delights in God's law "is like a tree planted by
streams of water, which yields its fruit in season" (Ps.  
1:3).  
	What is your "in season"?  "In season" means "at the
proper time." Given the proper ingredients for growth,
such as hard work and God's inner working, you will
burst forth with fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, and
self-control (Gal.  5:22-23).  "In season" means not a day
before-and not a day later.  Premature fruit is will-
power driven, not God driven.  
	You'll go through dark times, times when your
behavior still feels out of control, times when you might
question God.  But he is still working deep within your
character, moving, healing, and changing you inside.  
Like the farmer scattering seed and seeing it sprout
"though he does not know how" (Mark 4:26-29), you
don't always know how God is changing you.  But keep
doing your part, and let him have his way with his
ingredients, deep inside.  Easy change is shallow
change, not character growth.  
	A season of no change in your life may simply mean
that some particularly important and deep healing is
going on inside right now.  Beware of those who might
interpret God's slow, underground, invisible work in
you as a sign of no growth.  Beware of promises of quick
fixes that require nothing of humility, faith, patience, or
delay of gratification-all signs of true spiritual matu-
rity.  
	Debra, the budding behaviorist whose predicament
opened this chapter, was fortunately a searcher.  When
her resentment and anger weren't alleviated by her
"good" actions (as her friend assured her they would
be), she didn't keep trying the same thing.  
	But neither did she give up.  She got involved in a
recovery group at church that gave her permission to
understand her negative feelings instead of discounting
them.  She found a Christian therapist who helped her
see that acting positively was simply that-an act.  And
she found the grace to resolve the feelings.  
	Pepper steak even found its way again to Debra's
dinner table-not to assuage her pain, but because she
loved her husband and kids.
ASSUMPTION #4  
I just need to give it  
	to the Lord.  
	Alcoholism had cost Dennis two large businesses  
	and two families.  After each loss my friend built
himself a new life, but he was unable to sustain it.  A
wife would divorce him, a business would go bankrupt.  
	Binges, police interventions, and drunken stupors
had often embarrassed Dennis and his families.  Many
mornings he woke up in places he could not recall
having driven to.  His life was bleak, and his friends had
little reason to believe he could ever change.  
	Dennis is a different man today.  No longer the
alcoholic of twenty years ago, he is a successful
businessman, a good husband, a loving father, and a
faithful friend.  He leads a ministry to addicts in his
church and is known in the community for responding
quickly in seemingly hopeless situations.  
	The fruit of his current life is remarkable.  Nor is this
a short-lived, religious turn around: he has maintained
his current lifestyle for two decades.  
	Curious about how he had made the turn around in
those early, hopeless days, I asked him once how he
became sober.  
	"It wasn't hard," he said dryly.  "I went to seven AA
meetings a day."  
	Clearly, Dennis's recovery had not just dropped out
of the sky.  He had worked very hard at it, discovering
that God requires us as his partners in sanctification, in  
the process of making us holy.  This is especially true in
significant emotional growth, which God says is a
partnership between him and us.  Not choosing to do it
alone, he has devised a system whereby he works with
us to mature us, heal us, and develop us into the image
of his Son (Rom.  8:29; 2 Cor.  3:18).  He requires us to
be active, responsible participants in our own healing.  
	Listen to how Paul says it: "Therefore, my dear
friends, as you have always obeyed-not only in my
presence, but now much more in my absence-con-
tinue to work out your salvation with fear and trem-
bling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act
according to his good purpose" (Phil.  2:12-13).  Indeed,
"we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to
do good works" (Eph.  2:10).  
	In other words, we are co-laborers with God in
working out our salvation.  Though his part is primary,
we have an indispensable, distinct part also.  We are
stewards of our own salvation and sanctification.  
	Many Christians, however, adopt a passive attitude
toward their spiritual and emotional growth, especially
if they struggle with emotional pain, character weak-
nesses, life situations that need changing, or dreams
that need to be realized.  Such Christians often have a
"let go and let God" view of their healing and growth
process.  
	This belief-"I just need to give it to the Lord"-
can make and keep Christians crazy.  
	To the contrary, there is an active role for us to play
in spiritual and emotional growth.  Many Christians are
stuck because they do not perceive themselves as
partners with God in cultivating their own growth.  
	Not Opposites, But Parallel Truths  
	It is a paradox that many believers understandably
have trouble comprehending: We are unable to save
ourselves, and we must be active participants in our
process of growth and change.  
	On one hand, the Bible says that if we try to save our
lives, we will lose them (Matt.  16:25).  We are unable to
change by ourselves, and we are by nature "dead in
[our] transgressions and sins" (Eph.  2:1).  In a profound
sense, it is God who both initiates our salvation and
carries it to completion (Phil.  1:6; Rom.  11:36).  
	With only this truth (that we cannot save ourselves)
and without its partner (we must be active participants
in our salvation), sincere believers will ask God to heal
their depression, take away their anxiety, deliver them
from bulimia.  Haven't they turned to him as Savior, to
one who gives them abundant life?  They are disap-
pointed, confused, and frustrated when God fails to
deliver the abundant life they requested.  
	The parallel truth to our powerlessness is that we
must aggressively press forward, diligently working out
our salvation in order to lay hold of that which God has
secured for us.  The Bible is clear in explaining the
active role we must take in our own growth:  
	Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to
them, so that everyone may see your progress.  
(I Tim.  4:15)  
	Fight the good fight of the faith.  Take hold of the
eternal life to which you were called.  (1 Tim.  6:12)  
	I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which
God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  (Phil.  
3:14)  
	If I do not do my part, growth will not happen.  
	A Pair of Passive Teachings  
	There are two popular teachings on emotional
recovery.
"Position" Teaching  
	"You just need to focus on your position in Christ.  
He has secured everything for you.  He is sufficient.  If
you truly believe your position in Christ, you will
escape the undesirable emotional~ state you're in."  
	The first idea, which I call position" teaching,
emphasizes that if we really knew what God has
secured for us in the heavenly realms, we would be
transformed into a state of wholeness.  We should not
have to deal with hurts from the past, or any other pain
or broken heartedness.  
	This misrepresents the process of sanctification.  God
has secured an eternal position for us in heaven and has
blessed us with every spiritual blessing (Eph.  1:3), but
Scripture also teaches that we must go and possess
what he has secured.  
	This is analogous to what we are told in the Old
Testament.  There we read that God secured the Prom-
ised Land, but the Israelites still had to fight deadly
battles to possess what he had secured for them.  
	Listen to the way God described it to Moses:  
	Speak to the Israelites and say to them: `When you
cross the Jordan into Canaan, drive out all the
inhabitants of the land before you.  Destroy all their
carved images and cast idols, and demolish all their
high places.  Take possession of the land and settle in
it, for I have given you the land to possess.  ...  But if
you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those
you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes
and thorns in your sides.  They will give you trouble
in the land where you live." (Num.  33:51-53, 55)  
	The idea is this: God has secured a position of
health and Christ likeness for us, but we must fight the
fight with him to possess that position.  If we do not,
then the old inhabitants of our soul will continue to
plague us.  We must be actively involved in our
sanctification.  Teaching Christians that all they must do
is "know their position and security in Christ" denies
their responsibility for the process-the responsibility
to face their pain and the issues that caused it.  
	This teaching keeps many from doing the things the
Bible says to do.  It sounds spiritual, but in reality these
believers are avoiding responsibility.  We have seen
many people who have suffered for years with emo-
tional disorders, trying to get relief through "realizing
their sufficiency in Christ," without doing the hard
work required for real transformation.  When they do
begin to do the hard work, other Christians attack them
for being secular humanists and living apart from faith.  
Many have been hurt by this deception.  
	Trying desperately to realize their "security in
Christ," they fail to achieve real security, which comes
from deepening our relationships with God and his
church and from growing in character and abilities.  
They need to be "rooted and established in love" (Eph.  
3:17), and "speaking the truth in love, [they] will in all
things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.  
From him the whole body, joined and held together by
every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in
love, as each part does its work" (Eph.  4:15-16).  
	"Get Your Eyes Off Yourself' Teaching  
	"You just need to get your eyes off yourself and on
the Lord.  All the introspection you're doing is self-
centered, humanistic, and just plain useless.  Introspec-
tion is self-worship.  Just focus on the Lord."  
	Not only are Christians admonished to internalize
their position in Christ, but they are told to get their
eyes off themselves and onto Jesus.  "Stop being intro-
spective," their friends tell them.  "Stop thinking of
yourself," their pastor warns them.  This teaching
sounds so spiritual that it's hard to disagree with-
largely because the Bible does warn against self-wor-
ship.  
	But prohibiting individuals from looking inside
themselves distorts Scripture.  The Bible, in fact, says
the opposite.  The Bible teaches that we must look
inside and work on the things in our soul.  In fact, Jesus
says that looking at ourselves is the first thing we
should do: "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of
your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove
the speck from your brother's eye" (Matt.  7:5).  
	David was introspective in Psalm 139 when he
asked God to help him look inside and find out what
was wrong (vv.  23-24).  Early in the Psalms he con-
fessed that God desires truth in the "innermost being"
(~ys.  51:6 NAsB).  Paul is a further example when he says,
A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the
bread and drinks of the cup.  ...  But if we judged
ourselves, we would not come under judgment" (1 Cor.  
11:28, 31).  These teachings do not call for humanistic
self-worship, but a godly examination of ourselves.  
	Scripture records that whenever people encounter
God, they end up looking inside themselves, at all that
is wrong within them.  His grace gives them the
permission, and his holiness forces the comparison.  
When Isaiah saw God, he immediately saw also the
desperate condition of his own heart (Isa.  6:1-5).  James
clearly describes the process of humbling ourselves
before God: "Come near to God and he will come near
to you.  Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your
hearts, you double-minded.  Grieve, mourn and wail.  
Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to
gloom.  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will
lift you up" (4:8-10).  
	As we gaze at God, we get in touch with our
sinfulness and brokenness.  Those who teach us to get
our minds off ourselves are actually teaching us to avoid
the process of cleansing, healing, and sanctification.
The Bible teaches that spiritual growth is an ex-
-tremely self-involved process; we must continually be
looking at ourselves through confession, cleansing, and
repentance.  Contrary to what an anti-counseling move-
ment is saying, this kind of introspection is no secular-
humanistic self-glorification.  We are not to glorify
ourselves, but to humble ourselves before God so that
he can transform our soul into his likeness.  
	Gaining self-awareness includes confessing our sins
and gaining truth in our innermost parts.  When we find
- the aspects of the self that need to die, we put them to
death.  But this is impossible without self-awareness
and looking inside.  
	Twelve Steps and Other Confusion  
	"For years I fought my depression and eating
problems by trying to change," Jane told me, "but I got
worse instead of better.  Then I went to a twelve-step
group at our church, and they said that I had to admit
that I was powerless to change, and that I could not do
anything on my own.  God would have to change me.  
Now I come here and you tell me that we have a lot of
work to do!  I don't understand."  
	"Both are true," I said.  "You are powerless, and you
have a lot of work to do."  
	"But if I'm powerless to change, what in the world
am I supposed to work on?  It doesn't make sense.  
	As the Twelve-Step movement has grown in the
church, Christians like Jane are confused about what
we have the power to do in our own sanctification.  If we
are powerless, as Step One teaches, what can we do to
make ourselves holy?  If we are poor in spirit, as the
Beatitudes tell us, what can we do to recover from
emotional and spiritual pain?  Admitting we are pow-
erless begins to sound a lot like "letting go and letting
God," doesn't it?
In a sense, yes.  Without God's help, we are pow-
erless to heal our pain and transform our ingrained
patterns.  The processes of healing and transformation
are mystical; we cannot control them.  "Night and day,"
Mark writes, "whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed
sprouts and grows, though he does not know how"
(4:27).  We cannot will healing or growth; like a growing
plant, with the right ingredients, it happens.  
	In another sense, however, we can be a good
gardener.  We can guard our hearts, making sure that we
submit ourselves to the process, that we get the
nutrients God has provided, that we endure the weed-
ing and pruning he suggests, that we absorb the water
and sunlight of his love and grace and truth.  
	In fact, there are at least a dozen tasks that we have
the ability to do in cultivating our own growth.  
	1.  We have the ability to own our problems.  This is
called confession, which simply means "to agree with."
We will never change unless we confess what is true
about our condition.  Only when we confess that we are
stuck will we begin to work on getting unstuck.  Only
then can we stop blaming others and excusing our-
selves.  We can then ask for forgiveness and receive it
(1 John 1:9).  
	2.  We have the ability to confess our failure to solve
our problems.  We are powerless to save ourselves.  We
must come to a place where we say, "God, I have failed
in my attempts to change and to get better." We must
come to the end of ourselves.  
	We fail mostly because we try to overcome our
problems by "acts of the will" or by other self-improve-
ment methods.  Yet any attempts to solve our problems
by ourselves will fail.  "Therefore I will boast all the
more gladly about my weaknesses,~' wrote Paul, "so
that Christ's power may rest on me" (2 Cor.  12:9).  Stop
trying harder.  It will only bring you more failure.  
Sometimes you have to stop trying and wait instead.
others.  This is the essence of humility: We recognize
that we cannot do it alone.  Maybe we can't change our
sexual orientation, or stop spending money compulsive-
ly, or stop being depressed, or stop an eating disorder-
but we can ask God and others for help.  "Ask and it will
be given to you" (Matt.  7:7).  As James says, God is
willing to help us: "You do not have because you do not
ask God" (4:2).  
	4.  We have the ability to continue searching and
asking God and others to reveal to us what is in our
souls.  God's Spirit-and people-can help us to see
ourselves as we really are.  David asks God in Psalm 139
to show him what is wrong with him, and his request
brings to the light the brokenness that needs to be
loved, and sin that needs to be forgiven and turned  
	~~ twelve-step language, this is the continuing
moral inventory." We grant God permission to change
those aspects of us that need changing.  
	5.  We have the ability to turn from the evil that we
discover inside ourselves.  In repentance we discover
the sick, foul, and evil aspects of ourselves.  Then we
can say, "I do not want to side with that motive or part
of me.  I want to be different." When we are controlling,
for example, we can confess it to others and to God.  
Then as we notice how we control others in our
relationships, we can repent and turn from it.  Character
change comes as we confess our sin, get our real needs
met, and repent from the evil that we find comes so
naturally.  We do not have to feed the evil aspects of our
personality.  We can begin to loosen our hold on them
and let them go.  
	Don't think that this is easy.  We enjoy our hatred,
our bitterness, our envy.  We enjoy lust and deceit.  Yet
realizing that these sins are ruining our lives can
motivate us to give up whatever perverse pleasure we
gain from holding on to these sins.  We can allow God to  
meet that need in a healthy way through the love of him
and his people.  Giving up some evil aspects of our-
selves and connecting instead to love is like trading in
one friend for another.  It is a death and a birth.  
	6.  We have the ability to find out what needs were
not met when we grew up in our family, and then take
those needs to the family of God, where they can be
met.  God says that he "sets the lonely in families" (Ps.  
68:6).  Through God's family his church, we can get our
needs met.  If we missed some necessary nurturing in
childhood, for example, we can take our needy parts to
others in the body of Christ and establish supportive
connections.  God asks the strong to meet these needs
(Rom.  15:1).  
	If in childhood we lacked the training and support of
a father, we can appeal to those in the body to help us
learn and internalize what we did not get growing up.  
This is the "building up of [the body] in love" (Eph.  
4:13 NAsB).  We cannot expect God to instantly and
supernaturally heal the hurts people have inflicted on
us.  He heals through his people.  Because our hurt
comes from relationships, our healing must come from
relationships also.  Jesus asks his people to be his arms
that wrap around each other.  Our problem is that we
seldom ask.  
	7.  We have the ability to seek out those whom we
have injured and, when it is helpful, to apologize,
admit our wrong, and ask them for forgiveness.  This is
called making amends: "If therefore you are presenting
your offering at the altar, and there remember that your
brother has something against you, leave your offering
there before the altar, and go your way; first be
reconciled to your brother, and then come and present
your offering" (Matt.  5:23-24 NAsB).  
	The Bible teaches that to have peace with God, we
must make peace with each other.  We cannot claim to
be right with God if we are not doing everything in our
hearts to be right with others (1 John 4:20-21).  A
crucial aspect of getting well is purifying our relation-
ships with other people and working hard on treating
them well.  This fulfills the second greatest command-
ment, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt.  22:39).  
	8.  We have the ability to forgive others who have
hurt us.  Having confessed our sins against God and
others and having been forgiven, we can give that same
grace to others (Eph.  4:32).  In fact, our recovery and
well-being is intimately tied to our forgiveness of
others.  It does us no good to receive grace with one
hand and deal out judgment with the other (see Matt.  
18:21-35).  
	We need to forgive not just with our will, but from
the "heart" (Matt.  18:35), from our whole being.  For-
giveness is a deeply emotional process whereby we
deal with all our feelings.  We must be honest about our
hurt and anger and not close our hearts and become
callous (Ps.  17:10; Eph.  4:19).  
	9.  We have the ability to develop gifts and talents
God has given us.  He has given us abilities; we must
use them.  The difference between the "good and
faithful servant" and the "wicked and lazy servant" in
Matthew 25 is that the first one invested his talents.  
How much each servant accomplished didn't matter,
but whether he had used what he received.  The wicked
servant did not even try to use what he had.  
	10.  We have the ability to continue seeking God.  
God promises that if we seek him, we will find him; if
we knock, he will open the door for us.  He teaches us to
persevere in prayer and in seeking the answer we want
from him (James 4:2; Matt.  7:7-11; Luke 18:1-8).  
	11.  We have the ability to seek truth and wisdom.  
Truth is God's revelation in the Bible and in his
creation of how he and his universe works.  We can be
seekers of what he teaches in his Word and students of
the works of his hands.
Wisdom is practical, applied knowledge, learned
through living life.  We must be intimately involved
with living in the world and learning through experi-
ence (Heb.  5:14).  
	12.  We have the increasing ability to follow God's
example of love.  Those who "love one another, as he
commanded us" (1 John 3:23) recover.  Those who hold
on to hatred, revenge, and self-centeredness, do not.  
Love connects us with others, softens our hearts,
decreases our isolation, and matures our soul.  Practic-
ing love is the best thing you can do to heal from
emotional pain.  
	During my sessions with Jane, I discovered that she
had dealt with depression for a number of years.  
Though she was a committed Christian, she never
could overcome it.  For years she had sought spiritual
answers for her emotional pain.  She tried giving it to
the Lord, she memorized Scripture about her position
in Christ, she prayed and meditated.  
	Finally, guilty and hopeless, Jane decided she was a
spiritual failure.  She became angry at God for his
seemingly inactive role in her struggle.  She had given
her depression to him more times than she could
remember.  Why hadn't he healed it?  
	In counseling she learned that she had a lot of work
to do.  Having come from a very abusive family, Jane
had developed a pattern of disconnecting from people.  
She did not allow herself to need anyone deeply, and
her hurt was never touched by anyone.  This pattern of
isolation only renewed her depression every day.  
	As Jane worked hard to change her protective style
of relating in individual and group therapy, she began
taking responsibility for the work that only she could do
in her sanctification process.  She began telling her story
to others and accepting their love and encouragement.  
	Jane did not change overnight; it took a long time.  It
was hard, spiritual work-but not as she had previously
understood "spiritual," that is, only prayer and Bible
study.  She learned to cry over her losses, to accept
comfort from other people, to repent of the relational
patterns that kept her from loving others.  She learned to
forgive those who had hurt her and to overcome her
defenses that had kept her from responding to love.  
	To do all of these things, she also had to pray and
study the Bible.  Yet her prayer life took on new
dimensions.  She asked God to show her how she
needed to change and to show her what she was hiding
in her heart.  She asked for courage to confront friends
and family members, a task she had always avoided.  
	In short, Jane began to really "work out her salva-
tion with fear and trembling." She learned that she
could not merely "depend on the Lord" as some had
taught her, but that he depended on her to possess what
he had secured for her.  She had to press on in the
spiritual life.  
	With these changes, her depression lifted, and later
she gave to others the comfort that she had received
from God (2 Cor.  1:4).  A wounded healer, she was able
to love others and show them the new and abundant life
God had given her.  Only this time, Jane had done her
part as well.
ASSUMPTION #5  
	One day, I'll he finished  
	with recovery.  
	al and Frances were elated.  The Wednesday night  
	Bible study they were hosting for the first time in
their home was a success.  They had team-taught a
passage from Ephesians about relationships, and the
four attending couples had participated enthusiastically
in the discussions.  
	Frances usually kept her private thoughts and
feelings to herself.  Tonight, however, impressed with
the warm, accepting atmosphere of the Bible study
group, she decided to risk divulging something very
personal during prayer-request time.  
	She took a deep breath.  "I've been in therapy for a
while to deal with a depression I've had since I was
very young," Frances said.  "The therapy seems to be
working.  I can see God's hand in my counseling.  But it
isn't always easy-the feelings are very painful.  I'd
appreciate prayer for God's grace in this journey."  
	Others mentioned their prayer requests.  The group
prayed and then broke for refreshments.  Later, as
people chatted together on their way out, Leonard
asked Frances for a minute alone.  They retired to a
quiet corner.  
	"I don't want to sound intrusive," Leonard said,
"but I thought,, perhaps I could help out with your
prayer request.  
"I didn't ask for anything but prayer," Frances said,
surprised, "but I'm certainly open to help."  
	"I've seen this happen before in friends who have
used psychology to heal their spiritual problems.  They
go on and on, session after session, and never really get
better.  It's a no-win situation, Frances.  I wonder if it's
time for the counseling to end.  When do you really
expect to stop being depressed?  Perhaps a deadline
would be helpful-you know, like, giving yourself
another three weeks to stop being depressed."  
	Frances felt undone.  Leonard's veiled accusations
pierced her.  She must not be doing something right,
she thought guiltily, or she would have been finished
with counseling by now, and over her depression.  
	Leonard's point has been made, in dozens of ways,
by friends and families of Christians who are seeking
help.  They ask questions like these:  
	Aren't you done with therapy yet?  
	When will you be well?  
	Isn't it getting worse instead of better?  
	Isn't it time to get on with your life?  
Don't you need a deadline?  
	Why don't you have a goal in mind?  
	At the heart of these questions is this crazymaker: "I
will one day be finished with recovery." People who
assume this idea think that spiritual growth is like
changing a burned-out light bulb.  Take the bad one out,
pop the new one in.  Problem solved.  Life goes on.  They
think emotional struggles should be treated the same.  
Fix a depression.  Cure a compulsive spending problem.  
Repair an anxiety attack.  In any case, the process has a  
	clear endpoint.  
	Some psychotherapists support this view.  In any
bookstore and from many mental health professionals,  	One day, I'll be finished with recovery.
you can learn five-to-ten-session cures for emotional
maladies.  Most of them recommend a talk-to-yourself
approach, such as "Start concentrating on positive
things, and negative things like depression will go
away," or "Learn proper financial habits so that you can
say no to your spending impulses." When talking to
herself doesn't work, the struggler begins to doubt
herself (that is, question the healing process) and to
distance herself from the healing agents the Lord may
have sent.  
	Why Growth Doesn't Have to Stop  
	"So what's the problem with that?" you may ask.  
"I've heard horror stories about therapies that go on
forever.  Therapy has got to stop sometime, doesn't it?"  
	True.  In fact, the Scriptures teach us that much in
life does and should have an endpoint: "Desire realized
is sweet to the soul" (Prov.  13:19 NAsB).  "There is a
time for everything, and a season for every activity
under heaven" (Eccl.  3:1).  In his powerful, final written
words, Paul proclaims the value of finishing: "I have
fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have
kept the faith.  Now there is in store for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge,
will award to me on that day" (2 Tim.  4:7-8).  
	God himself is a finisher.  He created the universe in
a finite period of time (Gen.  2:1-3).  His work of
reconciling us to himself he completed on the cross: "It
is finished!" (John 19:30).  
	So, yes, it is true that whether we pray, study the
Bible, see a therapist, or join a support group, we
should expect results.  A changed, healing life is the
mark of the maturing Christian, just as the fruits of the
Spirit are the signs of God's work in us (Gal.  5:22-24).  
	However, while we do successfully resolve prob-
lems such as depression, anxiety disorders, and com-pulsive behaviors, the sanctification process continues
throughout life.  We must be patient with ourselves and
others while emotional problems are being worked on.  
We must also be patient in the face of our continuing
sinfulness and immaturity-even when the psychologi-
cal symptoms are over.  
	Yet those who cannot wait patiently for a struggler,
those who tire of seeing a friend in therapy for month
after month, those who wish their relative could con-
clude his recovery process and get on with life-these
people are sidestepping crucial biblical truths about
growth.  When you believe that an individual will one
day be finished with recovery, you bring on several
serious problems.  
	Recovery and Spiritual Growth Are Split Apart  
	Those who teach this crazymaker misunderstand
emotional recovery.  Emotional recovery isn't removing
a depression or curing a hot temper.  Its roots go much
deeper.  
	In his first recorded sermon, Jesus read from Isaiah
61:1-2: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he
has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He
has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and
recovery of sight for the blind" (Luke 4:18).  The word
recovery implies finding or retrieving what was lost.  It's
an aggressive word, full of action.  
	In a nutshell, recovery means taking back what we
lost in the Fall, recovering our place as God's image
bearers, as stewards of the earth.  
	Emotionally, recovery means taking back character
traits that we were robbed of: the ability to make deep
emotional connections when we've been unable to, to
confront evil in others when we've been afraid of
conflict, to say good-bye to a perfect picture of our-selves and replacing it with God's loving acceptance of
us, warts and all.  
	In other words, recovery describes the sanctification
process, the spiritual-growth process, the task of re-
claiming the image of God in ourselves, becoming like
him (1 John 3:2).  Recovery is another word for the
maturing and healing events God accomplishes in our
souls.  We are using the term recovery in its broadest
sense-not simply the clinical, emotional dimension.  
	You can't separate growth into "emotional growth"
and ``spiritual growth.  
	All growth is spiritual if it involves the biblical
processes of love, responsibility, and forgiveness.  All
growth is spiritual if it produces a cheerful heart,
concern for others, a deeper sense of responsibility, and
an ability to set limits on evil.  
	In other words, Jesus was as concerned about the
plight of the woman caught in adultery (emotional
growth) as he was in the training of the Twelve
(spiritual growth).  
	We Are Forced into Completing a Task,
Not Growing  
	In college I was active in a Christian campus group,
a ministry that emphasized Bible knowledge.  We
learned to read the Bible, study it, memorize it, and
meditate on it.  
	I became a Scripture-memory addict.  Memorizing
Bible verses seemed like a practical way to get God's
truth inside my head.  So I memorized anywhere from
two to ten verses a week.  My goal was to memorize the
entire New Testament in several years.  The program
was realistic, despite the fact that review sessions took
an hour every day.  
	The larger problem was that I began hating the Bible.
I resented my schedule.  I dreaded the reviews.  I
never wanted to see how far behind I was.  
	Looking for answers, I asked someone in my group
how he coped with staying on schedule.  He asked
about my schedule, and I told him.  "That's not how I do
it," he said.  "I memorize a lot fewer verses than you do.  
I try to get more mileage out of them.  The way I figure
it, I've got enough work to do with the few I already
know."  
	I felt thirty pounds lighter.  The advice helped me
enjoy the Bible again, to look forward to spending time
understanding and being helped by it.  
	Obviously, memorizing Scripture was not the culpret
here.  My own internal demand to finish the job was
driving me crazy.  I was more concerned with getting
the verses memorized than being fed by the Word.  
	And that's the second problem with the "one day I
will be finished" crazymaker.  It focuses on the law, on
completing the task, rather than on the journey, on how
you get there.  It distances Christians from the love of
God and others, driving them anxiously toward the
taskmaster of perfection.  Arriving becomes the demand
that breaks their backs.  
	The goal is love itself.  Do you know Christians who
know the Bible inside out, but are deficient in the
ability to love?  They haven't learned the lesson of
1 Timothy 1:5 (NASB): "The goal of our instruction is
love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a
sincere faith."  
	In fact, love is the process of achieving the goal as
well as the goal itself.  Learning to trust, to extend our
heart, to take ownership over our resistance to love, is
all part of God's recovery program.  That's why people
who get stuck on the question "When will I be
finished?" miss the whole point.  
	It was during the 1960s that my hometown was
shocked by the divorce of a prominent couple, both in their late fifties and active in the church.  It didn't make
sense.  They were Christians, had raised three success-
ful children, did well in business, and even went on
mission trips.  Their marriage seemed good.  What
happened?  
	Look at how their marriage was evaluated, though: a
long track record of church involvement, kids who
became responsible adults, the ability to build a
successful business.  Now look at how the marriage was
not evaluated: How did they connect?  What was their
relationship like?  What did they say and feel toward
each other when they were alone?  No one knew.  In
other words, the focus was on the goal, not on love.  
They had missed the central point of marriage.  
	In the same way, Martha was resentful that her
sister, Mary, was lazily sitting at Jesus' feet, just being
with him.  "Lord," Martha complained, "don't you care
that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?  Tell
her to help me!" (Luke 10:40).  
	Looking beyond Martha's jealousy, Jesus told her
that intimacy was the better part, which "will not be
taken away" from Mary (Luke 10:42).  Mary's moments
with Jesus would be a permanent part of her emotional
memories, of her own character structure.  They would
make up a part of who she was for eternity.  
	People engaged in the recovery process learn to love
the journey for what it is.  They learn to stop and smell
the roses, spiritually speaking.  
	"I was so impatient to be well, so I could get on with
my life," a patient explained to me.  "But my impatience
made me resist entering the process.  So I could never
resolve my emotional issues.  It was only when I
realized that my goal orientation was keeping me from
God and others, that things started changing."
We Lose Forgiveness  
	We are to heed the direction our lives are taking.  
Like a navigator plotting a ship's course toward matu-
rity, we are to look constantly at our bearings and make
adjustments.  Throughout life we repeat the process: We
get off target, make corrections, and get back on course.  
	Furthermore, it is impossible to be in this process
without forgiveness.  
	Among my friends are several video-game fanatics
who play in arcades, shopping centers, at home-any-
where.  I used to try to compete with them.  Now I just
watch.  I can't understand how they evade land mines,
spaceships, and cannons for hours.  Their eye-hand
coordination astounds me.  
	You may remember the first time you played a video
game.  Your electronic maneuvering was probably clum-
sy, you overreacted to obstacles, you regularly dropped
your animated character into pits.  
	If you persevered (unlike me), your character's
actions became more subtle.  You aimed, ran, kicked,
and shot more accurately.  You could consistently leap
over the lava lake and avoid rolling monsters that spit
flame.  Young teenagers learning to drive steer with
jerky overcorrections, yet they gradually smooth out
their steering.  But even professional drivers don't keep
the steering wheel absolutely stationary.  They're al-
ways adjusting, always correcting, always in motion.  
	That's what spiritual growth is like.  We take a step,
make a mistake, learn from it, and make a more
educated step.  We move from infancy to youth to
adulthood (1 John 2:12-14).  We blunder, confess,
repent, and learn from our painful consequences.  
	And here is where forgiveness is everything: Since
there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus, we are never
alienated from love in all our overreactions and errors
and outright sins.  	One day, I'll be finished with recovery.
For a few minutes, take forgiveness out of the
picture.  Suppose no cushion of grace catches us when
we fall.  Suppose that when we get off course, we face
only condemnation and isolation.  Suppose that as you
played your video game, you failed to dodge the killer
turtles.  They get you-and enough voltage surges from
the joystick and into your body to jolt you out of your
chair.  
	You'd probably plot your next move very carefully,
and give the killer turtles a wide berth instead of
attacking them for extra points.  You'd be in no mood to
risk a mistake and earn another potent jolt of voltage.  
Your learning curve would be flat.  Any video-champion
potential in you would be destroyed.  The cost of failure
would simply be too high.  
	People who are told to ignore the process of
recovery, who are told to get their lives together and
simply decide to get well-these people are robbed of
God's gift of forgiveness.  They are given no room for
trial and error, for risk and learning.  There is no room
for growth built on love.  
	Gene came to me for therapy about his depression.  I
learned that he had great difficulty confronting others,
being direct, and taking initiative.  In psychological
terms, Gene was aggressively conflicted.  
	Every time someone at work took advantage of him,
Gene felt angry, thought about saying something, then
became violently sick to his stomach.  When the nausea
had passed, he was still too shaken up to try to resolve
the conflict with the co-worker.  
	In Gene's childhood home, I discovered, any ag-
gression on his part only met the violent rage of his
alcoholic father.  So he learned to sidestep issues, keep
the peace, and walk on eggshells with his dad-and
with the world.  
	Gene's aggression had been severely judged and
wounded.  In other words, when he wanted to tell the
truth, his nausea stopped him-just as his dad had.  His
father had condemned Gene's aggression, and the
nausea took over where his dad left off.  
	Gene needed a safe place to practice taking risks, a
place where he could tell the truth without being
attacked.  He spent much time in a group doing this.  
	The first time he told a group member that he didn't
like her interrupting him, the nausea rose in him as
always, and he almost had to leave the room.  The waves
of nausea passed-and then the woman he'd con-
fronted thanked him for his honesty.  The more Gene
practiced telling the truth, the more he was able to
make mistakes, to take initiative, and to be more open.  
He'd moved from condemnation to forgiveness.  
	We Become Proud  
	A couple in my office argued about the husband's
critical attitude toward his wife.  Underneath a guise of
concerned piety, he constantly belittled her about her
lack of spiritual progress.  She wilted under the sancti-
monious barrage.  
	"Maybe it would help your wife listen to your
statements," I suggested to him, "if you would tell us
what your own spiritual weaknesses are-if you got the
log out of your own eye first."  
	His face went blank.  "Well, actually, I'm pretty
much on top of it," he said.  "My walk with the Lord is
going well, and I'm meeting my spiritual goals."  
	"Then you're worse off than she is," I said.  "If your
biggest spiritual problem is,,her spiritual problem, your
spiritual problem is pride.  
	My client was under the impression that walking
with God meant staying out of trouble.  Many like him
imagine they can reach some magic level of maturity in
which, as long as they keep turning the spiritual crank,
all is well.  Enough Bible study, prayer, worship,
evangelism, and no apparent gross sin-and you have
the classic "together" Christian.  He had an ideal
fantasy of himself as a Christian.  
	The only problem is that the Bible doesn't teach
this.  None of us will finish our spiritual journey in this
life.  We are all sinful, immature people who, no matter
how much progress we've made, still need to agree
with Paul that we are all sinners-"of whom," Paul
wrote, "I am the worst" (1 Tim.  1:15).  We haven't been
made perfect (Phil.  3:12), and we won't be until we're
with God.  
	If we believe that one day we will be finished, our
tendency is to become proud and self-sufficient.  We
deny that we have much unfinished business, that we
are beggars who need to daily cry out to God for the
grace to help us with our problems, to test us, and to
know our anxious thoughts (Ps.  139:23).  Any teaching
that leads us to think we've arrived at a final, satisfac-
tory level of spirituality leads us out of God's arena and
into Satan's.  
	The goal of spiritual and emotional growth isn't
becoming perfect.  The goal is a deepening awareness of
ourselves, our weaknesses, our sins, and our needs.  It is
an increasingly clearer understanding of how much we
need "so great a salvation" (Heb.  2:3 NAsB).  
	Many Christians read in Matthew 5:48 Jesus' com-
mand to be perfect-and attempt to become just that.  
However, the Greek word teleios, translated "perfect"
in many Bibles, is better understood to mean com-
plete" or "mature." Paul uses this word when he tells
us, `All of us who are teleios [mature] should take such
a view of things" (Phil.  3:15).  God wants a grown-up,
not a perfectionist.  
	Satan wants us to think like the Pharisee, not the tax
collector (Luke 18:9-14).  If we think we've arrived
spiritually, we're no longer repentant, hungry, and
needy-and we stop asking for help.  And when we stop
asking for help, we stop getting help (James 4:2).  The
squeaky wheel stops squeaking, then collapses without
intervention from God and his resources.  
	We Despair  
	Finally, if we believe that one day we will be
finished with recovery, we will sooner or later despair.  
If we're honest, we are acutely aware of our spiritual
poverty.  We understand that we'll never be ideal.  And
since the Bible seems to demand that we be perfect, we
experience a loss of hope: "Hope deferred makes thee
heart sick" (Prov.  13:12).  
	Christians who are surprised by their regressions
often despair.  After having done well in recovery for a
number of months, they begin again to eat compulsive-
ly, get depressed, or go into isolation.  
	A friend with a lifetime of emotional isolation went
to therapy for depression.  As he began working on his
inability to attach to other people, he began to love
others for the first time.  Before his therapy, people had
only been vague objects to him.  He welcomed the
change his heart was making.  
	Then a good friend of his was killed in an auto
accident.  Devastated, he raged against God for permit-
ting the accident.  The things he told God were so
intense and graphic that they frightened him.  
	When he asked his Christian therapist about these
intense, furious feelings, she told him that perhaps it
was a sign that he wasn't saved.  
	"Maybe," I replied when he told me this.  "But to
me it's an indication that you are saved.  You feel safe
enough to confess to God what you are actually
thinking.  And you care enough about the relationship to
tell him.'  
	His therapist's reaction is shared by many Chris-
tians, who perceive regressions, feelings of rage, and
failure as "backsliding" or "getting off track" or "going
down the tubes." They do not understand that regres-
sion is built in to the sanctification process.  If you were
to chart the process of sanctification, you wouldn't use a
straight, ascending line, but a zigzagging line, full of
valleys and hills.  
	Failure and regression are normal.  Uninterrupted
success and lack of struggle are the exception.  If Paul
(by his own words) is the chief sinner, if Peter denied
the Lord, if a murderer and adulterer named David is
remembered as the man after God's own heart (1 Sam.  
13:14)-if these are all true (and they are), then we
must give up the idealized picture of ourselves, and
allow our imperfect selves to be forgiven, loved, and
matured.  
	Is There a Goal?  
	So what about progress and goals in the Christian
life?  Are we doomed to wander aimlessly, with the
lackluster prospect of being unfinished seekers?  
	Absolutely not.  Definable points of progress mark
the path of spiritual and emotional growth.  The mature
person is one who has gained a level of proficiency or
wisdom in the four developmental stages: bonding (the
ability to give and receive love), boundaries (having a
clear sense of responsibility), sorting out good and bad
(the ability to receive and give forgiveness in a fallen
world), and becoming an adult (being able to exercise
adult authority in the world).  
	These marks of maturity indicate one who has
moved, in the apostle Paul's words, from milk to meat,
one who has learned to love and work wisely, who has
come a long way on his or her spiritual journey.  
	Furthermore, we can also see progress in the
reduction of clinical symptoms.  Depression, anxiety,
and compulsive behaviors follow the healing of the
heart.  They signal our spiritual and emotional condi-  
	tion.  
	Fevers drop only gradually.  Cholesterol counts don't
change overnight.  And painful emotional symptoms
resolve only gradually as one's spiritual condition
changes.  
	People finish therapy successfully.  They learn how
to make emotional attachments.  They develop bound-
aries.  They begin accepting their own imperfections.  
Clinical symptoms begin disappearing.  People gener-
ally no longer need professional help after successful
treatment.  But beware: Conflicts and internal problems
are not over forever.  As long as we are present on earth,
we will have struggles.  
	And this means that we'll always need God's help
and grace, the body of Christ, support groups, and
intimate friends who know us inside and out.  We'll
always need to be soundly judging ourselves (Rom.  
12:3).  We'll always need to be growing.  
	As we mature, our cry to God should always be, "Be
merciful to me, a sinner.  Coming closer and closer to
him exposes our sinfulness and neediness just as it
exposes who he is.  When we discover our sinfulness
and God's majesty, we can go only in one direction: on
our knees as Isaiah and Peter did (Isa.  6:1-7; Luke 5:8).  
	Learn not to ask the question, `Am I finished with
recovery yet?" Learn to ask, "What's next on my
journey, as I am known by God and others?" The
endpoint-and the journey-is loving and being loved.
ASSUMPTION #6  
Leave the past behind.  
	don't know how to begin,~' Jill said, looking troubled.  
	I m afraid that if I tell you what happened, you'll
think I'm an unfit mother or that I don't love my child."  
	"I don't know what it is you did," I replied, "but I
can tell that you're very concerned about it.  Why don't
you tell me about it, and then we'll see what I think."  
	So Jill began.  Whenever her four-year-old daughter
made a mistake, such as spilling her milk or making a
mess, Jill would lose control and explode.  She would
verbally attack her daughter, screaming horribly hurtful
things and calling Amanda names.  Then, devastated,
she'd realize what she was doing and immediately
leave the room.  Her guilt overwhelmed her.  
	"How long has this been going on?" I asked.  
	"For about the last year and a half.  Ever since
Amanda became enough of a person to move around
and make messes and mistakes.  They're really not even
mistakes; she's so young, I know she's just learning.  But
at those times, I totally lose control.  I don't even think
about what Amanda knows or doesn't know.  I've lost it
by then, and almost don't even know where I am."  
	"What have you tried so far?"  
	"Mostly memorizing Scripture about anger and
taking `timeouts' when I'm angry.  But most of the time I
can't do that.  By the time I know I'm angry, it's all
over.  

"This may sound like a crazy question, Jill, but did
you ever experience anything like that when you were
a child?"  
	"Well, I - ` Unable to finish her sentence, she
began sobbing uncontrollably.  It was a while before she
was able to talk again.  When she did, she told horror
stories about how her mother screamed at her, about
how verbally abusive her home had been.  Jill had only
to commit some minor mistake, and her mother yelled
at her that she was stupid, bad, worthless.  Yet as she
talked about her past, her pain and fear soon overcame
her, and she soon shut down again.  
	She was reluctant to speak about her traumatic past,
Jill said, because of what her pastor had taught her
about looking at the past.  "The Bible says that old
things are passed away and all things are new," Jill told
me.  "I'm a new creation.  How can things from the past
have any hold on me?  I must forget what lies behind
and press on.  I just need to depend on the Holy Spirit to
empower me, and I need to repent of my anger, and I'm
sure I'll be okay."  
	"Have you tried that?" I asked her.  
	Her look told me she had and that it had not worked.  
	She did not know why her past hurts were still
causing her pain, and why she was repeating them with
her own daughter.  She felt helpless.  
	Jill's story is not unusual.  Many adults repeat their
parents' patterns in their own parenting, or are affected
by what they suffered as a child.  A thirty-five-year-old
woman is unable to fall asleep at night because of
memories of violence she suffered as a child.  A happily
married woman cannot have sexual intercourse with
her husband because of memories of childhood sexual
abuse.  A forty-year-old man suffers immobilizing de-
pression every time he watches his parents interact
with his children, because he remembers how they
raised him to be impossibly perfect.
In each instance, adults in favorable circumstances
are being affected by things that happened in their past.  
Although they had tried to leave the past behind, those
past events stubbornly kept disrupting their functioning
in the present.  
	In these cases, people recognized how the past hurt
their adult lives.  Even more problematic, however, is
when one's life isn't working-and the individual
doesn't know why.  He gets depressed or suffers panic
attacks.  She can't stop bingeing and purging.  He spends
his paycheck away as soon as he gets it.  She is unable to
meet simple goals she sets for herself.  
	The most common problems are relational: People
are drawn into unhealthy relationships, or they con-
stantly repeat a destructive relational pattern, regard-
less of their efforts to break it.  For example, they find
themselves attracted to critical or controlling people.  Or
they get hooked up with abusive individuals and are
unable to repeatedly stand up to them.  Or-and this
may be the most heartbreaking-they are unable to
respond to good people, distancing themselves from
those who love them.  And they can't figure out why
they do it.  
	Some of them enter therapy, and their therapists
reveal the connection of their problems to relationships
in their past, or to past hurts that they've never dealt
with.  Such patients discover unfinished business inside
them.  
	Then Christian friends or teachers tell them that
because they are a new creation in Christ, the past
should have no claim over them.  They should "forget
what lies behind and press on" (Phil.  3:13-14).  
	As if that's not confusing enough, some discover that
it was therapy, not faith, that helped them deal with
their past and that ushered them into a degree of
freedom and resolution.  Despite their increasing relief
from emotional pain, they're nagged by guilt, by the
feeling that they've done something unspiritual.  After
all, they reason, they didn't rely on Christ for healing,
but ran off to therapy-what some Bible teachers
denounce as humanistic, secular psychology.  They feel
as if Christ saved them, but therapy healed them.  
	In this chapter we will explore the false assumption
"I need to leave the past behind." Proponents of this
idea say the past is not important; we should just press
on to what lies ahead.  Yet this is a misapplication of
Scripture; dealing with our past is very biblical.  
	The Nature of Your Past  
	Jason came into therapy because his wife was
frustrated with his emotional distance from the chil-
dren.  As we explored what made it difficult for him to
connect with his children, I asked Jason about his own
father.  
	His father was wonderful, Jason told me, and he had
always looked up to him.  "It seems that you and your
father did much better together than you and your
children are doing," I said.  "I wonder what went
wrong.  
	"I don't know.  Maybe it has something to do with
his death."  
	"What do you mean?"  
	"He died when I was thirteen.  He just never woke
up one morning.  I watched the paramedics come in and
take him away under a sheet.  Mom never talked about
it.  My uncle made all the funeral arrangements, but he
didn't talk about it, either." And then he began to cry.  
	As we continued to work, he began to recognize his
anger toward God for the sudden loss of his father, and
toward his mother and uncle for not helping him
through his feelings of grief.  As he worked through the
loss and felt the grief he never allowed himself to
experience when he was a teenager, he stopped dis-
tancing himself from his own children.  
	His progress puzzled him.  "Why did the past affect
me now?" he asked.  
	"When were you feeling the pain of your father's
death?"  
	"Well, now-today, as an adult.~'  
	"So, we really aren't talking about the past at all, are
we?  You carry your grief in your soul today.  Your
father's death occurred years ago, but your pain you feel
today, right now.  That is the present, not the past."  
	"I guess that's true," Jason replied.  "I would feel
distant every time I started to get close to the kids,
because getting close to the kids got me close to my
feelings about my father."  
	"I think you're right," I said.  "The past can't really,,
affect us, but our present feelings about the past can.  
	We as humans are caught in the flow of time.  We
divide our lives into past, present, and future.  But the
Bible looks at our lives from the perspective of eternity,
in which there is no past or future-only the present.  
The things we would say are "in our past are,
according to the Bible, part of our present, since from
the perspective of eternity that is all there is.  
	People have hurt us, we have hurt people, we have
suffered wrong, and we have done things that are
wrong.  We would say, "All those things happened in
the past and can't be changed." But the Bible shifts the
focus from the past to the eternal present: "What is the
state of your soul and everything in it now?  Have your
past experiences been exposed to the light?  Have they
been forgiven?  Have you repented of them?  Have you
exposed the hurt to love and light?  Have we grieved
over and let go of hurtful things, or are we still hanging
onto them?  We need to see our lives and our souls not
as past and present, but as eternal.  
	Again, what the Bible always asks of us is this: Have
the things in our souls-pain, patterns, skills, desires,
fears-been exposed to the light of God's grace, truth,
and forgiveness?  If so, those things are healed and
transformed.  However, if we don't expose things of the
past to the light of God's truth and love, they remain in
darkness and are still alive today, creating fruits of
darkness in us.  Unconnected from the transforming
power of God's love and light, they take on a life of
their own.  
	Jill's relationship with her mother had never been
brought out into the open, never been exposed to the
light.  Still plaguing Jill in a hurtful and unforgiving
way, her relationship with her mother had not been
transformed through forgiveness-and so it was very
much alive in the present.  Jason's grief for his father
had never been expressed, so it remained alive, part of
Jason's day-to-day feelings into his adulthood.  What-
ever in us has not been brought out into the open still
has a life of its own in the past-and you can be sure
that it will affect our present relationships.  
	The teaching that we need not worry about the
past's influence on us is especially destructive and
unbiblical because it forbids bringing the things that
are in the darkness into the light and having the grace
of God touch them.  
	A misinterpretation of the popular "forget the past"
Scripture explains why many never bring their feelings
into the light.  
	But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for
the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider every-
thing a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have
lost all things.  I consider them rubbish, that I may
gain Christ and be found in him, not having a
righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but
that which is through faith in Christ-the righteous-
ness that comes from God and is by faith.  ...  But one
thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining
toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to
win the prize for which God has called me heaven-
ward in Christ Jesus.  (Phil.  3:7-9, 13-14)  
	"What is behind" Paul is not his hurts or situations
that require him to forgive someone or even his old
sins.  The past that Paul is forgetting is his old way of
trying to achieve righteousness.  He spends the entire
first part of this chapter listing his accomplishments to
illustrate to the Philippians how he vainly tried to
please God.  But it didn't work, he says.  He's leaving the
old system behind.  He's found a new faith.  
	In fact, by enumerating his accomplishments earlier
in the chapter, he was bringing them to the light,
confessing them, grieving them.  He never denied what
he had done.  
	Paul, then, is not saying in this passage to let
bygones be bygones, as some inaccurately interpret it.  
To the contrary, the apostle models for us the act of
bringing one's past to the light and confessing it.  
	Teachers who tell you simply to forget the past and
press on are ignoring or even contradicting pivotal
biblical commands.  These directives reveal why deal-
ing with the past is so important.  
	Expose the Deeds of Darkness  
	The first biblical directive is that we bring into the
light whatever is in darkness.  Our past, in biblical
terms, is our history.  The Bible isn't concerned about
when something happened, whether today or ten years
ago.  The Bible is interested only in whether we have
denied the problem and pushed it into the darkness, or
whether we have exposed it to the light and dealt with
it in God's way.  Have we covered it up, or have we
confessed it and brought it to the light?
Confession, or bringing things to the light, opens us
up to the process of transformation.  And transformation
is what God is interested in: "Have nothing to do with
the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose
them.  ...  Everything exposed by the light becomes
visible" (Eph.  5:11, 13).  
	We can see this truth in Jill's life.  She was very
angry at her mother for how she had been treated, and
that anger had never been brought into the light.  
Hadn't her pastor told her to forget the past, like Paul
taught?  As a result, she had never been "angry without
sinning," and that unresolved anger poisoned her
relationship with her daughter (Eph.  4:26-27).  By not
dealing with her anger, she had given the Devil a
foothold in her personality.  
	Besides covering up feelings and hurts from the
past, we often have hidden motives generated by past
relationships.  For example, a man is highly ambitious
in order to gain the approval of his mother.  A woman
approaches everything competitively, always thinking
of coming out on top, in order to settle an old score with
a sister.  Such motives usually relate to a problem in a
past relationship that has never been resolved.  
	In short, the past is important because, until we deal
with it, it is part of what the Bible calls "the darkness"
of our soul.  If we have not confessed sins of the past or
forgiven others for sinning against us, then these sins
rule us, and the devil gains a stronghold in our lives.  To
teach that examining the past is wrong contradicts the
Bible's teaching to deal with the darkness inside.  Past
relationships and feelings usually need to be dealt with
in the present.  
	Forgive Everyone Who Sins Against You  
	Unless we look at the past, furthermore, we cannot
truly forgive.  Forgiveness deals with the past.  Forgive-
ness is God's way of making right things that have hurt
us.  To know whom to forgive, we must know what
happened to us, name the sin, and realize who is guilty.  
	The hurt and abuse people faced as children show
themselves in behavioral and relational patterns-pat-
terns that often result from unforgiveness in their
hearts.  Because they have never forgiven those who
hurt them, they may still be unconsciously angry at
them.  
	Tom constantly argued with his superiors over
trivial matters.  He made an issue of everything, then
always had to get in the last blow.  When he began
exploring this problem in counseling, he realized that
he was still trying to settle an old score with his father.  
His father always had to have the upper hand in a
discussion and would put young Tom down whenever
they talked.  Although Tom thought he had forgiven his
father years ago, his present behavior showed other-
wise.  He gradually realized that he had not forgiven his
father, but was still trying to make all the authority
figures in his life pay what his father owed.  
	As Tom got in touch with the anger he felt toward
his father, he started to deal with the anger and let it go.  
That is, he began doing the work of grace: "Forgiving
others as God in Christ has forgiven you" (Eph.  4:32).  
Once he accepted his father, he could accept other
authority figures as well.  
	Heal the Brokenhearted  
	Another problem with teaching that you should
leave the past behind is its disregard for the broken-
hearted (much like teaching that Christians should not
have pain, as we discussed in chapter 2).  The Bible
repeatedly describes how, in the words of the psalmist,
God is "close to the brokenhearted and saves those who
are crushed in spirit" (Ps.  34:18).
A primary way that God heals the brokenhearted is
through his church.  As its members, we are his hands to
touch each other's pain.  He has commanded us to love
and minister to one another with compassion, mercy,
confrontation, help, and strength.  The New Testament
repeatedly commands us to minister emotionally, spiri-
tually, and physically to one another.  
	In fact, God gets plainly upset when his people do
not help his hurting ones: "You have not strengthened
the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured."
Not only will he do the job for us ("I will bind up the
injured and strengthen the weak"), but he will destroy
"the sleek and 'A53' the strong," those with power who had
fattened themselves by oppressing the weak (Ezek.  
34:4, 16).  
	An individual may suffer pain now because of past
wounds that have gone untouched by love.  Such
abandoned or otherwise hurt people carry broken,
abused hearts.  And however convincingly a teacher
claims that such hurts simply vanish with time, they
don't.  They need to be touched.  
	What heals them is God's love through his people
and his Spirit.  When someone has a broken heart, they
need the love of other believers.  The Bible says that
loving one another is a manifestation of the grace of
God (1 Peter 4:8).  
	Those who have been hurt by the family they grew
up in need the love and care of their new family, the
family of God (Luke 8:21), to heal their old wounds and
give them the love they need.  
	Grieve Your Losses  
	Openness to the past is the way through grief, which
in turn is the process of letting go of things that we were
once attached to.  This letting go allows us to be open to
the present.  In short, loss opens the door to new life.
Grieving is a conscious process by which we delib-
erately release our attachment to persons, goals, wishes,
or religious systems that we no longer can have.  Our
attachment to these outgrown things, in fact, keeps us
from connecting to new and better things that God has
for us (2 Cor.  6:11-13).  
	Lot's wife was one who held onto the past and was
unable to connect with new things.  Leave Sodom, God
told her.  But her ties were so strong that she was not
able to leave completely.  Instead of grieving her losses
and moving on, she looked back longingly at her former
life, and "she became a pillar of salt" (Gen.  19:26).  
	Jesus alluded to her when he taught the concept of
losing one's life.  "Remember Lot's wife!" he says.  
"Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever
loses his life will preserve it" (Luke 17:32-33).  Ties to
the old life keep us from living the new life God has
planned for us.  
	Hurts and losses in our past can keep us stuck
emotionally and spiritually if we do not grieve them,
thereby releasing them.  You can be tied to a person
who is dead, tied to a person whose love you can't have,
tied to the approval of someone who will never give it,
tied to a fantasy impossible to realize.  Whatever it is, an
emotional tie to something from the past can keep us
stuck in the present.  
	God's way of dealing with this is through grief, or
letting go.  We are freed by realizing what we have lost,
feeling anger and sadness, and then letting go.  
	Listen to the value that the Bible places on grieving:  
	It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to
a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every
man; the living should take this to heart.  Sorrow is
better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the
heart.  The heart of the wise is in the house of
mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of
pleasure.  (Eec!.  7:2-4)
Ironically, sadness can move a person out of pain
and into happiness.  Grief can transform a heart, a fact
that many who have worked their way through depres-
sion can testify to.  As they worked through their
underlying sadness, their depression lifted.  
	Only when we feel the pain of our losses can we
connect with the care available to us.  Blessed are
those who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matt.  
5:4).  Many have care available to them, but they are
unable to accept it because they have not mourned.  
Grieving opens up a heart to let new love in.  
	Too many individuals experience a loss in life yet
never grieve-despite the fact that it is normal to
grieve.  Scriptures record many instances of God griev-
ing: He grieved the loss of a perfect creation.  He
expressed his pain and grief on the cross of Calvary.  
Jesus, a man "acquainted with grief," was sad when his
friend Lazarus died.  When we lose something impor-
tant and do not grieve, our heart holds onto the old
attachment-and we get stuck.  We can move on only as
the grieving process allows us to let go.  
	If our heart is frozen in grief, we are unable to feel
feelings God has designed for us.  Many people experi-
ence frozen grief as depression.  Grief (sadness and
anger) that has not been expressed and resolved leads
to depression.  (Solomon speaks of grief being associ-
ated with a happy heart.)  Sadness and anger need to go
somewhere.  If we express them, we let go of them and
can move toward happiness.  But depression does not go
anywhere; it sits like a block of mud.  Often it needs to
be washed away with tears of sadness, and then it
moves out of one's system.  
	So avoid the teaching that one should leave the past
behind, for it hinders people from grieving.  If you do
not grieve, you'll be stuck holding onto old things in
your heart.  Instead, do as Paul did when he "con-
sider[ed] everything a loss" (Phil.  3:8).  Talk about the
past.  Acknowledge it.  Grieve over it, as God designed.  
(He gave you tear ducts for a reason.)  Then let it go.  
Lose it.  This death opens the door for a resurrection.  Do
not fear mourning, and pay no attention to anyone who
tells you that mourning the past is unbiblical.  "Blessed
are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted"
(Matt.  5:4).  
	Confess and Repent  
	When people examine the patterns they learned in
the families they grew up in-that is, their families of
origin-they are often accused of sidestepping their
own problems and blaming their parents for their
behavior.  "Why do you avoid life?" they are asked.  
"Why do you insist on fixating on things you can't
change?"  
	Certainly, it is easy to blame others when we ought
to take responsibility for our own behavior.  Some
individuals are stuck in the blaming rut.  (We addressed
this problem in Assumption #4.)  
	However, there are solid biblical reasons for explor-
ing the past-in particular, your past in your family of
origin.  We have already discussed some reasons: bring-
ing things out of darkness, understanding whom we
need to forgive, realizing with whom we should recon-
cile, and grieving.  
	An equally important reason for understanding the
past is to repent-to turn away from patterns we
learned in our families of origin.  
	The Old Testament records instance after instance
of God confronting people for walking in the wicked
ways of their fathers.  He points out that they are
repeating generational sin, and calls them to repent-
ance.  He gives them insight into their behavior.'  
	"Do not be like your fathers and brothers, who were
unfaithful to the Lord, the God of their fathers, so that
he made them an object of horror, as you see.  Do not be
stiff-necked, as your fathers were; submit to the Lord"
(2 Chron.  30:7-8).  
	"Will you judge them?  Will you judge them, son of
man?  Then confront them with the detestable practices
of their fathers and say to them: `This is what the
Sovereign Lord says"' (Ezek.  20:4).  
	God asked them to see the evil of their fathers,
disagree with it, and turn to his ways.  
	Nehemiah tells us that the Israelites "stood in their
places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of
their fathers" (9:2).  We similarly experience spiritual
revival and repentance by understanding which ways of
our parents were not pleasing to God, were not ways in
which he wants us to relate to him or to each other.  
Only when you bring these patterns into the open can
you call them evil and turn from them.  
	Conversely, when people deny the sins of their
fathers, they are destined to repeat them.  If they never
acknowledge hurtful, even evil patterns of relating,
they blindly go on repeating them.  They hurt their own
children as they were hurt themselves.  
	Insight and confession, then, break the chain of
generational sin and give hope.  Yet many feel destined
to continue dysfunctional patterns because they were
taught an erroneous interpretation of Exodus 20:5,
which speaks of sin being carried on into the third and
fourth generations.  That is a half truth, however.  The
Bible also teaches that God will honor any individual in
a generational chain who repents; his repentance will
help him break the links of that chain.  
	The person who sins will die.  The son will not bear
the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the
father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the
righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself,
and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon
himself.  But if the wicked man turns from all his sins
which he has committed and observes all My statutes
and practices justice and righteousness, he shall
surely live; he shall not die.  All his transgressions
which he has committed will not be remembered
against him; because of his righteousness which he
has practiced, he will live.  (Ezek.  18:20-22 NAsB)  
	God is always willing to forgive those who acknowl-
edge their sin and repent.  The chain of generational sin
can be broken.  
	Much of repentance is looking at the past to see
what you learned, from whom you learned it, and how
you are repeating that pattern today.  Confession and
repentance of ungodly family ways-a common pat-
tern-is a powerful dynamic of the spiritual life.  
Confess whatever wicked ways were learned in your
early years, turn from them, and enjoy the freedom that
comes from walking in the light of God and not
repeating inherited patterns of darkness.  
	Personal Sin  
	If in this moral inventory we find not only genera-
tional, family sin but personal sin that we alone are
responsible for, we need to confess that sin, ask for
forgiveness, and move on (1 John 1:9).  And this confes-
sion is not for God's ears only.  We need to confess to
each other (see James 5:16) in order to feel the full
power of the grace of God.  Many have never felt God's
grace because they've never confessed their darkness to
another person and felt his or her full acceptance.  One
of the ways we feel God's acceptance is through the
love of his people (1 Peter 4:10).  
	In addition, we need to ask forgiveness of, and make
amends to, the people we have hurt.  Making amends
leads to reconciliation, ownership of our sin, and help
for the people we have hurt.  Acknowledging our own
sin against other people makes them feel better and
helps them work through what we did to them.  
	Listen to what Jesus says about this:  
	If therefore you are presenting your offering at the
altar, and there remember that your brother has
something against you, leave your offering there
before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled
to your brother, and then come and present your
offering.  Make friends quickly with your opponent at
law while you are with him on the way, in order that
your opponent may not deliver you to the judge, and
the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into
prison.  Truly I say to you, you shall not come out of
there, until you have paid up the last cent.  (Matt.  
5:23-26 NAsB)  
	God is serious about how we treat each other.  In
making amends there is healing for us as well as
healing for those we hurt.  
	Changing the Past  
	It is blatantly wrong to teach that we should just
forget the past, for the simple reason that the past will
one day be our entire life.  Past, present, and future are
aspects of our soul that need to be reconciled to God.  
	We cannot change our past.  But we must change our
internal connections to those who have hurt us by
forgiving them.  We must release our demand that they
somehow make it up to us.  We need to let go of lost
dreams and people.  
	We must take our living hurts from the past to those
who can heal them.  We must bring to light patterns we
have learned from our parents and other adults, confess
those destructive patterns, disagree with them, and
repent from them.  If we have wronged people, we must
confess our sin, apologize to those we have hurt, and
make amends.
Though none of these processes change the past,
they nevertheless redeem the past.  God is in the
process of reconciling everything that has gone wrong,
including our personal past: he deals with the past,
reconciling people to himself repairing damage, re-
building what sin has destroyed.  But in order for him to
deal with our past, we need to bring all of our broken
parts to him.  This is the ultimate dealing with the past.  
God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in
[Christ], and through him to reconcile to himself all
things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by,,
making peace through his blood, shed on the cross
(Col.  1:19-20).  
	Bring your history to God, whether it happened two
days or twenty years ago.  Bring it to him and to his
people, allow his light and grace to transform it, bring
his truth to bear on it, and experience the reconciliation
of your whole life.
ASSUMPTION #7  
	If I have God,  I don't need people.  
	It had been more than two years since Roy and I had  
	seen each other.  Because he lived in another state,
we didn't get together very often.  So we had a lot of
catching up to do during a quiet breakfast one morning.  
	But our lack of communication wasn't entirely due
to geographical distance.  There were things we needed
to talk out.  
	Eighteen months earlier Roy had dropped off the
face of the earth.  A successful Christian businessman,
he had been my friend for many years.  One day he was
fine, I'd been told.  The next day he moved out of his
home, took an apartment, and virtually disappeared.  
	For over a year Roy was out of contact with his
friends and colleagues.  He kept his job and visited his
kids, but no one else ever saw him.  He didn't return
phone calls.  Secretaries and answering machines ran
interference for him.  
	His friends speculated about what had happened to
Roy.  Had he lost the faith?  Had he gone crazy?  Roy
wasn't talking.  
	One night, out of the blue, Roy called me at my
home and asked if we could get together.  We made
plans, and he flew in the next day.  
	Over breakfast Roy told me his story.  For about a
year he had been under extremely intense business
pressure that required more of him than he had.  He had  
tried to tough it out and be strong for others.  "Times
were tough," he told me.  "I knew if my struggles were
bad, others' had to be much worse." A deep depression
followed.  
	Roy had shared his problem with only a few people.  
"Get some time away," one told him, "and rekindle
with the Lord." "Do a personal inventory of yourself,"
another said.  "Chances are, you've dropped your walk
with God to a lower priority." A third told him, "God's
rod and staff will comfort you.  
	So Roy began spending more time in the Bible and
in prayer.  Since stress and worry were waking him up at
four A.M.  anyway, he started using that time for his
devotions.  But his depression continued; black hope-
lessness and despair engulfed him.  
	His depression finally got the best of him.  Roy's
emotional pain became so intense that he oiled and
loaded his revolver to prepare for the only solution he
knew.  But before he went ahead with his plan, he
decided to move out for a few weeks to try to sort things
out with the Lord.  
	One more shot at prayer.  One more chance at an
inspiring Bible study.  Perhaps he hadn't really con-
nected with God during the other attempts.  Perhaps it
would be different this time.  
	It wasn't.  Roy prayed intently for hours on his knees.  
He read the Scriptures, poring over them to seek the
Lord.  And his depression grew.  
	"You're still with us," I said to Roy that morning.  
"What happened?"  
	"It was the strangest thing," he recalled.  "As I was
deciding to go ahead and end my life, my apartment
neighbor knocked on my door to borrow a Phillips
screwdriver.  I got it for him, and we started talking.  
	"He wasn't a Christian, but he seemed interested.  
Bill let me talk and talk and talk.  About my pain and
life.  About my insane business pressures.  About my
marriage struggles.  About my abusive mother and my
absent father.  About my acting-out school years.  About
the brother who had let me down.  About my conversion
to Christ and how my life started coming around.  About
my many years of rescuing the world for God, and how
the demands on me just kept growing.  
	"Bill listened and asked questions.  He didn't offer
advice.  He told me he thought I had a really tough life.  
That was all.  And after a couple of hours of my bending
his ear, he asked if I'd like to go out to dinner.  We did.  
And then he told his story."  
	Roy looked thoughtful.  "It was the funniest thing.  
Bill didn't tell me to do anything.  He sure wasn't God.  
He didn't say one word about God.  And yet for some
reason I felt better after talking to him than I did after
talking to God.  I hate the way that sounds, but it's true.  
	"I met some of Bill's friends.  They were like him-
people who had struggled, some believers, most not.  
But everyone seemed to want to listen to each other's
problems.  Nobody asked me to take care of them.  
Nobody asked me for spiritual advice.  I could say
whatever I felt, and they just accepted me.  
	"I felt guilty, because I wasn't around Christians.  
But I stopped wanting to kill myself.  And strangely
enough, I started wanting to pray again, which I'd
pretty much given up on.  Can you believe that?  Feeling
close to God with a bunch of nonbelievers!  
	"Anyway, after about a year, I started sensing more  
	substance, I'd guess you'd call it, inside me.  And I
knew I needed to get back to my family, my friends,
and my life.  So I'm home now.  Everybody thinks I'm
crazy, because I'm not talking much about it.  But for
some reason, I'm more ready to reenter life."  
	Roy leaned forward across the table.  "Which leads
me to why I wanted to talk to you.  Why am I better?  
Why did hanging around a bunch of ordinary people
help me?  I believe God is sufficient for my needs.  Yet it
seems that he wasn't.  So what's the deal?  Is the Bible
wrong?  Isn't God enough for my needs?"  
	The "Me and God" Syndrome  
	Before we call Roy irresponsible, of little faith, or
even crazy, let's look at his dilemma.  Many Christians
experience the same problem and ask the same ques-
tions.  
	In some ways, this crazymaker is easier to deal with
than the false assumption we explored in chapter one
("It's selfish to have my needs met").  At least the "me
and God" syndrome allows us to be in need.  The
problem is that it presents a biblically incomplete idea
of how we get those needs met.  Individuals who teach
this crazymaker provide only part of the answer.  It's a
subbiblical view of how people get help.  
	The "me and God" syndrome says this: Since Christ
is enough for me, it's me and God against the world.  
With God on my side, I can lick any problem.  He's the
pilot, and I'm the co-pilot in the battle of life.  If he's
there beside me, I need no one else.  
	In theological terms, this crazymaker is based on the
doctrine of the sufficiency of Christ.  Helpful when
understood biblically, this tenet is based on passages
such as Colossians 2:9-10: "For in Christ all the
fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have
been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over
every power and authority."  
	Correctly understood, the sufficiency principle
teaches that Christ provides for the believer's every
need-physical, spiritual, and emotional.  
	The problem arises when we interpret Christ's
sufficiency as Christ alone, not including his resources.  
We run into problems when we think that prayer and
Bible reading are enough to keep us going, when we
think that depression, loneliness, or anxiety can be
solved by spending time alone with God.  
	This distorted teaching- "If I have God, I don't
need people"-says that going to people for our
spiritual or emotional needs is wrong.  To those who ask
for help from other people, teachers of this doctrine say:  
	You lack faith.  
	You have a limited, or small view of God.  
You are trusting in humans instead of the Savior.  
You are dabbling in secular humanism.  
You are in sin.  
	You are proud.  
	And on and on.  People who buy into this doctrine
give testimonials to conquering depression, compulsive
behaviors, and bad marriages because they turned from
people and toward God.  
	So' What's the Problem?  God Is Sufficient,
Isn't He?  
	God is God, you say, and he can do everything,
right?  Doesn't the Bible say God is sufficient?  How can
anything be wrong with this?  How can this be a
crazymaker?  
	God certainly is God, and God can do anything.  
Jesus declared that "with God all things are possible"
(Matt.  19:26).  He rules the universe (Rev.  19:6).  
	However, although he can, God doesn't do every-
thing.  God doesn't drive your car to church.  He doesn't
water your lawn (unless you live in Seattle).  He doesn't
tell your kids that you love them.  
	God uses all sorts of resources to help us in life.  He
uses angels as "ministering spirits, sent out to render
service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation"
(Heb.  1:14 NAsB).  He uses the witness of creation to
draw us to him: "The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Ps.  19:1).  He
used a donkey to talk to Balaam (Num.  22).  And he uses
people.  
	In short, God's love is manifested through many
channels, including this one: his creatures loving and
helping other of his creatures (1 Peter 4:8-10).  
	"Me and God" teachers say that God alone is the
source of grace, of undeserved love.  They say we
shouldn't look to people for grace.  Yet the Scriptures
say that people are indeed a means of distributing
God's grace to others: "We have different gifts, accord-
ing to the grace given us" (Rom.  12:6); "But to each one
of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it"
(Eph.  4:7).  
	If you're not receiving grace from God's people,
your perception of God is too small.  God wants to see
love proliferate in his universe.  That's what he is about,
and that's what he wants us to be about.  
	God Uses People to Meet People's Needs  
	I was summoned to a psychiatric hospital to inter-
view an emergency case for possible admission.  When I
arrived at the office, I met a distraught woman in her
twenties.  
	When she was picked up in the middle of the night,
Ruth had been walking down a country road, naked,
and in a psychotic terror.  The authorities called her
parents, who called a Christian psychologist, who then
called me.  
	As we talked, Ruth - started to calm down.  "What
were you doing in the woods?" I asked her.  
	"I was on a spiritual-growth retreat."  
	"What kind?"  
	"To get alone with God for extended periods of
time, to journal what I'in learning from him, to grow
closer to him."  
	"How extended is `extended'?"  
	"A week.  I stay alone every day in a cabin with my  
	Bible and my notebook.  
	"You don't talk to anybody?"  
	"Once a day I have a session with my spiritual
leader for an hour or so.  We go over what I'm learning.  
Then I go back to my cabin."  
	"When did it get bad for you?"  
	"I got there on Monday.  The first day or two were
okay.  But by Thursday I wasn't okay.  At first I was just
lonely, then I got really scared.  By Friday, I thought I
was being attacked by horrible beings, and I ran out of
the cabin in the middle of the night to get away.  
	"What did your spiritual leader say about the bad
days before the breakdown?"  
	Ruth paused for a moment.  "He said that I was
resisting the Spirit of God," she said.  "He thought a few
extra days might help."  
	The culprit here is not being alone with God, but
that Ruth went into the retreat with an undiagnosed,
severe abandonment panic disorder.  It surfaced, pre-
dictably, as she became more and more isolated.  Yet
when she told her leader about it, his answer was for
her to isolate herself even more.  
	This approach to spiritual issues is taught widely
among Christian circles.  It reminds me of the two
tongue-in-cheek rules of engineering: (1) If it doesn't
work, use a hammer; (2) if it still doesn't work, use a
bigger hammer.  Ruth's leader was using a bigger
hammer on her, with disastrous results.  
	This is the first problem with the "If I have God, I
don't need people" approach: It denies that God uses
people as his fingers.  
	Yet God constantly uses people.  We see people
meeting other people's needs all the way through
Scripture.  God looked at Eden and declared that it was
not good that Adam had no human companion (Gen.  
2:18).  The Preacher says, "Two are better than one...  
If one falls down, his friend can help him up" (Ecci.  
4:9-10).  And all the references to "one another" in the
New Testament passages about the church (i.e.,  Rom.  
12:10; 13:8; 14:13; 1 Cor.  12:25; 16:20; Gal.  5:13; Eph.  
4:25, 32) point to this same idea: God meets our needs
with people.'  
	Both-and, not either-or.  Are you uncomfortable with
the idea that God uses people?  Does it make you feel
that God never does anything directly through his
Person or his Word~that he merely tosses people our
way to represent him?  
	This is hardly the case.  God isn't limited to people,
but is highly and personally involved with us.  He uses
people for some things, and himself directly for others.  
	At a seminar on this topic, a studious fellow asked
the question, "So what percentage of our needs are met
by God and what percentage by people?"  
	We answered, "One hundred percent by both.>' As
we'll see, it's actually God's hand behind it all.  
	Eyes and hands.  God designed us to need each
other in humility, so that we could relate to him as
creatures to Creator.  When we think we do not need
what other Christians offer us emotionally and spiritual-
ly, the body of Christ stops functioning as it should:
"The eye cannot say to the hand, `I don't need you!'
And the head cannot say to the feet, `I don't need
you!"' (1 Cor.  12:21).  Needing each other's gifts,
support, wisdom, and love is the biblical pattern for
maturity.  
	There are four fundamental spiritual and emotional
arenas in which God meets people where they are
lacking: growth, comfort, wisdom, and repair.
1.  Growth.  Most Christians we know want to grow
spiritually.  Once the Father has drawn us to salvation in
Christ, our hearts yearn to mature and become more of
what we were intended to be-image bearers of him
(Gen.  1:27).  
	One way this happens is through each other.  As
parts of Christ's body, the church (Eph.  1:22-23), we
help grow each other up.  None of us is complete.  We
have our crises and conflicts at different times and
about different things.  This way, when one is in need,
he or she is helped.  Paul explains it like this:  
	Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow
tip into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.  From him
the whole body, joined and held together by every
supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in
love, as each part does its work.  (Eph.  4:15-16,
emphasis mine)  
	"Builds itself up in love." Using the resources
provided by God, we are to play a crucial part in each
other's spiritual growth.  Life in Christ is life in the body
of Christ, his church.  
	Over the years I have belonged to several churches
in which this principle is alive.  The members helped
each other when their babies were born, and they
helped each other bury their dead.  When anyone was in
physical, financial, or emotional need, he called his
spiritual family.  Each part did its work, and the church
grew in depth and breadth over the years.  
	2.  Comfort.  This is a basic spiritual and emotional
need.  We need someone to ease our pain, someone to
soothe us when we're distressed.  
	One of the Hebrew words for comfort, naham, is
rooted in the idea "to breathe deeply."2  
	To understand this, look how a mother calms a
frightened infant.  She holds him to her breast, next to
her heart.  The baby can hear his mother's heartbeat and
deep, regular breathing.  In a little while, his panic
subsides, and he responds to the even, smooth func-
tions of his mother.  Comfort restores a sense of safety
and order to us.  
	Comfort can come from God alone: "May your
unfailing love be my comfort" (Ps.  119:76); "For the
Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on
his afflicted ones" (Isa.  49:13).  The Holy Spirit com-
forts: The early church was built up and continued in
the comfort of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 9:31 NAsB).  
	Roy's friend told the truth when he quoted Psalm
23: "Your rod and your staff, they comfort me." Yet he
didn't go the next step and ask, "Can I help?"  
	People are intimately involved in God's comforting
process.  When Jacob thought his favorite son Joseph
had died, "all his sons and daughters came to comfort
him, but he refused to be comforted.  `No,' he said, in
mourning will I go down to the grave to my son"' (Gen.  
37:35).  This important passage shows the healing
power of the comfort of humans.  Jacob refused the
solace of his children because he knew it would
promote the grieving process.  Rather than resolve his
greef, he wanted to somehow stay connected to his dead
son.  
	"Trust God," advise some Christians to friends who
experience loss.  Yet these Christians are only condemn-
ing their friends to a lifetime of unresolved grief.  
	"People comfort" isn't just for those who have lost
someone.  When church members have sinned, then
been disciplined for it, we should not leave them alone
("For his own good," we say to ourselves).  Instead,
"you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will
not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow" (2 Cor.  2:7).  
We should offer solace even if he deserved to suffer.  
	Paul had great joy and comfort in Philemon's love
(Philem.  7).  And when Paul was depressed, "God, who
comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of
Titus" (2 Cor.  7:6).  Job called his preachy friends
miserable comforters" (Job 16:2), who in the end were
replaced by other friends and family, who "comforted
and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had
brought upon him" (Job 42:11).  
	"People comfort" apparently comes in two kinds:
good and miserable.  It's helpful to study the comfort
Job's friends offered him, so that you can duck when
you see it coming.  
	If you go only to God for comfort, you may be
limiting God's help.  If we can't use his fingers, we're
tying his hands.  
	3.  Wisdom.  In seminary we discussed endlessly
what doctrinal camps we supported.  Calvinism, Armi-
nianism, pretrib, posttrib-we argued and analyzed for
hours.  
	During one heated disagreement, one fellow made
the mistake of asserting that he was no camp follower of
anyone.  He was, he said, a biblicist.  
	We roundly and relentlessly hooted him down for
being presumptuous and arrogant.  He said, in effect,
"All the Bible scholars of the last two millennia are
irrelevant.  I understand the Word without their help."  
	We are to become mature in understanding the
Bible.  We're to aspire to handle the Word of truth
correctly (2 Tim.  2:15).  But we need the help of others
to comprehend the Word.  
	Remember the Ethiopian eunuch's response to the
apostle Philip, who had seen him reading Isaiah and
who had asked the eunuch if he understood what he
was reading?  "How can I," the eunuch replied, "unless
someone explains it to me?" (Acts 8:31).  What if Philip
had said, "Well, you need to lean on God to understand
these words.  See ya."  
	The point is simply that we all need wisdom-skill
in living-whether it be in understanding Scripture,
comprehending marriage, or figuring out depression.
And people are some of God's best resources in gaining
this skill.  
	You'll hear the crazymakers, "Don't listen to people
for your answers-get them directly from God." But do
you see the implied contradiction?  "Don't listen to
what I'm saying, because I'm human."  
	So humbly consult "specialists" in whatever areas
you need wisdom, whether it's about career, finances,
anxiety disorders, or the will of God.  Let God speak
through those who have walked with him-and learn
from them.  
	4.  Repair.  We all are broken in some way, both
sinful and sinned against.  Because none of us has
escaped the results of sin, we suffer spiritual and
emotional damage.  We won't let others love us.  We
can't say no.  We don't know how to connect with
people.  We're unable to be firm in our convictions.  We
need help to be disciplined, to accept our weaknesses,
to stand against those who would abuse us.  The broken,
damaged, immature parts of our character need to be
fixed.  
	As we said in chapter 5, the work of recovery is the
work of sanctification.  God is redeeming those lost parts
of our souls that are injured.  He is bringing those parts
into the light of his grace and truth.  
	And doing this repair, many wrongly believe, is God
himself, by himself, unaided by anyone or anything.  All
we really need, they insist, is to do what the Bible says.  
	Yet the Bible says over and over again that we
should find people to help us return to spiritual and
emotional health.  The root meaning of the Hebrew
word hazaq, "repair," is "to squeeze or bind." Among
other things, it means "to help strengthen the hands
and arms." The picture is of strong hands supporting
weak ones.  
	In her old age a friend of mine was weak and frail,
unable even to hold her fork to eat.  At mealtimes I'd
sometimes place my hand around hers, guiding the fork
to her mouth.  This hazaq brought us closer together.  
	It was this characteristic in the patriarch Job that
Eliphaz saw and commended: "Think how you have
instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble
hands.  Your words have supported those who stum-
bled; you have strengthened faltering knees" (Job 4:3-
4).  He was glad Job had hazaq (although Eliphaz
neglected to give his friend any hazaq in return).  
Jonathan "hazaqed" David in a crisis: He "helped him
find strength in God" (1 Sam.  23:16).  It was through
Jonathan that David received God's love.  
	The Bible doesn't dictate how God will meet a
specific need-directly or through people.  Yet we
cannot assume a loving act of God over a loving act of
people.  God sent Titus to Paul (2 Cor.  7:6).  God so
loved the world that he sent his Son.  Allow God to
touch you through whatever or whomever he desires.  
	Don't Downplay the Incarnation  
	It was a difficult session for Carol.  Her father had
recently died after a lengthy illness.  His death had
been expected.  What hadn't been expected was what
she'd begun to discover about her relationship with
him.  
	For a long time Carol had told me stories about the
kind of man her father was.  In all of them her father was
loving, caring, strong, and protective.  She had evalu-
ated the men in her life by one standard-her father.  
There was only one problem: Carol's dad had left her
and her mother when she was two, connecting with
Carol only sporadically throughout her life.  
	So Carol had created in her head a perfect father.  
She'd embellished who he really was to protect herself
from the pain and loss of not having had a father at
home.  Only after his physical death was she able to
accept the death of the relationship several decades
before.  She began seeing her father for the real person
he was-a troubled, self-absorbed man who really
hadn't made time for her.  She had a deep loss to work
through-the loss of a man who had never been.  
	Carol never had a dad to connect with-one who
held her, played with her, and took her on walks.  
Having no picture of a real dad, she fabricated an
unrealistic one and compared every man she dated with
this ideal dad.  
	The fact that Carol had a dad, somewhere, was not
enough to save her from deep feelings of abandonment
and loss.  She needed a father in her house, a father in
the flesh, a father incarnate.  This only mirrors the need
that God sensed within humans: In addition to the fact
of God in our lives, we need God in the flesh, God
incarnate-the Christ.  
	The crazymaker that says, "If you have God, you
don't need people," distances us from the man Jesus.  It
minimizes the Incarnation, a fundamental Christian
doctrine.  
	A fleshy religion.  Most religions detail how to reach
God.  You perform certain rituals, you remain faithful to
commands, you live the best life you can, or you
recognize the god that you are.  
	In Christianity, however, we don't reach for God.  
We don't find the pathway to God.  He reached for us,
he made a path for us: "God was reconciling the world
to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against
them" (2 Cor.  5:19).  God saw that we were in deep
trouble and would never be able to reconnect with him
in his holiness.  So he did the work for us: Christ paid
for our sins on the cross.  
	In the Christian faith, God actually became man.  
That's what incarnation means.  God became came,
flesh, for us.
By becoming a man, God baptized and affirmed our
humanness.  He made it acceptable to be just folks.  We
don't have to water down or transcend our humanity to
be spiritual.  To the contrary, to become spiritual, we
must become more human.  
	By becoming a man, God showed that he under-
stands our sufferings.  He's been there.  "For we do not
have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in
every way, just as we are-yet was without sin" (Heb.  
4:15).  
	He became more thoroughly human than any of us
can imagine: "God made him who had no sin to be sin
for us, so that in him we might become the righteous-
ness of God" (2 Cor.  5:21).  The miracle of biblical
Christianity is that the God-man wrapped himself in
our sin until he paid for it.  He took our sin upon himself
and endured the punishment we deserved.  Thus by a
marvelous exchange he made it possible for us to
receive his righteousness and be reconciled to God.  
	So if the flesh and bones and blood-and sin-of
being human is apparently important enough to God
that he became a man, then being human must not be
all that bad.  Furthermore, we can learn about love from
the various ways the God-man loved people.  He taught
them.  He healed them.  He put his hands on them.  He
wept with them.  He visited them in their homes.  He
even asked three of them to support him in his pain in
Gethsemane: "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to
the point of death.  Stay here and keep watch with me"
(Matt.  26:38).  
	This is how he met needs when he was on earth-
with direct, hands-on compassion and love.  The incar-
nation of Christ points out the absurdity of thinking you
don't need people.  When he was a man, God himself
needed people.  
	This is what makes the sufficiency teachings in-
sufficient.  Proponents of this crazymaker teach a Christ
who is definitely divine but scarcely human-contrary
to the biblical teaching that Christ was fully God and
fully man.  They therefore limit the resources of Christ
to God's direct intervention.  They teach an insufficient
Christ, not the Christ of the Bible.  
	The Gnostic split.  At the root of sufficiency teaching
is Gnosticism, an ancient philosophy that held that
knowledge of spiritual things is essential.  Matter-the
opposite of spirit-is therefore evil.  In other words,
flesh is bad and spirit is good.  The goal of a Gnostic,
then, was to become less fleshly and more spiritual.  
	It was only logical that Gnostics treated their bodies,
which were matter, harshly.  Self-mutilation, depriva-
tion, and isolation were commonly practiced by them,
all to help Gnostics separate their flesh from their spirit.  
Their view of Christ?  A purely spiritual Christ, not one
tainted by humanity.  
	With the opening words of his first letter, John
explodes this heresy:  
	That which was from the beginning, which we have
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we
have looked at and our hands have touched-this we
proclaim concerning the Word of life.  
	The apostle's point was that the Christ was also a
man named Jesus, who lived, breathed, touched us, and
died for us.  In the same way he loved us, we are to love
others.  The spiritual Christian is very, very human.  
	For this reason, the phrase "body of Christ" is
critically important.  In passages like Romans 12, 1 Co-
rinthians 12, and Ephesians 4 we read that the church
operates as Jesus' body would if he were physically still
on earth.  We are to love each other, bear each other's
burdens, and support each other.  We are his fingers.  If I have God, I don't need people.  127  
Learning about God.  We learn about God's charac-
ter from our human relationships.  That's why the Bible
says that "anyone who does not love his brother, whom
he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen"
(1 John 4:20).  People who are disconnected and es-
tranged from each other have a more difficult time
knowing and being close to God.  
	We see this continually in clinical practice, espe-
cially among Christians who can't sense any closeness
to God after years of functional Gnosticism and
sufficiency teachings.  Only after they've worked on
connecting to healthy people do they gradually begin
sensing God more.  They learn the spiritual truths only
when the physical ones are in place.  
	Babies and spouses.  It's almost impossible for "just
me and God" teachers to live as they teach.  If I am
loved only directly by God, then for me to comfort
others or help them grow would be to cause them to sin.  
I'd be teaching them to become dependent on people,
instead of relying on God.  Such a parent would have to
stand over a crying infant's crib and tell her to be
comforted by God-then walk away.  Such a husband
wouldn't kiss or hold his wife-he'd tell her that Christ
loved her, and that's enough.  The teaching breaks down
in actual life.  
	In fact, the only way this system works is to stay
away from people and simply point them to God.  Yet
that's exactly what James steers us away from:  
	Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and
daily food.  If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you
well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing
about his physical needs, what good is it?  (James
2:15-16)  
	If they live what they believe, "just me and God"
believers wish people well.  Hoping God will take care
of any unfortunates, they avoid helping them, in order
that the needy will trust Christ even more.  But that
belief is a dead faith, James declares (2:17), and it needs
to be buried.  
	God's Love, Shown through an Unbeliever  
	The actual tragedy in Roy's life, as he explained it to
me during that long breakfast, was not his childhood
sufferings (which were enormous) or his breakdown
(which was traumatic).  The tragedy was that there was
no Christian for Roy to connect with.  God had to bring
an unbeliever to him.  No doubt this circumstance was
partly due to his resistance to Christians around him.  
Yet from what he told me, most Christians simply
weren't available to be God's fingers.  Instead they
pointed the finger.  
	God made us to need him and each other.  We need
God.  We need his Word.  We need each other.  
	In his second letter, the apostle John wrote, "I have
much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and
ink.  Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to
face, so that our joy may be complete" (2 John 12).  
Complete your own joy.  Come face to face with others
who love you.
ASSUMPTION #8  
"Shoulds" are good.  
	[Henry] grew up reading the Bible every day  
	because I loved it.  I had my own Good News Bible.  
From the fourth or fifth grade on through high school, I
read my Bible every night.  
	When I got to college, I made a deeper commitment
to God and joined a discipleship group that enforced a
daily quiet time.  Every week the group asked, "Are you
having your quiet time?" I began to dread that ques-
tion.  Suddenly, when I didn't read the Bible and pray
every day, I felt guilty.  
	Reading the Bible was something I had always
loved doing.  But when it become a requirement with
negative consequences-when I felt had to do it or I
would be condemned-I no longer wanted to do it.  I
moved from a world of "want to's" to a world of
"shoulds."  
	In this chapter we will look at this supposedly
Christian belief that can drive you crazy: "`Shoulds' are
good." We will look at how we feel about duties we
think we should do.  
	The word should expresses obligation, compulsion,
duty.  It implies that we have no choice; that if we do
other than we should, we are bad or condemned.  
	Saying that shoulds that make us feel bad or
condemned are not good is a difficult position to
defend, for most of us have a deep sense of obligation.  
We should fix dinner for our family.  We should get to
work on time.  We should stop overeating.  We should
stop spending beyond our budget.  
	Then the shoulds invade our spiritual lives.  We
should set aside time for Bible study, serve on that
board of directors, love our next-door neighbor who
gossips.  The problem arises when we do things in order
to be good, instead of because of the blessings we will
gain by doing them.  The problem is doing good things
from a sense of obligation instead of out of genuine
love.  
	Our goal as Christians is to love the Lord our God
with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our
mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matt.  
22:37-40).  We cannot love unless we are free to not
love-and see the consequences of both choices.  
	The underlying concept here is freedom.  The tradi-
tional Christian concept of freedom is that we are free
from specific ceremonial practices of the Mosaic law:
We don't have to follow much of what the Old
Testament commanded because Christ fulfilled those
injunctions in New Testament times.  However, real
Christian freedom is more than just freedom from laws.  
It is freedom to choose life; freedom from fear, guilt,
and condemnation when we make a wrong choice;
freedom to choose love instead of avoiding guilt.  
	Freedom comes through grace.  When we fail to be
something we are not, or when we do something we
shouldn't have done, we are truly free from condemna-
tion through God's grace.  We no longer have to do -
anything.  Yet why do some Christians refuse to believe
that they are free?  What are the consequences of this
thinking?  And finally, what in particular is the joy of
true freedom?
Why We Think We Are Not Free  
	Scripture often refers to the human race as slaves.  
They are owned by and absolutely subject to the will of
someone else.  They must obey-or else-whether the
master is a person or an influence or a habit.  
	We are slaves to sin.  "What I want to do I do not
do," said Paul, "but what I hate I do" (Rom.  7:15).  We
seldom enjoy the destructive lives we often live; but we
are "sold as a slave to sin" (v.  14).  We get angry at our
spouses.  We overeat.  We drink too much.  We spend too
much.  We put things off.  We criticize our neighbors.  No
matter how hard we try, we find that we have to agree
with Paul.  The good we want to do, we do not do-and
we practice the very evil we hate.  Why don't we do
things that are good for us and that would make our
lives better?  
	Because by nature, we are not free.  We are slaves to
the law of sin and death.  As long as we are under the
law, we will fail-as much as we try and as good as our
intentions may be.  
	The person who trusts Christ as Savior is out from
under the law of condemnation.  She is "in Christ." This
means that when God looks at her, he sees the
righteousness of Jesus.  Legally, she is not guilty (2 Cor.  
5:21).  No matter what she may be doing, she does not
bear the legal guilt or condemnation, because Christ
bore the guilt once for all.  The consequence of sin for
the Christian is never condemnation or punishment
from God.  The Christian is perfect in God's eyes
because he is looking through the lens of Christ.  
	Experientially, however, we can be very much
under the law.  We can feel and act as if we will lose
love if we sin.  Emotionally we are still under the law.  
We feel that if we do not do as we should, we are bad or
condemned and that we deserve to be punished.  To the
degree that we experience guilt, anger, and loss of love  	132	Assumption #8
when we do not do as we should, we are still under the
law.  
	When We're Under the Law  
	There are at least five major consequences of being
under the law.  
	The Law Brings Wrath  
	The Bible says that the "law brings wrath" (Rom.  
4:15)-first, the wrath of God.  God is angry at offenses
against him just as we get angry when someone hurts
us.  If we are under the shoulds of the law, then we
expect God to be angry at us.  Second, we get angry back
at God.  We resent him and his rules, and we want to
move away from him.  Third, we become angry at
ourselves.  Wrath is a natural fruit of the law.  
	Mary had struggled with her weight since she was
twenty-five.  At forty, she had gained and lost hundreds
of pounds on every kind of diet you can imagine.  She
felt good when her weight was low, and angry when
she fell off her diet.  She would say vicious and angry
things about herself,  calling herself a string of brutal
names.  To her, the law-the emotional consequences
of her failure-brought wrath more than it brought
permanent weight loss.  
	We Are Condemned  
	When we are under the law, we are in a state of guilt
and condemnation, subject to feeling guilty when we
fail.  We feel guilty, bad, or condemned if we do not do
what we should.  
	Yet condemnation and guilt are not options for the
Christian; only godly sorrow is (2 Cor.  7:8-11).  Godly
sorrow is sadness at having hurt God or someone else; it
is focused outward on others.  Godly sorrow produces
change in us.  Worldly sorrow is a feeling of badness; it
is focused inward on ourselves.  (Godly sorrow is
distinguished from guilt, or worldly sorrow, more
thoroughly in the next chapter.)  
	Because Rob had trouble reaching his financial goals
for the family, he felt guilty.  He made plans, but never
did he stick to them.  So he felt bad-but he didn't
change.  He became so overwhelmed with bad feelings
that they paralyzed him, and he was unable to learn
how to do better.  Not until he dealt with his feelings of
badness was he able to feel true remorse about the
irresponsibility that led to his failures.  
	So if one feels bad or guilty or condemned about
what he should do, he is emotionally and experientially
under the law.  If one feels sad or sorry about where he
is, then he will be motivated to change.  He is motivated
by love.  He will want to do better for himself and the
ones he loves.  Feeling guilty is "worldly sorrow
(2 Cor.  7:10); feeling sorry is godly sorrow, the key to
true motivation.  It is based not on wrath at self, but on
love for others.  
	To unlearn our feelings of worldly sorrow, or guilt,
is terribly difficult for most Christians to hear, not to
mention to practice.  Though they think that guilt is
helpful, the Bible clearly teaches the opposite.  Yes, we
should feel sorry when we fail.  That motivates us to
change.  But we should never feel guilt and condemna-
tion.  We have been freed from those so that we can get
our minds off the badness of our inadequacies and onto
the lovelessness of our behavior.  
	The writer of Hebrews says it this way: "How much
more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the
eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God,
cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so
that we may serve the living God!" (Heb.  9:14).  We
have been cleansed, "once for all by his own blood"
(v.  12), so that we are free from guilt to serve out of
love.  
	We Are Separated from Love  
	Another consequence of living under the law emo-
tionally is that it separates us from love.  The law is
hostile toward us.  The law of God plainly says that the
"soul who sins ...  will die" (Ezek.  18:4).  Death is
separation from God.  In other words, to be under the
law implies that God does not love us, does not relate to
us when we are not as we should be.  If we do not do
what we should, the law says, then God will not love
us.  
	But the gospel says that God loves us whether or not
we do what we should.  In fact, it says that God loved us
"while we were enemies," even before we were
interested in doing as we should (Rom.  5:10).  
	Jim's life changed when he realized this truth.  A
pastor who had been trying for years to break free from
compulsive sexual behavior, Jim finally came to the
hospital for depression after he was caught soliciting a
prostitute.  He felt thoroughly unlovable and con-
demned.  As he told his story to the group, he expected
them, too, to condemn him because he had failed so
miserably.  
	But he was amazed to find that his little group of
recovering addicts accepted him exactly as he was.  
They did not withdraw love from him for his failure.  
They confronted him about how he had hurt his wife
and family, but they never withdrew their love.  Their
acceptance proved to be the missing ingredient in his
life and helped him get out from under the law and
conquer his compulsive behavior.  Finding out that he
would not be hated when he failed changed his heart.  
	If we feel unloved when we do not do as we should,
that means we are still under the law.  Yet the New
Testament teaches that nothing we do can separate us
from the love of Christ-we are totally loved as we are.  
We have "gained access by faith into this grace in
which we now stand" (Rom.  5:2).  This means that the
love and grace of God is something that we stand in and
cannot be removed from, no matter who we are or what
we do.  
	We should never feel that we jeopardize God's love
for us when we fail his expectations.  Certainly, sin has
other consequences we must face-but being separated
from God's love is not one of them.  
	Sin Increases  
	The fact that sin increases when we're under the law
is a confusing and destructive consequence.  When we
face something we need to do, we tell ourselves that we
should do it.  Yet the Bible says that when the shoulds
become law, we'll sin even more.  The instruction of
Paul in Romans is clear about this: "The law was added
so that the trespass might increase" (5:20), and "I found
that the very commandment that was intended to bring
life actually brought death.  For sin, seizing the opportu-
nity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and
through the commandment put me to death" (7:10-11).  
	In other words, Paul teaches that if we feel that the
shoulds are laws with legal consequences, we will sin
more, not less.  The law will arouse within us the desire
to sin more (Rom.  7:5).  To our legalistic minds, this
sounds like the opposite of what we suppose actually
happens.  Isn't it true that the more we tell ourselves we
shouldn't do this or that, the more obedient we'll be?  
	If we feel we should do certain things because
punishment awaits us if we don't, we have not died to
the law (Rom.  7:4), and the law will have power over
us.  In other words, the very method by which we are
trying to change will produce failure.  	136	Assumption #8
We are not saying that standards, which tell us what
we should do, are bad.  On the contrary, they are good.  
But if we think that we are condemned if we do not live
up to the standards, we are still under the law in the
legal and emotional sense, and sin will increase.  
	We Gain No Benefit  
	Whatever we do because we feel we should or
because we have to is of no benefit.  Our motivation is
not love.  Yet the reason behind all of the command-
ments, all of the "shoulds," is love.  The shoulds have
their place, of course, in this scheme of love: They are
standards that tell us how we may better love God and
others.  But if we behave a certain way because we
should, instead of because we want to, it profits us
nothing.  
	Motivation is everything to God.  If our motivation is
compulsion or a feeling of obligation-a "should"-it
is not love (2 Cor.  9:7).  Paul would not even accept a
gift unless it was "spontaneous and not forced" (Phi-
lem.  12-14).  
	If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but
have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a
clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and
can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I
have a faith that can move mountains, but have not
love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor
and surrender my body to the flames, but have not
love, I gain nothing.  (1 Cor.  13:1-3)  
	We may sacrifice in all sorts of ways that we should,
but those actions can be meaningless unless we give
because we love.  If we do something only because we
think we should-because we would feel unacceptable
if we didn't-then we'd be better off saving our energy.
Because of these consequences, freedom from the
shoulds is crucial.  Only when we are free can we love
freely.  If we are in slavery to the shoulds because of
guilt or fear, we are not ready to love.  We must first be
set free.  Slaves do not love; sons and daughters do.  
	Freedom to Live  
	This sounds too much like license, some object.  If
we aren't condemned for what we do or who we are,
why should we even bother trying to do the right thing?  
If we have total freedom, why not do whatever we want
to do?  
	It's a natural objection to grace.  Perhaps you feel
yourself objecting to the total freedom we described
above.  We all have a strong legalistic streak that simply
cannot let us believe what the Bible teaches about
grace.  We can't accept that grace is free and complete,
and that we can't do anything to add to it in any way.  
	The Bible anticipated this reaction.  "What shall we
say, then?" Paul answers us.  "Shall we go on sinning so
that grace may increase?  By no means!  We died to sin;
how can we live in it any longer?" (Rom.  6:1-2).  The
biblical response to total freedom is a refusal to live in
death any longer.  It is ridiculous to be freed only to
want to return to jail.  In verse four the apostle Paul
says, "We were therefore buried with him through
baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we
too may live a new life."  
	For the first time we have a chance to be free from a
life of death, and we have the opportunity to live a new
life.  We have been saved from what we are by nature-
wickedness, evil, greed, envy, murder, strife, deceit,
malice, gossip, slander, God-hating, insolence, arro-
gance, boasting, disobedience, senselessness, faith-
lessness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness (Rom.  1:29-
30).  And who wants this kind of life?  
	Still, the worried legalist in us asks, "But if the
`shoulds' will not keep us in line, what will?"  
	The Bible's answer is threefold.  First, our love of
God will keep us in line.  The relationship and friend-
ship we have with him is so great and empowering that
it motivates us to be more like him and to not offend
him.  "God's kindness leads you toward repentance"
(Rom.  2:4).  We do not want to hurt someone we love
(Eph.  4:30).  
	Second, our love and deep connected relationships
within the body of Christ will keep us in line.  When we
love others and are connected to them, we don't want to
hurt them, and our loye for them constrains us.  As the
Bible says, "Do to others what you would have them do
to you" (Matt.  7:12).  Those relationships will also serve
to discipline us.  When we are out of line, other people
whom we love and who love us will come to us in love
and truth to tell us when we are wrong.  
	Third, we would be miserable living a life of sin
(unless we are in denial).  We usually recognize that the
ways we live are not that satisfying.  We get tired of our
behavior patterns that cause problems in relationships,
that set us back in life.  When we finally figure out that
the real problem is us, not everybody else, then we join
Paul in thinking that we, too, may have a new life.  We
can have life, or we can have death.  At any rate, we
worry no longer about not doing as we should.  Instead,
we focus on the misery of our failed lives and the pain
we have caused those we love.  
	The Bible offers no middle ground between the two
options of life and death.  Both are reality.  Life consists
of honesty, love, responsibility, forgiveness, fulfillment,
and the like.  Death consists of dynamics like deceit,
separation, irresponsibility, judgmentalism, and un-
fulfillment.  Paul puts it like this: "Those who live
according to the sinful nature have their minds set on
what that nature desires; but those who live in accord-
ance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the
Spirit desires.  The mind of sinful man is death, but the
mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace" (Rom.  
8:5-6).  
	Finding the Deeper Life  
	At this point Christians enter the deeper life.  They
have been Christians for a long time, but they've been
stuck.  For years they have continued behaviors and
personality patterns they have tried often but vainly to
forsake and repent from.  The chief reason for that
failure?  They were living under the "shoulds." They
were motivated by fear, guilt, and feelings of badness.  
	There comes a time, however, when some Chris-
tians arrive at a state of genuine and shameless mourn-
ing.  It is here they want to change, not because they
know they ought to, but because they hate the hypoc-
risy, the lust, or the idolatry of their lives.  They are
dismal when they think what they're missing.  
	This is the beginning of what Jesus calls "poverty of
spirit," which brings them to grace in a much deeper
way than ever before.  They find that they have to accept
the fact that though they cannot change, they are okay
in God's eyes as they are, and that he wants to help
them even in their badness, failure, and inability.  
	Then they begin to let others know them in that
state (James 5:16), they get their minds off the guilt and
the "try harder" cycle, and they begin to connect with
the love extended to them from God and others.  They
also begin looking deeply at their own problems-and
that is when they begin to change.  This is what has
come to be called recovery.  
	The true motivation that brings change is hating
one's life (Luke 14:26), then hungering and thirsting for
something better.  "Blessed are those
who hunber and thirst for righteousness, for they will
live".
This is very different from the
trying to do what we should

Guilt says, "I am so terrible."

guilt that comes
of fear and guilt.  
says, "I want to  
Shoulds as Standards  
	Are shoulds good?  Do they help us?  The Bible's
answer is a qualified yes (Rom.  3:31).  The way that the
Bible wants us to look at the shoulds is very different
from the way we normally look at them.  
	Biblically, shoulds are what we need to do to live.  
Shoulds are the perfect law, our guide for life.  They are
reality.  Doing what we should brings about a certain
result, such as life and goodness.  The Bible does not
say, however, "You should, or else you're bad." It says,
"You should, or else you will suffer and lose" (1 Cor.  
3:15).  
	I finally came to understand this in college.  I knew
that if I wanted to live in a way that would bring life
and goodness, I needed to read my Bible and pray.  It
would help me have the relationship with God that I
wanted to have.  But I learned that I would not lose the
love of the Christian community if I did not read my
Bible and pray everyday.  
	Shoulds are good in the sense that they are stand-
ards by which we see how we're doing.  God's shoulds
guide us on the way of life everlasting.  They are the
light on our path.  
	If we want to live, God's law is the way to life.  As
David says, "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful
things in your law" and "Direct me in the path of your
commands, for there I find delight" (Ps.  119:18, 35).  In
God's design, the law is intended to be a standard by
which to evaluate ourselves.
God's shoulds help us to see where we need to
grow, where we need to change.  But when we see the
discrepancy between who we are and who we need to
be, we go to him for help in getting there.  We do not
crawl away from him in guilt because we haven't
arrived yet spiritually, hiding and feeling bad because
we are not doing what we should.  The law is not
judging us in a legal way, but guiding us in a loving
way.  It tells us what we need to do.  
	The Real Problem (and Solution)  
	When we do things because we think we should or
we will be condemned, we are trying to do things right.  
But doing right is not the Christian answer, because
doing wrong is not the problem.  Doing wrong is only a
symptom of the problem.  The real problem is separa-
tion from God and each other.  
	Because we are born alienated from God, because
we are separated from him and enemies with him (Rom.  
5:10), we are hostile toward him (Rom.  8:7).  We are cut
off from him and do not have a relationship with him.  
When we are living apart from God, we are like dead
people trying to be alive.  Death, the Bible says, is not
the end of life, but separation from God, the source of
all life.  
	Salvation through Jesus Christ reverses this prob-
lem.  Christ brings us back into relationship with God.  
We are reconciled to God (Rom.  5:10; 2 Cor.  5:18-21).  
We are connected to life again, and we produce the
fruits of life instead of the fruits of death.  
	The essence of salvation is moving from being out of
relationship with God into relationship with him, from
being cut off from him and under the law of sin and
death to being his heirs and receiving his grace.  
Decrees against us tell us what we should be like and
what we should do, and when we are not being or doing  
this, we are condemned.  Even if we live a decent life
and fail in only a few points (which no one does), we
are still condemned (James 2:10).  In salvation, how-
ever, there is no condemnation (Rom.  8:1).  
	A Life of Freedom  
	What does a life out from under the shoulds, out
from under the law and in relationship with God look
like?  Let's look at two areas of life, relationships and
performance.  
	Love and Relationships  
	In relationships, being out from under the law
means that we are free to love.  We do not have to love
God or anyone else (Josh.  24:15).  We are free to love
whomever we please.  But, looking in the mirror of
God's law, we realize that if we do not love, our lives
will be empty.  We begin to see that a life without
fulfilling relationships is worthless, has little meaning,
and can even cause harm to others.  
	Being out from under the law means that I see my
failures to love as a serious problem, a cancer in my
soul.  I do not grovel in guilt because I have cancer; I
am not condemned for my cancer.  But I see it as a
serious problem for which I need immediate treatment,
or I will die.  I become very sad and concerned about
my condition.  
	Being out from under the law also means I do not
put others under the law.  They are free.  I do not
condemn them, get angry at them, or withdraw my love
from them if they fail to love me in the way that I want.  
So many marriages are legalistic, under the law.  If one
partner fails, the other judges, condemns, and with-
draws love.  The partners live out the essence of the
-law, and it always produces death-in this case, the
death of a relationship.  
	What do you do inside when your wife does not love
you in the way that you want?  In your perception of
her, does she become bad?  You are living under the
legal shoulds when you conclude, "She should treat me
in a certain way or she is bad." This attitude is
judgmental and self-centered, and it never leads to
resolution.  
	When we love people, we give them total freedom
as God gives us.  We accept them as God does us.  They
do not have to love us.  When they fail to love us, or
choose not to love us, we do not withdraw our love from
them.  We may confront them and make them aware of
their failure.  We may express our sadness about their
choice.  Sometimes we may have to invoke tough
consequences.  But we do not condemn.  
	Performance  
	When we evaluate our performance, we look at what
we should be doing, but we do not condemn ourselves.  
When we fail, we own our failure.  With grace, we do
not need to be defensive, for we are not condemned.  
	Guilt says, "I should be different, and if I'm not,
then I'm bad." Grace says, "I see the standard, and I'm
not measuring up.  I'm in trouble.  I need to change if
I'm going to live and have what I desire.  If I want
certain outcomes, I need to change." This is different
from changing to avoid being bad.  
	When we live out from under the law, we begin
looking at the quality of our obedience and steward-
ship.  If in a realistic evaluation of them, we see they
aren t up to standard, we are sorry.  We realize that this
is not how we want to be and we begin to seek God's
help to change.  In a phrase, we hunger and thirst for
righteousness.
We are motivated to change because we want a
different life for ourselves and for our loved ones, and
out of love for God.  Repentance works if it is motivated
by a desire for something different, for something better
than we have.  Repentance merely to get the shoulds off
our back always fails.  To the contrary, prayer and Bible
study aimed at finding God always work.  
	Compare two children, both of whom take piano
lessons.  One practices because his parents tell him he
should and make him feel bad if he doesn't.  When he
moves away from home, he forgets music altogether.  
The other student practices because she wants to be a
concert pianist.  Her parents can't keep her away.  This
kind of motivation is lasting and is what every great
doer has in his or her soul.  
	"Have to" Versus "Want to"  
	Coming out from under law means changing from
"have to" to "want to." This does not mean that we
always feel as if we want to do what is right.  But it does
generally mean that we want righteousness.  Jesus did
not want to go to the cross; but he wanted what it would
give him: our salvation.  In the same way, we may not
want to do individual deeds of obedience, but we want
the end result of our deeds.  That is the true "want to." I
want the end result, so I will do what I do not want to
do in the immediate moment.  Maturity expects delayed
gratification.  
	The shoulds want us to "have to." We must or we
are bad.  We have no choice.  Shoulds used in that way
will always fail.  
	Be freed from shoulds, and you will start to live.  You
will be free to desire God and his life.
ASSUMPTION #9  
Guilt and shame are good  
	for me  
	What ever Became of Guilt?" The sermon title in the
church bulletin jumped out at Randy and Vicki as  
	they sat in the pew.  They looked at each other.  Then,
shrugging, they turned toward the pastor for the morn-
ing message.  
	The couple had been coming to this small, friendly
Bible church in the Midwest since Randy's new job had
brought them here from the West Coast three months
ago.  The warmth of the members encouraged them, and
Pastor Glenn communicated the Bible message in a
straighfforward, no-nonsense fashion.  It seemed that
they had found a church home after their cross-country
trek.  
	This Sunday morning Pastor Glenn came right to the
point.  "Beware of the humanistic approach to guilt," he
preached.  "A sense of guilt occurs because we're truly
guilty.  Listen to it.  God provides guilt so that we'll
know when we've missed the mark.  If you feel guilty,
you are guilty."  
	Randy and Vicki shifted uneasily.  They weren't
used to this approach to the gospel.  Yet perhaps God
was speaking to them.  
	"Guilt solves the problem of loving ourselves too
much," continued Pastor Glenn.  "Rather than concen-
trating on how wonderful we are, guilt refocuses us to
the darker side.  It puts who we are in perspective.  
Focusing on guilt doesn't make us guilt-ridden.  In-
stead, it makes us more responsible.  
	"The Holy Spirit speaks to us through guilt.  Jesus
taught about the conviction of the Holy Spirit in John
16:8: `When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt
in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment.' Don't
quench him."  
	Driving home after church, Randy and Vicki were
thoughtful.  "Honey," he said, "I feel worse after the
sermon than before."  
	Vicki nodded.  "Same here.  But maybe it means we
need to get our act together."  
	"I didn't know our act wasn't together until fifteen
minutes ago.  
	We Are Sinful, But ...  
	"But what's wrong with that?" you may ask.  "We
need a sense of contriteness before the Lord.  Don't at
least the psalms teach as much, as in Psalm 51:17?"  
	We cannot deny that a sense of our sinfulness is
biblical.  Furthermore, it is common to feel worse after
we encounter God-the prophet Isaiah and the apostle
Peter both knew the feeling (Isa.  6:1-7; Luke 5:8).  
Awareness of our sin informs us of our need for God's
forgiveness.  
	Pastor Glenn's message sounds Christian, but much
of it is unbiblical.  It burdens Christians with shame and
guilt that God never intended.  
	Where's the Crazymaker?  
	This crazymaker states that guilt and shame are good
for us, are helpful to our spiritual growth.  Guilt and
shame assist us by revealing our past sin to us-and
they also prevent us from sinning again.  
	This false assumption is especially potent in those
who respect the Bible, because the Scriptures can be
subtly twisted to teach guilt and shame messages.  
Families, for example, often use these messages to keep
kids under control.  
	"Law is the easiest subject in the world to preach,"
my seminary professor used to say.  "Grace is the
hardest."' It's really not difficult to teach that-  
	1.  The Bible says to obey God.  
	2.  We don't.  
	3.  We should.  
	Hundreds of Scriptures are preached that way.  The
only problem is, it doesn't help Christians grow spiritu-
ally.  Most Christians already know they don't do what
the Bible says to do, and that fact hasn't exactly set
them free.  
	Pastor Glenn's sermon is an example of a theology of
guilt and shame, which plays out in our lives like this:  
	"You've ruined the party for all of us with your
behavior.  I can't show my face to my friends."  
	"How can you be so selfish as to not lend me the
money?'  
	"After all I've done ,for you, you can't even come
home for Christmas.  
	"Shame on you for saying that to her!"  
	"You really should visit them.  They are your
parents, you know."  
	- "There's plenty of people out there who need your
help, and you're going on vacation?"  
	. "What am I supposed to do with myself if you can't
go?"  
	"You should have licked that eating disorder by  
	now.  
	You get the idea.  The speaker usually wants some-
thing from you and is angry that you aren't providing it.
The guilt message is simply a way to get you to change
your mind.  
	Many Christians don't see the guilt trip laid on them
in these messages.  Trying to solve their guilt problem,
they talk to themselves this way:  
	1.  I feel guilty (due to my own conscience, to
someone laying a guilt trip on me, or to both).  
	2.  I assume I've sinned.  
	3.  If I confess my sins, God will forgive me (1 John
1:9).  
	4.  I confess, and feel less guilty.  
	5.  I go on with my life until the next time someone
makes me feel guilty.  
	The problem is that we can feel guilty without
actually being guilty.  And 1 John 1:9 isn't a bath for
guilty feelings.  It's a sin bath.  We don't confess to get
rid of guilt, but to have sin forgiven by God and to be
reconnected in fellowship to him.  There is much
confusion about what the Scriptures actually teach
about guilt and shame.  
	The Internal Condemnation of guilt and Shame  
	Let's explore the concepts of guilt and shame first,
then clear up the confusion surrounding them.  
	Guilt  
	Guilt has two common meanings: The state of
having done a wrong (e.g.,  he is guilty of stealing the
stereo) and a painful feeling of self-reproach resulting
from a belief that we have done a wrong (e.g.,  he felt
guilty for not coming home for Christmas).  
	On one hand, the Bible always refers to guilt as the
state, not the feeling.  You won't find Scriptures describ-
ing a feeling of guilt.  The Bible describes a legal
condition of guilt: "You have become guilty because of
the blood you have shed" (Ezek.  22:4).  "For all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom.  3:23).  
	As a judge pronounces a defendant guilty, God has
declared us legally guilty.  We have missed God's mark
of righteousness and need his solution, the Cross.  By
official pronouncement we are guilty for having broken
the law.  
	On the other hand, feelings of guilt-as opposed to
the state of guilt-are basically our consciences con-
demning us, telling us we're bad.  Guilt feelings are
painful, often causing us to criticize and condemn
ourselves even more.  Guilt feelings usually result from
a sense that our actions have hurt someone.  We may
feel guilty about needing attachment to someone and
consuming their time.  Or we may feel guilty for
disappointing someone, or setting a limit with them.  
	Some people feel guilty about letting others down
through their imperfections or flaws.  Olivia, for exam-
ple, came to see me about a deep sense of guilt she bore
over disappointing her husband.  He was a talented
musician.  She wasn't.  For years he had unrelentingly
reminded her that her inabilities had limited his
potential.  He completely overlooked why he had mar-
ried her in the first place; he never seemed to notice
her many wonderful qualities.  Olivia's grandiose sense
of responsibility led her to feel that she had actually
injured her husband.  
	Others may experience guilt when they show more
talent or ability than another person.  Still others feel
guilty about simply existing, and taking up space on the
planet.  There is no end to the things about which we
can feel guilty.
Shame  
	Shame is a painful feeling of having lost the respect
of others because of our own improper behavior.  
	Though similar to guilt, shame has a broader
definition in the Bible: It is both a state and a feeling.  
Shame can be a state of being despised by others
(Joseph wanted to divorce his pregnant fiancee, Mary,
quietly to avoid her being publicly shamed) or shame
can be a feeling (Adam and Eve, in their pre-sinful
condition, felt no shame).  Shame is a sense of being
bad, a state of internal condemnation.  
	Some people distinguish between the two words by
saying that guilt describes our self-condemnation for
what we do, while shame shames us for who we are.  
You feel guilty for yelling at your child; you feel shame
for being a bad parent.  
	Of particular concern to us is the fact that guilt and
shame both describe a state of internal condemnation, a
pervasive sense of badness about the self, delivered by
the conscience.  These feelings can be mild or excruciat-
ingly painful.  
	Guilt and shame arise from different sources.  For
example, some guilt is an awareness of our judged
state-the fact that we are born under the law and
severed from grace (Rom.  1:20, 2:14-15).  Some shame
comes from experiencing our own badness, as when
"God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the
wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame
the strong" (1 Cor.  1:27).  
	These types of guilt and shame are simply our
emotional responses to the realities of our fallenness.  
They are good for us because they tell us that we
desperately need grace, and they motivate us to look for
help and forgiveness.  
	However, the guilt and shame that we are concerned
with in this chapter come from a different source.  They
derive from early socialization processes.  The con-
science serves as an internal parent to monitor and
evaluate the goodness or badness of our behavior.  
When the conscience approves, we feel relief.  When it
doesn't, we feel guilt and shame.  This conscience-
driven, environment-derived dynamic is what becomes
a problem in spiritual growth.  
	why Pastor Glenn's Message Was a Crazymaker  
	You probably remember the Where's Waldo?  book
series-cartoon scenes filled with hundreds of minute
characters on the page, among which one was the
bespectacled, stocking-capped Waldo.  The challenge
was to find him among the hordes of sunbathers,
farmers, trolls, firefighters, animals, and the like.  
	Welcome to "Where's the Crazymaker?" In the
Sunday message Randy and Vicki heard lie the major
theological errors of the ``guilt and shame are good for
me false assumption.  Now that we understand the true
natures of guilt and shame, let's take a biblical look at
Pastor Glenn's message.  
	Pastor Glenn Dezfied the Conscience  
	Pastor Glenn claimed that feeling guilty is a sign
that you are guilty.  Guilt feelings, he said, are an
emotional red light that tells you that you have sinned.  
God speaks through guilt and shame.  So listen to them.  
	Ken exemplified this thinking.  A highly self-critical
professional man, he came to the hospital program for
severe depression.  Ken loved people, but his excessive
sense of responsibility contributed to an unrelenting
guilt problem.  
	I observed the climax of Ken's problem in group
therapy one morning.  For the first few minutes, every-
one was quiet.  Some members mulled over the work
done in previous group sessions.  Others were just timid
about initiating conversation in a group setting.  
	Detained by a medical workup, Ken came in a few
minutes late.  He took his seat.  Several people smiled at
him, and the group stayed quiet a few moments more.  
	Ken gradually became more and more agitated.  I
watched him squirm restlessly in his chair, rubbing his
hands together and perspiring.  Finally he could stand it
no longer.  "I'm sorry!  I'm really sorry!" he blurted out.  
	The group members asked him what he was apolo-
gizing for.  
	"I ruined the group," he said shamefacedly.  "I know
why the group is so quiet.  I disrupted you all by being
late, and now no one wants to talk.  I'm really sorry!"  
	Ken's conscience was punishing him for being late.  
He assumed that his conscience's judgment was accu-
rate.  He assumed that he had disrupted the group
session.  But he hadn't.  
	Many Christians feel the same enslavement to a
shameful conscience Ken did.  But we don't have to.  
Let's look at a biblical view of the conscience.  
	The first thing we notice is that our conscience is a
product of the Fall.  Human beings didn't always have a
conscience.  Adam and Eve didn't have one, because
they didn't need one.  They had a direct, uninterrupted
connection with God.  
	In addition, Adam and Eve were never intended to
deal with issues of morality.  Questions of good and evil
weren't meant for humans, but only for God.  God knew
that if we had knowledge of good and evil, we would
turn our focus from relationship to rules, from love to
legalism.  Being good would become more important
than being connected.  
	That's why the only tree whose fruit Adam and Eve
were prohibited from eating was the Tree of Knowl-
edge of Good and Evil (Gen.  2:9, 17).  And when they
ate, God said, "The man has now become like one of us,
knowing good and evil" (Gen.  3:22).  Adam and Eve
now had knowledge of good and bad, but without the
character strength of God to deal with it.  They were
banished from the Garden.  
	The banishment was actually an act of mercy.  God
ejected the first couple so that he could later work out
the problem of sin through his Son.  Otherwise, they
would have remained eternally hidden from God in the
Garden.  So humankind was stuck-out of the Garden,
out of perfect connection with God.  
	At this point conscience began.  It occurred as a
product of our loss of relationship with him, as we
began responding to the internal law of sin and death
(Rom.  8:2).  It was an adaptation, of sorts, to learning
how to sort out good and evil.  The conscience became
an "evaluator," refereeing the goodness and badness of
our thoughts, actions, and feelings.  
	Our conscience isn't God.  It's part of living in a
fallen world, and in a judged state.  This internal referee
combines the law written on our hearts by God (Rom,.  
2:15) with our early socialization processes.  But it isn't
perfect.  
	For example, people with overstrict, guilt-laden
values will feel excruciating guilt when they are
innocent.  In contrast, people raised with no sense of
right and wrong will feel no remorse when they should.  
	The Bible describes three types of conscience: the
weak conscience, the seared conscience, and the ma-
ture conscience.  
	The weak (or immature) conscience.  The weak
conscience is an overstrict, punitive internal judge that
finds guilt everywhere.  It takes responsibility for much
more than God intended, as Ken did.  
	Paul describes the weak conscience like this: "Some
people are still so accustomed to idols that when they
eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed
to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is
defiled" (1 Cor.  8:7).  In other words, the weak or
immature conscience prohibits, criticizes, and accuses
unjustly.  
	The seared conscience.  A seared conscience is the
opposite of a weak conscience.  The person with a
seared conscience has little sense of remorse.  The
sociopathic personality has a seared conscience; he
can't feel empathy for the suffering of others.  He lives
by the law of the jungle: Eat or be eaten.  
	Those with seared consciences generally come from
families in which they suffered such terrible abuse that
they live in a state of perpetual rage.  Or they come from
families with little structure or love.  With no attach-
ments and no limits, people become small gods to
themselves.  
	Those with seared consciences become controllers
or manipulators of others.  Paul warns Timothy against
"hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been
seared as with a hot iron.  They forbid people to marry
and order them to abstain from certain foods" (1 Tim.  
4:2-3).  
	The mature conscience.  Over time, the mature
conscience is able to more and more closely approxi-
mate biblical values as it makes judgments.  When the
Bible speaks of a "clear conscience" (Acts 24:16; Heb.  
13:18; 1 Peter 3:16), it indicates a person using a
scripturally trained internal monitor.  To have a clear
conscience doesn't mean you're perfect, but only that
your conscience is accurately helping you make biblical
judgments about your actions.  
	As a product of the image of God as well as a part of
the Fall, our consciences change and grow with us.  As
we help the conscience mature, we can trust it more.  Guilt and shame are good for me.  155  
But it is certainly fallible.  Equating the conscience with
God makes as much sense as equating a cult leader with
Jesus Christ.  
	Pastor Glenn Confused Guilt Feelings
with Godly Sorrow  
	The second crazymaking point Vicki and Randy's
pastor made is that we need to focus on guilt.  Certainly,
a sense of our sinfulness is necessary for repentance;
but Pastor Glenn described something very different
from that.  
	Guilt feelings focus on our badness.  They focus on
our feelings of worthlessness and our deserved punish-
ment.  They are essentially self-absorbed, not other-
centered.  Guilt moves us not toward relationship, but
into hiding.  
	Godly sorrow is a better response to our sinfulness:  
	Yet now I am happy not because you were made
sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance.  
For you became sorrowful as God intended and so
were not harmed in any way by us.  Godly sorrow
brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves
no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.  See what
this godly sorrow has produced in you: what ear-
nestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what
indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern,
what readiness to see justice done.  (2 Cor.  7:9-11,
italics mine)  
	Here Paul teaches the difference between godly
sorrow (remorse) and worldly sorrow (guilt).  Godly
sorrow is empathic, centering on the hurt we cause to
someone we love.  We feel bad because we feel the pain
of the person we've injured.  
	We are destructive.  We hurt God: "I have been hurt
by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me"
(Ezek.  6:9 NAsB).  We hurt each other: "Their mouths are
full of cursing and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to
shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways" (Rom.  
3:14-16).  We constantly cause pain to those we love.  
	Godly remorse seeks to heal, to make restitution to
those we've hurt.  Reconciliation and relationship are its
goals.  To the contrary, guilt seeks self-justification.  It
attempts to get rid of the bad feelings.  
	Judas displayed worldly sorrow, or guilt.  When he
felt remorse, he tried to return the thirty silver coins to
the priests and elders.  He was more concerned with his
misdeeds than with restoring his relationship with
Jesus.  The fruit of his worldly sorrow was suicide (Matt.  
27:3-5).  
	The next time you miss the mark, search your
emotional response.  If it centers on how bad you are,
your emotions are the sorrow of the world.  But if your
response centers on loving your neighbor as yourself, it
is likely to be the sorrow of God.  
	Unlike godly sorrow, guilt holds us back from two
highly desirable objects.  
	First, guilt prevents love.  Those who are preoccu-
pied with their guilt may look loving; but when you try
to talk to them, they are absorbed with their own pain.  
They work harder trying to get rid of their own guilt
feelings more than they work at feeling the pain of
others.  
	When a husband tells his wife (as one I know did),
"I'm staying married to you because I couldn't stand
the guilt if I left," there should be no mystery why she
cannot warm up to him.  Such a husband is more
concerned with not feeling bad than with nurturing his
wife.  
	Guilt-motivated people are afraid to love.  They give
of themselves under compulsion rather than cheerfully
(2 Cor.  9:7).  They do loving things to avoid feeling
guilty, not because they want to.  
	Consider the following scenario: You make plans for
a weekend trip with a good friend.  Two weeks before
the trip, you call your friend to confirm your mutual
plans.  She tells you, "Oh, don't worry-I would never
forget this trip.  If I did, I'd just hate myself.  Being
responsible to my friends is very important to me.  I
don't like letting them down."  
	Her comments probably wouldn't affirm you as a
desirable friend.  She is obviously more concerned
about avoiding guilt than she is with spending time
with you.  Yet this is the attitude that runs unspoken in
the head of many guilt-ridden individuals.  Love just
doesn't have room.  Love's want-to is smothered under
guilt's ought-to.  
	Second, guilt prevents spiritual and emotional
growth.  People don't make genuine progress emotion-
ally until they conquer their guilt feelings.  There are
several reasons for this.  
	Guilt-ridden people are afraid of being themselves
because they fear further condemnation.  So they
generally adopt false selves that appear to be getting
better, while they bury their wounded selves deep
inside.  This is common among Christian circles where a
guilt message is taught: The compulsive or depressed
person starts acting happier to keep the helpers happy.  
After a while, however, she breaks down-a process
the helpers interpret as "backsliding." In reality, her
wounded soul had all along stayed hidden, and the
problem had multiplied inside like a cancer.  
	Guilt-ridden people are emotionally under the law.  
They are not truthful about their weaknesses because
they fear they will lose love.  Admitting failure, they
fear, will bring condemnation and isolation from God
and others.  People who are constantly frustrated in
their attempts to be perfect begin seething inside-
they can't fulfill the law, can't please their guilty
consciences.  It's futile.  The fruit of those attempts is
only rage (Rom.  4:15).  
	Guilty people are more concerned about being good
and sin-free (an impossibility in itself) than about
getting well.  They focus on the questions, Am I being
good?  Am I sinning?  Am I bad?  instead of on the
questions, Am I connected deeply to others?  Am I
being truthful?  Am I learning from my mistakes?  When
we focus on being good, we move into self-absorption
and a compulsion to keep the rules-and we move
away from closeness, intimacy, and relationship with
God and others.  You don't open up to someone you
think is holding a baseball bat over your head.  
	Pastor Glenn Confused Conviction with Guilt  
	Leaving church one morning, I overheard a com-
ment between two friends.  "I really felt the conviction
of the Spirit during the sermon, one said.  "I feel so
guilty now that it's just got to be God."  
	This comment typifies the third problem in the
message Randy and Vicki heard that Sunday morning.  
Although their pastor referred to John 16:8 as evoking
guilt feelings, he did not understand the difference
between God's job and ours.  
	When Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict
the world of guilt, he was describing the Spirit's role in
salvation.  The Holy Spirit exposes our sinfulness and
need for a savior.  But he doesn't dictate our response.  
Guilt, godly sorrow, rebellion, or indifference aren't
from him; they come from us.  
	The churchgoer whose comment I overheard should
have said, "I'll have to think about whether my guilt is
a response to God or to my critical mother."
Is Guilt Ever Good?  
	One good thing about guilt feelings: They can be a
sign of spiritual growth.  Many who are recovering from
emotional problems have severe guilt attacks.  Leaving
the old ways and cleaving to new ideas and people
activates their controlling consciences-which then
rain down "You're being bad" messages to stop the
mutiny of biblical freedom.  Such consciences are
saying no to your freedom.  A critical conscience wants
to keep you a slave to its mandates.  It wants you to obey
its idea of goodness, not the Bible's.  
	If you're in recovery and beginning to address your
true spiritual needs for attachment, responsibility, and
forgiveness-and you're getting beat up by your con-
science-rejoice!  You're probably doing something
right.  Then find friends who will help you work
through the feelings.  
	What Can You Do?  
	If you're motivated by guilt or shame, you cannot
also be motivated by love.  A strict, guilt-inducing
conscience is not from God.  Ask him for help in finding
people who can move you from guilt and shame to love,
and follow these steps:  
	1.  Own the guilt.  It may have been built into you by
too-strict relationships, but it's now your problem, and
you can do something about it.  
	2.  Get into a support system that is more concerned
with relationships than "sin-busting," a group that
understands that "God's kindness leads you toward
repentance" (Rom.  2:14).  
	3.  Investigate where you learned the guilt messages.  
	4.  Become aware of your anger.  
	5.  Forgive whoever controlled you.
	6.	Learn new information to reeducate your con-
science, from the Scriptures and from books like this.  
		7.	Internalize new voices from your support group.  
Guilt isn't resolved by simply retraining your mind.  
You need to replace critical voices with accepting ones.  
	8.  Don't resist grief.  Let others comfort and love you
through the process.  
	"This then is how we know that we belong to the
truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence
whenever our hearts condemn us.  For God is greater
than our hearts, and he knows everything" (1 John
3:19-20).
ASSUMPTION #10  
If I make right choices, I will grow spiritually.  
	Laura listened to the sermon on Sunday morning,  
	she grew more and more depressed.  Discouraged
about so many areas of her life, she had come to church
searching for hope.  
	Here she was, thirty-one, and back again in another
hurtful romantic relationship.  Laura felt helpless to
stand up to her boyfriend, who in a critical and
downright mean way manipulated, dominated, and
generally controlled Laura's life.  Every time she decid-
ed to confront him, she backed down  
	Furthermore, she was sleeping with him, even
though she felt bad about it.  She had been told many
times that men who pushed you to violate your values
were not men with whom you could sustain a long-term
relationship.  But, somehow, she never found the will-
power to say no.  
	Laura was weak-willed in other areas of her life as
well.  A yo-yo dieter, she tried again and again to eat
right and exercise, but never could follow through.  Nor
could she stand up to her mother, who still tried to
control her life.  She knew that she must live her own
life, but could not find the willpower to resist her
mother's manipulation.  
	On this particular Sunday, Laura had gone to church
yearning for some help.  The pastor ended his sermon
by saying, "It all comes down to choices.  People choose  
to do what they want to do.  If you really want to serve
God and live a spiritual life, you will.  You will stop
sinning, and make right choices.  By an act of the will,
you will choose God's ways over your own.  Go out from
here today and make right choices."  
	Laura's heart sank.  She had heard it all before.  She
had tried to make right choices for years.  But try as she
might, she could not find within herself the willpower
to make the choices she knew she needed to make.  If
this was all that God had for her, she really was without
hope.  She slipped out of church and glumly drove over
to her boyfriend's house.  At least she would not be
alone.  
	"Just Say No!" advised the popular drug-education
program.  The sponsors thought that just saying no was
the answer to the drug problem.  Other people have
held the same philosophy about other problems-
anger, lust, depression, addictions.  If we have prob-
lems, they say, we're merely making wrong choices.  
What we need to do to correct the situation, they say, is
to understand what the right choices are, then make
them.  
	If you truly believe this, life becomes pretty simple.  
All you need to know is what is right, and then do it.  
	Knowledge and willpower become the tools of spiritual
growth.  The cause of spiritual growth, then, is making
right choices.  
	It sounds Christian.  Indeed, the Bible has much to
say about choice.  Joshua encouraged the Israelites to
choose: "If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you,
then choose for yourselves this day whom you will
serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond
the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you
are living.  But as for me and my household, we will
serve the Lord" (Josh.  24:15).  
	Certainly we have no problem with Joshua's laying  If I make right choices, I will grow spiritually.  163  
out the choices.  We do need to choose whom we will
serve-and that choice has eternal significance.  The
problem, as we saw in False Assumption #8, is that the
spiritual life is not that simple.  Spiritual growth, or
sanctification, does not end the day we choose God.  
Yes, we can choose God-but we can at the same
moment constantly sabotage our own "choice." That is,
we choose the exact opposite of what we have commit-
ted to.  
	This happens frequently in daily life.  You choose to
diet, but three months later you are twenty pounds
heavier.  You choose to stay calm, yet you go berserk
when your spouse gives away the punch line of your
joke.  You choose to be sexually pure, yet you can't help
sleeping around.  You choose to have a consistent prayer
time, but you can't get up in the morning.  
	"Just Say No" has failed because the doctrine that
willpower is the answer is a human doctrine, not a
biblical one.  Willpower fails.  With the best intentions
we choose one thing (as an act of the will) and then do
the opposite.  Instead of just saying no, we experience
what the apostle Paul did: "I do not understand what I
do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I
do" (Rom.  7:15).  
	So this crazymaker says, `If I make right choices, I
will grow spiritually." If making right choices is our
only hope, then we are indeed hopeless.  Paul's experi-
ence and our own reveal our inability to just say no.  
	Why Doesn't It Work?  
	Why doesn't making right choices work?  It sounds
so spiritual, so Christian.  Why isn't it biblical to choose
our way to health?  Why can't we grow by an act of our
will?  
	Many Christians teach that if we can change our
behavior, our feelings will follow.  Act lovingly toward
someone we hate, we're told, then we will begin
genuinely to like him or her.  Choose what is right-
whether you feel like it or not-and you will inevitably
begin to desire that right thing.  
	It works that way sometimes.  What happens more
often than not, however, is that a person's initial
commitment to do what is right is undercut, and then
she is back where she started-or worse.  
	The undercutting often occurs as what has come to
be known as compulsive behaviors.  If someone is
caught in a compulsive cycle of acting out sexually,
overeating, taking drugs, or drinking excessively, he
may choose to stop, but he inevitably falls into the same
cycle-despite commitments to God, himself, and
others to stop.  
	Ike was a pastor caught up in a cycle of sexual acting
out.  He preached sermons about purity one night and
engaged in illicit sex the next.  When his board of elders
found out, they gave him an ultimatum: Begin intensive
counseling, or resign.  
	At first, Ike talked a lot about how sorry he was and
how bad he felt about his behavior.  He made commit-
ments to change, promising never do it again.  And then
the group confronted him.  
	"I don't believe that you'll change at all," said a
group member.  "I think that you will just act out again
and again."  
	"But this time I really mean it," Ike said.  "I will do
it this time.  I just made some bad choices."  
	"What makes you think you won't make them
again?"  
	"Well, because this time, I'm really serious about
wanting to change.  I'm really committed."  
	"Weren't you really serious' all the other times?  
You always felt bad about what happened, and prom-
ised to change.  But that never does it.  And if you don't
do something other than choosing to change, why
should we believe that it will be any different this
time?"  
	Ike looked depressed.  He was beginning to see that
he would repeat the same cycle if he did not do
something different.  But he did not know what to do.  
He was hopeless.  He saw no options other than trying
to make a stronger commitment in the future.  
	What was wrong with Ike?  Why didn't his efforts
and commitments work?  What he began to realize was
that, although he wanted to change, he wanted other
things just as deeply, things he had denied.  These
desires were deep in his heart, where motivation arises.  
He strongly desired to be accepted and admired-a
desire that wasn't being met within his congregation.  
He wanted to hurt his wife because he resented her
criticism about his haphazard way of handling house-
hold finances.  He wanted to rebel against the spiritual
obligations he had taken on and now resented.  All of
these motives produced destructive fruit in his life.  
	In short, Ike's heart didn't respond to his "act of his
will" theology, primarily because, in his understanding
of his will, there was no place for his heart.  The Bible
makes it clear that the will is not separate from the rest
of the person.  We do things with our entire person, not
just our will, or intellect.  The greatest commandment
reveals this fact to us: "Love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind" (Matt.  22:37).  Jesus paints a picture of an
integrated person who takes all of himself-not just his
conscious will-to God.  
	Ike lacked integration.  He chose with his will to
stop acting out sexually, but with his heart he chose to
continue.  Unless we will as a whole person, our minds
and our hearts willing the same thing, our choices are
short-lived because we end up doing what our heart
chooses.  We are divided on the inside.  God confronts
this split: "These people honor me with their lips, but
their hearts are far from me" (Matt.  15:8).  If we fail to
own the conflict, the disowned part of us will sabotage
our choice.  
	Ike eventually learned to confess to God and others
what was actually in his heart.  When he was honest, he
found he had conflicting desires.  He had never faced
how dark his heart really was.  He admitted that a part of
him really did not want to serve God at all.  He resented
God.  He had a lot of pain and grief that he had never
faced, and he was trying to cover up that pain by acting
out sexually.  His true self was not in relationship with
God or others at all.  And so this self had a life of its
own; it willed him into an entirely different direction
than where his intellect told him to go.  
	Internal Conflict  
	Our mind, soul, and heart are often in conflict with
one another, and we do not like to face conflict within
ourselves.  We may know what is right and what our
values are; but in our hearts are deep loves and
affections for things and people that are contrary to our
values.  For this reason, the Bible always calls for
change from the inside out, not just making right
choices.  
	Stan had a problem obeying his boss.  He wanted to
do well in his work, but inevitably he would sabotage
his own best intentions.  He met with his boss for
planning sessions, where they reviewed Stan's goals.  
He initially looked forward to meeting those goals-
after all, he was paid extra for good performance-yet
shortly after these first few meetings, he began procras-
tinating and not fulfilling his commitments.  He simply
didn't get the job done.  
	So he came to see me.  "I don't know why I do this,>'
he told me.  "I really want to do what I am supposed to.  
I just need to make better choices."
"What do you mean by `better choices'?" I asked  
	him.  
	"Choices that please God and get me where I want
to go.  Choices that accomplish what I want to accom-
plish."  
	"What makes you think you aren't doing that now?"  
	"What do you mean?  Of course I'm not accomplish-
ing what I want to accomplish."  
	"I'm not so sure.  Maybe there are things you want to
accomplish other than achieving your and the com-
pany's goals."  
	"Like what?  My behavior is ruining my career.  
	"Yes, it is," I said.  "But maybe your career is not the
most important thing to you.  I think something else is
much more important to you than achieving your  
	business goals.  
	"Like what?"  
	"You are much more interested in feeling like you
are in control of yourself; no one is going to have power
over you.  In a work situation you feel one-down to your
boss, and you resent that.  So you resist doing what he
wants you to do so that, even though you fail, you are in
charge.  
	"Basically you hate authority so much that you can't
exercise any in your own life.  And it is hurting you very
much.  But the pattern is also keeping you from feeling
some very old feelings that you have never resolved
about being one-down to power figures.  So what you
have never really recognized and owned is that thwart-
ing authority figures is a much more important goal to
you than making money.  Your head knows that to do the
right thing would help you, but in your heart is still so
much hatred for authority, that your heart overrules
your values.  Until you deal with that conflict, you will
continue to win by losing."  
	Stan had no idea how to deal with his conflicting
feelings and wishes.  Ever since adolescence he had
been in conflict with authority figures.  On the outside
he was a "good" boy, agreeing to do what those in
authority wanted because he wanted their approval.  
But he disappointed them with his ultimate perfor-
mance.  He had so fooled himself into believing that he
wanted to please his father and other authority figures
that he had gotten out of touch with his conflicting
feelings about them.  As a result, he complied on the
outside, but was determined on the inside not to be
controlled.  The inside always won.  
	"A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree
cannot bear good fruit" (Matt.  7:18).  As hard as the bad
tree tries to bear good fruit, it cannot.  This is what can
happen to Christians who try to choose good fruit, but
have not faced the bad aspects of their heart.  Jesus gave
a better answer than the "make right choices" model;
he called for character change: "Make a tree good and
its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit
will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.  ...  The
good man brings good things out of the good stored up
in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the
evil stored up in him" (Matt.  12:33, 35).  
	Internal character dictates what we ultimately
choose to do.  If we have problems in our heart, no
amount of trying to make right choices will produce
good fruit in us.  We must deal with the things that are
on the inside and driving our choices.  
	Stan needed to deal with the deeply conflicting
motives in his heart.  He needed to confess his hatred
for his father and for other authority figures.  He needed
to forgive them, to own his sin of rebellion, to seek
forgiveness, to find care and affirmation from other
Christians to fill the empty place inside that his father
had never filled.  He needed to face his sadness about
what he had always wanted and never gotten from his
father.  
	And he needed to face his fears of failure, to step out
and try new things.  Avoiding responsibility had kept
alive his fantasy that he really knew more than all his
bosses; procrastinators can never be proven wrong or
inferior to doers, because they can sit back and pas-
sively criticize.  Stan had to take chances and occasion-
ally fail-a painful process in which his pride had to
die.  
	How Then Do We Grow?  
	If making right choices cannot ensure spiritual
growth in us, then how do we grow?  First of all, realize
that choice is necessary but not sufficient for growth.  
Spiritual growth is always a combination of choosing
the good, gaining the support and strength to do it, and
dealing with the bad.  
	So equally important to our choices is submitting
ourselves to God and to his church for support and
absorbing his Word and his truth.  Through relation-
ships we forge in the body of Christ, we must confess
the deep aspects of our heart.  We must learn to depend
on God's Spirit to discover what is choking our spiritual
growth.  We must dig around inside the root system of
the tree to remove what is choking its growth.  And then
we must practice what we are learning (Heb.  5:14).  
	The Bible calls for painful surgery.  Resolving again
and again what you will do is easier than submitting to
the knife that cuts into your deepest motives and
feelings, and exposing them.  Deluding yourself into
thinking you will change this time only delays the pain
of actual transformation.  If we do not change on the
inside, we do not change at all.  No magic act of the will
transforms character.  
	Bad Out, Good In  
	Spiritual growth is both cultivating the good and
weeding out the bad.  To make right choices, most of us
do one or the other-cultivate the good or weed out the
bad.  We usually work only on one side.  
	To the contrary the Bible says we must take care of
both sides of the problem.  Only then will we be able to
sustain good choices.  We must add what good things we
need as well as uncover the bad things-both internal
and external-and turn from them.  
	People who try to stop eating, for example, will fail
precisely because they deal with only one side.  Without
food, they feel the isolation driving their lust for food.  
They try to say no to the bad (overeating) without
replacing it with something good (deep relationship
with people that would end the isolation).  
	When people say no to drugs, they begin feeling the
pain that they tried to cover up with the drugs.  When
they stop acting out sexually, they get depressed
because they have to face the inner emptiness and pain
that was driving the sexual behavior.  If all they do is
make the right choice-to stop the behavior-they
leave themselves in misery.  They are unable to sustain
the choice simply because the driving motivation is still
there.  The need drives the lust.  
	The Bible confirms that when we stop sinful behav-
ior, we begin to suffer (1 Peter 4:1-2).  When we stop
living after lust, we will suffer in the flesh.  People
experience the underlying pain when they stop acting
out their addictions.  
	The apostle Peter says that "since Christ suffered in
his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude"
(1 Peter 4:1).  We need to prepare for the suffering to
come when we stop bad behavior.  Yet God does not
leave us there.  He wants us to fill the needs that are
driving the lusts.  He wants to provide for us through the
grace of his people.  He does not want us to give up one
thing without replacing it with another.  
	Sally was forever getting into destructive relation-
ships with men.  She made poor choices about romantic
relationships.  Each time, her friends told her to to leave
her current boyfriend; she usually agreed wholeheart-
edly that it was the right thing to do.  
	But when it came down to it, she never could make
that choice.  She always felt so horrible after breaking
up that she could not sustain it.  The depression would
override her will.  Her "act of the will" wouldn't act.  
And soon she was back in similarly hurtful situations.  
	Sally is an example of destructive behavior patterns,
whether about relationships, eating, or drugs.  She
attempted to say no to the bad, but she did not deal with
the entire picture.  Not only did she need to say no to
the destructive choice of going back, she had to face the
absence of the good within her as well.  She did not
have the love she needed to ward off the depression she
felt when she broke off a relationship.  
	In her soul, in fact, Sally had a lot of empty places-
a perilous situation, Jesus reminded his listeners once
with a story about a person who got rid of the bad
within (a demon), and yet he did not further clean out
his house and fill it with good things.  So when the
demon returned, the house was still unoccupied.  The
demon found some friends and took up residence again,
and things were worse than before (Matt.  12:43-45).  
	There was no place for love and truth within her,
that the Bible says we need in order to survive.  
	For Sally to conquer her pattern of choosing destruc-
tive relationships, she had to do some work inside:
Grieve deeply over past pain that she was seeking to
alleviate in these relationships, confess old anger that
she was acting out in these relationships, take some
good things into her soul to ensure that she would
choose good in the future.  She needed God's truth and
the loving connection of other people.  
	In the past she would soon feel so empty again after
a breakup, that her resolve evaporated and she ran back
to the man she had left.  Yet she finally took responsibil-
ity for her emptiness, saw a therapist, and got into a
good support group.  She began to feel other people's
care.  By taking in some good, she was able to say no to
the bad.  And this time she was able to sustain it.  No
inner strength is why co-dependents (including those
addicted to substances) get better only with a support
group.  
	Right Versus Pure Intentions  
	A right intention is the choice to do the right thing.  
We choose the proper, God-pleasing thing to do, and
usually take little account of whether or not we want to
do it.  We just do it.  Many evangelicals base their
theology on this old-fashioned "act of the will" think-
ing.  The key to spiritual growth and success, they insist,
is to know the moral code and follow it.  
	We saw earlier that people who have right inten-
tions, who choose to do the right thing but whose heart
isn't in it, are often far from God's will.  They can choose
to do the loving thing but gain nothing (1 Cor.  13:3).  
	A pure intention is wanting what we choose.  In the
biblical sense this is what it truly means "to will." The
words most often translated "to will" actually mean "to
desire." For this reason, to think of an act of the will
apart from a pure heart that desires the things God
desires is unbiblical.  God wants us to will and want the
same things that he wants.  
	But we do not desire what God desires without
having our heart changed.  We need to take the deeper
desires of our heart-lust, envy, resentment, hatred,
revenge-to God for him to transform.  Conflicting
motives sabotage our lives and produce bad fruit.  But as
we take those evil desires to God and to others in the
body of Christ, we find that they are transformed
through confession, grace, and repentance.  As we
receive from him, we gradually find that our character
begins to want and desire what he wants and desires.  
And then the "right choice" is not nearly such a conflict
between what we want and what we tell ourselves we
ought to want.  We begin to will the things that he wills.  
We not only choose to treat others lovingly, but we
want to.  
	Through a combination of "working out [our]
salvation with fear and trembling" and a "God who
works in [us]," we begin to be transformed-and then
we come into line with his "good purpose" that he is
working out in us (Phil.  2:12-13).  In the process of
acquiring pure intentions (instead of right intentions),
we begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt.  
5:6).  
	Spiritual growth Leads to Right Choices  
	We saw early in this chapter how right choices are
often held up as the cause of spiritual growth.  But we
have seen that making right choices is a result of
spiritual growth.  The ability to make right choices is a
fruit of the Spirit (Gal.  5:22).  
	When our theology tells us we can make the right
choices, we know we're being prideful.  We are unable
to save ourselves, Jesus said-unable to do the right
thing.  He told us to own the fact that we are poor in
spirit, which means we are unable to do what is right.  
To admit this is humility-which is simply surrender-
ing our assumption that we can make right choices.  We
admit our spiritual poverty (Matt.  5:3), recognize that
we can neither save ourselves (Matt.  16:25) nor be
perfected through the power of the will or human effort
(Gal.  3:3).  God must transform us.  
	Since we cannot make the choices we want to make,
what choices can we make?  We can choose to-
Confess our sins  
	Give up the notion that we can save ourselves  
	Submit our inability to God  
	Ask for help in searching for our faults  
	Repent  
	Take account of our needs and let others meet them  
	Make amends  
	Forgive  
	Invest and practice talents  
	Seek God  
	Seek truth  
	Love one another  
	All these choices assume weakness and humility.  
They focus not on being good, but on working out
problems.  These choices will succeed, where trying to
be good will fail.  These choices are based on our
sinfulness and inadequacy, not on our goodness or
ability to make godly choices.  These choices will
produce spiritual growth that bears the fruit of self-
control and the ability to make right choices.  
	Therefore, instead of trying harder to make right
choices, surrender your inability to God-become
humble, unable-and ask him to begin the process of
spiritual growth in you.  As you begin to do the hard
work of spiritual growth, he will begin reproducing his
life in you through the process of internal change.  As
you cooperate with his pruning and cultivating of your
character, you will produce fruit in your season (Ps.  
1:3).
ASSUMPTION #11  
Just doing the right thing is more important than why I do it.  
It wasn't a happy family that sat in my office.  Gerry  
	and Beth Andrews, a couple in their early forties,
were on the couch, looking a little bewildered.  Across
from them sat Dave, their sixteen-year-old son, arms
crossed tightly over his chest and head down.  He
looked like an ad for a Save Our Teens campaign.  
	During the past few months, Dave had been having
trouble at school-skipping classes, displaying a poor
attitude when he did attend, making some poor choices
of friends.  His grades were dropping as a result.  School
officials had recommended professional help.  
	I asked Dave what the problem was.  A silent stare
answered me.  I turned to his parents.  
	"It all started when Dave started spending time with
the MacArthur boy down the street,' said his father.  
"He's had lots of...  you know, problems.  Up until that
time, our Dave was as bright, responsible, and caring a
young man as you'd ever want to meet."  
	"Dave, what do you think about that?" I asked.  
Again, the silent stare.  So I spoke to the three of them.  
"Making a poor choice in friends may be part of the
problem, but generally things at home contribute to a
teen's behavior.  How are things between you three?"  
	Mrs.  Andrews spoke up.  "Actually, they're fine.  
We've always been a close Christian family.  There's
never been much conflict in our home, thank the Lord."  
"That's not always a good sign,~' I said.  "People
differ about lots of things, and probably need to."  
	Something woke Dave up out of his staring contest
with me.  "Ask them about the schedule."  
	"What schedule?" I asked.  
	"The one on the refrigerator.  That's what's wrong
with them.  The schedule."  
	His father leaned forward.  "Dave's referring to our
weekly family schedule.  It's how we, keep tabs on our
activities.  Most families have one.  
	"So what's the problem with the schedule on the
refrigerator?" I asked.  
	"Everything," Dave said.  "Church on Sunday and
Wednesdays.  I don't like our church.  Dinner with the
Thompsons on Tuesdays.  They're old, and I don't have
anything in common with them.  Weekends doing
projects with Dad."  
	"What don't you like about all that?"  
	"They just do things to do things.  To keep busy."  
	"That's not true," piped up Mr.  Andrews.  "The
schedule has always been like that.  We've always been
active people, and all these activities are good!"  
	"Yeah?" Dave glared at his father.  "I think it's
because you and Mom don't like to talk to each other.  
You keep busy so you don't have to talk to each other."  
	The room was silent.  If you want the unvarnished
truth about a family, always ask the black sheep-who
has nothing to lose by being honest.  
	Just Do It  
	This encounter illustrates a crazymaker that plagues
many people: "Just doing the right thing is more
important than why I do it." Or, more spiritually
phrased: Obedience is the key to the Christian life.  
	The Andrewses were doing the right things.  They
were worshiping and fellowshiping and doing things
together as a family, but all for the wrong reasons.  They
were keeping busy only to avoid conflict.  The way the
Andrewses saw it, God wanted them to obey him for
obedience's sake.  
	Teachers of this crazymaker use passages like this to
support their teaching:  
	For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous
in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who
will be declared righteous (Rom.  2:13)  
	Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive
yourselves.  Do what it says.  (James 1:22)  
	God is like the parent who stands over the question-
ing child and says impatiently, "Just do it!" This view
holds that God looks at our actions far more than he
does our motives and internal spiritual state.  
	Those who hold to the "just-do-it" philosophy are
likely to say things like this:  
	Go the extra mile whenever anyone asks for help.  
	Turn the other cheek any time you are hurt by
someone.  
	. Read the Bible regularly, no matter what.  
Thank God for his provision at all times.  
Obey your authorities in all things without ques-
tion.  
	Stop any gross sins as an act of obedience, including
compulsive behaviors (ritualistic, repetitive behav-
iors) and impulse control problems (addictions to
substances, food, sex, spending, etc.).  
	This concept implies that we do acts of obedience
because they're the right things to do, and that God will
bless our efforts regardless of our reasons for doing
them.  If inside you know you're obeying only because
you fear being abandoned or looking bad to others, that
doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter if you're feeling
resentment or guilt as you obey.  It's your actions that
count.  
	What's So Crazy about This?  
	As usual, Christians have painted this fallacy with
rosy colors.  It looks so reasonable.  The list above
contains many good and important things for Christians
to do.  Isn't it true that we are to be doers and not just
hearers of God's commands?  That our behavior does in
fact reflect the state of our spiritual lives?  
	Besides, we all know people who rationalize their
sinful behavior:  
	"Someone made me do it.~'  
	"I'm a victim of circumstances."
"With a past like mine, it was inevitable."  
	"I couldn't help it."  
	- "The Devil made me do it."  
	"You wouldn't believe how bad traffic was.  
	Such people are usually shirking their responsibili-
ties and trying to get off the hot seat.  
	But the Bible won't let them off, for it places a high
value on personal responsibility and follow-through.  
God's followers keep their oaths even when it hurts (Ps.  
15:4).  
	Yet God likes "just do it" obedience as little as he
likes lame excuses.  Before we look at why let's see how
the Bible defines obedience.  
	Obedience: Lend Me Your Ear  
	In both the Old and New Testaments, the words
translated "to obey" mean "to hear, to attend to." The
Hebrew word shema is translated "to hear" more than
eight hundred times in the Old Testament; the Greek
word akouo (as in acoustic guitar) is translated "to hear"
some four hundred times in the New Testament.  The
Bible paints a picture of people paying attention to
someone's request or command, then responding.  
	A couple brought their three-year-old daughter to
me because they were concerned about her unrespon-
siveness.  She rarely responded to their directives, often
completely ignoring what they said.  Something didn't
seem right, so I ordered a medical exam for the girl.  It
turned out that she had a hearing problem.  She wasn't
disobeying-she simply didn't know she was being
addressed.  
	The biblical idea is this: When we hear, we respond.  
The Hebrew language doesn't distinguish much be-
tween hearing and responding; they go together.  For
example, the Israelites told Moses, "We will do every-
thing the Lord has said; we will shema" (Exod.  24:7).  
But when they didn't do everything the Lord had said,
Isaiah declares: "They would not follow his ways; they
did not shema his law" (Isa.  42:24).  To the Old
Testament Jew, if you heard right, you responded right.  
	The classic Old Testament passage on attentiveness
to God is what Jews call "the Great Shema":  
	Hear [shema], o Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord
is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your strength.  
These commandments that I give you today are to be
upon your hearts.  Impress them on your children.  
Talk about them when you sit at home and when you
walk along the road, when you lie down and when
you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and
bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the
doorframes of your houses and on your gates.  (Deut.  
6:4-8)  
	Every Jew knew the Shema; the pious still recite it
daily.  In fact, when asked what the greatest command-
ment was, Jesus quoted part of this passage-then,
	echoing Leviticus 19:18, added the second great com-
mand: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt.  22:39).  
All the Law and Prophets can be summarized in these
two commandments, Jesus said.  If we listen to these
principles, we will be the loving people God wants us
to be.  
	Not only do we shema God, but he shemas us.  David
cried out to God, "Shema me when I call to you, o my
righteous God" (Ps.  4:1).  "The righteous cry out, and
the Lord shemas them; he delivers them from all their
troubles" (Ps.  34:17).  Imagine God bending down to
hear our cries for help and then helping us.  Shema is a
two-way street.  
	We don't see in the Bible the idea of hearing
without doing-at least, until Jesus says that "everyone
who akouos these words of mine and puts them into
practice is like a wise man who built his house on the
rock" (Matt.  7:24).  In the New Testament, hearing God
doesn't always guarantee doing what he says.  
	You remember Rhoda, the servant girl who slammed
the door in Peter's face when he showed up unexpect-
edly after God had miraculously freed him from prison.  
She's a good example of hearing without doing.  She
came to akouo the door-then, in her excitement, forgot
to let Peter into the house (Acts 12:13).  She heard, but
she forgot to respond by letting Peter in.  
	Obedience Always Has a Purpose  
	Here's the point: The word obedience describes a
relationship between God and us.  We hear what he
wants for us, then we respond.  Much like a child
responds to the voice of his parent, we listen to him and
do the right thing.  
	Why should we obey?  Instead of giving the standard
circular answer-"Because we should"-the Bible
goes deeper than that, to the heart of who we are.
Obedience is a structure to train us in maturity, not an
end in itself Obedience for obedience's sake isn't
biblical.  Following God's commands always has a
purpose.  
	For example, good parents have one goal in mind for
their children: autonomy, or independence.  They want
their children to learn how to get their needs met, how
to be productive, how to solve problems.  In the same
way, God gives us directives to help us mature and
grow up.  
	Listen to Deuteronomy: `Walk in all the way that
the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you
may live and prosper and prolong your days" (5:33).  
"The Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees and
to fear the Lord our God, so that we might always
prosper and be kept alive" (6:24).  "Observe the Lord's
commands and decrees that I am giving you today for
your own good" (10:13; all italics mine).  
	God wants us to do the right thing so that we'll grow
up.  Good parents train kids in talking about their
feelings so they can talk to their spouse and friends in
adult life.  They instruct them in taking out garbage so
they can take responsibility for a job when they grow
up.  They teach them to set appropriate boundaries so
they can protect themselves from evil as they grow
(Matt.  25:7-9).  
	You may have been taught that obedience is for
obedience's sake-that God wants to be obeyed be-
cause he's some sort of control addict.  That's not God's
fathering style.  His directives help us to learn his ways
so that we develop into his image.  "I will instruct you
and teach you in the way you should go," he promises
(Ps.  32:8).  Obedience is our response to the fathering of
God.
	Levels of Obedience  
	Obedience changes as we mature.  Our relationships
to God and each other require less and less structure as
we cultivate more character structure inside.  The more
we mature, the less specific instruction we need.  
	A three-year-old, for example, needs to be put to
bed.  He doesn't realize his biological need for sleep.  A
fifteen year-old goes to bed (we hope) so she won't miss
her ride to school the next day.  Spiritual infants need
milk; spiritual adults can eat solid food (Heb.  5:12-14).  
As we grow more mature, we shift from specific
commands to a structure for living.  We don't need
someone to hold our hand through every decision.  
We're making the Word a part of ourselves: "I have
hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin
against you" (Ps.  119:11).  
	Why Obedience for the Sake of Obedience
Is Un biblical  
	The false assumption "Just doing the right thing is
more important than why I do it" has six problems.  
	This False Assumption Substitutes Sacrifice for
True Obedience  
	If anyone had it together, Jason did-active at
church, good job, lovely wife and two children whom
he loved, exercised regularly and looked it, kept in
close touch with his friends.  
	But one day, out of the blue, a deep depression hit
Jason so heavily he could hardly get out of bed.  It made
no sense to him.  He came to see me.  
	We talked for a while about Jason's apparently snug
and untroubled life before his breakdown.  We gradu-
ally uncovered that Jason's structured lifestyle was basically a way
to fend off a lifelong depression.
He had
grown up in an alcoholic and abusive family, where
he'd lived through all sorts of chaos and crises.  
	His activity and responsibility saved Jason.  Because
no one else in the house washed his clothes, prepared
meals, and budgeted money, Jason learned to.  He
became a thirty-year-old at the age of nine.  
	Jason did the right thing, not because he was selfless
and loving, but to stay alive.  The depression inevitably
caught up with him.  
	Not that it's unhealthy to be responsible.  The
reasons behind the responsibility are the problem.  
Jason had lived a lifetime of sacrifice.  Fearful of falling
apart inside, he stayed busy and active to ward off a
breakdown.  
	Just before coming to me for treatment, in fact, Jason
had confided in a Christian friend.  "Keep your nose to
the grindstone," the friend advised him.  "You'll get
past it." It didn't work.  
	Jason stayed busy to avoid dealing with his needs.  
He wasn't driven to obedience by the love of Christ,
but by fear and panic.  It was about situations like this
that Jesus said, "But go and learn what this means: `I
desire mercy, not sacrifice"' (Matt.  9:13).  Our sacrifi-
cial, giving, responsible acts are helpful to neither God
nor us until we understand God's mercy-being loved
just as we are-and then return that love.  
	A truly responsible lifestyle is the product of being
loved just as we are-with our sinfulness, our imperfec-
tions, our wounds, and our weaknesses.  Then, as we are
loved in that state, we learn to give back that love.  Jason
had not been so loved, and so it was impossible for him
to obey in love.  He could obey the Bible's commands
only because he was told to.  
	Some people lead highly functional lives not so
much to keep their depressions away, but to keep from
being shamed by others.  I knew a woman who kept her
weight in check by being around critical people who
would come down on her for gaining weight.  When her
critical friends moved away one year, this woman put
on seventy pounds in several months.  The shaming
external control hadn't solved the problem-it had just
postponed it.  She finally lost the weight for the right
reasons, but she first had to learn mercy and sacrifice:
She had to receive mercy in order to sacrifice her
longing for food.  
	When we do the right thing reluctantly or under
compulsion, not freely (2 Cor.  9:6-7), we live in fear.  It
may be fear of loss, of falling apart, of guilt, or of others'
disapproval.  But no one can grow or flourish in a fear
atmosphere.  Love has no place there, for "perfect love
drives out fear" (1 John 4:18).  
	This False Assumption Ignores the Wholeness or
Integrity of a Person  
	Not only do we move away from love when we obey
for obedience's sake, but we also become split apart
inside.  The soul becomes fragmented and disconnected
from God.  We desire one thing and do another.  "These
people come near to me with their mouth and honor me
with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" (Isa.  
29:13).  We were created to be whole, integrated, in body and soul.
We are to connect with each other and God
this way.  When we do, we are loving God with our
heart, soul, mind, and strength.  
	Ever had dinner with someone who didn't want to
be there?  The conversation may have been pleasant
and even interesting, but you sensed that your dinner
partner was somewhere else.  This splitting brings a
lukewarmness to the relationship that prevents true
intimacy.  That's why God prefers coldness to halfheart-
edness.  An honestly cold heart is in trouble; but
because it knows what it is, it can be redeemed.  The
lukewarm, half-there, half-not-there person, however, is
not honest with herself, and so is out of the reach of the
grace of God that could heal her.  
	The "obey for the sake of obedience" idea promotes
this sort of split.  Rather than exploring why we don't do
what we should so that we can work out the conflicts,
this crazymaker ignores the problem.  
	This False Assumption Discourages a Sense of
Responsibility  
	For some time I had been treating Karen, a divorced
woman who had just started to re-enter the Christian
dating world (a dangerous place, as those in it are
aware).  She had begun dating Bernie, despite the fact
that he frequently stood her up-but always with a
good explanation.  
	Karen asked me if I would see them together for a
few sessions.  First, though, I wanted to meet Bernie
alone for a diagnostic evaluation.  
	At first glance, Bernie was the nicest guy you could
imagine.  Good-looking and in his midthirties, he was as
attentive and helpful a client as a therapist could ask
for.  Too much so, it turned out.  Bernie was a "nodder,"
so eager to please that he agreed with my statements
before I finished them.  When I mentioned this to him,
he eagerly agreed that he had that trait!  
	"Can you help me with it, Doc?" he asked.  "I'll do
anything you say to work on it."  
	Bernie had a history of failed relationships and
unsuccessful career moves.  He jumped in with 150
percent enthusiasm, energy, and eagerness to please-
until conflicts came, that is, when Bernie would bail
out.  That's what eventually happened with Karen.  One
day he pulled a permanent no-show, and she never
heard from him again.
	Bernie wanted to do it right-at least on the outside.  
I have no doubt that he was sincere about his desires.  
However, he was so concerned with pleasing me and
others that he wouldn't take responsibility for his true
feelings about situations.  
	That's the second problem with the "just do it"
crazymaker: It discourages responsibility for one's own
actions and attitudes.  The person becomes so focused
on pleasing the feared authority-God, parent, boss,
spouse-he isn't able to deal with differences.  
	One of the marks of maturity is moving from
unconscious to conscious choices.  We move out of the
automatic, learned habits of relating and responding to
biblically driven decisions.  Bernie was still bound to
the frightened and anxious way of relating he had
learned as a child.  He couldn't slow down from external
pleasing to determine what he really thought and felt
about situations.  His actions (not showing up at
appointed times and disappearing from time to time)
shed light on his true values.  
	Don't ask why.  People under the burden of the "just
do it" crazymaker aren't free to ask why.  Asking
questions is considered rebellious, defiant, and insub-
ordinate.  Obedience, they feel, should be automatic  
	and unquestioned.  
	Yet to forbid questions greatly discourages the
formation of responsibility in believers.  Adults want to
know why, not to get around obedience, but to learn
and grow.  They like having the big picture.  And while
God alone has the big picture, in the Scriptures he
allows his children to ask why.  Asking why allows us to
work together with God (Phil.  2:12-13).  
	Successful executives are aware that their top pro-
ducers are people who frequently ask why.  They aren't
content to perform their tasks by rote.  They want the
wisdom of the boss's perspective to help them achieve
their goals.  They know that this is best for the boss, the
company, and themselves.  
	The word why occurs more than four hundred times
in the Bible.  God himself asks us "Why?" to make us
think.  "Why are you angry?" God asked Cain.  "Why is
your face downcast?" (Gen.  4:6).  God wanted Cain to
gain insight into his unhappiness-a value hardly
encouraged by the "just do it" idea.  
	Jesus also responded to many whys posed to him:
"How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your
disciples do not fast?" (Matt.  9:14).  "Why couldn't we
drive [the demon] out?" (Matt.  17:19).  "Why this
waste?" (referring to the woman who poured expensive
perfume on Jesus' head in Matthew 26:8).  He answered
these and many more questions, knowing that informa-
tion helps adults to take more responsibility.  
	Beware of authority figures who demand instant,
unquestioned obedience.  Not only do they not repre-
sent the character of God, but they probably also have
something to lose (such as control over you) by your
having information.  
	This False Assumption Promotes Lying  
	Remember the story of the little boy who didn't
obey his father's directive to sit down?  No matter what
his dad did to persuade him, he refused to comply.  In
frustration, his father finally picked up his son and
placed him, bottom down, on the sofa.  
	"Now you're sitting," said Dad.  
	"I'm sitting on the outside," replied his unbroken
son, "but I'm standing on the inside!"  
	That anecdotal boy was honest about his rebellion.  
Advocates of "just do it," on the other hand, must lie
about their true feelings.  In other words, we often feel
resentment, resistance, or rebellion about doing the
right thing.  It's part of our heritage, part of being Adam
and Eve's children.  When we must comply on the
outside, however, our rebellion moves from light and
openness to hiding, where it is much more difficult to
resolve.  
	In the parable about a dad and his two sons, the
second son was a liar.  When his father told him, "Son,
go and work today in the vineyard," he answered, "`I
will, sir,' but he did not go" (Matt.  21:28, 30).  Jesus then
told the crowd that the tax collectors and prostitutes
were entering the kingdom of God ahead of those who
were like that son.  
	Why did Jesus give priority to two such unlovable
groups as these?  Because they couldn't hide their
weaknesses and needs.  Tax collectors and prostitutes
were constantly in public shame because of their
vocations.  And that was Jesus' point: Whatever is out in
the open, exposed to the light of relationship, can be
healed.  Whatever is hidden-even under a show of
compliance-will stay unhealed because it is di-
sowned.  
	What do you do when you're asked to do the right
thing?  Do you make a deliberate, thought-out, free
choice to say yes or no?  Or do you lie about the no
inside you, and say yes?  Unless you can say no, you
cannot truly say yes to God or people.  
	This False Assumption Denies Our Fallenness  
	At its heart, "just do it" means, "You can obey" or
"The reason you don't obey is that you don't want to."  
	Over and over again we hear Christian teachers,
preachers, and counselors make the mistaken assump-
tion that once we are believers, we can do anything.  
	"To believe that people can't obey every command
of Scripture at any given moment," a church elder told
me, "is to impugn the character of God." He believed
that obedience is simply a matter of submission and
will.  
	The biblical truth, however, is the opposite.  The
Bible is full of hope for those who realize that we can't
live perfect lives.  We lie to ourselves when "we claim
to be without sin" (1 John 1:8).  We struggle with the
truth that "what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate
I do" (Rom.  7:15).  And yet Jesus blessed our poverty of
spirit (Matt.  5:3)  
	God has a great deal of room in his heart for those
who fail and sin, over and over.  He cares for those of us
who admit we can't "just do it."  
	This False Assumption Devalues the Power of
the Cross in Our Lives  
	In my first-grade year, our family moved with my
dad's business.  As happens with lots of six-year-olds
who suffer the trauma of moving and switching schools,
I [John] had trouble with my reading.  
	Needless to say, my parents were concerned.  My
mom hovered over me anxiously as I read my as sign-
ments at home after school.  It wasn't helpful to either of
us.  With her standing over my shoulder, I was doubly
anxious as I read.  If I missed a word, she corrected it
instantly.  We danced this high-anxiety duet for weeks,
until one day when my mom consulted her mother, who
had raised six children.  Granny had some advice for
her.  
	After school the next day, I arrived home to the
usual milk and cookies on the kitchen table.  And my
mother, as usual, asked me to read to her.  Reluctantly, I
pulled out my primer and began.  
	But something was different this time.  Instead of
sitting behind me, reading along, Mom stayed at the
sink, washing dishes with her back to me.  I'd read for a
while, starting and halting, wrestling with the words.
	Mom didn't say a word until I asked her for help, then
she'd offer an answer.  And on I'd go.  
	It worked.  I relaxed after a while and stopped
worrying about the mistakes.  I even enjoyed the little
reading I was doing.  What was helping was that Mom
seemed more at ease, more casual, standing over there
at the sink.  
	I didn't know until years later that the whole time I
was reading, she was standing there silently, tears
running down her cheeks.  Her empathy for my struggle
was great, and her motherly instincts pressed her to
rescue me.  Yet she stayed quiet and kept her voice
calm, so I wouldn't know.  I've been a voracious reader
ever since.  
	"Just do it" didn't work for me.  It was a demand I
couldn't satisfy.  I had no safe place to struggle or work
on my deficits.  What worked was Mom giving me grace
to make mistakes, with no anxiety, condemnation, or
guilt-but lots of cookies and milk.  
	The Safety Net Called Grace  
	Perhaps the most serious problem of the "just do it"
idea is that it leaves little room for the gift of life bought
by Christ's death.  Maturity is a cycle of trying and
failing our way into growth.  The cycle goes like this.  
	1.  You  
	2.  You  
	3.  You  
	4.  You  
	5.  You  
	6.  You  
	7.  You  
	8.  You  
	try.  
	fail.  
	receive grace and forgiveness.  
	suffer consequences.  
	learn from tbe consequences.  
	try.  
	do a little better.  
	fail.  
	And so on.  We learn by practice, says Hebrews 5:14.  
When we know that we won't be condemned when we
fail, we grow faster.  We take more risks.  But living
under the "just do it" bondage dooms us to not learn
from our mistakes.  The "just do it" fallacy at its best
interrupts and at its worst destroys the maturity cycle.  
Grace, on the other hand, protects us from loss of love
as we mature through trying and failing.  
	When is the last time you backed away from a
struggle with compulsive behaviors?  Were you bound
and determined to beat it through discipline, guilt, or
self-shaming?  
	There's a better way.  When we allow ourselves to
work through our inner motives and conflicts about
situations, we are more free to be autonomous, to take
responsibility for our behavior, and to be truly free in
Christ.
ASSUMPTiON #12  
	If I know the truth, I will grow.

	She was at the end of her therapy.  The journey had  
	been difficult.  When Joyce began therapy, she was a
hundred and thirty pounds overweight.  Now, after lots
of hard work, she had returned to a normal weight.  
	Her weight problem was, of course, only a symptom
of deeper problems.  In therapy, she had had to face
some painful truths and realities about her life, and do
some difficult work in her relationships.  
	The hard work had started when she realized how
much her parents had controlled her as a child.  She
idealized them, constantly caved in to their wishes, was
unable to stand up to them and be her own boss.  In
short, she had little control over her choices and
opinions.  
	This pattern of control had spilled over into her
adult relationships.  Her sisters and friends generally
ran her life, and she smiled every step of the way-the
consummate servant, gladly doing whatever anyone
wanted her to do.  But she gradually began resenting
deeply the very people she apparently loved and
served so gladly.  
	In addition to recognizing her relationship prob-
lems, Joyce finally remembered her sexual abuse when
she was eight.  The depression and grief she experi-
enced as an adult at first overwhelmed her.  She  
endured a period of anxiety and even panic because she
was afraid people could see the shameful truth.  
	But Joyce hung in there, faithfully working on
whatever it seemed God was trying to show her next.  
She established better boundaries with her parents:
She gave them a firm no when they wanted something
from her she didn't want to give, and she dealt with the
conflict that followed such refusals.  (This was the most
difficult part of her therapy.)  Her parents wondered
what had happened to their dependable daughter.  Why
the sudden selfishness?  They poured on the guilt, but
Joyce stood firm.  
	She began opening up to people about the pain of
her childhood sexual abuse, allowing others to be there
for her and to comfort her.  She slowly learned to
depend on people in a way that she never imagined she
could.  As she developed a support system, the inner
emptiness that had compelled her to eat (one of the
symptoms of her woundedness) began to be replaced
with love.  
	When she started to see me, Joyce had subscribed to
all twelve false assumptions.  Yet her healing had come
in a different way than her assumptions had predicted.  
One day towards the end of her treatment, I asked
Joyce how she explained her weight loss, a very visible
symbol of her increasing healthiness.  
	"I used to think that if I knew the Bible, studied it,
and depended on it to transform me, my problems
would be solved," she replied.  "But it didn't work.  
	"Here's what did work: First, I had to come out of
isolation and learn to connect with other people.  In the
beginning I did that with you, and then I was able to do
it with others.  
	"Second, I had to set boundaries in order to control
my life.  As long as others had control over me-and I
didn't-I didn't have the self-control I needed to say no
to food.
"Third, I had to learn to deal with and express my
pain and hurt, instead of covering it up with eating.  
When I learned that pain could be my friend instead of
my enemy, I was not so afraid to face it, and it began to
go away.  Now when I'm hurt, instead of eating a large
pizza, I call someone and talk it out.  
	"What I've really learned in all this, though, is that
what I thought about the Bible is not true.  Bible study
didn't cure me.  I learned that I have to do what the
Bible talks about.  Studying the Bible told me what I
needed to do, but only in actually getting out there and
doing those things did I see what the Bible was actually
talking about.  Knowing the Bible did not change me,
doing it did."  
	I was struck by how her view of the Bible had
changed.  Joyce didn't believe the Bible any less.  To the
contrary, she believed it more, because she had proved
its power in her life.  She had been taught that Bible
study, that "knowing the truth," would change her.  Yet
she discovered that doing the truth was what made her
grow.  
	When we were young counselors, a strong move-
ment was just beginning in the evangelical church to
apply biblical truth to emotional problems.  People
were being taught that Scripture memory, exegetical
teaching, doctrinal purity, and personal Bible study
were the keys to spiritual and emotional growth.  
	This focus is still popular.  If they simply know their
Bibles, many Christians are taught, their emotional
problems will be cured.  They are taught that knowing
God's Word is the all-sufficient cure for everything that
ails them.  Bible study and prayer, this camp believes,
are the answers to emotional problems.  
	Proponents of this view point to Jesus' words: "The
truth will set you free" (John 8:32), as well as some of
the descriptive passages about the Scriptures, such as
Psalm 19:7-14, or Psalm 119.  From such passages they
build an entire system that relies upon Bible study and
truth as the cure for everything.  
	This approach sounds good.  What could sound more
Christian than to stand up for the integrity of the Word
of God?  How could anyone even question such teach-
ing?  It sounds like heresy to even ask, "Is the Bible
enough?"  
	We believe that the Bible is God's Word and that its
revelation is sufficient.  What we question is its applica-
tion.  Is the cure simply reading the Bible and learning
truth?  The false assumption here is, "If I know God's
truth, I will grow." Yet we believe that Bible study
alone was never God's remedy for emotional and
spiritual problems.  Healing takes work.  
	This false assumption has been popular for centu-
ries.  One of Job's friends offered him the same advice:
"Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way
prosperity will come to you.  Accept instruction from his
mouth and lay up his words in your heart" (Job 22:21-
22).  Job's suffering would end, his friend assured him,
if only Job understood the truth and aligned himself
with it.  Yet God rebuked the friend for giving Job such
erroneous advice.  
	"You diligently study the Scriptures," Jesus said to
those well-acquainted with the Scriptures, "because
you think that by them you possess eternal life.  These
are the Scriptures that testify about me" (John 5:39).  
The Jewish leaders were so busy studying the minutia
of Scripture that they didn't recognize the One to whom
the Scriptures were pointing, the One who could lead
them into the spiritual life that truly heals.  
	We are not saying that the Word is dispensable for
spiritual growth.  It is not.  But neither is Bible study the
entire picture.  The Scriptures themselves teach that
Bible study is necessary yet insufficient in itself for
leading one into a healthy Christian life.
The Absence of Relationship  
	Truth alone saves no one.  The Pharisees had all the
truth they needed.  What they didn't have were relation-
ships with God and with each other.  
	The essential problem is that we are alienated from
God and others.  The essence of the spiritual life is to be
reconciled to God and have a vibrant relationship with
him (2 Cor.  5:18-19), and then to be reconciled to
friends and neighbors in the same way: To love God
with all your being and to love others as yourself.  
	God with Skin On  
	"Don't be afraid of the dark, honey," said a mother,
calming her frightened child.  "God is with you." To
which the child replied, "But I need somebody with
skin on.  
	We talk continually about how relationship with
God is essential for emotional growth-but so do those
who teach the false assumptions.  Yet though they teach
that prayer and Bible study are healing agents, their
emphasis on Bible study (and relationship to God
through Bible study) falls short of what the Bible
actually teaches-an incarnational gospel.  This means
that for us to realize the grace of God, God had to put
skin on.  He had to become a man.  Even now, he comes
to be with us in bodily form through his church, which
we call the body of Christ.  The church is Christ with
skin on.  We feel the grace of God not only by studying
about it in the Bible, but by experiencing it incarnation-
ally, just as it was first revealed.  
	In our hospital program, Phyllis was a patient who
had been an active Christian worker her entire adult
life.  Yet at age forty-five, she had gotten so depressed
she could no longer function.  
When we put her into a broup, a pattern emerged.
Every time a group member started talking about a
problem in order to get feedback and support from the
group, Phyllis quoted a Bible verse to him.  No one told
his or her story without a Scripture quote from Phyllis.  
	Patients and staff quickly realized two things-Phyl-
lis had an amazing grasp of the Bible, and she had
virtually no ability to relate intimately with others.  
	Consequently, Phyllis was very alone inside.  She
knew a lot about God's love, but experienced very
little.  Extremely cut off from other people emotionally,
she became depressed.  Phyllis was trying to have a
relationship with God apart from his body (the church),
and it wasn't working.  
	The apostle John wrote about a relationship with
God apart from his church: "For anyone who does not
love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God,
whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20).  We need God
"with skin on," and that is the function of the body of
Christ.  "Above all, love each other deeply, because
love covers over a multitude of sins.  Offer hospitality to
one another without grumbling.  Each one should use
whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully
administering God's grace in its various forms" (1 Peter
4:8-10).  Humans are God's agents for administering his
grace.  
	God's grace is not something that we learn only by
reading the Bible.  We also realize it in human relation-
ships.  
	Healing Hands of Humans, Too  
	Truth without relationship sidesteps the healing
God wants for us in his body.  Christians are told to
study the Bible for their growth and comfort, but the
Bible they read instructs them to return to human
relationships for healing: Go and abide with one
another, comfort one another, weep with those who
weep, confront one another, confess to one another,
encourage one another, and build one another up.  
These relational elements are essential for growth and
transformation in the soul.  
	We will in all things grow up into him who is the
Head, that is, Christ.  From him the whole body,
joined and held together by every supporting liga-
ment, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part
does its work.  (Eph.  4:15-16, italics mine)  
	The teaching "If I just know the truth, I will grow"
clearly contradicts the biblical mandate to go to the
body of Christ for growth.  You can't read the Bible and
think that it says that studying it is enough.  It points to
Jesus and a relationship with him and his people.  
	Doing the Truth  
	Another reason this false assumption is harmful is
that it teaches against the very truth it says to study.  
God designed sanctification, which has several ele-
ments beyond Bible study and learning the truth.  These
elements involve practicing the truth: putting the Bible
down and going and doing what it says to do:  
	Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive
yourselves.  Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to
the word but does not do what it says is like a man
who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at
himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he
looks like.  But the man who looks intently into the
perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do
this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-
he will be blessed in what he does.  (James 1:22-25)  
	In other words, James says, "Put your Bible down
and go do it!" Jesus told his listeners the same thing:
	Why do you call me "Lord," and do not do what I say?  
I will show you what he is like who comes to me and
hears my words and puts them into practice.  He is
like a man building a house who dug down deep and
laid the foundation on rock.  When a flood came, the
torrent struck that house but could not shake it,
because it was well built.  But the one who hears my
words and does not put them into practice is like a
man who built a house on the ground without a
foundation.  The moment the torrent struck that
house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.  
(Luke 6:46-49)  
	These passages compare hearers of the Word with
those who practice it.  Christ dismisses the value of
merely hearing his Word.  
	People who are taught to get over their emotional
problems by just reading their Bibles and praying are
being taught to become hearers of the Word.  There will
be no genuine healing, however, until they become
doers of the Word.  Bible study alone has been lifted to a
status the Bible never intended.  God says the Bible is
important because it points us to Jesus and tells us how
to live out our relationship with God and others-in
fact, it serves as a guide for living our whole life.  
	Though she had been in various types of Christian
service for years, Terri became, inexplicably, suicidally
depressed during a two-month missionary assignment.  
She soon learned the first steps of expressing her pain
in therapy and letting others comfort her.  She learned
to be honest with God and cultivate a relationship with
him.  She worked on forgiving people against whom she
had held deep grudges.  She got reconnected to the
body of Christ.  
	As Terri's depression lifted and her relationship
with God improved, she began to grow in her love for
God instead of feeling duty-bound to serve him.  If I know the truth, I will grow.  201  
Then something happened.  Terri appeared in my
office one day, very scared, distant, and confused.  
	"I don't know if I can trust you anymore,~' she said
tearfully.  "I just met with my former spiritual teacher,
and she said you were heretical."  
	"What did she mean by that?" I asked her.  
	"She said that you were a secular humanist and that
I shouldn't see you anymore or listen to what you say.  
	"What did she say that you should do instead?" I
was concerned because I knew that, although she had
made great gains, Terri wasn't finished with therapy.  
	"She said that I needed to get back to the Bible and
depend on it only, that the Bible was sufficient for all
my troubles.  She said that counseling was godless, and
that if I read the Bible and memorized the truth, it
would set me free."  
	"I want you to think hard, Terri.  How would you
describe what you have been doing in therapy?"  
	"What do you mean?"  
	"What have you learned and done since you have
been seeing me?"  
	"To get in touch with my grief.  That I need to
forgive.  I've opened up to other people and let them
support me.  I've tried to separate from my mother so I
could have a better relationship with my husband.  
Tried to be more honest about what I struggle with by,,
confiding in others.  Tried to be more honest with God.  
	"Now let's look more closely at the work you have
been doing and compare it with what the Bible
teaches," I said.  "Solomon and Paul talk about grief.  
Jesus and Paul talk about forgiveness.  Jesus, Paul,
Peter, David, and John urge their listeners to connect
with other people for support.  Genesis speaks of
leaving and cleaving, and Jesus says that you may end
up being enemies with your own family members when
you begin to do what he says.  
	"Both Paul and James," I continued, "write about
being honest and confessing to others our shortcom-
ings, feelings, and sins.  And Job and Jesus stressed
honest relationships with God.  It sounds to me that you
have been doing exactly what the Bible tells you to do,
and that is why you are getting better.  
	"Therapy has been the place where you have been
doing what God commands.  Sounds to me like your
former spiritual teacher wants you to just read the Bible
without doing what it says.  
	"I guess I really am doing what it says," Terri said
slowly.  "But she seems so spiritual ...  and I get
confused  
	"I have no intention of trying to control you, Terri.  I
want you to see some other people and tell them
everything that we do here, then get their input.  Then
go home and read your Bible as I've suggested in the
past.  Finally, think about whether you want to continue
with your therapy-or to follow her advice and teach-
ings.  I want it to be your decision.  And I want you to
make sure you talk to a couple of pastors in the process,
telling them exactly what you've been doing."  
	Terri soon got back on track, practicing those actions
that had been helping her-but not without much fear
of disobeying her spiritual mentor.  
	Real problems arise when people in counseling are
doing the hard work of therapy and then one of their
spiritual teachers condemns what they are working on,
calling it "secular humanism." They are then instructed
to get back to "biblical" ways of healing-Bible study
and prayer.  
	When they study their Bible, they find that it says to
do the things they were doing in therapy-take respon-
sibility for what is inside, uncover the darkness, grieve,
forgive, reconcile, learn, confront, express feelings,
confess, and support.  
	This is exactly what is so ridiculous about the false
assumption "If I know the truth, I will grow." It tells
people to study their Bible, yet prevents them from
doing what it says.  
	Character Change  
	Character change-to be transformed into God's
likeness-is the key to real healing for all of us (2 Cor.  
3:18).  
	But such transformation is hard work.  It comes not
by simply memorizing Scripture and trying to be
inundated with truth.  That is the Pharisees' method.  
Real character change comes from practicing the truth,
not just hearing it.  People who are actively involved in
recovery and character change are doing the hard work
of denying themselves.  They should not be told to stop
doing the truth, and instead just to study it or listen to it
in exegetical sermons.  
	Actually doing leads one to become humble and
loving, responsible and forgiving, cleansed and trans-
formed-and actively involved in bringing others into
the same kind of healing (2 Cor.  1:3-4).  Learn the
truth, study your Bible diligently, but don't stop there.  
Take what it says and put it into action by practicing the
healing process it points to.  Holding to his teaching, not
just knowing it, sets you free (John 8:31-32).  
	Jesus always emphasized doing what he said: "But
the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and
good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by
persevering produce a crop" (Luke 8:15).  If we sincere-
ly do this, we become like him who said, "I do know
him and keep his word" (John 8:55).  And in keeping his
word, there is life and health indeed.  
	"How can a young man keep his way pure?  By
living according to your word.  ...  I rejoice in following
your statutes as one rejoices in great riches" (Ps.  119:9,
14).  Conclusion  
	We have one regret in writing this book.  It's
incomplete.  
	These twelve false assumptions are the major
growth teachings with which the church struggles, but
more are created all the time.  As a seminary professor
remarked, "Our ability to sin creatively is limited only
by our depravity."'  
	What's a Christian to do?  
	1.  Seek God and ask him to illuminate your thinking
with his truth and wisdom.  If the teaching is accurate,
God wants you to understand that he is the fount from
which all truth flows.  
	2.  Make the Bible your final authority.  Don't let
religious-sounding jargon, high I.Q.,  eloquence, author-
ity, or sincerity determine if a teaching is true.  Test the
spirits with the Word of God.  And when you read the
Bible, look up the verses in several translations.  Check
out the context.  Does the idea fit in the passage?  Learn
to be an independent student of the Bible.  There are
many good commentaries, dictionaries, and Bible study
aids in Christian bookstores.  And enroll in a Bible study
methods class offered by a church (yours or another).  
	3.  Learn to think critically.  In other words, don't
believe something just because an authority figure says
it (including us).  Beware of teachers who are threatened
by your questions.  Jesus answered people's questions;
the Pharisees were insulted by them.  
	4.  Spend time with people who think for themselves.  
Learn what questions they ask when they read new  
information.  Mavericks often find nuggets of gold that
party-line people miss out on because they're stuck in
tradition.  
	5.  Ask yourself if you believe something because you
were taught it, or because it's true.  Many people don't
question false assumptions because they might shake
up their loyalty to their family, church, or community.  
Remember that God's truth will always win out.  
	6.  Look at the fruit of the teaching.  Does it lead to
love, responsibility, self-control, and forgiveness?  Or
does it bring on isolation, compulsion, guilt, and
shame?  
	Our prayer is that you will dig underneath every
false assumption to the truth-and, in the truth, find
Jesus.  
	Henry Cloud, Ph.D.  
	John Townsend, Ph.D.  
	Minirth-Meier Clinic West  
	260 Newport Center Drive #430  
	Newport Beach, CA 92660  
	1-800-877-HOPE