We are one: body, soul and spirit

In my last post I focused on the different world-views underlying spiritual faiths and Western psychology, and questioned whether the latter was imposing its assumptions on the many people of faith. In this blog I pursue this line of thinking further, focusing on the increasing overlap between Western therapeutic thinking and Christianity.

Some think that Christianity and psychology have nothing to do with each other: they are different realms and there is no reason for Christians to be any more interested in psychology than in any other '-ology'. There are others who see Christianity and psychology as so overlapping that they almost merge into one, and use 'pop psychology' in the church context with great relish, and seem to almost equate therapy with sanctification!

One of the very first things I learnt as a therapist was that it is difficult to tell psychological problems apart from spiritual problems. There are mental health issues that may have their roots in spiritual problems, and spiritual problems that may be presented as mental health ones. [I'm not interested here in those who suffer from serious delusions - such as thinking that they are Jesus Christ - but rather in the interplay of our ordinary everyday psychological and spiritual experience in life's ups and downs.]

Physicians and psychotherapists increasingly acknowledge that physical and mental health affect each other greatly. We are, after all, one person - our mind is part of our body! So, when people think about being in 'good health' or a state of 'well-being', they generally mean being in good physical and mental health.

But this is not sufficient. We also need to include the link between the physical and mental with our spiritual being. We are indeed one person - body, mind (or soul) and spirit; they each affect the other. So I do not see how one may truly be in good health without the spirit also being healthy. And how can the spirit be healthy when we ignore it, starve it, even deny its existence? We end up with people who look healthy on the outside but who are empty on the inside, hollow shells - or as Jesus put it more plainly, "whitewashed tombs".

Moreover, I do not think Jesus subscribed to the current ideology which sees spiritual issues alone as being the concern of the church, while we leave physical health to doctors and mental health to counsellors and the like. Jesus dealt with whole people - body, soul and spirit - and his healing was total - physical, mental and spiritual. He gave bread to hungry people, hope to hopeless people, enabled lame people to walk and the blind to see, and forgiveness and new life to those who were spiritually broken.

Counsellors must engage with the spiritual realities of their clients, not with any aim for salvation, but merely to understand their clients properly. And the church needs to follow Jesus' example and deal with whole people. Too often both have fallen for the same deceit: that the spirit can be separated from the body and mind.

Nevertheless, the church and counsellors are aiming at different things. It is not the role of counsellors to pass comment on their clients' spiritual frame of reference, merely to understand and engage with the whole person in front of them. But the church will not be relevant to people if it confines itself just to the spiritual; the 'average person in the street', as well as those in the pew, will see the irrelevance of preaching that doesn't deal with the physical and emotional realities of our lives. The gospel is not just about forgiveness for personal sins and being right with God, but about restoring relationships and the natural world - it's about making all things new.

Buddhism is cool!

Buddhism seems to crop up in conversations in the most unlikely places these days. I work as a counsellor in a secular context. One of the growing buzz-words in counselling these days is 'mindfulness' - though actually this is usually introduced as "mindfulness, which originally comes from Buddhist practices'".

Also, in a training I attended recently, the trainer introduced a concept and similarly added, 'this is a Buddhist concept'.

I tried to imagine how this would have been received if the trainer had said about some point in the training 'this is a Christian concept', or, equally, 'this is a concept from Islam'. I very much doubt that either of the latter would have been accepted without challenge.

But, as Buddhism is currently cool, it's not just acceptable to introduce things as 'coming from Buddhism', but this seems to add to their cachet.

So I'm puzzled. What is it about Buddhism that is attractive and acceptable in our secular society, when other religions are carefully put back in their box?

Buddhist teachings on the nature of suffering and how to rise above it sound attractive; we all know what it is to suffer and we would rather that we didn't! So, it seems worth paying attention when a teaching claims to have something to say about this. Moreover, as Buddhism doesn't make a big play about any deity who should be obeyed, but rather extols a personal inward journey towards enlightenment, I suppose that this fits with our secular self-improvement society rather well.

Personally, having tried self-improvement of various kinds and made no headway - remaining as sinful as ever - I confess Jesus as my Lord. He specialises in rescuing sinners and requires only a simple prayer: "Have mercy on me, a sinner".

Being a sinner isn't cool, but Jesus offers forgiveness and eternal life to all who will accept His free gift.

That is a Christian concept. And daily lived experience.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water

Dirty bath water:

• Christian denominational & theological divisions
• evil in our hearts, dressed to look smart in pews
• self-serving, proclaimed as protecting the truth
• traditions and unwillingness to change
• self-importance and hypocrisy
• keeping a safe distance from a troubled world
• sticking with people who are 'like us'.

Baby: Jesus!

Cleansed water:

• crossing the divides to bring Christian unity, under one Lord
• evil in our hearts, forgiven at the cross
• acknowledging Jesus as Lord, who is the Truth
• following wherever Jesus leads
• self-worth, bestowed at great cost on the cross
• working to bring peace to a troubled world
• loving those who are needy, in the name of Jesus.

Don't throw the baby out with the dirty bath water!

I'm a Christian - no more and no less

Over nearly 40 years of being a Christian, I've belonged to Methodist, United Reformed, Baptist, interdenominational and Anglican churches; some have been charismatic, some evangelical and some somewhere in between.  I've only changed churches when a new job took me to another part of the country and then had to find a new church home.

I've met people from all these and other Christian denominations who seem to me to be Godly people, and others who don't look at all Godly to me; but I'm not the authority on their Christian standing, and I know that I often look like the un-Godly ones myself.  (What grace that our standing in Christ is NOT dependent on whether we look Godly!)

But I'm struck by how often Christians identify themselves first by their denominational membership or theological stance: 'I'm a Methodist', 'I'm an evangelical', or 'I'm a charismatic'.  And frequently it's clear that even such labels are insufficient and so become: 'I'm a Strict and Particular Baptist', or 'I'm a conservative evangelical'.

I'm afraid these labels have always left me puzzled.

Are the labels intended to indicate which personal preferences one has as a Christian: 'I'm a Christian and prefer organ music and stained glass to guitars and choruses'?  But in which case the latter is trivial and our shared identity as children of God must encompass those who have very different preferences to ourselves!

More likely they are used as a shortcut to indicate which specific belief-set one holds as true, so that we can find others of like mind.  But even here I have a problem.  If we are in effect saying 'I believe these particular beliefs and, though I accept you are Christian, I disagree with some of your beliefs', then this is only a cause for discussion in brotherly/sisterly love, recognising that we may still end up disagreeing - but the bond between us as brothers and sisters in Christ far outweighs any such disagreements, which are trivial by comparison.  Hence the label is really of very little consequence.

Or are we actually saying through our denominational and theological labels, that 'I am right and you are wrong; I therefore do not accept you are a Christian'?  Well, you may have privileged (though 'read-only') access to the Book of Life, but I know that I do not. And dividing up people as 'in' or 'out' based on their labels - for example, evangelicals are 'in', but catholics are 'out' - absolutely must be wrong.  If you do that you're bound to end up surprised at how many evangelicals end up 'out' and how many catholics end up 'in'.

You may feel strongly that your particular set of beliefs are 'right', but from where I stand it looks more like one set of imperfect beliefs being compared with another set of imperfect beliefs; one forgiven sinner feeling superior to another forgiven sinner.  Isn't that arrogance and a sin?  (Of course, if you do have a perfect understanding of the perfect Word of God, then you ARE right and this doesn't apply to you.)

You cannot add anything to one's position as a Christian.  How can you sub-divide Christians by anything that actually matters?  And if we hold more dear the particular label that appeals to us than our position as Christians, then this begins to look rather like idolatry...

You can keep your labels if they matter that much to you.  But me?  I'm a Christian - no more and no less.